I was called by a journalist yesterday who told me that in Dewsbury six years ago I shared a platform with Baroness Warsi’s now husband at a meeting against the persecution of Muslims. Sadly I couldn’t really help him as at the time I was doing hundreds such events and have only the dimmest of recollections of that one.
It is not merely amusing that Cameron refers Warsi for investigation for allegedly pocketing a couple of thousand quid while protecting Hunt who tried so hard to shepherd the Murdoch BSkyB bid past the winning post, while pretending to referee the event.
Nor is the lesson just that a Muslim woman will always be expendable while a fully paid up member of the ruling class will be less so.
The truth is that to trip up an MP over a little cash does not threaten the system. To tackle the massive institutional corruption by which corporate interests control the British state is a different question altogether.
Hunt is of course not the only case not to be referred. Nor was the Adam Werritty debacle, where rather than the proper investigative procedures Cameron organised a tidy little stitch-up by Gus O’Donnell which omitted almost all the key facts and particularly did not say what the entire scheme was about – the promotion of the interests of Israel. The Murdoch Empite, the Israeli lobby, these are amongst the interests that actually run the exploited citizenry of this poor wracked old country. Every now and then glimpses of truth emerge.
But must not be pursued.
“pallid and bloodless” (Mary)
The second adjective explains the first. No blood left. Not unusual.
I can’t bear it. Have just switched on Sky News and Campbell is on talking about ‘Tony’ who was such a caring person and who thought deeply about all his actions. There is a large image of his book in the background. Campbell has just batted away a question about Dr Kelly’s death (Did he throw him to ther wolves?) He said that it was a harsh question and had told Hutton all he knew about it. Quite. He looked shifty and managed to get the conversation round to England football and hair gel in the end.
He said that he was at Queen Mary College last night and found that people were very interested in what went on during his time at No 10. I am sure that they are. He is revolting.
Judging by the directions yesterday evening, both Marham and Lakenheath were involved. Including 4 Tornados neatly in formation at ca 10,000′ heading E towards Marham and a C130 descending from the NE in the general direction of Lakenheath/Mildenhall , while some US strike things at high altitude came in from the SE.
Busy, busy, busy.
Campbell was also on the R4 arts programme last night. Only listening with half an irritated ear, but they didn’t seem to be talking about Iraq. Blair came into it a lot, though. Oh, and Campbell remains passionately committed to Labour, seemingly. He should do what’s best for the party, in that case, and leave.
Andrew Lansley. In charge of destroying the NHS and creating new bluesky opportunities for service providers to monetise the provision of consumer solutions in the bandage, chemotherapy, prosthesis and medicament zones, while relieving hard-working families of their dependence on subsidised medicine. Or something like that.
.
Andrew Lansley. Non-exec director of Profero:
.
http://www.proferogroup.com/
.
Lansley describes this as a “digital marketing agency” in the RoI. Whereas it’s a specialist lobbying company for the pharma and biotech industry. Who pay him ~£13K a year(£1073 for 6.5 hours monthly) for his no doubt valuable input.
.
Just for info.
.
http://dissidentvoice.org/2012/06/egypt-braces-for-confrontation-with-military-and-israel-calls-up-reserves/
,
/….
.
The week before the Egyptian runoff elections, the Israeli defense forces (IDF) have issued emergency call up orders to six reserve battalions in light of new dangers on the Egyptian borders and the repeated attacks that were allegedly launched against Israel from the Sinai Peninsula. And the Knesset has given the IDF permission to summon a further 16 reserve battalions if necessary.
.
And in response, the Egyptian second army has been put on high alert. A military source added that lots of armored vehicles and tanks have been pushed to the borders with Israel and vital targets have been secured like the Suez Canal waterway.
.
Illicit arms shipments, smuggled from Libya, have been flooding the Egyptian market lately.
.
/….
“Tony Blair take two: Ex PM ‘poised for political comeback with Labour after advising Obama on election battle'”
.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2147101/Tony-Blair-Former-PM-begin-political-comeback-Labour-advising-Obama-election-battle.html#ixzz1vR8OBgiT
.
“amassing an estimated £20million fortune since leaving office five years ago”…And the rest!!!, try £120million, I wonder what that equates too in how many people he murdered and maimed ?, £3.00 per man/women/child.
The BBC’s Katya Adler who used to transmit the Israeli propaganda has been transferred to Madrid where she is ‘giving it large’ on the state of the Spanish economy.
.
Her colleague Tim Franks who was also Israel based is now in this country and reports on sport and the like.
.
Perhaps they can only take so much of working in conjunction with the likes of Regev.
~~~~
Google’s Schmidt has been cosying up to Netanyahu. More Israeli PR here.
http://joelleydeninternetseomarketingjournal.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/israel-hi-tech.html
More on Campbell. I would just disagree that there has not been much publicity. I do not watch TV 24/7 but I have seen him on at least five programmes with this ‘book’ and I think he was on Marr on Sunday but not sure. Komodo heard him on Radio 4 last night too. I would guess he’s been on Newsnight and Ch4 and ITV too
.
The day Alastair Campbell danced on Dr David Kelly’s grave
By Miles Goslett
PUBLISHED: 09:31, 21 June 2012
Comments 4
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2162235/The-day-Alastair-Campbell-danced-Dr-David-Kellys-grave.html
Another donor to the Lansley cause in 2010 was John Nash (and/or his wife, Caroline), also interested in health, not least of Lansley’s bank account. This made quite a stir at the time, but like so much else, it is now visible only if you lift the carpet. Nash’s pattern of donation since then is interesting.
.
http://unlockdemocracy.org.uk/blog/entry/donor-of-the-week-john-caroline-nash
.
(Tax-avoidance is something else his Care group is quite good at:
{http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/?lid=4251} )
.
But these days, instead of funding the Tories, or a Health Minister, he appears to be subsidising No2AV – No to the Alternative Vote – whose finances remain conveniently opaque. Is No2AV, then, a slush fund?
.
{http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/no2av-campaigners-refuse-to-publish-donor-details-2215747.html}
.
“Breadline Britain Project”
.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/series/breadline-britain
.
The three main parties fiddle while britain suffers.
“China’s Food Fright
It’s the law of the jungle in the food safety industry with hidden poisons now including new growth hormone”
.
http://english.caixin.com/2012-06-20/100402817.html
Disgraceful editorial threatening Ecuador if it doesn’t submit to Yankee dictates in this morning’s Washington Post: Asylum for Julian Assange?:
guys what is up with Nat West? Is there a fully fledged run on the bank and no one is talking about ti?
Komodo,
.
Assange mad? Ironically it was Wiki-leaked documents that exposed US hypocrisy in accusing Rafael of ignoring corruption.
.
The US are miffed at losing their Manta forward operating air-base and despite contributing to Ecuador’s tourist industry, Rafael will indicate asylum for Julian Assange, gauge the US response and then/maybe secrete him away in a ponchos and Panama hat.
.
Assange bereft of a £quarter million in bail bond will probably start growing banana’s and virulently condemn the IMF for screwing with Ecuador’s oil exports.
I have just come in and read this Passerby. Blame it on the computers!
.
NatWest and RBS customers hit by technical problems
NatWest said it was sorry for the inconvenience Continue reading the main story
.
Customers of NatWest have reported problems with their bank accounts, with balances not being updated and online services unavailable.
.
The bank confirmed it was experiencing technical issues and that “a number of customers” were affected.
.
NatWest said it would be keeping over 1,000 branches open until 19:00BST on Thursday to assist customers.
.
It said it was working hard to fix the problem, which has also affected some RBS and Ulster Bank customers.
.
One small business owner told the BBC that the electronic system to pay staff was not working.
/..
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18535060
.
I said the other day I had received an A5 size leaflet from NatWest on Helpful Banking inside an envelope made of bubblewrap. Today another identical one arrived.
Ref the tax avoidance/evasion furore and Agent Cameron’s castigation of the K2 offshore set up.
.
Government should set example on pensions and pay cuts
June 21st, 2012- http://political-cleanup.org/?p=5458
.
On Adrian Goldberg’s BBC WM radio programme today an engineer called in to say that Government should set an example to doctors, and indeed the nation.
.
They should start making contributions to their index-linked pensions as ‘ordinary people’ do, should take pay cuts before asking others to do so.
.
MPs’ pensions are not even taxed?
It was said that the Taxpayers Alliance has discovered that MPs’ pensions are not even taxed! Seeking more information I found in the Telegraph (4.4.09):
.
George Bull, a partner at accountants Baker Tilly, pointed out that politicians also enjoy risk-free final salary pensions, where subsidies from taxpayers are rising after the Government Actuary’s Department disclosed a £50m shortfall this week. Mr Bull said: “The big earners for MPs are property and pensions. The problem with pensions is that the MPs work to their own special rules with generous index-linked pensions and tax-free gratuities when they retire or are voted out. The rest of us have to make our own pension provision.”
.
~~~~
Colville of the Torygraph said earlier that Cameron’s father had a very efficient offshore tax set up.
The huge glossy lifestyle magazines twice a year from RBS seem to have stopped, though. I would much rather have had an interest payment, but hey, I’m a miserable old grouch and I just don’t appreciate advertorials for Caribbean hideaways.
________________VISIONS of the ‘WOUNDED SNAKE’______________
.
Nations provoke fantasy. Throughout history peoples have had visions of their origins, destiny and mission.
.
Whether Pax Romana, Islam, Marxist communism or the ‘White Man’s Burden’ of imperialism we have come to recognise ‘America’ as a word that has taken on mythic proportions.
.
Here is my vision of that America, one I beam every single day to children’s mobile phones in order to reveal to them the sense of America’s mission, a dark apocalyptic message that tries to prevent assimilation into a universal creed called Americanism…
.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXPrfnU3G0#!
Good piece by John Pilger who covers all bases. He includes a reference to Campbell.
.
History is the enemy as “brilliant” psy-ops become the news.
From Agent Orange in South Vietnam to Obama’s drone attacks in Afghanistan and war in Syria, Washington spins its assaults on the world as it cynically lives up to a reputation for casual slaughter.
.
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/international-politics/2012/06/history-enemy-brilliant-psy-ops-become-news
.
On the other hand, Rent A Tool here is euphoric about his session with Campbell at Queen Mary college. Remember he was a tool for Bliar and ‘wrote’ two biographies of him. Supported the Iraq war of course.
.
{http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2012/06/21/alastair-campbell-i-have-never-been-asked-that-question-before/}
No need for any comment here. See the opening paras.
Yuk!
.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/john-rentoul/john-rentoul-dont-knock-twitter-for-being-random-7869902.html
Aussie diplomatic cables confirm that U.S. DOJ is pursuing charges against Assange, as reported by Sydney Morning Herald: Assange felt ‘abandoned’ by Australian government after letter from Roxon:
A cop out by the Norwegian state prosecutors on Breivik.
.
Prosecutors in Norway call for Breivik insanity verdict
Prosecutor Svein Holden: “We are not convinced that Breivik is legally insane but we are in doubt”
.
Norway Attacks
Breivik trial: Day by day
Survivor: I’ve done my duty
Norway looks again at insanity
Unanswered questions
.
Prosecutors in Norway have called for self-confessed mass killer Anders Behring Breivik to be considered insane in their closing argument at his trial.
.
Prosecutor Svein Holden said there were still doubts about his insanity but he should be placed in psychiatric care, not sent to prison.
.
Judges in the trial in Oslo are due to deliver their verdict in the trial in July or August.
.
Breivik killed 77 people and injured 242 on 22 July of last year.
.
/..
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-18530670#
Sound quality not too good. Julian Assange speaking from the Ecuadoran Embassy.
.
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/julian-assange-exclusive/4085686
A penetrating piece by John Pilger – “piracy, “austerity” and “perpetual war”: an extremism dedicated to the overthrow of democracy.”
.
Yet ideological domination has sapped economic and moral sources of British influence. Agent Cameron and his liberal interventionist elite have relied on the language of morality backed up by BBC propaganda and images of the dying, their faces, names and Facebook accounts that appeal to our shared humanity.
.
Yet the realists like Julian Assange and and many other whistle-blowers are key to penetration; key to transmuting the illusion of an emotional hunger for war against an imaginary enemy into a plan for peace.
.
What do you know that counts? Demolishing the ‘invisible government’ is long overdue.
Not Insane = brain-washed.
i.e. You take a moral, even spiritual, personality and graft onto it as you would graft a selected tree species onto a vigourous, wild root.
==>
The UK had a long struggle against Papacy culminating in individual freedom of religion in 1640, after a bloody struggle.
The Protestant root which we share with Sweden and Germany was capable of being brain-washed into Nazism.
==>
You can take Islamic individual faith, mix it with deeply cynical political schemes like the old cabbage of an independent Kurdistan, and what do you get? Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, and lots of oil, water and resources getting colonised and lots of people dying.
==>
So how do we avoid that? Go back to centralised religion like Papacy and Sufism which does not have the vigourous root of individual faith as its driving force? Papacy and Sufism have the common theme that the divine books are forbidden for popular consumption.
==>
Sufism believes that mortification of the flesh and self-sacrifice opens the inner senses and mind. Islam by contrary, and Protestantism, both say that by steeping yourself in the word of God, the divine scriptures, you have a useful plant, a selected tree species, grafted onto a wild root of individual faith.
==>
The Sufis believe that the forthcoming month of Ramadhan should be used for self-mortification. The Qur’an states that the Muslims should dedicated the month to reading the Qur’an in the mosques in daylight hours and some night time hours, and then return to eating and enjoying their families.
–>
Sufism is not Islam. But my Sufi boss is trying to use the controls of employment law to deny me the opportunity of reading the Qur’an in Ramadhan. The religious freedom which was sealed into UK law in 1640 is being eroded by a new bunch of Papists, the so-called Muslims who believe in saints and holy men.
==>
Not having it. Tomorrow my daughter is getting married and I can’t go because I’m a Muslim and my ex is a vicar in the anything goes except Islam Church of England.
==>
My point being, that our UK establishment portray Islam as a radical religion which would turn into a monster like Nazism or Breivik brain-washed-ism. It sponsors two groups, the Sufis or moderate Muslims like Warsi, and the short-robed Salafist mad mullahs.
==>
There is however an increasing number of young and old Muslims who, like their Protestant UK predecessors who consumed the Good Book at home, read and try to understand the Qur’an on a daily basis and in Ramadhan.
==>
May Allah guide the Sufis and protect the UK from the return of Papacy under another name.
So contrary to what we are told by the MSM, Julian Assange is NOT in the Ecuadorian embassy primary to seek political asylum rather it is a ‘safe house’ to prevent I believe a rendition to America, a ‘rogue state’ that will incarcerate him in the same way as Bradley Manning. This action will give Julian the time needed to draw public attention and support for him and his cause.
.
I strongly urge every able bodied citizen of Britain who cherishes freedom and justice to support him in the short amount of time that Ecuador can give him while in sanctuary. Thank-you
Ok, Mary, carry on copying and pasting (even from the BBC, which you profess to hate so much) and don’t engage. I happen to think it makes the comment section a lot less vibrant and interesting, but hey, that’s me. I like to discuss. I can read the BBC website any time – if I ever wanted to.
hellooo! is he back in power?
21 June: Tony Blair: Military Option on Iran ‘On the Table’
In an interview on IDF Army Radio Thursday, Blair said bluntly that “all options, including the military option, are still on the table. All these options are terrible,” Blair said, “but Iran cannot be allowed to go nuclear…
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/157089?#.T-Mkv5HNnOM
Off topic:-
U.S. Crimes Against Humanity?
History is the Enemy as ‘Brilliant’ Psy-ops Become the News
By John Pilger
June 21, 2012 “Information Clearing House” — Arriving in a village in southern Vietnam, I caught sight of two children who bore witness to the longest war of the 20th century. Their terrible deformities were familiar. All along the Mekong river, where the forests were petrified and silent, small human mutations lived as best they could.
Today, at the Tu Du paediatrics hospital in Saigon, a former operating theatre is known as the “collection room” and, unofficially, as the “room of horrors”. It has shelves of large bottles containing grotesque foetuses. During its invasion of Vietnam, the United States sprayed a defoliant herbicide on vegetation and villages to deny “cover to the enemy”. This was Agent Orange, which contained dioxin, poisons of such power that they cause foetal death, miscarriage, chromosomal damage and cancer.
In 1970, a US Senate report revealed that “the US has dumped [on South Vietnam] a quantity of toxic chemical amounting to six pounds per head of population, including woman and children”. The code-name for this weapon of mass destruction, Operation Hades, was changed to the friendlier Operation Ranch Hand. Today, an estimated 4.8 million victims of Agent Orange are children.
Len Aldis, secretary of the Britain-Vietnam Friendship Society, recently returned from Vietnam with a letter for the International Olympic Committee from the Vietnam Women’s Union. The union’s president, Nguyen Thi Thanh Hoa, described “the severe congenital deformities [caused by Agent Orange] from generation to generation”. She asked the IOC to reconsider its decision to accept sponsorship of the London Olympics from the Dow Chemical Corporation, which was one of the companies that manufactured the poison and has refused to compensate its victims.
Aldis hand-delivered the letter to the office of Lord Coe, chairman of the London Organising Committee. He has had no reply. When Amnesty International pointed out that in 2001 Dow Chemical acquired “the company responsible for the Bhopal gas leak [in India in 1984] which killed 7,000 to 10,000 people immediately and 15,000 in the following twenty years”, David Cameron described Dow as a “reputable company”. Cheers, then, as the TV cameras pan across the £7 million decorative wrap that sheathes the Olympic stadium: the product of a 10-year “deal” between the IOC and such a reputable destroyer.
History is buried with the dead and deformed of Vietnam and Bhopal. And history is the new enemy. On 28 May, President Obama launched a campaign to falsify the history of the war in Vietnam. To Obama, there was no Agent Orange, no free fire zones, no turkey shoots, no cover-ups of massacres, no rampant racism, no suicides (as many Americans took their own lives as died in the war), no defeat by a resistance army drawn from an impoverished society. It was, said Mr. Hopey Changey, “one of the most extraordinary stories of bravery and integrity in the annals of [US] military history”.
The following day, the New York Times published a long article documenting how Obama personally selects the victims of his drone attacks across the world. He does this on “terror Tuesdays” when he browses through mug shots on a “kill list”, some of them teenagers, including “a girl who looked even younger than her 17 years”. Many are unknown or simply of military age. Guided by “pilots” sitting in front of computer screens in Las Vegas, the drones fire Hellfire missiles that suck the air out of lungs and blow people to bits. Last September, Obama killed a US citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, purely on the basis of hearsay that he was inciting terrorism. “This one is easy,” he is quoted by aides as saying as he signed the man’s death warrant. On 6 June, a drone killed 18 people in a village in Afghanistan, including women, children and the elderly who were celebrating a wedding.
The New York Times article was not a leak or an expose. It was a piece of PR designed by the Obama administration to show what a tough guy the ‘commander-in-chief’ can be in an election year. If re-elected, Brand Obama will continue serving the wealthy, pursuing truth-tellers, threatening countries, spreading computer viruses and murdering people every Tuesday.
The threats against Syria, co-ordinated in Washington and London, scale new peaks of hypocrisy. Contrary to the raw propaganda presented as news, the investigative journalism of the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung identifies those responsible for the massacre in Houla as the ‘rebels’ backed by Obama and Cameron. The paper’s sources include the rebels themselves. This has not been completely ignored in Britain. Writing in his personal blog, ever so quietly, Jon Williams, the BBC world news editor, effectively dishes his own ‘coverage’, citing western officials who describe the ‘psy-ops’ operation against Syria as ‘brilliant’. As brilliant as the destruction of Libya, and Iraq, and Afghanistan.
And as brilliant as the psy-ops of the Guardian’s latest promotion of Alastair Campbell, the chief collaborator of Tony Blair in the criminal invasion of Iraq. In his “diaries”, Campbell tries to splash Iraqi blood on the demon Murdoch. There is plenty to drench them all. But recognition that the respectable, liberal, Blair-fawning media was a vital accessory to such an epic crime is omitted and remains a singular test of intellectual and moral honesty in Britain.
How much longer must we subject ourselves to such an “invisible government”? This term for insidious propaganda, first used by Edward Bernays the nephew of Sigmund Freud and inventor of modern public relations, has never been more apt. “False reality” requires historical amnesia, lying by omission and the transfer of significance to the insignificant. In this way, political systems promising security and social justice have been replaced by piracy, “austerity” and “perpetual war”: an extremism dedicated to the overthrow of democracy. Applied to an individual, this would identify a psychopath. Why do we accept it?
http://www.johnpilger.com