I had almost brought myself to the point of formally announcing the closure of this blog.
I cannot explain to you why the trend of recent political society in the West depresses me to the point of introversion and withdrawal. Almost everyone else manages to get on with it. It is an accepted, even commonplace fact of political discourse that inequality is rampant, that the gap between rich and poor in our economy has been widening and the trend accelerates, that social mobility has been turned backwards and we have a government dominated not just by wealth and status but by inherited wealth and status. The state itself has become, ever more blatantly, a mechanism for funneling money from ordinary people and giving it to the very rich, be it in bank bailouts, quantitative easing doled again to the banks, private finance initiative payments (liabilities totalling over £200 billion in taxpayer paid interest in the NHS alone) or “market driven” takeover of public services, or a hundred more ways.
My own professional struggle, which focused on trying to block use of intelligence gained by torture, seems only an attempt to divert a tiny ripple within a tsunami of contempt for morality in public life. The practice of torture exploitation has not ended; the Gibson inquiry into official complicity with torture has been unceremoniously halted as the guilty and directly responsible polish the green leather benches of the House of Lords with their expensively suited rumps, or inhabit their offices as Permanent Under Secretaries, or command large offices in BP. The SAS, CIA and Saudis play at overmastering the Russians in a new proxy war in Syria that, yet again, thanks to foreign military interference promises to be a still greater evil than the regime that preceded it. The media propaganda is yet more cynically distorted to a simplistic portrayal of “our” good guys and the evil bad guys, when in truth, as nearly always, the leaderships in resource wars on all sides are bad and the interests of the people are far from their hearts.
Democracy in the UK has become almost meaningless. A monopoly of effective news flow by a deeply corrupt corporate media has crystallised the major party structures as the only real choices in the consciousness of the vast majority of voters. Those major parties have been so bought up by those same corporate interests that there is no genuine choice of policy on offer. If you were against the handing of untold billions of your money to the bankers, or the interminable and pointless Afghan War, you were one of a very large percentage of the population but had no mainstream party which respected, let alone represented, your view.
New horror after new horror representative of this dreadful state of affairs arises every day. The latest casualties in drone strikes, which kill 20 innocents for every alleged terrorist they succeed in executing without process of law. Three young British soldiers dead today for no purpose whatsoever. The first NHS Trust goes under because of PFI debt. This week the Bank of England is expected to print another £50 billion in quantitative easing and hand it straight to the banks to be eventually paid out in salaries and bonuses.
The extraordinary way in which the middlemen who facilitate financial transactions in trade, suddenly through distorted legal frameworks became the chief individual beneficiaries of activity in the physical economy, is revealed every week in more and more detail of horrific corruption. But nothing whatever is done to stop them, let alone punish the guilty. They own the entire political establishment.
Occasional shafts of humour penetrate the stygian murk. Chloe Smith is revealed as completely inadequate by Jeremy Paxman. We could have told him that – at the Norwich North byelection the Conservative Party were desperate never to allow her to face questioning, and on this blog I offered a cash reward to anybody who spotted her with less than five minders. It was never claimed.
What really made me laugh was the report in the Guardian that she was given her ministerial position in the Treasury by David Cameron in the mistaken belief that, as she had worked for Deloitte, she must know something about finance. Why this is really funny is that the only job she ever had at Deloitte was not, as variously reported in the mainstream media, in PR or human resources, but in fact to be seconded to the Conservative Party. Chloe never had any job except as Conservative Party staff. She was then taken on by Deloitte and instantly seconded back to the Conservative Party; her working for Deloitte at all was a fiction. Whether this was to evade political donation rules or just to burnish her CV as a parliamentary candidate, I have no idea.
That the experience Cameron thought qualified her as a Treasury minister was actually a secondment to the Tory Party by one of those lobbying major corporate financial interests – and Deloitte was the Royal Bank of Scotland’s auditors – is so rich it moves beyond satire. I can scarcely believe it myself. In fact it gave rise to such paroxysms of bitter laughter that I found the strength to blog again. Thank you Chloe and Dave for that, anyway.
Alan Campbell Why don’t you pop over to Timbuktu and sort things out?
@alan_campbell
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It really amuses me the opprobrium heaped upon these Muslims in Mali for destroying Timbuktu. The Coalition of the Willing destroys entire countries.
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The invasion of Iraq was certainly more destructive in terms of loss of antiquities than what is going on in Timbuktu. Hence the lack of media coverage.
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That’s the problem. The fighters in Mali need a PR operation to emphasize how their actions deliver freedom and democracy. When will they leave the Dark Ages behind and retain the services of Bell Pottinger?
Quite KingFelix. My comment to Alan Campbell was sarcastic as you probably guessed.
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I have just been reading some of Tony Harrison’s poems and this one in particular chimed, as did Baghdad Lullaby.
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A memory of the charred bodies in the line of vehicles in the desert.
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A Cold Coming
http://home.sslmit.unibo.it/guerra/testi/leech.pdf
For interest
http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/3-July—Treasury-Select-Committee–Written-submission.pdf
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Supplementary information regarding Barclays settlement with the Authorities in respect of their investigations into the submission of various interbank offered rates
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Context
In anticipation of Bob Diamond’s appearance before the Treasury Committee tomorrow, 4 July, 2012, in the interest of clarity and transparency we set out on behalf of Barclays a brief summary of the salient events and the actions that Barclays has undertaken since becoming aware of them. These explanations are in no way intended to excuse any of the events that occurred. These events should never have taken place, and Barclays deeply regrets that they did.
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/… 9 pages follow
Mary
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I’ve been reading your comments for a couple of years.
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I get it.
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If Craig winds up this blog, I want to follow you, you are a mine of information.
Don’t get yourself down by cursing the darkness. Keep lighting the candles!
Silly response, Mary. So you can only comment on countries that you are sorting out? I guess you are blogging from Gaza then? Just thought Craig as a West Africa hand might want to comment on this or Boko Haram.
“Robert Reich | Mitt Romney and the New Gilded Age”
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http://truth-out.org/news/item/10109-mitt-romney-and-the-new-gilded-age
Please keep this blog going Craig. When it went silent I thought you were either too busy on your biog of Burnes, or depressed and frustrated. I am sorry to find out it was the latter. Clearly from the comments you can see that you do matter to a lot of people, not to mention the trolls, who will also miss you 😉
And the English fed refuse to say just how much on the £/$ they pay for the assets. Say £100 denomination, is it £20? I’m guessing its full face value. How ironic that no intelligent life will touch such toxicity. The taxpayer seems to love the stuff, can’t get enough. And what about the quality, is it A/B or worse? We are being shafted, really done over. QE is the same as war. Relieve the peasants of their future earnings to infinity. The vampiric trio of Cameron/Osbourne/Merv, are asset stripping this country dry while at the same time feeding us the excrement of such a feast. The Chinese were not so lame when they re-capitalised the big 4 commercials. They took the bad loans from the banks and either took assets from said company or equity shares. I had a contact inside the Chinese central bank .I asked how the banks had not repaid any money to the ministry of finance..he said as banks state owned no need to pay any money back.So the taxpayer back the bonds and are liable for losses. If these vampires cannot run a banking business they should literally fuck off.
Please, please don’t ever stop this blog. I share your despair at the darkness that seems intent on engulfing us all but it’s only people such as yourself, Pilger, Media Lens and other brave souls that can bring a little light into this miserable world. Your work and experience are invaluable and without your efforts everything would truly be lost.
Completely agree with the posts above – Craig Murray is an ongoing source of inspiration. I have the utmost respect for his angry, enquiring, logical mind and his total contempt for the bullshitters.
Muireach Go Bragh!
Please don’t let the bastards grind you down. Your’s is a lone voice in the wilderness. Thank you for continuing
Craig, you are a among the few shafts of light in this sea of shite.
I hope you continue to write, for you add sustenance to us who haven’t succumbed to becoming sheeple.
When Churchill’s Black Dog pays you it regular visits, we’ll be here understanding and patiently waiting for your return.
Much respect
A
Craig – Lets just look forward to the day every citizen from Britain and elewhere can go and see Straw,Blair,Balls,Brown,Cameron,Osbourne,Campbell and all the other criminals in the banking and mainstream media in jail. Until that day we all must keep going