I was invited to be on the Murnaghan programme on Sky News this morning – which I always find a great deal more intelligent than the Andrew Marr alternative on the BBC. I declined because I did not want to get up and get a 7.30am train from Ramsgate on a Sunday morning. I had a meeting until 11.30pm last night planning a conference on human rights in Balochistan [I still tend to say Baluchistan], and I have a newly crowned tooth that seems not to want to settle down. But I am still worried by my own lack of energy, which is uncharacteristic. Is this old age?
I also have some serious work to do on my Burnes book, and next week I shall be staying in London to be in the British Library reading room for every second of its opening hours. So there may be a bit of a posting hiatus. I have in mind a short post on an important subject on which I suspect that 99% of my readership – including the regular dissident commenters – will strongly disagree with me.
This is a peculiarly introspective post, perhaps because my tooth is hurting, but I seem to have this curmudgeonly spirit which wishes to react to the huge popularity of this blog by posting something genuinely held but unpopular; a genuine view but one I don’t normally trumpet. The base thought seems to be “You wouldn’t like me if you really knew me”.
Similarly when I wrote Murder in Samarkand I was being hailed as a hero by quite a lot of people for my refusal to go along with the whole neo-con disaster of illegal wars, extraordinary rendition and severe attacks on civil liberties, sacrificing my fast track diplomatic career as a result. My reaction to putative hero worship was to publish in Murder in Samarkand not just the political facts, but an exposure of my own worst and most unpleasant behaviour in my private life.
I am in a very poor position to judge, but I believe the result rather by accident turned out artistically compelling, if you don’t want to read the book you can get a good idea of that by clicking on David Tennant in the top right of this blog and listening to him playing me in David Hare’s radio adaptation.
Anyway, that’s enough musing. You won’t like my next post, whenever it comes. Promise.
Message from 38 Degrees. There is a postcode to check if a CCG is being formed in your area. If so, please sign.
The government’s plans to privatise and fragment our NHS are taking shape.
Local doctors are forming a Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) for the area. They’re going to get new powers to decide what health services you and your neighbours are able to access and who provides them. [1]
Whether it’s treatment for diabetes, skin conditions, a broken arm or depression, profit-hungry companies like Virgin Care and Serco are circling, ready to bid for contracts by promising to slash costs. [2]
The doctors on your local CCG will be under pressure from the government to hand out contracts to private companies. That could put vital services at risk. [3] But the last thing most doctors want is to carve up our NHS for private profit. Plus, the new CCG has a legal duty to listen to local people. [4]
So right now, we’ve got a big chance to ask local doctors to use their new powers to protect our NHS, not privatise it. Together, we can make sure they hear from hundreds of local people as they make these crucial decisions.
Can you add your name to the petition to your local CCG now?
https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/CCG-petition
Donations from 38 Degrees members have funded lawyers to prepare robust wording for CCGs to write into their constitutions – protecting our NHS from the worst risks of the government’s plans. [5]
If we can get in early, while CCGs are still being formed, we can give doctors a better choice – one based on sound legal advice and the interests of patients, not private companies.
38 Degrees members will be able to work together to persuade their local CCG to write these safeguards into their constitutions. The government and the private health industry probably won’t like it at all, but there’s little they can do to stop people power.
First things first. Can you add your name.
Hey J – I asked who’s behind this enormous scam of GCC, and what the aim of it might be. An answer that the scientists themselves are all scamming us because “they’re all in it for the money” is a much weaker reply than I was hoping for. It’s laughable, actually. An unspoken nod and wink between such a vast number of scientists, their easily duped paymasters and a totally hoodwinked public – apart from much more clever people like yourself, obviously – that’s a good enough explanation for you? Unbelievable.
You didn’t address this “state sponsored bogeyman” business, btw. If “the state” really is behind it, why aren’t they actually doing anything? How come “the state” as represented by the Dubbya Bush administration, for instance, had no interest whatsoever in promoting a move away from fossil fuels? Which “state” did you have in mind, and why are they in opposition to the findings of their own agencies?
Glenn, if you had been following the story, you would know that it is UN led.
There is also an astonishly blatant clue in the “Intergovernmental” part of the IPCC.
Not too difficult if you could be bothered.
SB: So you’re with Republican Senator Inhofe (chairman of the Senator Committee on Environment and Public Works), who thinks it’s all down to the UN, Al Gore and Hollywood elites then, eh?
You do realise that governments appoint their members to the UN, right? Are you actually saying that governments send people to an organisation that then work directly against their wishes (and – indeed – get completely ignored in their policies)?
This conspiracy theory is laughable. Try thinking this through a little bit… not too difficult if you could be bothered.
I don’t do the fake left/right panto-politics that’s designed to divide the gullible masses so stop trying to identify me with this nonsense.
As zoologist alluded to it’s “smearing” – a rather childish way of conducting a discourse.
Chris Jones wrote a rather good piece on the mechanisms on th last page – I earlier suggested also that you need to look at Maurice Strong, a Rockefeller agent, Club of Rome member and founder of UNEP if you want to understand the driving force and powers at work.
If you think history is just happenstance then you are deluded.
Mitchell’sgate gate is rambling on, calling people plebeian, i.e. common people, seems to rank higher in the news than the Gulf of Hormuz mine sweeping manoeuvres, or the murders of four EU citizens by state sponsored terror.
Now back to the impact of wars and destruction on the environment, not to forget adding the vast extra releases in all these pollutants Billy and others so mentioned, that will be expended in the ‘building it all up again’ phase.
How much did it cost to rebuild Dresden, Hamburg, Coventry, Paris, London,etc. what are the legacies of WW2 pollution today?
What’s the latest on Fukushima you may ask?
Have a cheerful look and take your pick, each and every story will no doubt feature in some future research project on the impact of nuclear fusion in the environment.
http://enenews.com/category/location/japan
Uh, I dunno, but initiating a scientific fraud if immense proportions looks like a crap way of taking over the world to me.
What about free (GPLed etc.) software? Is that a propaganda push to make it easy to subvert everyone’s computers? And Wikipedia; is that a propaganda tool too?
“Uh, I dunno, but initiating a scientific fraud if immense proportions looks like a crap way of taking over the world to me.”
That’s because you haven’t looked at the problems of ‘taking over the world’.
First you have to make the people give up on their culture and moral independence, by causing them to distrust all valid authority. This undermines their natural cussed reaction against bureaucracy.
Then you panic them with the invented scare stories of pseudo-science; and sprinkle in some rioting chaos in the streets, from the youths that have been deliberately uneducated, yet flattered to high expectation, and add a sense of ‘youth’ disenfranchisement.
Finally, when crisis ensues, wait for the people, coached by the moral relativists in the media, to vote in a totalitarian solution.
SB: Straw men aside (where did I – or anyone else – say “history is just happenstance”?), it seems even you should admit this is very thin stuff indeed.
I did look at the “rather good piece on the mechanisms” that Chris Jones wrote on the last page. He appears to be making the astonishing argument that “The main plan is to de-industrialise the main rich countries and bring about population reduction”, going on to say that The Club of Rome would like 500M-1B people on the planet, etc. etc. .
So that’s been the programme for the last few decades. How’s it working out? Population crashing? err… no. We’ve off-shored industry, but that’s only in persuit of cheap labour, industry is busting along in a more polluting fashion elsewhere.
Sorry, as conspiracy theories go, this one could only be called a staggering failure (if it were actually genuine). If these stated aims were the goal, then they’ve failed – why carry on with such a failed strategy?
You’ll have to come up with something better than this, SB, to account for such a vast, massive conspiracy that you see as jerking everyone around (apart from more clever people like yourself, of course).
Farrukh Hussain,
The way I read it was that Babur’s love for the young boy, Baburi, was a metaphor for his yearning for his kingdom, taken by the Uzbeks – the emasculation of the king without a kindom. The bare-footed Babur aimlessly wandering the streets in a state of emotional anguish is a reflection of his tireless and frequently irrational wanderings in search of a kingdom. I suspect that the episode is a literary trope and never actually happened.
Interesting reading on this is Ali Anooshahr’s The Ghazi Sultans and the Frontiers of Islam
Sigh. I don’t remember saying anything about a grand conspiracy. Different people have different motives,
: some money, some power & some no doubt a genuine belief they are doing good. And some through sheer incompetence. As Billy said, there can be no doubt that governments are pushing it, though an about turn seems to be in progress in many quarters. Science seems to be slowly winning. If not one death at a time as someone once said, but one reputation time.
Another clue. Do you believe everything you read in the Guardian or see on the BBC? Who are the biggest proponents of global warming in the UK? Which UK broadcaster has a stated policy of not being impartial on global warming? Hint: it was mentioned already in this post and may be in breach of its charter.
This is the link to the podcast Sunflower – Enjoy.
http://www.spreaker.com/user/uk-collapse/ukc_radio_podcast_03_1
Thank-you for listening.
BBC’s statements of impartiality or not bear little relation to its output, on any number of sensitive subjects. There have made few quality broadcasts on agw and plenty of dross for fools to latch onto.
The terms alarmist and denialist are too equally perjorative, it reveals skewed sensitivites to complain about one being worse than the other.
The warnings of heightened danger in the middle east, and local crisis with NHS and all, from our most grounded commentors here, have been diluted alot by the impenetrably certain and profuse rejections and aspersions cast on the already massively researched and agreed international petitions of grave threat to the planets heat and weather systems posed by a number of human industrial outputs, most significantly CO2.
Enough is just never enough for some.
I notice for about a week now, America’s most popular, and possibly its most hopeful public comment website -reddit.com has had several muslim bashing threads reaching its front page every day, under the auspices of discussing protests against blasphemy, general violent tendencies and mistreatment of women etc.
A point aside. Top blackberries this year.
Very satisfiying foraging. Makes me a right weirdo to feed myself and family with the juicy black beauties.
So are the simple things, all that are needed! Maybe I need the ability to kill mame and destruct to the point of world annihalation.
No_ we jusy need more blackberry bushes and simple people..
@LeonardYoung 24 Sep, 2012 – 2:34 am
quote
Have a look here at Orwells brilliant essay on uses and abuses of language for political purposes, a piece which is as relevant today as it ever was: http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit/
endquote
Thank you for this link. The essay gives not just a political insight but also a more general one about using the English language.
I am a wiser person for reading it.
Vronsky – I like that tip of using a mirror to peer down at. I find the doubled weight and cost of binoculars wasted on me as i have one eye much better at peering than the other. I cant imagine what viewing fine detail would be like stereoscopically but i expect paralax is imperceptable with the very distant ranges involved.
Jay, too true – I’ve gathered kilos.
Great jam and water ice/granitas 🙂
“I am a wiser person for reading it.”
Its fine stuff, but dont misplace it everywhere. Like Leonards alarms against notions of denial.
I’ll try not to misplace it anywhere, but I definitely shall apply it everywhere.
Thanks for the podcast Mark, enjoyed adding your voice to the lines of your pen. good luck with your work, especially now as we descend down the scale of human rights in so many places, not just Syria, Iraq or Palestine, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, the latter two who are refusing to reform their societies, but also in the wider ME.
Now as we talk a massive corporamada is ready to whip Iran back into the dollar continuum, spread chaos and division, whilst controlling their oil management and nuclear ambitions. It will set the world alight.
For they do not know what they are doing.
Mark this is brilliant- its so great to hear you:
Mark Golding on UKC Radio
I like their music playlist too, always looking for UK podcasts like this, thankyou.
Anyone heard/read anything about the paid “editors” beavering away in in the wikipedia?
Evidently there has been a resignation and so many others are scurrying out of the light as any self preserving cockroach would do.
@ScouseBilly
I have concluded that your thinking is flawed and that nothing I say will raise a doubt in your certain mind. However, I am compelled to say a few words. And be warned, I will be “playing the man”.
First, let’s quickly get this out of the way. Scientists are not all of one opinion but, hey, that’s science. However, unquestionably the weight of scientific opinion is clearly that man is contributing to global warming.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveys_of_scientists%27_views_on_climate_change
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr.pdf
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/roulette-0519.html
http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12782
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/students/envs_4800/weber_2011.pdf
I understand that small sample above means nothing to you because you have no faith in peer review science. In your mind those scientist are all corrupt, slavishly bid by the evil empire.
I am a great advocate of questioning the testimony of experts. Unfortunately, some science, quantum physics and computer modelling for example, require a depth of ability, study and experience that simply excludes the layman. You say classic physics provides the answer. I trust that climate experts have taken the classic physics into consideration. Yes, yes, I understand that you know them all as liars, souls sold to the devil.
Computer modelling is imperfect but has produced impressive predictions, from it’s horrifying use in the Manhattan Project to telling us if it will probably rain tomorrow. But you brush it aside as phooey. No doubt you have a link up your sleeve to prove it.
When tackled about a specific scientific point you fly off at a tangent with impressive but ever-moving hyperbole that frustrates the debate. When frustration leads to criticism you cry “ad hominem” like a teenager after latin class.
You readily accuse others of not understanding the science. So I especially note that you simply ignore Deepgreenpuddock, who appears to have some real scientific understanding, when he challenges you. One example:
Deepgreenpuddock 21 Sep, 2012 – 9:22 am
“ScouseBilly…he confuses the very elementary word, molecule, used in his post to describe an ionic, crystalline substance. There were other glaring errors that would not be made by a C pass GCSE in Chemistry.”
You indignantly accuse others of politising science and then bang on about the corrupt IPCC. Let me turn to someone I trust through long experience. He’s not perfect. He is only human. No doubt you think him a corrupt liberal.
George Monbiot:
“David Wasdell, an accredited reviewer for the panel, claims that the summary of the science the IPCC published in February was purged of most of its references to “positive feedbacks”: climate change accelerating itself. This is the opposite of the story endlessly repeated in the right-wing press: that the IPCC, in collusion with governments, is conspiring to exaggerate the science. No one explains why governments should seek to amplify their own failures. In the wacky world of the climate conspiracists, no explanations are required. The world’s most conservative scientific body has somehow been transformed into a cabal of screaming demagogues.”
http://www.monbiot.com/2007/04/10/the-real-climate-censorship/
While I am on the subject of people I have learned to take very seriously.
Noam Chomsky:
“Then there are others that are overwhelming in importance. For example, the looming global environmental crisis, which raises questions of species survival. It’s very urgent right now…Yet here there has been a major corporate propaganda offensive, quite openly announced, to try to convince people that the environmental crisis is a liberal hoax. And it’s had some success, according to the latest polls. The percentage of Americans who believe in anthropogenic global warming, human effects on climate change, is down to about a third. This is an extremely dangerous situation: it’s imminent; we have to do something about it right now.”
No-one could call Chomsky corrupt in this context. He must be duped. He’s well known for being stupid.
http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/20110301.htm
That you call yourself a “slayer” speaks volumes of your mindset. I note that even on this thread alone you bandy that 9/11 was a US false flag operation, Yvonne Fletcher was not shot from the embassy, medicine has little value, the US is geoengineering weather, 7/7 was mossad. As it happens I have sympathy for one of these claims and no nothing of another. However, two are almost certainly fantasy that deny obvious truths and the last is an extrapolation that defies reason. Whatever their veracity, that’s quite a list for just one thread.
The alarmists here, Geoff, Deepgreenpuddock, Clark etc are genuinely sceptical. You are not. From a seed of healthy suspicion you conjure a whacking great oak of belligerence. I know nothing will distract you from your mission but for the sake of the baby children I want to quote an earlier post.
Glenn 23 Sep, 2012 – 2:40 am:
“As with the 9/11 thread, we have a few people who are absolutely in possession of the complete truth, and do lots of eye-rolling and sighing at the astonishing inability of the rest of us to see what they’d have as the bleedin’ obvious…The nothing to see here, move along crowd makes no mistakes at all. No admission there might be a point here, or something worthy of further consideration. They’re long on pumping references (despite most being irrelevant or BS). Not long on direct replies. And admitting to one single error, perhaps just promoting what turns out to be a bogus reference? Never.”
I’ve got to admit you had me going for a minute. Guess I’m off the xmas card list again.
Wikipedia seems a very difficult community and resource to maintain against all the problems at large, that it works to some degree, and in less political areas it can do brilliantly, im thankful.
Sorry, typo in my previous post – I missed out the word ‘quantum’:
“Unfortunately, some science, quantum physics and computer modelling…”
[Mod/Clark: Correction applied to appropriate comment.]
Clark : “Uh, I dunno, but initiating a scientific fraud if immense proportions looks like a crap way of taking over the world to me.”
George Carlin explains in 3 minutes ..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsL6mKxtOlQ
It’s a big CLUB. And YOU AIN’T IN IT.
Correction to my last post. Apparently anything in sharp brackets disappears from the post. The bits below in capitals disappeared. It should have read:
@Phil 24 Sep, 2012 – 4:29 pm
quote:
Let me turn to someone I trust through long experience … SNIP .. George Monbiot
endquote
IMO your trust may be misplaced. I had my doubts about this guy for a long time, but when his long-standing opposition to nuclear power turned to “radiation is good for you” in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, I gave up on him.
Is he an agent of misinformation? I don’t know but there are many of them around, including influential newspaper columnists. George Monbiot has talked himself into my BIG QUESTIONMARK, JUST IGNORE category.
[Mod/Clark: Previous version deleted.]
Zoo; Don’t know your age, but George Carlin (though I love him) doesn’t have the timely scoop.
‘Let me warn you” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRZUaW0HwCM
‘same as it ever was….’ http://www.lyricsfreak.com/t/talking+heads/once+in+a+lifetime_20135070.html
21st scent tree 24 Sep, 2012 – 5:46 pm
“but when his long-standing opposition to nuclear power turned to “radiation is good for you” in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, I gave up on him.”
Yes I know he has alienated a lot of people with his nuclear stance. But I do believe he is sincere in his belief that nuclear is our best bet. And yes he is compromised by writing for the guardian. The price he pays is keeping his mouth shut on the role of corporate media.
I do not always agree with him but have never found him an agent of misinformation (if I exclude by omission).