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.
(this version is cleaner-please delete the other as there were a few mistakes/ommissions etc-cheers)
It’s quite hard to find the original quote but here is how it originally appeared…it’s true that its been coloured by time but the message is the same:
“Food is power. We use it to change behavior, some may call it bribery. We do not apologize.”-Catherine Bertini, executive director of the U.N. World Food Program (speaking in 1997) http://www.markswatson.com/popcontrol.htm (its a tatty looking site but the quote is the right one)
I have no idea why Clark and Glenn seem to get upset about such a quote- Henry Kissinger put accross the same message in the 1970′s, as did Hitler and countless other dearranged people through the ages, as can be seen on many many places on the interweb including infowars – with the mere mention of the name infowars seeming to cause some to recoil in abject horror at the thought that they may be …..cue dramatic horror music….a bit..too…PATRIOTIC!!!! THe horror of it!
Anyway,this article demonstrates how numerous members of the UN have called for and are calling for population reductions of 80% and more through various methods of control,including food:
http://www.infowars.com/the-move-to-depopulate-the-planet/
Clark -regarding corporations etc – you seem a bit confused and i’ve no idea why you seem to think i’m pro corporations. You say you want better control over corporations and stronger government (which i agree with) but then you say you want more international government and better global power to control corporatism. However what you miss out on is that most governments have now been taken over by cooperations so a global government would be a danger because you would be controlled by the corporations that we both dislike so much..
Chris, I don’t think you’re pro-corporation. I asked, because I wanted to know what your attitude actually was. It wasn’t a rhetorical question, but my guess was that you probably don’t want corporations running everything.
I don’t think that government have been “taken over” by corporations. I think that the power balance has shifted in favour of the corporations. But there is still significant public influence over government, too.
Yes, I think there needs to be some sort of global democracy, stronger than the UN and with greater democratic input.
A global government like that would be an irrelevance rather than a danger. If it was controlled by the corps, there would be no difference from not having it at all; the corps would do as they wished either with or without it.
The reason I mentioned all this is that the fringe Right-wing sites that push the idea that a New World Order is using a climate change scam to justify global genocide are the same sites that argue for weaker government and less corporate accountability. It’s a Right-wing agenda, and I think that the fears of lots of decent Left-wingers, moderates and uncommitteds are causing them to be seduced by it.
New Agers like Scouse Billy are getting drawn in by stuff like Thrive, which is another “dismantle all government” propaganda tool.
Without government, what exactly are corporations going to be accountable to? Our governments are not sufficiently accountable or democratic, but it’s still a lot better than no government at all. And all we have at the international level is the UN, with no democratic input from ordinary people.
The corporations dread the idea of an international, democratic government. They’re going full-steam with treaties like GATT and NAFTA to be the only global power structures in existence. Web sites that instil fear of the UN and any other global tier of government are playing into their hands. And these same sites are all shouting that global climate change is a scam, which is exactly what the corporations want you to think. Beware!
Clark – certainly agree that any global institution needs to be far more accountable and democratic but i don’t agree there needs to be a global government though – far too prone to centralized corruption and tyranny on a mass scale.I also think that you should try to look beyond the whole left right ‘thing’ as it won’t solve the ‘power by any means’ that the 0.1% elite are trying to attain, regardless of politial ideology
Chris, there is one solution, the best solution, for global population increase, and that is affluence. Affluence, which brings education and healthcare, drops the birth rate; just examine the birth rate figures for various countries to confirm this. But this solution is never mentioned by these “New World Order = Genocide” sites, and it’s barely mentioned by the corporate media, either.
Corporatism and its influence upon governments exploit the weaker, poorer nations. Their people produce cash crops and raw materials for a pittance, and the product of their labours are shipped to the richer nations. “Economic Hit Men”, yes?
Read Pilger’s Hidden Agendas for multiple, well documented examples.
Only some kind of governmental structure can redistribute wealth on the necessary scale, and restrain the rapacious foreign policies of the rich nations’ governments (foreign policy is not a high priority for national voters).
Such a solution would automatically be called “socialist” or “left wing”, would it not? What is there “beyond” to look for?
Myself, 6 Oct, 2:11 am:
Or just look at Zoologist’s list of US military “interventions”. The vast majority in poorer countries subsequently exploited by the corporations, rather less in oil-rich regions, and that’s basically all:
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2012/09/leave-of-absence/comment-page-8/#comment-368973
Chris, that Infowars article you linked to, “the-move-to-depopulate-the-planet”. Don’t you recognise an article for the US Christian Right when you see one? All that “I pray to God” stuff, opposition to US healthcare provision, the “pro-life” anti abortion stuff. Grief. It quotes a Bertrand Russell speech, where he’s obviously taking the piss, and they present it as if you’re meant to read it literally! Then there’s the reference to the USSR’s constitution, to push the “Commie” button. All the usual stuff.
Chris, that article is for gullible US Christian Right-wingers, Tea Party idiots.
A teacher, a Tea Party supporter and a corporate CEO are sat at a table. In the middle is a plate with six cookies on it. The CEO reaches out and takes five of the cookies. When he’s eaten them, he turns to the Tea Party supported and says “watch out for that teacher, she wants to steal your cookie!”
Affluence does seem to reduce growth from what i’ve seen as well – at least in the medium to long term – i’m not sure it’s a contentious issue in general.
What a shame the UN,foreign aid etc have turned out to be just yet more flawed corporations but i think theres a new opportunity for a real non governmental/tyrranical brotherhood of nations…as naive as that sounds
Clark – try to look past the religious stuff (not that people don’t have a right to be religious, or in fact be against abortion if that’s their view)In fact,if you aren’t able to handle other peoples idiosyncracies/beliefs,just copy and paste the quotes themselves in to google and you can look at them on a site that doesn’t panic you so much and is more to your liking – whatever that may be. In other words, it doesn’t matter shit on what sites the quotes are, it’s the quotes and what they represent that matter…- you know, stuff like people in high places wanting to get rid of 80% of the current populations…
Zoologist: If you did actually take the time to read a bit of that 9/11 thread “debate”, I will start taking you seriously. But let’s see if we’re really serious, because I’m not sure if you’re genuinely interested in anything but wasting my time.
When you asked about the Perkins book earlier, and then asked “Did you read it though Glenn?” I thought you were trying to be cute, imply that I’ve got these books just for decoration, and was waiting for the zinger, “But did you understand it?”
If you’re genuinely asking a searching question, then yes – I read that book about 6 years ago when it first came out. It was unpleasant to know, but not a surprise, at least not for one unfortunate enough to have digested a deal of Chomsky, John Pilger, Fisk, Hartmann, just having read real news for years and years, and so on. And someone who listens to Mike Malloy and Sam Seder, not to mention the great Bob Kincade, with the Head on Radio Network (http://headonradionetwork.com/)
I’ve answered a couple of your questions, but the rest are noted (from 6 Oct, 2012 – 12:48 am) and put in the pending pile.
Just to see that we’re not on a time-wasting exercise, please explain why you said this: “Seems to me the Glenn on that thread is the alter-ego of the one on this thread.”
It appears to me that there’s nothing inconsistent, but you say it suggests an alter-ego. Please clear up why that might be, and I’ll be happy to continue this as a properly considered conversation.
Thank you, in advance.
Btw… if the weather holds up, I’m on a full-day outing tomorrow. Have a good weekend, everyone.
I am vegan, as I have previously stated – regarding eggs this one’s for Glenn:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNCGkprGW_o&feature=related
Clark still seems to think my avatar may be connected to Nazism 😉
Please don’t disillusion him anyone – it’s just too funny.
British policy in its colonies often involved the creation of deviant sects, in order to Divide and Conquer.
Memoirs Of Mr. Hempher, The British Spy To The Middle East (~1713)
This document reveals the true background of the Wahhabi movement which was innovated by Mohammad bin abdul Wahhab.
It is a first-hand account by Hempher of his mission for his government, which sent him to the Middle East to discover ways to undermine the Ottoman Empire. Among the vices the British were to promote were racism and nationalism, alcohol, gambling, fornication and tempting Muslim women to uncover themselves.
As part of their strategy of Divide and Conquer, the British hoped to pit the Arab Muslims against their Turkish brothers. As the killing of another Muslim was strictly forbidden, the only way to do so was to find a loophole in Islamic law whereby the Arabs could declare the Turks as apostates.
Most important was the strategy to “insert heresies into Muslims’ creedal tenets and then criticize Islam for being a religion of terror.” To this purpose, Hempher located a particularly corrupt individual by the name of Mohammed Ibn Adbul Wahhab.
Abdul Wahhab was the instrument by which the British were able to insinuate this vile idea into the Muslims of the Arabian Peninsula. Basically, Wahhab contrived the idea that, simply by the trivial act of offering prayers to saints, their Turkish brethren had forfeited their faith, and therefore, that it was permitted to kill all who refused to adhere to his reforms, and to enslave their women and children. But that included the entire Muslim world, except for his small misguided band of followers.
Wahhabis even demonstrated their contempt for their pretended faith by indiscriminately slaughtering Muslims and non-Muslims alike. The Wahhabis then set about destroying all the holy tombs and burial grounds.
The Ottoman Sultan brought an end to the first Wahhabi rebellion in 1818, but the sect revived under the leadership of the Saudi Faysal I.
The Wahabbi movement would have been insignificant without the allegiance of the Saudi family, who were originally wealthy merchants from Iraq.
After WWI, the former regions of the Ottoman Empire were divided into varying puppets regimes. For aiding to undermine the Ottoman authority in the region, Ibn Saud was duly rewarded with the creation of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932.
One year later, in 1933, the Saudis granted oil concessions to California Arabian Standard Oil Company (Casoc), affiliate of Standard Oil of California (Socal, today’s Chevron), headed by Rothschild agent, Rockefeller.
Since that time, Saudi Arabia has been the most important ally to the West in the Middle East, not only providing access to its oil reserves, but also in tempering Arab aggression against Israel.
Due to the evident hypocrisy of the regime, it has been necessary to suppress the ensuing dissent with brutality. Another important aspect has been preventing scholars from speaking of “politics”, that is, to criticize the regime.
Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), political and economic alliance of six Middle Eastern countries — Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, and Oman. The GCC was established in Riyadh, Saudia Arabia, in May 1981. The purpose of the GCC is to achieve unity among its members based on their common objectives and their similar political and cultural identities, which are rooted in Islamic beliefs.
Some of the most important achievements of the GCC include the creation of the Peninsula Shield Force, a joint military venture based in Saudi Arabia, and the signing of an intelligence-sharing pact in 2004. At a GCC summit in December 2009, an agreement was reached to launch a single regional currency similar to the euro.
http://www.gccia.com.sa/
Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, and Oman
are not bastians of “Western Democracy”.
@Clark
Do you have any REAL WORLD evidence that global government would be a good thing? I can’t think of one example.
There are however many instances even in recent history that have turned out to be pretty bad.
The way I see it, those who carved up the world centuries ago still control the companies that hold the assets. Compare the oil holdings and mines of BP, Rio Tinto and Shell to their original Empires – those of the English and the Dutch. The global trade routes have been remarkably static throughout history. Briton was a major source of Tin in the Bronze age. Britannia still rules the waves.
The “Corporations” you are on about owned the globe before there was such a thing as “Parliament” – from parler “to speak”.
They existed as monopolies before there was an England, let alone it’s offspring, America and Israel. They are as old as the City of London itself – like Babylon, a City State.
You are making endless assumptions about the general “goodness” of powerful people and I just see endless evidence for the opposite.
Forget “Left” and “Right” it’s a diversion. A Hegelian Dialectic to keep the people quiet while the real business gets done.
BUSINESS trumps POLITICS. Don’t forget.
Look at Mussolini’s definition of Fascism and compare it to Britain today.
Who is sincere here? Glib chatter about the 0.01 % or the “elite” doesn’t solve anything much does it.
Who are these people and what are their names? If we are to hold them accountable we need to identify who is pulling what strings and why.
Expose the “Great Game”. To me this means tracing back the powerful to the source of their power. To others this means hysterical shreaking about “*the illuminati*”.
It is said those who do not read history are doomed to repeat it. It’s one of the truest things ever said. There’s nothing new under the sun. Mankind must learn from the past or we do face repeating the same mistakes.
realpolitik :
If anyone had taken the time and looked at Obomba’s actual voting record before the election they would have known he was bought and paid for by Goldman Sachs. ANother “Legacy” man like Blair. Similarly Romney.
Ron Paul was the only one not owned. He got excluded.
If you are sincere and not a gatekeeper site, as it appears that you are: –
Show me evidence that the UN is a universally benign organization.
Which individuals do you see as particularly influencial? What are their motives?
Why exactly will “Global Governance” turn out better this time?
Or are you really prepared to take it all on trust and assumption?
Left or Right? They don’t care.
Totalitarianism (or totalitarian rule) is a political system where the state holds total authority over society and seeks to control all aspects of public and private life wherever necessary.
The concept of totalitarianism was first developed in a positive sense in the 1920s by the Italian fascists. The concept became prominent in Western anti-communist political discourse during the Cold War era in order to highlight perceived similarities between Nazi Germany and other fascist regimes on the one hand, and Soviet communism on the other.
Aside from fascist and Stalinist movements, there have been other movements that are totalitarian.
The leader of the historic Spanish reactionary conservative movement called the Spanish Confederation of the Autonomous Right declared his intention to “give Spain a true unity, a new spirit, a totalitarian polity…”
and went on to say
“Democracy is not an end but a means to the conquest of the new state.
When the time comes, either parliament submits or we will eliminate it.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totalitarianism
I am sincerely against Global Totalitarianism.
Ya get me?
Perfidious Albion : –
“We do not govern Egypt, we govern the governors of Egypt.”
Lord Cromer (1849-1917)
Freemasonry appeared in Egypt soon after Napoleon’s conquest in 1798. A top commander in Napoleon’s army established the Lodge of Isis. French Masonry dominated Egypt until British lodges began to appear after the British occupation in 1882.
The British used Islam to legitimize their puppet rulers in Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Palestine after taking over the Middle East in World War I. Because of this Islam was seen by much of the Arab populace as just another part of the corrupt colonial establishment.
That is why the legitimate anti-colonial movements, such as those of Nasser, Mossadegh and Bhutto, were primarily secular in nature. When these nationalist movements began to succeed outside of the British sphere of influence the British turned to their Islamic allies to subvert these independent regimes.
The Muslim Brotherhood stands out as the most important counter-revolutionary movement of this period in the Middle East, and one of the British-based Globalists’ most important strategic assets today.
The Muslim Brotherhood – The Globalists’ Secret Weapon
http://www.redmoonrising.com/Ikhwan/MB.htm
Chris Jones 6 Oct, 3:10 am
It’s not a contentious issue, it was well established decades ago. It’s just an inconvenient fact, so certain parties never mention it. That’s how propaganda works.
Their not just more flawed corporations. The UN is semi-democratic. It’s a mix of responsive and unresponsive, like most governments.
What would you rather have as a commoner? Partial, flawed influence, or influence only in proportion to the shares you own? ‘Cos the former is what you have with governments, and the latter is all you get with a corporation.
Chris Jones 6 Oct, 3:25 am: it isn’t that the religious stuff freaks me out. It’s that you failed to see what you’d just swallowed.
Look, if you go to a website and it keeps going on about “wogs” and “White Power”, and it has all these brief excerpts that show Blacks and any non-whites to be inferior and prone to be criminals, are you going to believe what it says?
You keep telling me to wake up. Look closer to home.
Scouse Billy 6 Oct, 10:18 amEdit
Billy, you seen to have assumed that my question was rhetorical. It wasn’t. I was asking you a question I wanted the answer to. Who is that?
That latest video you linked to was quite good. Real epidemiology. I wish you could tell real science from fake, though. The “free energy” stuff you seem to believe in is bunk.
Zoologist, your comments of 6 Oct, 10:46 am, 10:47 am, 10:47 am and 11:40 am are full of very important facts that need to be more widely known. I was aware of most of them, but not in that degree of detail.
(From the comment times, it looks like you prepared a load of comments in advance, and submitted them in quick succession. Curious.)
6 Oct, 12:19 pm
Yes, broadly speaking, I agree, though you seem to have a funny definition of “Britannia”, and I’d say that power has globalised, particularly since the independence of the colonies of the British Empire.
Oh, masses, but most of them aren’t global.
First, the UN. I know, it does a load of harm, but it does a load of good, too. Votes in the UN Security Council just prevented the US/UK/France doing to Syria what they did immediately before to Libya. The UN WHO wiped out smallpox. I could go on and on. Yes, a load of bad stuff is done too. But do you think the good things would have happened without a governmental structure?
Second, just look at the countries of this world. The stronger and more democratic their governments, the better things are for their citizens. If the government is powerless, or easily influenced (like a single dictator under the US etc. thumb), the worse things are for the subjects. It’s an obvious general rule.
No, I’m just assuming the powerful to have human nature, a mixture, but a tendency for them to be more competitive and less compassionate – which is compatible with them fighting their way into positions of power.
You are assuming that the powerful are utterly evil, to the point of irrationally planning the murder of nearly everyone else, even against their own better interests. This assumption of yours should become evident to you from your own words that I have highlighted in bold.
This is entirely true of Left and Right in our currently fake party political system. However, to take one example (and your history should be good enough for you to confirm this), after World War Two, the UK Labour party really did represent the interests of the ordinary people. Our great institutions of universal healthcare, public utilities, and the welfare state were set up, because the majority voted for politicians that genuinely supported these things.
C’mon, Zoologist. Help us fight the Good fight. Not this defeatist stuff. You may as well be fighting David Icke’s shape-shifting lizards. If the elite are really as untouchable as you maintain, all is already lost.
Zoologist, in the UK we have to persuade people to vote for independent and minor party MPs, because the big parties are already corrupt.
What we don’t want to happen is for everyone to just give up on politics and voting. That plays straight into the hands of the corporate power structures.
@Glenn – Yet again you contrive to put my name in the same sentence as “David Icke’s shape-shifting lizards”.
Perfidious Albion
@Clark In your email to me you said I should be more concerned about the impact of GCC on Bangladesh.
Here is my evidence that the powers behind the UN don’t care too much about Bengalis: –
The Bengal famine of 1770 was a catastrophic famine between 1769 and 1773 that affected the lower Gangetic plain of India. The famine is estimated to have caused the deaths of 10 million people (one out of three, reducing the population to thirty million in Bengal, which included Bihar and parts of Orissa).
The famine occurred in the territory which was called Bengal, then ruled by the British East India Company.
In the 17th century the British East India Company had been given a grant on the town of Calcutta by the Mughal emperor Akbar. During the following century the company obtained sole trading rights for the province, and went on to become the dominant power in Bengal.
In 1757, at the battle of Plassey, the British defeated the then-Nawab Siraj Ud Daulah and plundered the Bengali treasury. In 1764 their military control was reaffirmed at Buxar. The subsequent treaty gained them the Diwani, that is, taxation rights; the Company thereby became the de facto ruler of Bengal.
The famine occurred due to the British East India Company’s policies in Bengal.
As a trading body, the first remit of the company was to maximise its profits and with taxation rights, the profits to be obtained from Bengal came from land tax as well as trade tariffs. As lands came under company control, the land tax was typically raised fivefold what it had been – from 10% to up to 50% of the value of the agricultural produce.
In the first years of the rule of the British East India Company, the total land tax income was doubled and most of this revenue flowed out of the country. As the famine approached its height in April of 1770, the Company announced that the land tax for the following year was to be increased by a further 10%.
Sushil Chaudhury writes that the destruction of food crops in Bengal to make way for opium poppy cultivation for export reduced food availability and contributed to the famine. The company is also criticised for ordering the farmers to plant indigo instead of rice, as well as forbidding the “hoarding” of rice. This prevented traders and dealers from laying in reserves that in other times would have tided the population over lean periods.
By the time of the famine, monopolies in grain trading had been established by the company and its agents. The company had no plan for dealing with the grain shortage, and actions were only taken insofar as they affected the mercantile and trading classes.
http://www.defence.pk/forums/bangladesh-defence/136009-famines-bangladesh-east-bengal.html
In the situation of acute famine that prevailed in Bangladesh in 1974, the United States used food aid to exert political pressure – pressures which were to bear fruit in the political changes that were brought about in August 1975. In terms of total mortality, though figures vary, one scholar estimates 1.5 million deaths as a reasonable estimate.
This article reviews the nature and implications of the power of food as a political weapon. At the same time, it argues that while the famine in Bangladesh in 1974 might have had its immediate causes in the withholding of food by the US, such pressures could work because market forces remained controlled by big farmers and traders, and also because of certain obligations of the government towards segments of the population in the form of a commitment to statutory rationing in urban areas. The famine toll in 1974 could have been substantially reduced had only the government been able and willing to reallocate available food stocks and insist on shared austerity.
Politics of Food and Famine un Bangladesh
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/4368187?uid=3738032&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&sid=21101241470331
The Holodomor, or Hunger plague, was a famine engineered by the Soviet Union as part of a series of actions, including mass executions, designed to destroy the Ukrainian nation.
Census data reveal a shortfall of 11,000,000 in the Ukrainian population by 1937.
http://www.holodomor.org.uk/
“Famine in Ukraine was brought on to decrease the number of Ukrainians, replace the dead with people from other parts of the USSR, and thereby to kill the slightest thought of any Ukrainian independence.”
– V. Danilov et al., Sovetskaia derevnia glazami OGPU_NKVD. T. 3, kn. 2. Moscow 2004. P. 572
Christ almighty, Zoologist, I devoted a post in reply to you at “6 Oct, 2012 – 3:32 am”, and instead of giving me one word about that, you respond to something Clark posted, and say, @Glenn – Yet again you contrive to put my name in the same sentence as “David Icke’s shape-shifting lizards”.
Why do you confuse myself with Clark? It’s not the first time you’ve done it. And apparently you’ve entirely forgotten our previous conversation up to that point.
This is the sort of thing that makes me feel you’re not some genuine individual, with whom I am having a one-to-one conversation.
Zoologist, are you asserting that the UN is entirely evil, does nothing good at all, and that the world would be better off without it?
Do you hold a similar position about corporations?