I am a guest speaker tomorrow at the NUJ Conference in Newcastle, on the subject of blogging. Never one to appease an audience, I shall give them it straight on my opinions of the collusion between mainstream media and power, and thus those who work within it. I expect to hear a lot about how bloggers are irresponsible, do not check sources etc.
I shall be drawing on some of the content of this talk:
I post this again because nowadays this website has far more readers than when I first posted it, and because it encapsulates my thoughts rather well.
I shall tell the NUJ that the mainstream media remains very constrained in what they publish. The Jimmy Saville affair broke on the internet in a big way a year ago, and yet the mainstream media is only now catching up – and still not making key links, like to Haut de la Garenne.
I receive, constantly, emails from people wishing me to take up various cases on my blog and furnishing information. 95% of the time I do not publish because I am not able to investigate fully (there is just one of me) and I do not know the source: the exclusives on this blog come mostly from my access to well-placed sources I have known for years through my past diplomatic career, and trust.
A notable proportion of the cases brought to me by those I do not know involve alleged paedophile rings. I was sent information about Haut de la Garenne for years, which named a string of senior people alleged to take advantage of organised paedophilia in the care home. Among the judges, politicians and aristocracy, there was indeed the name of Jimmy Saville. I have to admit it was not just that I could not prove any of it, I was actively sceptical about what seemed a random list of names of the famous. We now know for certain that Saville visited the place several times. The whole Haut De La Garenne investigation always seemed to obscure more than it revealed; I do hope it is mow re-opened, and taken away from the local Jersey police.
Another case which caused me great concern was that of Hollie Greig, where the jailing of Robert Green seemed to me vicious and unjustified. But I had earlier refused a request on behalf of the Greig family to involve myself in the case because the allegations made seemed to me incapable of proof without investigative powers and resources of the kind the police have. That the police do not properly deploy those resources where allegations involve the powerful appears to me too often to be too likely. Where the accusation is that the judicial establishment is involved in a paedophile ring, for the same judicial establishment to start jailing campaigners is extraordinary.
But the Alisher Usmanov and Adam Werritty cases will be the main thrust of my talk to the NUJ. In the first, the mainstream media still to this day persist in covering up the criminal past of the convicted blackmailer and Putin cohort who purchased 10% of Facebook and 35% of Arsenal Football Club.
The Werritty case is much more sinister because it goes to the media collusion in burying evidence of the influence of Israel on British politics. The public were told that Werritty was at a small number of meetings where he should not have been. The mainstream media refused to discuss why he was at those meetings or what his participation was actually about – leaving the public to infer he was merely Fox’s lover or in some way they were making money.
Even when I was able to produce undeniable evidence that Fox and Werritty held eight meetings with Matthew Gould, now and during six of those meetings British Ambassador to Israel (and Private Secretary to the Foreign Secretary for the first two meetings) the mainstream media refused point blank to publish it. Mossad were present for at least two of those eight meetings. Gus O’Donnell’s report, whcih led to Fox’s resignation, had revealed only two of these eight meetings. This should have been a massive story. The media buried it (with the sole and belated exception of the Independent on Sunday).
No media were prepared to put any investigative resources into what Gould, Werritty and Mossad were doing. I had an impeccable senior source who told me that they were discussing preparing the political ground for an attack on Iran. You would think that, given the Werritty affair caused Fox to resign, that was worth investigating. The media completely blanked it. To this day the fact that Werritty and Fox met Gould eight times has been reported nowhere but one column in the Independent on Sunday.
I think my encounter with the journalistic profession could be quite fun. I shall also be arguing that bloggers should be allowed to join the NUJ; an internal NUJ debate on this is the background to my invitation to speak.
p.s and you should certainly get NUJ membership Craig
“The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary.
Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban. Anyone who has lived long in a foreign country will know of instances of sensational items of news — things which on their own merits would get the big headlines-being kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that ‘it wouldn’t do’ to mention that particular fact. So far as the daily newspapers go, this is easy to understand. The British press is extremely centralised, and most of it is owned by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics.”
George Orwell
“But the corrupt judiciary, where all important decisions are made in Gentlemen’s Clubs gets retiring judges to do a nasty piece of work before they go. Lord Hutton whitewashed the death of Dr David Kelly and retired. Gus O’Donnell whitewashed the Werritty scandal and retired. And now Lord Phillips. Who can trust High Court judges?””
Better to have them retire than to continue completely untouchable because of that which they discovered in their inquiry.
The two big judicial enquiries of the 1960s – 1970s resulted in:-
Denning (Profumo) going on with ever more stupid, racist and incompetent pronouncements: my favourite is his dismissing the leave to appeal of the Birmingham six –
“If they won, it would mean that the police were guilty of perjury; that they were guilty of violence and threats; that the confessions were involuntary and improperly admitted in evidence; and that the convictions were erroneous. … That was such an appalling vista that every sensible person would say, “It cannot be right that these actions should go any further.””
Widgery (first Bloody Sunday) went senile on the Bench. His colleagues wrote his judgements, but he had sufficient moments of lucidity to frighten those who feared that he would reveal what he knew about Bloody Sunday if they sacked him.
Do, instant retirement (or totally public questioning) is safer for the rest of us
i saw Nick Davies speak at a Media Workers Against the War conference(he was a Guardian journalist then, not sure if he still is) and he said that newspapers had cut back staff so much that frequently a news report would consist of a couple of press releases sent by different organisations (often including the government) and just edited together quickly with a few words changed. He said that investigative journalism didn’t happen much because that would require people working full time outside the office and not available for doing the routine stuff. Newspapers being companies run for profit, combined with the Murdoch press and the internet reducing sales of newspapers were the main causes according to him.
p.s meant to say the point is that many (though not all) newspaper reports involve no research whatsoever – just editing together press releases
Hutton was chosen by Bliar to do the ‘inquiry’ for a reason. Dr Kelly still has not had an inquest, the right of every British citizen who dies in unnatural circumstances, and boy were they unnatural.
‘On March 30, 1994 as Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland, he dismissed Private Lee Clegg’s appeal against his controversial murder conviction. On March 21, 2002, Lord Hutton was one of four Law Lords to reject David Shayler’s application to use a “public interest” defence as defined in section 1 of the Official Secrets Act 1989 at his trial.
Lord Hutton represented the Ministry of Defence at the inquest into the killing of civil rights marchers on “Bloody Sunday”. Later, he publicly reprimanded Major Hubert O’Neil, the coroner presiding over the inquest, when the coroner accused the British Army of murder, as this contradicted the findings of the Widgery Tribunal.[2]
Lord Hutton also came to public attention in 1999 during the extradition proceedings of former Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet had been arrested in London on torture allegations by request of a Spanish judge. Five Law Lords, the UK’s highest court, decided by a 3-2 majority that Pinochet was to be extradited to Spain. The verdict was then overturned by a panel of seven Law Lords, including Lord Hutton[3] on the grounds that Lord Hoffmann, one of the five Law Lords, had links to human rights group Amnesty International which had campaigned for Pinochet’s extradition.
In 1978 he defended Britain in the European Court of Human Rights when it was found guilty of torturing internees without trial. He sentenced 10 men to 1,001 years in prison on the word of ‘supergrass’ informer Robert Quigley who was granted immunity in 1984.[citation needed]
Lord Hutton was appointed by the Blair government to chair the inquiry on the circumstances surrounding the death of the British scientist David Kelly. The inquiry commenced on August 11, 2003. Many observers were surprised when he delivered his report on January 28, 2004, and cleared the British Government in large part. His criticism of the BBC was regarded by some as unduly harsh; one critic commented that he had given the “benefit of judgement to virtually everyone in the government and no-one in the BBC.”.[4] In response to the verdict, the front page of The Independent newspaper consisted of one word: “Whitewash?”.’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Hutton,_Baron_Hutton
The criticism of the BBC was a blind in the case.
‘A notable proportion of the cases brought to me by those I do not know involve alleged paedophile rings’.
This whole area is a minefield & Craig was probably correct to be sceptical about most of the claims. The blogger Anna Raccoon (who I think pre retirement was involved professionally in child protection) has been very sceptical about some of the claims made re the Hollie Greig case.
Haut de la Garenne has however troubled me since the minute I read that the convicted ‘Beast of Jersey’, Paisnel, used to attend Christmas parties there dressed up as Santa Claus. The ex RUC man who was removed from the case a while back seemed to be onto something (ditto magistrate Connerote re the Dutroux case) and that only adds to the suspicions.
A source I do accept as reliable (and who elsewhere on his blog admits to visiting this site!) has some interesting posts about peadophilia & the judiciary north of the border. See here-
http://andrew-drummond.com/2012/05/11/strange-tale-of-crooked-cops-transvestites-a-mutilated-body-and-two-scots-known-as-the-gay-macmafia-part-10/
Craig- do any of the names here tally with those given to you in correspondence ?
It’s not entirely true that the mainstream media are only just now catching up on the Jimmy Savile story, the suppressed Newsnight story was prepared in December 2011 and the BBC’s decision not to screen it was reported in the mail the following January.
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/wire/8518
Sorry but the “Truthseeker” article about Savile is so wide of the mark it’s laughable. It’s no good responding that “Ah yes but they were right about him being a paedophile”; there’s no proof that Savile was involved in the events described and as already pointed out he was not gay.
Millions if not billions of words are written into blogs every day and the vast bulk of it is rubbish. With so much being written of course from time to time something is going to emerge that appears prophetic but it isn’t that bloggers are doing a much better job at uncovering the truth than regular investigative journalists; it’s simply chance. The infinite number of monkeys turning out Shakespeare.
I forgot, Private Eye covered the Werrity case in considerable detail but perhaps you don’t want to mention them.
I did a quick google of scallywag portillo and it came up with this http://pebpr.blogspot.co.uk
Mary, Murder Most Fowl, I’m not suggesting these judges didn’t do the nasty work of government before they retired. That’s probably why they are chosen, because they are prepared to toe that line. Nevertheless the big ones seem to be their parting shots.
Kempe
Private Eye’s source was me, so it would be somewhat redundant to mention them as an antidote to the mainstream media…
Right, Mary, but the worst thing Lord Hutton did during his inquiry was not establishing where Louise Holmes and Paul Chapman actually found Dr. Kelly’s body first off rather than a month after the inquiry had started – what gave some credence to Dr. Keith Hawton, the Oxford expert on suicide who had been delegated the authority about the cause of death, finding that Kelly had killed himself.
Holmes and Chapman had found Kelly’s body, off the tow path along the Thames, and in thick, difficult to passage woods, not on Harrowdown Hill as claimed.
Kelly’s body was moved, apparently by helicopter where the TVP finally caught up with it.
Hawton only saw the site there, and, of course, talked about it being such a secluded, nice place for a suicide.
Of course, it was then easy to explain away the physical inquires that Kelly had experienced while fighting off his killers, apparently the four unknown persons who had spent the night on a moored boat, within a hundred yards of where his body was found.
In short, the Hutton In
Don’t know why my message was posted while I was still writing it, but its conclusion is fairly obvious: The Hutton Inquiry was a cover-up from start to finish.
@Craig
One of the tv news reports last night fleetingly mentioned that Saville was also a suspect in the Jersey child abuse cases.
Jersey is a microcosm of everything that is wrong in our world encapsulated within one little mafia island. They have corrupt journalists, corrupt politicians, rampant high finance and poverty in an almost Brechtian parody.
Ex senator Stuart Syvret and ex deputy police chief Lenny Harper are just two of those who have long fought to expose what is happening in Jersey.
http://stuartsyvret.blogspot.co.uk/2011/06/jersey-or-palermo.html
http://voiceforprotest.blogspot.co.uk/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-523706/I-known-Jersey-paedophiles-15-years-says-award-winning-journalist.html
Mary, thanks for the Lord Hutton biography which demonstrates just how suitable he was to Blair’s needs. It is tragic that there was never an inquest and many of us are still fighting for one. Can I urge people to join the fight.
http://www.facebook.com/groups/193075719823/?fref=ts
Thanks for that Trowbridge H Ford.
Yes John I know you did not mean that.
Coleen Nolan of the Nolan Sisters has just been on a chat show. (The TV is on although I am supposed to sorting paperwork!) She said that once in the 70s she was grabbed by Savile and propositioned but then a child of 14, she saw him as an unattractive old man. A milder account here {http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/entertainment/celebrity/coleen-nolan-says-jimmy-savile-1353101)
Savile was a guest of the Bliars at Chequers in 1999. Some of the other entries make interesting reading esp. 2003 when he was waging war on Iraq. Falconer who set up the Hutton Inquiry for Bliar was there in Oct of that year.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-352804/The-list-The-Blairs-dinner-guests.html
There is an older Mail link (2000) to Savile who described his friend Jonathan King (who spent 4 years in prison for the sexual abuse of five boys) as a ‘sabra’. Weird or what?
‘He has also readily admitted that he has never wanted to marry or to commit himself to any relationship where he would feel “tied”.
King classes veteran TV presenter Jimmy Savile as one of his closest friends – they have known each other for 25 years. Savile once said of him: “He’s a sabra. A sabra is an Israeli fruit that’s prickly on the outside and all soft and lovely inside. That’s Jonathan King.”‘
(http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7052/Profile-bubblegum-King-pop.html#ixzz28FRJNeDv)
All totally wicked, disgusting and sick making. The poor children. The abuse they experienced lives with them for the rest of their lives.
PS The spelling is Savile btw. I call him Sa-Vile. And friend of royalty! The charidee stuff was a good camouflage. Do you remember he had a military guard at his funeral and his remains are buried in the gold coffin on the Yorkshire cliffs so that he can look out to sea? Piffle.
You will probably be on your way by now, but should you be able to watch this video, it will steel you for tomorrows NUJ MSM meeting.
I know you are looking forward to it. No better place than this thread to publish this video kindly provided by a fellow poster on the Pink Un’ forum of NCFC.
recently retired top HMRC Tax collector David hartnett at a schmooze diner with more beneficiaries from his ideas, like letting Vodafone and Goldman Sachs off their tax billions owed. Enjoy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3w4tcIsaInE
The Jimmy Saville affair broke on the internet in a big way a year ago…
And it was there a while before that, too – 2006:
http://www.network54.com/Forum/283664/thread/1166189253/Jimmy+Saville+-+Necrophile…..
WARNING: Some fairly deranged posts here.
Private Eye are awesome. They have got things badly wrong at times (MMR vaccine conspiracy theories for example) but so often they are ahead of the mainstream media on creeps like Archer, Goldsmith, Maxwell et al years before these people are eventually brought down. I am sure the Daily Mail news desk uses part editions of the Eye and recycles them when they have no current news. The number of articles in the gutter press on people or events that have been covered in Eyes passim!
I once got a story in the Eye about an African dictator who had hired Concorde to fly him to the dentists. I got it from someone working for BA by pure “chance encounter” one night.
These days one has to be incredibly canny to distinguish between a conspiracy theory and fact.
For example the absurd and very dangerous medical/science conspiracy theory that HIV doesn’t exist or is harmless. That has resulted in tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths in South Africa thanks to the gullibility and stupidity of Mbeki and his former, loony health minister Ms Beetroot.
One tactic these nutters use is to claim there is a global cover up orchestrated by the CIA / FDA etc to withhold “the truth”. You see the same patterns of behaviour and guerrilla tactics being used for substantiate other wacko conspiracies.
There’s a fine line between real investigate journalism and being seduced by conspiracy theories. The skeptic in us should needs to remain alert and take nothing at face value.
Ps. A shame David Aaronovitch’s book on conspiracy theories is pants. It could have been so much more interesting.
Apart from Saville and Glitter, all the other ‘paedophiles’ should really be referred to as pederasts. And it is because boys are effectively being regarded as disposable refuse, that the Marxist-Feminist media, like the BBC, will only consider the actions of these guys.
If the mainstream media included the pederasts, then the name list would be too large for the purpose of scape goat; plus, the name lists would include their own.
Also, I believe the purpose of the ‘paedophile’ emphasis is to undermine the institution of heterosexual marriage, by implying all men are child abusers, even in their own homes. Whereas pederasty would not discredit the family, only homosexuals in a position to direct the news propaganda, the establishment, and especially the gay and lesbian dominated social services.
My appreciation of Private Eye soured after Paul Halloran published a Letter from Washington by me, lifting the curtain on what a terrible leader Al Haig was because of his involvement in the JFK conspiracy assassination in Dallas.
I thought that it was just a beginning of uncovering it, only to discover that it was the beginning of the end of Haig as the Secretary of State.
I thought that he was the worst of the Reaganites, only to discover that officials like the DCI, Pappy Bush, Navy Secretary John Lehman, Jr. et al. were much worse!
You may ‘know’ it, but is it legal to understand it?
Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone points out that there was a high proportion of homosexuals involved in the scandals. It would follow that a culture of celibacy would attract lesbians and gays to the Catholic church as Nuns and Priests respectively.
Although by secondary association, the Catholic church is seen as causal to ‘paedophilia’, the truth is closer to understanding the primary cause which is homosexual pederasty, especially when viewed in proportion to numbers of Catholics that also abuse children, compared to numbers of homosexuals that also abuse children.
But it is illegal to make the statistical association, as it would be ‘homophobic’ to make the initial suggestion to test.
Apropos Mr Saville and those allegations. This is an offcut from a BBC production tape, dated 19-1-75. Now, this was rather unnerving listening in the devil-may-care-in-your-face-2010s, so how would it have felt in 1975. Yet…
http://soundcloud.com/musiclibraryfinland/savilles-travels-get-off-my
@Craig Murray
As a blogger I completely back your view on the mainstream media. Today I received an e-mail from the ombudsman of the NRC, the Dutch quality paper. I had complained the countermovement (Occupy, WikiLeaks, Anonymous, Femen etc) isn’t treated seriously. Netizens will recognize this complaint. The editor-in-chief will answer me in due time.
You also refer to alleged pedophile rings. Tomorrow in US Congress there is a hearing (by the Helsinki Committee on Europe) on Human Trafficking & Pedophilia in which the highest Dutch civil servant in the ministery of Security and Justice, mr. Joris Demmink will be held against the light. The Dutch government has not investigated the matter. As in your country, and in Belgium some years ago, rumours about high ranked politicians and a cover up are heard. And again the mainstream media are silenced.
http://arrestdemmink.com/
“Private Eye’s source was me, so it would be somewhat redundant to mention them as an antidote to the mainstream media…”
But nonetheless they published.
Ps. A shame David Aaronovitch’s book on conspiracy theories is pants
Neil- Why on earth were you disappointed !?
I’ve only just read the T Stokes article linked at ‘a year ago’ in the blog post. I’ve lived in a cloistered environment and never expected to find this, or much of the other stuff.
‘Winston Churchill’s original Sandhurst file, for example, described him as an idle layabout and a confirmed sodomite who was a menace to the younger boys.’
This could be bad…
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-19813382
David Aaronovitch believed the Saddam will give Al Qa’ida WMDs conspiracy theory and believes the Iran will commit national suicide to destroy Israel or give Hezbollah WMDs to commit national suicide by proxy conspiracy theory, so he was never likely to be good at deconstructing conspiracy theories