Impunity 1959


After such an extended break from blogging, you will be deeply disappointed that I restart with something as mundane and trivial as Jeremy Clarkson. I have defended the man in the past, because I much enjoy Top Gear and consider that much of what he has been criticised for in the past had been an amusing winding-up of the po-faced of the kind I employ myself. But nasty, indeed vicious bullying of a subordinate should always be a sacking offence.

That did not ought to be the question, though. He hit someone and they had to go to hospital. Where are the police? They are incredibly fond of sweeping up scores of teenagers for thought crime, but here we have an actual violent assault that spills blood, and it seems completely out of the question the perpetrator is brought to account. Why is that? I had a personal experience a couple of years ago when I was very mildly hurt – less than young Oisin – in an assault, and the police insisted on arresting the perpetrator despite my repeated requests to them not to do so. They told me rather firmly that the idea that it is the victim who has a say in pressing charges, is a myth. Why was Clarkson not arrested?

I cannot in my mind dissociate this from the non-arrest of Jimmy Savile for his crimes, despite their being well-known and reported at the time. That seems to link in to the wider paedophilia scandal, and the question of why no action was taken even in the most blatant of cases when there was compelling evidence, such as that of the extremely nasty Greville Janner MP.

But then I think still more widely as to why, for example, Jack Straw has not been charged with the crime of misfeasance in public office after boasting of using his position to obtain “under the radar” changes in regulations to benefit commercial clients, in exchange for cash. I wonder why a large number of people did not go to jail for the HSBC tax avoidance schemes or the LIBOR rigging scandal, which involved long term dishonest manipulation by hundreds of very highly paid bankers.

At the top of the tree is of course the question of why Blair has not been charged for the crime of waging illegal war. The Chilcot Inquiry heard evidence that every single one of the FCO’s elite team of Legal Advisers believed that the invasion of Iraq was an illegal war of aggression. Yet now the media disparage as nutters those who say Blair should be charged.

Then I think of all the poor and desperate people who get jailed for stealing comparatively miniscule amounts in benefit fraud, or the boy who was jailed for stealing a bottle of water in the London riots.

The conclusion is that we do not have a system of justice in this country at all. We have a system where the wealthy and governing classes and those associated with them enjoy almost absolute impunity, broken in only the rarest of cases. At the same time those at the bottom of the pile are kicked hard to keep them there. There is no more chance of justice against those in power in the UK than there is of the killers of Nemtsov being brought to book in Russia.

But what has really scared me is this thought. This situation has been like this my entire life: and I have reached the age of 56 before I realised it. A very great many people have still not realised it at all.

What does not scare me is this. I realise that if the system of justice is completely corrupted, then there is no obligation on me to follow the laws of the state. In fact it would be wrong of me to do so. I must seek my ethical compass elsewhere than in the corrupt power structure which weighs so hard upon the people.


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1,959 thoughts on “Impunity

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  • Mary

    Is it a record? Seven in a row!! Like little dried peas from a pea shooter and just as ineffectual.

    PS nobody tells me what to think.

    PPS Fixation with Hilde Benjamin. Must change that script.

  • Habbabkuk (La vita e' bella)

    “PS nobody tells me what to think.”
    ______________________

    There have been some good ones on here today, but the above is really the best! 🙂

    You gave up thinking for yourself in the 1970s I’d guess.

  • Habbabkuk (La vita e' bella)

    Mary

    “PPS Fixation with Hilde Benjamin. Must change that script.”

    _______________________

    If the cap fits, Mary.

    Check out Hilde Benjami. you’ll be proud of the similarities: totalitarian in outlook, hypocritical, blinkered, humourless….the list is long.

    So no change of script, I’m afraid.

  • Habbabkuk (La vita e' bella)

    But I will say, Mary, that under my patient guidance you do appear to be focussing less on people’s Jewish grandmothers or grandfathers, Jewish spouses, Jewish friends and so on.

    I should like to think that this improvement will prove to be permanent and not just a temporary blip.

  • Mary

    The possessor of the usual obsessions. Pathetic.

    Hope he remembers to put his clock forward and keeps up. Oh I forgot. He isn’t a UK citizen.

  • John Goss

    John SD, please don’t take to heart what some people say on this blog. I won’t tell you who they are but let you discover for yourself. You have already seen how last night Resident Dissident came to the aid of Habbabkuk for his support of Israeli apartheid, and how Habbabkuk came to the aid of Anon tonight with a mouthful of bile. Ignore. There are not too many of them, and their collective reasoning is hardly worth a glance. By their actions (or incitements) you will get to know them.

    As Dreoilin has hinted there has been a lot of nastiness of late. It is hard to be polite to certain individuals and some of those who try can end up with an earful of profanities, if the written word could speak out loud. 🙂

  • John Spencer-Davis

    John Goss
    28/03/2015 11:10 pm

    John, don’t worry about me, please. But that is very much appreciated, thank you.

    Kind regards,

    John

  • giyane

    Habbabkuk’s new gravatar appears to show 4 green persona simultaneously arguing out of their mouth and their backside. Blah blah blah. Blllp blllp blllp. Well chosen, Heebijeeb.

  • Tony_0pmoc

    Well, cos I like Craig Murray..maybe some of you guys don’t get out too much…

    Maybe some of them were offended..and I had already been told..do not wear that T-Shirt Again…It is Very Offensive To British Soldiers…

    And for a minute I thought he was going to walk off..and just go home..

    He said Tony..where The Fck Did You Get The T-Shirt From..Not Available in The UK..But Look at My Wife..He said..Well O.K…Tony Please Behave.

    I said I am how about you?

    Its just a T-Shirt..and I ain’t got a gun.

    Do you want one too?

    He said..I am a British Soldier…I Can’t Wear That ..even in The Barracks…

    well its up to you…

    Do you mean you really like it?

    What size are you?..Yeh I think it will fit You Too.

    Fat B@stard Size

    Tony

  • Tony_0pmoc

    Tonight I just saw her standing there from the other side of bar..and I thought wow..is that my girl standing there being so friendly to everyone..She was The Most Beautiful Girl..There…and they didn’t really know..until well They Took The Photograph of us Together

    Blimey..My Girl ..Just Did It

    So I wrote this after the event a few hours ago (yes we know the band too..and all our friends..some of who’m just turned up who we hadn’t seen for ages)

    I just want to see the photograph..Did we look O.K….like we were really happy and couldn’t give a fck about you cunts…Well are You Jealous???

    A society based on lies and controlled by exceedingly rich psychopaths is not going to last much longer..I am getting rather worried about Dan Hodges on Blackheath Common with his Mum..Glenda Jackson.

    He writes a load of shiite really well..and they pay this gobshiite to write it.

    Such is Life.

    I know you have probably guessed by now ..both My Girl and me were born in Lancashire..but both our Kids and My Mum were Born In Forest Hill..well Lewisham Hospital..but she Really wanted to give Birth well in The Bath at Home

    So does that make us LONDON?

    Or Northern Oiks from MANCHESTER?

    Are we posh?

    Tony

  • Resident Dissident

    “seen how last night Resident Dissident came to the aid of Habbabkuk for his support of Israeli apartheid”

    Actually I was responding to Mary’s name calling. But of course “By their actions (or incitements) you will get to know them.” applies also to Mr Goss.

  • Habbabkuk (La vita e' bella)

    Mr Goss

    “You have already seen how last night Resident Dissident came to the aid of Habbabkuk for his support of Israeli apartheid”

    ______________________

    You need to polish your comprehension skills, Big Ears.

    My post did not support “Israeli apartheid” but conclusively proved that it is ignorant and misleading to describe the State of Israel as an apartheid state.

  • Habbabkuk (La vita e' bella)

    The Transatlantic Poster shows that he can count. I anticipate he will soon inform us that he read for the Maths Tripos at Cambridge (at the same time as he read Greats at Oxford, of course).

  • Mary

    Last week, there was no chance of a vaccine for MenB (meningococcal B) being made available on grounds of cost we were told – £75 per dose.

    Suddenly, the saviours of the Western world, Agent Cameron, Hunt and Glaxo Smith Kline have done a deal.

    Q Is there a general election coming up?

    Meningitis B vaccine deal agreed
    All babies in the UK will soon have a potentially life-saving vaccine against meningitis B after a deal with drug manufacturers, the health secretary says.
    3 hours ago
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-32101921

  • Mary

    Israel and the apartheid analogy is a comparison between Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians and South Africa’s treatment of non-whites during its apartheid era, or a comparison of the Israeli concept of hafrada with the South African concept of apartheid.

    The analogy has been used by scholars, United Nations investigators, human rights groups and critics of Israeli policy, some of whom have also accused Israel of committing the crime of apartheid.

    Critics of Israeli policy say that “a system of control” in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, including:

    Jewish-only settlements,
    the ID system,
    separate roads for Israeli and Palestinian citizens,
    military checkpoints,
    discriminatory marriage law,
    the West Bank barrier,
    use of Palestinians as cheap labour,
    Palestinian West Bank enclaves,
    inequities in infrastructure, legal rights, and access to land and resources between Palestinians and Israeli residents in the Israeli-occupied territories,

    resembles some aspects of the South African apartheid regime, and that elements of Israel’s occupation constitute forms of colonialism and of apartheid, which are contrary to international law.

    Some commentators extend the analogy to include treatment of Arab citizens of Israel, describing their citizenship status as second-class.

  • JeSuis Travesty

    @habba – this is the starting gambit of the holocaust deniers. Can you kindly advise us on their math or lack thereof.

    6m Holocaust – 4m Original Auschwitz + 1.5m Revised Auschwitz = 6m Holohoax?

  • Mary

    Sanctions and the fate of the nuclear talks

    #IranNuclear
    Gareth Porter
    Friday 27 March 2015
    http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/sanctions-and-fate-nuclear-talks-908442964

    ‘Last November, administration officials explained that US sanctions would only be removed after the International Atomic Energy Agency had verified that “Tehran is abiding by the terms of a deal over an extended period of time” in order to “maintain leverage on Iran to honour the accord”.

    In adopting that policy, the Obama administration is following precisely the course outlined by Mark Dubowitz, the executive director of the Foundation for the Defence of Democracies (FDD), the neoconservative think tank whose outputs align completely with Israeli interests. Dubowitz was the architect of the sanctions against Iran passed by Congress in late 2011 and strongly influenced the administration’s sanctions policy for the entire Joint Plan of Action period. Dubowitz called in a June 2014 paper for “careful sequencing of sanctions relief tied to Iran meeting its obligations under the agreement” and for suspension of only those sanctions that could be quickly “snapped back” as part of sanctions relief.’

    [..]

    ‘This has been keeping Iran under suspicion on the basis of intelligence documents provided by Israel that have never been authenticated and show many indications of having been fabricated.’

    ~~~

    ‘Talks’ designed to fail by Dubowitz and his cabal.

    No mention as usual of the nuclear pile at Dimona, the Israeli nuclear weapons or the Israelis’ imprisonment of a brave and truthful Jew put into solitary confinement for the first 12 years of his incarceration, Mordecai Vanunu.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mordechai_Vanunu

  • DoNNyDarKo

    Habbablind: Always amusing to read your attempts to legitimise the Illegitimate. You remind me of the blind man in “Life of Brian” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lbX7VxlrJQ
    Israel is a failed State far from being democratic.The experiment in the land of milk and honey has gone all wrong hasn’t it?
    West Bank Palestinians do not have the same rights whether to the Justice System,or water that the West Bank Israeli’s have.Do they? Gaza Fishermen don’t have the same rights as Israeli fishermen,do they ? Israel could have legitimised themselves by giving the Palestinians what the UN had designated for them.They haven’t and painted themselves into a corner.Netanyahoo has confirmed what we have known all along and that is that there is no plan to give the Palestinians anything but more cast lead.
    But I have to admit that you certainly earn your Shekels.You make everyone else look like amateurs…. With the sharp wit you have I am quite sure you could get a proper job.

  • Mark Golding

    The cold-blooded, premeditated crash of Germanwings Flight 9525 into an Alpine mountain, which killed all 150 people aboard is in fact an ominous US back-channel intimidation to our EU partner and alliance, Germany.

    The digital ‘fly-by-wire’ A320 was commanded to auto-land. Predictably information that would provide irrefutable proof of external control of the autopilot has been lost in the missing FDR memory.

    Germany had been warned initially after this 911 NeueHorizonteTV documentary:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=18&v=zhnNy5EsebA

    Then threatened if Germany granted asylum to Snowden:

    https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/03/19/us-threatened-germany-snowden-vice-chancellor-says/

    Finally Angela Merkel’s new Minsk agreement that circumvented US ambitions in Ukraine instigated the writing on the wall.

  • John Goss

    I often get labelled with never criticising Putin. Well I am criticising him on this. While I have no objection to him getting close to Egypt and Cyprus (there need to be checks and balances in the Mediterranean) supplying Egypt with nuclear power stations is illogical when there is all that sun in Egypt. World leaders should be thinking differently from old energy policies known to be a threat to the planet.

    http://nsnbc.me/2015/03/29/putins-new-mediterranean-strategy/

  • ------------·´`·.¸¸.¸¸.··.¸¸Node

    Part 3 of a continuing series. Grateful thanks to Anon for the inspiration and encouragement. I’ve had a reply from Morrison’s to the letter I wrote on Friday.

    Thank you for contacting us, enquiring about our policy in relation to sourcing products from Israel.

     

    We are aware of the concern that exists over the conflict in Gaza and understand that some customers may not want to buy products from the state of Israel. The pictures we are seeing on our TV screens are deeply saddening and we all hope for a swift resolution to the crisis.

     

    Morrisons does not sell any products from the Occupied Palestinian Territories.  We take care to ensure the integrity of origin declarations and perform random traceability checks to give our customers confidence that food labelled ‘Produce of Israel’ has not been grown in the Occupied Palestinian Territories

     

    We do sell a small number of products from the state of Israel; however these are clearly labelled with their country of origin, allowing customers to make an informed choice about what they buy.

     

    Please be assured that we aim to source all products responsibly and look to UK government for guidance on trade policy, following all international and legal requirements in sourcing and labelling our produce.”

    I’ll post a detailed comparison when all the responses are in, but for the time being, the most Palestine-friendly is Asda, then Morrison’s, then Sainsbury’s (who actually support the illegal settlements).

  • nevermind

    Anybody who is still providing PWReactor power stations needs to be criticised. John.
    Thanks to Obama and Cameron, this project within the Margreb countries, bringing new technology education and innovation, not to speak about jobs and energy, has been delayed by their chaos creation in Libya, Syria, Mali and wider middle east.
    But it will go ahead and show Egypt what is possible without creating dangerous substances and legacies.
    http://www.desertec.org/concept/

  • Mark Golding

    True John – I take your point – I can only offer Vladimir Putin knows he must develop Russia’s financial markets to avoid a deepening recession leading to collapse. If I am honest with myself and my family were starving for food I would probably try to sell snake oil to those that could afford it.

  • Republicofscotland

    My post did not support “Israeli apartheid” but conclusively proved that it is ignorant and misleading to describe the State of Israel as an apartheid state.
    **************************************

    Not a apartheid state,but a cookoo state,who wormed its way into Palestine,then when the British,had helped Ben-Gurion achieve his goal of flooding the country,the slaughter began.

  • Villager

    Dave
    29 Mar, 2015 – 12:23 pm

    “David Cameron – Karma’s Chameleon.”

    Thank you Dave for that link. Very interesting and aesthetically made too. All the more interesting and aesthetic that the video is based on a poem by the other Dave’s fellow Etonian, Heathcote Williams.

    (Sort of a refreshing antithesis to the J.U.N.K. and L.I.T.T.E.R. posted by the Goss, Macky & Co’s oF the Occupy movement of this blog.)

  • Trowbridge H. Ford

    Good Mark Golding except for leaving out Jewish participation in the crash, and Netanyahu’s wanting to cut Merkel down to size, especially her wanting to use oGerman power to help achieve a two-state solution to the Palestinian problem.

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