I am involved quite extensively in the making of what I believe to be a valuable independent documentary. It is based on George Ponsonby’s excellent book London Calling, and has the working title How the BBC Stole the Referendum. We have already done a few hours filming of my contribution.
The film is being directed by Alan Knight. It still requires some finance, having raised over £12,000 so far from crowd sourcing. If any readers of this blog can make a contribution, it would be gratefully received. I vouch for the good faith and commitment of the production team, though I am not in any sense connected with the management or finances.
I should like to ask for a couple of other bits of help as well. Can anybody find the BBC footage of the appalling Gavin Esler puff piece for the “Vote No Borders” PR campaign. The BBC broadcast it repeatedly on every TV news programme on 2 May 2014, but seem to have managed to erase all trace of it from the internet. It might also be useful if somebody could take a little video footage of the company nameplate of Acanchi Ltd at 24 Chiswell Street, London, EC2Y 4YX. Footage of the nameplate, the street sign and a little of the surroundings, just to visually establish it is in London. The technical quality of that little bit of video is not terrifically important.
UPDATE
See Gill R’s comment below. The company may be at Unit 311 Business Design Centre, 52 Upper Street, London N1 0QH. If anyone can easily get to either address and see what they can film it would still be helpful.
@Suhayl Saadi; “I’m no-one’s defender. More like a centre forward.”
What a vivid imagination you have in your kowtowing head, must be all the drink ! 😀
^ She’s lost it, but doesn’t know where to get off. Same attitude towards Craig.
“enjoy a good fight than a shared glass of wine.”
Defiantly sounds like by type of girl, those where the days my friend.
My* 🙂
*sigh* what am I doing on this bog.
^ Ishmael, as I think Paul Newman said to Robert Redford (in ???), ‘You can have her1’ 😉
Oh yes, The Sundance Kid.
Those were the days!
Media Review – Terrorist Attacks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HthoQCSWXZY
Also a good piece on Spain by Tariq recently. If a bit depressing.
Ps, Alcyone, it wasn’t really a comment addressed to you.
Fwl on the ending of the Ego, absolutely fascinating dialogue between David Bohm, the reknowned quantum physicist, Dr Allan Shainberg, a psychiatrist and J Krishnamurti entitled ” In aloneness you can be completely secure. ”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDNameIJ1uY
Requires deep listening
This is right up Craig’s street. Expect a post on Shaker Aamer.
” Tony Blair and Jack Straw must reveal what they knew about the alleged torture of the former Guantánamo Bay detainee Shaker Aamer, Alex Salmond has said.
In his first interview since returning home to London in October after being detained without charge for 14 years in the US military facility in Cuba, British resident Shaker Aamer suggested the former prime minister and the former home and foreign secretary were aware that he was being tortured.
“The not unreasonable allegation that Shaker Aamer makes is that both the prime minister, Tony Blair, and then home secretary [subsequently foreign secretary], Jack Straw, must have known not just about his illegal abduction but also about his torture at the hands of the US authorities,” Salmond told the BBC’s The Andrew Marr Show.
Shaker Aamer attacks extremism as he tells of joy of Guantánamo release
Read more
The SNP foreign affairs spokesman and former Scottish first minister said that “as with so many other things” Blair and Straw had a great deal to answer for. “They have to be asked the straight question of how could they possibly not have known about the fate that had befallen a British citizen,” he said.
“Governments have many responsibilities but the primary responsibility of all governments is to keep their own citizens safe from harm and governments aren’t meant to collaborate on the illegal abduction and the torture of one of their own citizens. So both the then prime minister and home secretary have to face up and tell us exactly what they knew and when they knew it.”
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/13/tony-blair-jack-straw-questions-complicity-in-shaker-aamer-treatment
PS As far as I recollect, SA is a UK Resident, while his wife and children are citizens. Regardlesss…
Macky
Thanks for the Frankie Boyle lecture link..i shall have to read it slowly, Later as a winter wonder land adventure.. wilderness calls.
Taking of Trees.. Before i go Re religions –
http://000024.org/religions_tree/
The problem with imagining stuff as frankie boyle does, Is people don’t really trust in it. As i’d argue most don’t trust or engage with the things he imagines in such a homogenised way, I haven’t even owned a tv in decades.
But i’v seen other places. Experienced other cultures (not holidays) And even the most alien on the face of things, well, people are the same once you really get in there.
And here in lies the problem, that particularly and critically the rich lead isolated lives. They may go to many places consulates, or city’s. Or token visits to the outland, but they don’t experience other grass roots culture as they don’t there own, expert to rush through ‘the vulgar’ as most of them see it.
There is little practical he says, and it’s not ‘going to be beautiful’. As there is no “We” as he suggests, but there is a them, and they are every bit as brutal and uncivilized as anyone. Not in ‘over there’ in our imagination, but here in this country, in real life (as in other countries elite) and they have WMD’s and other weapons of violence that they use regularly.
Whenever someone uses the term “WE” I see red. What ‘We’ pray tell. ?
And have you been drinking from fascist fountains, because you really need to be careful of that shit.
Goldfrapp – Utopia https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OB5Qoy8JHdI
Syria – the rational & ‘Why Did Turkey Shoot Down That Russian Plane?’ by Conn M. Hallinan
Conn is a columnist for Foreign Policy In Focus, “A Think Tank Without Walls, and an independent journalist. He holds a PhD in Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley. He oversaw the journalism program at the University of California at Santa Cruz for 23 years, and won the UCSC Alumni Association’s Distinguished Teaching Award, as well as UCSC’s Innovations in Teaching Award, and Excellence in Teaching Award. He was also a college provost at UCSC, and retired in 2004. He is a winner of a Project Censored “Real News Award,” and lives in Berkeley, California.
https://dispatchesfromtheedgeblog.wordpress.com
Poverty is physical. It hurts – everyone.
Ken, Some have no idea do they.
The real divisions are elsewhere. Obvious to the point of obscenity but ignored.
It’s this idea that if we can all think the right thoughts. Well how ‘lovely’, and many do. Ore often thoughts about thinking the right thoughts. Add a few we’s in there and your off, engaging in ‘politics’, tapped into the minds of the masses. Supposedly.
I’d imagined fucking all that shit up myself…
Just what I do atm is way to much influence and fame for one person.
Just to balance the anti-Muslim hype of the Media and their lack of coverage of a certain group in recent reports of unregistered schools:
Over 1,000 Jewish boys are being taught in more than 10 unregistered yeshiva schools in the Orthodox Haredi community in Stamford Hill, a Channel 4 documentary has claimed.
Undercover footage from a Dispatches investigation into faith schools, aired Monday night, shows hundreds of boys aged between 13 and 16 coming and going from a property on Lynmouth Road, believed to be one of the illegal yeshivas.
Yeshivas are fee-paying schools established by the Haredi community to educate boys in their traditions and beliefs. Like all independent schools, they are not required to follow the national curriculum but by law must be registered.
In a statement the programme makers said it was “shocking” that Hackney Council, the Department for Education (DfE) and Ofsted have known about the unregistered yeshivas for many years but that the schools continue to operate.
In a statement released following the airing of the documentary, the council said: “Our concerns about these schools date back many years, and we’ve been working with the DfE and Ofsted to try and engage with them, ensuring they provide the education and care to which all our children have the right.
“Our goal is to get all of these schools registered and meeting the standards that will be the best outcome for the children. There has been some progress and the DfE is working with those schools to ensure that they meet the standards so that they can be registered.
The National Association of Orthodox Jewish Schools were unavailable for comment.
http://hackneycitizen.co.uk/2014/07/15/illegal-yeshiva-schools-operating-in-stamford-hill-dispatches/
I suppose to bring this little clip to the attention of those who voted for even more airstrikes in Syria will be classed as “abuse”;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGm99SnNb5k
Good to see Salmond having a go at getting some sense out of Blair and Straw re Shaker Aamer. However the signs are that this is a candidate for the long grass.
At the FAC’s questioning of Blair on his role in Libya, four out of the eleven members turned up. Crispin Blunt, presiding, led off with an extravagant eulogy on Blair’s ‘achievement’ in Libya, which was apparently not only an improvement on sliced bread but the best thing Blair had ever done. Blair’s non-pursuit of the murderer of Yvonne Fletcher was ruled outwith the range of the enquiry. The questions were easy, and even the assertion by Blair, that in negotiating the removal of Gaddafi’s WMD’s he had prevented IS getting them, failed to extract a supplementary on the (subsequent) origins of IS. BP appears not to have been mentioned. Blair claimed that the warning to Gaddafi had been issued in his capacity of private citizen…but he had first checked with the US, and only then with Cameron, whose response was descibed as ‘noncommital’. Blair ostentatiously declined to blame Cameron for anything, thereby deploying his usual talent for passive-aggressive blameshifting.
So, a farce, which resolved nothing except that Blair’s deep involvement with Gaddafi had now been delicately scrutinised and could be allowed to fade into the mists of history.
Blair is being protected. He is being protected by HMG. Which probably means he is being paid by HMG, as well as the other regimes he serves. I’d say he’s a threat to national security.
“Good to see Salmond having a go at getting some sense out of Blair and Straw re Shaker Aamer. However the signs are that this is a candidate for the long grass.”
True, especially since Aamer will probably waive his legal rights in order to get his million-pound or so compensation.
Not addressed by the FAC, illegal renditions which must have been knowm to Blair:
https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/12/11/dispatches-what-tony-blair-should-be-asked-about-libya
It’s reported that security at the FAC session was greatly enhanced. This has been noticeable on Blair’s foreign trips too. Before this the taxpayer was footing the bill for at least a dozen heavies, four of them fulltime and the rest on substantial overtime and first-class exes.
Aamer will probably waive his legal rights in order to get his million-pound or so compensation.
That’s the carrot. I imagine there’s a stick, too.
“Steady on Macky, we might disagree with CM from time to time (I have done so quite often, on a number of subjects), but that doesn’t mean we should rant and rave, bang the table and denounce CM as an Enemy of the People, or somesuch.”
____________
Yes Glenn I couldn’t agree more with you, Macky and yourself do like rant and rave, thankfully very few on Craig’s blog pay attention.
“Somebody once said that religion is like a penis, it’s fine to have one and fine to be proud of it but don’t go whipping it out and waving it in everyone’s faces all the time.”
_____________
It sounds like you’re talking Fred, from experience.
Anyway Fred you must have the largest anti-SNP penis in Scotland, and reading your comments, you must indeed whip it out on a daily basis.
“Anyway Fred you must have the largest anti-SNP penis in Scotland, and reading your comments, you must indeed whip it out on a daily basis.”
Keep your slimeball nationalist personal attacks out of it retard.
From my point of view…The BBC’s Bias – Propaganda really started with “Listen With Mother” on the Wireless. I am not suggesting it was all bad…Actually it was very good. My Mum used to ring the bell..and it was time for us to come in..and listen to the Radio.
Then we got a TV..it only did one channel in Black & White – The BBC
They started with Andy Pandy – do you realise how much I loved Andy Pandy???
But Then Little Weed turned up With The Flower Pot Men..and she looked almost exactly like my 2 year old Blonde Girlfriend.
My Mum was a Childminder Too – Like My Wife.
The BBC used to be great. Its Rubbish Now – Totally Corrupted. The people who made these children’s TV shows in the 1950’s are totally lovely – and some of them are still alive..and going down the pub this afternoon to see a Young Band Live.
I’m Walking.
“Bill & Ben The Flower Pot Men”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcF9JSxkUSE
Tony
“Tony M, don’t worry, I’ve got Bill-Boy covered. I’m moving next door to the Billy-Boy, along with 57 varieties of Daddy’s Brown child, 72 fully-veiled concubines and a camel.
I might even invite a few Fenians to sing the Songs of Derry.”
”””””””
The hypocrisy of Suhayl is staggering, in his top comment, he attacks Billy Corr’s, comment as bigoted and racist, which it is, his side kicks Macky Fedup and Glenn UK, agree with him then he uses the word Fenian, in a derogatory manner in my opinion.
Yet Fedup Macky and Glenn UK, fail to bat an eyelid at that comment, very strange indeed, it’s as though the PC brigade, have conditioned there responses only to Islamaphobic comments.
More Straw/renditions:
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/12/01/tort-d01.html
Straw, questioned by Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Select Committee in 2005, flatly denied Britain’s participation in the US renditions and said there was no need for any inquiry into the issue.
Despite Straw’s denial, the evidence against him and Allen is damming.
Having resigned his role at MI6 in the summer of 2004, Allen went on to join British oil company BP as an adviser on a yearly salary of £200,000. Allen and Lord Browne, former BP chairman, visited Gaddafi regularly in secret to negotiate lucrative oil contracts for which the Blair government had lobbied hard on BP’s behalf. Britain, together with the US, pushed for the lifting of international sanctions against Libya in 2003, making the deals with both Shell and BP possible.
In May 2007, Blair returned to Libya accompanied by representatives of BP. The oil firm signed a £500 million agreement, with the prospect of 17 wells being drilled. The Daily Telegraph noted that if “all this exploration reached its full potential the deal could be worth £13 billion.”
Five months later Libya began to back out on the deal, to the alarm of BP. Allen met with Straw a few months later, on October 15 and again on November 9, to push for a solution in an attempt to finalise the deal.
The agreed release and repatriation on medical grounds of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi to Libya solved BP’s dilemma. Megrahi was head of security for Libyan Arab Airlines and a Libyan intelligence officer. He was convicted of 270 counts of murder for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie and imprisoned in Scotland. When asked if BP’s business interests were a factor in the government decision to release al-Megrahi, Straw responded to the Telegraph in 2009 saying, “Yes, [it was] a very big part of that. I’m unapologetic about that …”
Having turned over Belhaj to Libyan torture chambers, only a few years later the British government welcomed his role as the commander of the Tripoli Military Council. During the overthrow of the regime, individuals such as Belhaj and the resurgent LIFG were recast by Western governments, including Britain’s, as “freedom fighters”.
You won’t read that in the Guardian…
The BBC at it again.
For the second time in just over six months, the BBC has been forced to admit that its flagship news and current affairs program — Today — has misled its audiences over the situation in Israel and the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.
In a broadcast in October, veteran presenter John Humphrys and Middle East correspondent Kevin Connolly implied in a two-way conversation that all of those killed in that month’s violence were Israeli.
In fact, at the date of broadcast, on 19 October, more than 40 of those killed were Palestinian and fewer than 10 Israeli.
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/amena-saleem/bbc-forced-admit-it-misled-over-palestine
RoS, Suhayl is a true gentleman from all that I’ve seen. doubt very much that he intended that as a racist comment at all. At any rate the whole comment was a joke–very original that 57 varieties…
Btw, thanks for laying off that K stuff, but if you’re ever tempted to test one, watch that dialogue I linked to in the morning with David Bohm. Truly stimulating, an intense hour but also very revealing indeed!