Craig Murray's Blog, page 167

BBC Lawbreaking

I despair sometimes that society as a whole has lost all sense of how a democracy ought to operate.  State abuse has become the norm.

I am astonished that there is not greater reaction to the BBC role in Obama’s statement against Scottish independence.  It is now confirmed that not only did No. 10 ask Obama to make the statement, they set up the BBC to ask the question that prompted it.

For a state broadcaster, with a legal obligation to neutrality in the referendum campaign, actively to participate in a stunt plainly aimed to boost one side in the campaign is beyond disgraceful.  There is obviously a realisation at the BBC that they have done something very wrong indeed – all of the BBC’s own coverage with unprecedented reticence omitted totally the fact that it was the BBC that asked the question.

This ought to be an absolutely huge scandal which leads to resignations at the BBC.  Yes, it is not unprecedented for officials to ask a journalist to ask a helpful question.  The Tories might well ask the Sun or Telegraph to ask them something.  But it is a completely different thing when it is a state broadcaster legally obliged to neutrality and part of a referendum or election campaign.

That the BBC truthful report that there were no WMD’s in Iraq led to forced resignations, while this twisted propaganda interference has no result, is a sign of the collapse of democratic values in society – and the expectation of them.

The Dog That Didn’t Bark

There is a mystery about the media coverage of the Newark by-election result.  The most interesting thing about it was the abysmal failure of the official opposition, just one year ahead of a general election.  The New Labour percentage vote actually dropped, and even just taking the New Labour v Tory vote, the New Labour swing from Tory was only 2 per cent.  That is an almost unprecedentedly poor performance by an opposition in a by-election at this stage in a parliament, and a very, very plain indication of what was already obvious – that Miliband is not going to be entering the door of No. 10.

Yet Sky News, the BBC and the Guardian have virtually nothing to say about New Labour’s disastrous result.  Both Sky and the BBC this morning managed to give their analysis on the by-election without even mentioning New Labour at all.  What can be the cause of this reticence?  Is it that they are not anxious to point out to Scots that their choice is independence or more Tory government?

 

Deep Interest of the Deep State

Actually just read that Obama quote again:

“we obviously have a deep interest in making sure that one of the closest allies we will ever have remains a strong, robust, united and effective partner”

If the United States truly believes it has a deep interest in making sure that Scotland does not become independent, we can be quite certain that America will be pulling out all the stops to make sure that No wins.  The language is the language of intelligence service tasking memoranda, which Obama is consciously or unconsciously reproducing.  I have personally been involved in a great deal of intelligence service tasking.  Intelligence service resources, both personnel and financial, are deployed to a greater or lesser extent to a task according to an assessment of the depth of national interest involved.  If Obama has decided the US has a deep interest in the result of the Scottish independence campaign, we can expect hidden interference at Ukrainian levels.

Obama: Keep the Cannon Fodder Coming

“we obviously have a deep interest in making sure that one of the closest allies we will ever have remains a strong, robust, united and effective partner.”

Translation - ”Thanks for sending so many young Scots to die in Iraq and Afghanistan for us.  Look forward to seeing them die in Syria or Iran soon.  Keep the cannon fodder coming.  Sorry have to nip off now to approve some teenagers on a drone kill list.  Keep storing those nuclear warheads for us.”

Not a Liberal Democracy

New Labour were the chief culprits in moving Britain away from a liberal democracy and into an authoritarian state.  The series of “anti-terror” laws they put through were the most draconian in British history, far outweighing anything the government of Lord Liverpool did with the Six Acts.  Yet the entire liberal establishment went along with Blair, and those of us who warned we were sliding fast away from democracy were denounced as conspiracy theorists.

You hope there will be moments which will wake people up.  I not only hoped but believed that I could myself trigger such a moment when I blew the whistle on the Blair/Straw policy of widespread complicity in torture.  I discovered to my great personal cost, and as a matter of cathartic personal disillusionment which has defined my entire life since, that the establishment were perfectly OK with torture.

I should like to believe that today’s advent of totally secret criminal trials in the UK is another moment when revulsion might set in.  But I am not holding my breath, as an 800 year right to open justice is removed.  Theresa May had already applied to have another case heard in secret in which the government is being sued for complicity in torture.

I know from eye-witness report that it was only Jack Straw’s fear of an open trial and a free jury that prevented my own prosecution under the Official Secrets Act for blowing the whistle on torture.  If I did it today I would get a secret court and no jury. Now two men stand to be imprisoned for life on the basis of “evidence” from the intelligence services which even the accused are not to be allowed to see.  Remember this is “evidence” from the same intelligence services who told you that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.  Anything they have to say against anybody must always be open to the widest public scrutiny.  The idea that people should be convicted in secret on stasi evidence ought to be truly shocking.

Freedom Cheaper than Iraq War

A particularly mendacious lie by Danny Alexander puts the institutional start-up costs of Scottish Independence at £1.5 billion.  That is a cool half billion pounds cheaper than Scotland’s share of the costs of the Iraq and Afghan wars, even on the Westminster government’s blatant under-estimate of the war costs.

So Scotland can afford criminal invasions killing hundreds of thousands to ‘bring freedom’, but cannot afford the smaller cost of its own freedom!!!

The £1.5 billion estimate is mendacious in two ways.  Firstly, it is a simple recycling of a Canadian lie at the time of the Quebec independence referendum, apportioning with no argument 1% of GDP to startup costs.

Secondly, as nearly all the money will be spent in Scotland it is not a loss at all, but actually an increase to GDP, as any but the most nutty neo-con would be forced to acknowledge.  And it would be the precursor of government money spent annually in Scotland rather than England for ever thereafter.

Thankfully Alexander won’t have a job much longer – and if he thinks a penny of Scottish public spending is going in future to support his huge arse and deceitful mouth, he is very wrong.

 

Euro Values

Brian Taylor of BBC Scotland said last night he picked up at Holyrood that the other unionist parties were pleased that UKIP had won the former Lib Dem seat in Scotland and stopped the SNP getting a third.  That was the most revealing moment of last night for me – it showed the vicious irresponsibility of the Better Together campaign, and exposed the lie that UKIP are outsiders.

The other moment worth watching was Alex Salmond confronting Dimbleby that the BBC had given UKIP four times as much coverage time in Scotland during the campaign as the SNP.  Dimbleby tamely responded that his complaint should be directed to BBC Scotland.  The BBC’s promotion of UKIP again explodes the myth of UKIP as outsiders.

The Unionist camp’s pathetic attempt to claim that UKIP’s 10% and fourth place in Scotland, squeaking one seat, shows Scotland is the same politically as England where UKIP got 29% and came first, is desperate politics.  That in order to make that point they were happy for a racist party to marginally represent Scotland in Europe, is a sign of the total moral bankruptcy of the Better Together neo-con British Nationalist programme.

New Labour are completely screwed.  To only beat the Tories by 1%, when there is a huge UKIP voteof which a significant slice will go back to the Tories, shows there is no chance whatsoever that New Labour will win the UK general election.

The people of Scotland have a very simple choice in September.  Independence, or another Tory government which will probably pull the UK out of the EU, and might very well be in coalition with UKIP.

New Labour won almost nowhere except London.  It is the party of London., with a leader who has never in his life lived outside London.  But it is a fascinating fact that of all the class, educational, geographical and other statistics you can correlate with New Labour success, the factor with the strongest correlation of all with the New Labour share of the vote is the prevalence of postal voting.  New Labour can win only where the system is open widest to abuse through massive scale electoral fraud.

Some of this is straight fraud – postal ballots being given to ghost voters, non-existent people on the register.  That is very much more prevalent than you probably imagine.  But mostly it operates through the deprivation of the privacy of the polling booth.  In a polling station nobody is supposed to be allowed to look over your shoulder (although there were disgraceful scenes in places in Tower Hamlets, Wood Green and Newham).  But if you receive your ballot paper in your home, you are extremely vulnerable if you live in a situation where others are able to enter your home and demand to check that you have voted the right way before you post your ballot.  That is beyond doubt the situation both of many family members, particularly affecting women, and of certain highly hierarchical and patriarchal communities.  Postal ballot distortion is an absolutely disgraceful blot on British political culture.  It is also fundamental to New Labour’s ability to salvage something from a disastrous electoral performance.

There is indeed a very nasty undercurrent of racism in England at the moment.  I live in one of UKIP’s strongest areas and this racism cannot be wished away.  In fact I do not believe that Farage is personally racist, and I believe he is genuine not tactical in his abhorrence of the French National Front.  But I do believe Farage has pandered to and encouraged people who are racists, and that there are a great many racists within UKIP.  These people must not be allowed to become a ‘respectable’ part of politics and must be confronted wherever they appear.

I have argued for years that the UK is not a democracy in that no real choice is offered between the main political parties.  Their policies are all the same.  If the range of possible policies on any one issue were enumerated from 1 to 100, New Labour, Lib Dem and Tories offer you choices in the range 81 to 86. The electorate has noticed, and people are sick of it.  People have noticed all over Europe too.  The politics of neo-con consensus and its lackey media is happily dead.  This is a change that will not stop.  Once we imprison enough neo-cons who ripped off the public and the taxpayer, perhaps they might concede that it turns out history had not ended after all.

It is true that UKIP’s support does represent an upsurge of dissatisfaction with the political elite, and that also is part of an unarticulated rage at the astonishing growth of inequality of wealth in society and the vast shift of resources to the billionaire middlemen in the financial sector who do extremely little for it.  It is good that rage is building, and Syriza show in Greece that it can be constructively channelled.  But it is much more often and with much more success diverted in order to awake volcanoes of atavism, and rage that should be directed at plutocrats is instead turned on foreigners.  The danger is letting that analysis divert you from the fact of how very, very real and very, very nasty that atavism is in the dispossessed classes.  We are in a dangerous place.  The neo-con establishment is fanning racist flames.

At school, we were taught about the years of revolution in Europe of 1830-32 and 1848-9.  Those revolutionary years coincided with Asian Cholera pandemics, which undoubtedly played a part in driving people beyond endurance.  You can of course argue that poverty and famine assisted the spread of the pandemics.

This current year of European change has also been sparked by economic distress, and seen an increase in poverty marker diseases, some of which we had hoped had effectively vanished. But plague has been a cause.  Europe has suffered the most devastating plague of bankers in history.

The disillusioned should not blame immigrants.  Immigrants are victims too.  Turn your wrath on the bankers, the billionaires and the neo-con parties who do their bidding.  Another world is possible.

Let’s start by ending the UK and setting Scotland free.  It is not illegitimate to judge an idea in part by the quality and motives of those who oppose it.  The full range of the neo-con establishment prefer racist isolation for a neo-con UK to a free Scotland.  Just look at them.  Then kick them where it really hurts.

 

 

 

 

 

Buggering the Valet

The row over Prince Charles in Canada reminded me of the role of the Royal Family in personifying those timeless traditions which comprise the spine of British culture.  One of these great Royal traditions, which has continued right down to the present generations, is buggering the valet.

31 May should be a national holiday in celebration of this great tradition. We should call it Bugger the Valet day.  On 31 May 1810 Ernest Duke of Cumberland, fifth son of George III, was buggering his valet Neale.   While Cumberland was fully engaged, another servant named Sellis impertinently entered the room.  Naturally the Duke, having ordered Sellis to wait and be spoken to, took out his sword and ran Sellis through seven times. Sellis remained impertinent, and even after being stabbed the first time, had the temerity to grab a candlestick and hit the Duke hard on the face, inflicting a disfiguring wound.  This of course is described in official histories (and I see on Wikipedia) as having been received in the Napoleonic Wars.

Over the years, seven journalists were imprisoned for publishing an account of Sellis’ death.  The Duke failed to pay Neale the money he had promised him to lie that Sellis had attacked the Duke, and subsequently Neale talked rather a lot.  The first journalist imprisoned, Henry White, died of disease contracted in prison. Henry White deserves to be remembered.

Cumberland was to marry a woman very widely believed across the German speaking world to be herself a murderess, Princess Frederica of Mecklenburg Strelitz, whose two earlier husbands had died, the second particularly unexpectedly and conveniently.

During the reign of King William IV, Cumberland was second in line to the throne after Victoria.  Victoria’s widowed mother, the Duchess of Kent, was shagging her Private Secretary, Sir John Conroy.  Actually every summer in Victoria’s teens they did their shagging in Townley House, which I can see now from my study window.

Ten months of the year they lived in Kensington Palace, and Conroy put Victoria into seclusion.  Conroy was hated – he was far too middle class to be shagging a Duchess.  There was a successful film by that awful far right “Lord” Julian Fellowes a few years ago called The Young Victoria.  Conroy was portrayed as a caricature villain, and conventional historians have accepted the monarchist line that his seclusion of Victoria was to maximize his own influence of control.

What Conroy himself said, and is almost never published, was that he was keeping Victoria under very close guard because he was terrified she would be poisoned or otherwise murdered by the heir to the throne, her uncle Cumberland, and his wife. Where this is ever mentioned by historians, it is to ridicule it as a crazy pretext.

In fact Cumberland was a murderer,  and Frederica very probably was too.  Conroy was absolutely right to protect Victoria from Cumberland.  What the establishment would not admit then or now was that there was a very real reason for Conroy to apprehend this danger.   Ernest Duke of Cumberland had killed Sellis.  His wife Frederica was reputed throughout Europe to have poisoned her second husband in order to marry Ernest and gain the possibility of becoming Queen of England.  Only Victoria stood between them and the throne, in an age of high mortality.

When William IV died, Victoria became Queen but as a female could not inherit the other Kingdom of Hanover.  Cumberland therefore became King Ernest of Hanover.  He abolished parliament and persecuted those regarded as liberal, including the Brothers Grimm who he dismissed from their University posts.

Ahh, our beloved Royal family! Remember – 31 May is Bugger the Valet Day.

Mind-Boggling

When I watch the news I flick from channel to channel.  At the moment, if you asked me which channel comes closest to an ideal of good quality and unbiased journalism, I would probably say none, but the best is France24.  It is always fascinating to compare and contrast all the different viewpoints and techniques of news management.

I normally hover very briefly on Fox.  But just now Fox were running an item on a New York bar that has banned weapons – which the Fox commentators thought outrageous.  First they opined gleefully that the bar would get shot up in consequence.  Then one of them said “Most mass shootings actually occur in weapons free zones like schools.” They all happily concurred that schools would be safer if firearms were allowed in.

 

A Day Off Politics

No politics tomorrow.  Instead there will be a short post entitled – Amanda Knox, Oscar Pistorius and the McCanns.  Guilty as hell.