Blogging

Pardon a rather navel-gazing morning, but I have been thinking about blogging. I am not sure how the Leverson Inquiry got into discussion of blogging, but apparently the editor of the Daily Mirror has described bloggers as "cowboys".

If you read this blog you would, even in the last few months find definite and documented evidence that Jack Straw is lying about his complicity in torture, that Gus O'Donnell lied spectacularly about Adam Werritty's number of meetings with the FCO, that there was a secret diplomatic deal between the US and Saudi Arabia that provided for the NATO attack on Libya and the Saudi invasion of Bahrain. You would not know any of those things from reading the Daily Mirror, or any other mainstream paper, with an honorable partial exception for the Independent.

Yet to my knowledge the only blogger to appear at Leverson has been the ultra right pin-up boy Paul Staines.

I have entered this blog for the Orwell Prize this year. I have never done so before. I had not realised, until I received an email last week, that the Prize accepts entries purely on the basis of self-nomination. That presumably rules out most decent people from the start. But I decided to enter only because I was absolutely furious at the award last year of the blogging prize to appalling overpaid BBC hack Nick Robinson, whose "blog" is just a part of the official BBC website where he can recycle Westminster careerist gossip and neo-con propaganda. Robinson has absolutely no connection to the Orwellian struggle for liberty.

Do not expect anything better this time – the judging "panel" consists of two – mainstream hack Suzanne Moore and New Labour apparatchik Hopi Sen, who unti very recently was a paid New Labour employee.

The point of this is that, when institutions like the Leverson Inquiry or the Orwell Prize come into contact with the world of blogging, they really have no ability to connect. It is like William Hague with his baseball cap on reaching out to youth, or a Nick Clegg factory floor tour. It makes you cringe.

Why my sending an easily overlooked entry is a form of protest I do not know – maybe I was too annoyed to think straight. But I did have to select eight blog entries from 2011 for the nomination, and I found a dozen or so of which I am quite proud. This gave me impetus to move forward with an idea I have had for some time. I wish to bring out a book of collected writings.

My working title is "Zionism is Bullshit - Craig Murray and the Need for Dissent 2005-2011". I want to bring together not just the best entries of this blog, but published articles, and transcriptions of speeches and talks, as well as highlights of evidence to parliament etc. I probably won't be able to incorporate comments from the blog, as copyright and permission issues look a bit nightmarish.

A book called "Zionism is Bullshit" is going to have to be self published and sold via the internet. That worked fairly well for The Catholic Orangemen of Togo. There are now 74 left of the original 1200 hardbacks printed. Please buy a copy or two, using the buttons on the right. My hubris has been punished, and in the two months since I announced I will be donating 10% of my income to Scottish Independence, my income has been nil (except £64 profit on Catholic Orangemen sales). Like "The Catholic Orangemen", "Zionism is Bullshit" will be available for free download.