Embarrassing Smiles Cover Up Secrets and Lies

Tony Blair and Jack Straw

Jack Straw may have been “embarrassed” when he abolished his plans to abolish secret inquests which would have covered up his and Blair’s secret dealings over the euphemistically named extraordinary renditions (a.k.a. kidnappings and torture) that he initially claimed not to have done.

He may have been embarrassed about his son getting done in a tabloid sting for dope selling although his continued usage of the substance seems to have passed him by.

He may also have been embarrassed about being caught out for hiding the truth about using fake reasons to start the illegal war in Iraq.

Discovery and Personal Guilt

Embarrassment is not it though.  The real reason is our discovery of Straw & Blair’s hypocritical dealings over wars and torture, kidnap and illegal detention without trial, things that Straw’s government, and now our own coalition one, seek to hide.  That’s a deep guilt.

Was it guilt over the knowledge that as he was the head of an unaccountable web of spies, they were doing everything that any free democratic nation would naturally think abhorrent?

Or was it guilt over authorising these abhorrences to civilised behaviour?  Perhaps he knew that in 2005 the US was training already designated terrorists, in terrorism, on their own soil?

Extraordinary rendition, U.S. (and U.K!!) style

That’s the special relationship for ya!   Straw brought in the US-UK one-sided extradition agreement in 2003.  The following yearhe and Blair were found out to have started the war in Iraq on false pretences.  There then followed the endless investigations that dragged on for so long that folks forgot what they were about.

A collusion between the military, the law and politics from the establishment, designed to legally obfuscate by the dreary analysis of the minutiae of the webs of illegality they’d hatched?

We now find out, in the same year, 2004, that Straw and Blair were (supposedly) in government, Fatima Bouchar and her husband, Abdel Hakim Belhaj were captured, bound in gaffa tape (her eyelid bound open for 17 hours during this process), kidnapped and transported to a foreign power (Libya) where they were tortured and imprisoned for seven years.

Straw said he knew nothing, so what exactly was he paid for?  Was he a stooge, a calm reassuring personae, quietly acquiescing to misdeeds on the grandest of scales in exchange for lifelong protection and a nice pension?

Abdel is now in the ruling government of Libya, having fought and beaten Gaddhafi, with The West’s help, let’s not forget….

See: Special report: Rendition ordeal that raises new questions about secret trials.  This is the story of their imprisonment, and the trail of evidence that reveals the involvement of the British government.  It’s all there.  Detailed.  How Straw and Blair either instigated or permitted this to happen.

Cover Up Illegal Government Work by Invoking Secret Trials, “in the national interest”!

Killer Drone Aircraft

It’s all true.  Our own (and the US) secret services kidnapped and transported innocents from our own and foreign soils to foreign powers.  This was all done without the intervention of a judge, without court orders and in many cases (those in Guantanamo Bay for instance), without any immediate or subsequent trial.  They’re still doing it!

Bush, Cheney, Obama, Blair - their handiwork - it is estimated that >3ooo civilians have been killed by drones

The only difference between the recent actions of Jack Straw, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Blunket, Teresa May, Ken Clarke & David Cameron, and the historical actions of Joseph Stalin, Chairman Mao and Adolf Hitler are that in the former, there’s been no trial and the people are still alive, and in the latter there were usually show or peremptory trials usually followed by immediate execution.

Stalins Handiwork

Though life is precious, today’s innocents (innocent unless proven guilty, remember) may have at times wished they were dead.

One man’s been locked up since just after Jack Straw brought in the extradition deal with the US…! He’s now destined for transport to the USA and has been in solitary confinement here, without trial, for 8 years!  Murderers get less than that!  His crime was to host an anti-American website using a US-based host.

Killer Drone Pilots

This is a bit like me.

• I hate much of what the USA & UK does in the name of freedom, because plainly, it’s not.
• I hate the undemocratic, illegal processes that the US and UK have done in the past (and now it appears are continuing to do) with a passion.
• This website is hosted in the USA (Dallas, Texas, to be exact).

Can I expect a knock on the door and to be gaffa-taped off to solitary soon?  Probably not, because I don’t promote war, in fact, it’s an abhorrence.

Meanwhile, thousands of civilians die in US drone attacks while a lawyer for the victims is mysteriously prevented from gaining a visa because of “technical difficulties”!

Terrorist Distractions

Haditha Killings - US marines get away with murder

Let’s not get distracted by today’s news that the European Court of Human Rights has allowed the extradition of a few “terror suspects” to be extradited to the USA though.

The targets have no chance to surrender, and the Afghan government has raised concerns. The drone strikes are dubbed ''Kill TV'' or ''Taliban TV'' because soldiers watch live video feeds of bombs and missiles detonating, with one source admitting it is uncomfortable viewing: ''You can see everything.''

Because the real devilish forces, whereby a supposedly civilised country like the United Kingdom can kidnap and torture with impunity, still exist.  Pregnant Fatima Bouchar was not a terrorist and nor was her husband.  Their terrifying ordeal at the hands of our secret service stands testament to that.

The Real Targets - our own freedoms

Even worse, our own dear whiter-than-white freedom-loving governments have now been found to have colluded in the kidnap, lied about having knowledge of the kidnap, and now seek to cover up any further public knowledge of this and other kidnaps (and worse, perhaps?) under the guise of “national security”.

These are the real devils in our midst.  They are the real terrorists.  Under false pretexts they continue to bomb civilians with drones and kidnap and torture those they can’t kill.  Though from different political persuasions, successive governments draft laws cover up the previous one’s actions.

What an evil nasty bunch they are.     Cameron and his crowing cohorts are just the latest in a long line.

Meanwhile,

• MPs and judges can retire to fully indexed-linked pensions,   unlike the rest of the public sector workers who have been recently brutalised and scape-goated in the press for the thieving behaviour of gambling banker-politicians.
• MPs and judges are protected from harm by the very secret services they’ve steered and governed while the rest of us are made

•  to feel fear at home, where none exists
• to feel loathed abroad, when we have done nothing

All due to the evil machinations of these few folk.

The Real Reason for Secret Trials and Internet Censorship

At least we can all now see the real reason for last week’s push for secret trials by Cameron and the ConDems – to cover up our government’s hypocritical, illegal, criminal, actions.

In future, all reporting of these actions will naturally be curtailed when the internet is thoroughly locked down and all we’ll be able to see will be tits, bums and football interspersed with Simon Cowell same-songs and holiday-home recipes of the day.  Everything will be like the front page of the Daily Mail website.  Some freedom, eh?

Question:  Why Pictures of Drones and Dead Innocents, Yet not many Kidnaps?

A. Simple.    It’s the same mentality of person that sends in the drones to kill innocents as kidnaps innocents.  In fact, it’s the same people.  They stand there smiling on our TVs, in suits, with the appropriate amount of gravitas dependant on the situation.

The real devils in our midst.  The real terrorists.

Related articles

• Special report: Documentary proof that Britain initiated ‘extraordinary rendition!’ (truthaholics.wordpress.com)
• Special report: the documents that prove Britain initiated rendition (guardian.co.uk)
• Coincidence, or the Power of Politicised Fiction? (spinelessliberal.wordpress.com)
• A tale of the ‘Palpably Absurd’: The (dis)trusting Tony Blair, Iraq, WMDs and the ‘Deal in the Desert’ (politicsontoast.com)
• The Wonderful World of Tony Blair (seeker401.wordpress.com)
• Johann Hari: Oil, blood money, and Blair’s last scandal (independent.co.uk)
• Police to question Jack Straw over torture in Libya (independent.co.uk)
• Rendition (infinitepirate.wordpress.com)
• Jack Straw asked to appear before US Senate committee over Lockerbie bomber release (telegraph.co.uk)
• Papers Prove UK Initiated Rendition (the2012scenario.com)
• Clause exposes MI6 not clean on dirty tricks (thehindu.com)
• Kim Sengupta: Yard may shed light on Blair’s role in Libya (independent.co.uk)
• Leading article: Britain’s reputation is in the dock over rendition (independent.co.uk)
• Straw to Face the Law (order-order.com)

The End of Freedom -  Here is the News

Today, dozy Brits sleepwalked into a slightly-uncomfortable oblivion.  No-one blinked.

Monument stone at the site of the birth of Adolf Hitler reads: For peace freedom / and democracy / never again fascism / millions of dead remind us. The stone is from the quarry at the Mauthausen concentration camp.

Following on from yesterday’s news that everything any of us does will be recorded, anything and everything, it’s now the end of justice as we know it and a sharp veer to the Nazi/Soviet/Zimbabwe model of total surveillance, secret police and secret trials.

The BBC said, David Cameron defends secret courts and web monitoring plans, and the comments are cascading in fast.

Can no-one see this?  Where is the common sense that we British are reputed to have, or is that just a sham like our justice as well?  Something to brag about when criticising Little Johnnie Foreigner but not something we do at home?

As long as the lights still work and the Proles can drive to the burger shop they’ll all be happy.  Is that what the powers-that-be think?

It certainly looks like it.

Men in Suits

David Cameron (Photo credit: Nick Atkins Photography)

King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa (left) of Bahrain responds to a reporter's question during joint press availability with Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld (right) outside the Pentagon on Feb. 4, 2003 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Hitler and Mussolini

Mugabe

Stalin

Who Are What?

Now, instead of medallioned shouty people brandishing fists, swords and tanks like Hitler or Stalin, we find our freedoms are removed by men in suits.  Men like Cameron, Clegg, Brown and Blunkett.  Men like bankers and offshore tax advisors.  Men on hidden committees and quangos.  Men on secretly funded so-called “focus groups” that are nothing but sham cover-ups for the men in suits.

Other men taking away “other people’s freedoms” they slag off as bad, bad, bad.  Actually, most of them are!  People like Mugabe are obvious.  Less obvious is the King of Bahrain, Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa or the King of Saudi Arabia, Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud.  They wear their own sort of suit.

But like Hitler (say) before,  they all remove power from the people and misuse their army, their courts and laws as a disservice to the common man.

Islam Karimov, president of Uzbekistan

They all wear suits and they’re all bad people.  Cameron finally reveals his spots.  Obama, the false hope is just the same.  Chanting loud the voice of nationalism and national security, in actual fact they are the public face of non-accountable multi-national powers of huge influence.  They all had a chance to “change” things, but have been sucked into the greater, totalitarian void that multi-national capitalism is.

They are Borg.

Resistance is futile.

Smile as your freedom goes.  At least you’ve got a job, mate!

We are Borg.

We Are The Borg Unicomplex

Related articles

• Are we still willing to play along with David Cameron’s pain game? – Telegraph Blogs (dralfoldman.wordpress.com)
• David Cameron proves too expensive for the Labour Party’s political broadcast (telegraph.co.uk)
• David Cameron revives right-to-buy policy: £75k discounts offered to council … – Daily Mail (dailymail.co.uk)
• Tory MPs round on David Cameron and George Osborne (telegraph.co.uk)
• Could David Cameron protect drivers from soaring costs? (blogs.confused.com)
• MP faces charges over Nazi stag night (independent.co.uk)
• Obama tucks Cameron into bed after long day (time4sleep.co.uk)
• On Democracy, Plutocracy and Realpolitik (notnumber.wordpress.com)
• The Chilling Nightmares of Auschwitz (sabinianabalagtasbaliba.com)
• Is Obama ‘Dangerously Close To Totalitarianism?’ (johnmalcolm.me)
• UK: Queen invites Bahraini king to Jubilee banquet (alethonews.wordpress.com)
• What Obama And Hitler Have In Common (myvoice2012.wordpress.com)
• Embarrassment or Dirty Dealing Discovery – the Real Reason for Secret Trials (strangelyperfect.tv)
• Nazi Cameron Shows His Satanic Colours (strangelyperfect.tv)
• Cameron Reveals the Second Totalitarian Democracy (strangelyperfect.tv)
• Why Didn’t Hitler Invade Switzerland? (schwingeninswitzerland.wordpress.com)
• Dave’s Off On A Photo Shoot With Aung San Suu Kyi. To Talk About Democracy A Lot. (stirringtrouble.wordpress.com)
• Totalitarianism\Power\Public Education (broeder10.wordpress.com)
• Totalitarianism at Our Door (Open Thread) (wtpotus.wordpress.com)

Yet again I’m forced to side with the grinning David Davis.  This doesn’t happen often and is embarrassing to admit!.

ConDem Coalition Pledges Broken!

It’s all about the government plans to allow full-scale unauthorised real-time monitoring of every person in the UK’s internet activity!  It’s so 1984.

“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen” – (George Orwell: Nineteen Eighty-Four
.

Orwell must be turning in his grave in despair that what he predicted as a warning about what not to do, now looks like coming to fruition.

Remarkably, since wangling themselves into government, the conservative-libdem coalition government is now actually dropping a key part of their manifesto which they laboriously agreed two years ago.  This can still be found on the government website, page 11 to be exact (pdf) .  Here’s what they said:

• The Government believes that the British state has become too authoritarian…. We need to restore the rights of individuals in the face of encroaching state power – FAIL
• …reverse the substantial erosion of civil liberties and roll back state intrusion – FAIL
• … introduce safeguards against the misuse of anti-terrorism legislation – FAIL
• …end the storage of internet and email records without good reason – FAIL
• …a British Bill of Rights that … protects and extends British liberties – FAIL

(Actually, the whole Con-Dem pledge list makes good reading to see just how far removed from it our evil diktat of quangos has become.)

So what to do – use TOR.

ID Cards

Johann Wolfgang Goethe (Photo credit: andreasmarx)

Not so long ago I was haranguing the former Labour government about their plans for ID Cards, their laws over CCTV and photographing in public places, the reduction  in privacy for individuals and the removal of our civil rights over detention without trial, due cause and 3rd party notification for first 90 days and them 42 days.

I left the Labour Party because of it and have not rejoined.

Huge Vocal Resentment Against UK Government Secret Citizen Monitoring Plans.

Use TOR!

The new news (I thought it was an April Fool joke initially!) is that Email and web use is ‘to be monitored’ under new laws proposed by this nasty, nasty government.  Happily, there is now a huge and vociferous resentment against this from the general public who can see this evil act for what it is.  Top among them is David Davis!  See this link and the thousands of comments for instance; Backlash over email and web monitoring plan.

Clueless

Now, the tories and their liberal stooges have been shown to be both serially evil in their pronouncements and plans, and also serially incompetent of managing almost anything.

Their pathetic management of a minor industrial dispute (the fuel shortage) which did nothing except invoke almost universal resentment of the coalition and reawaken a general awareness of their ineffectiveness comes on top of stripping the very foundations away from one of UK society’s greatest inventions of the Industrial Age, our National Health Service (NHS).

Top this behavioural abomination with that of the revolving door policy between banking and politics which they continue to promote with zero penalties for failure while the population-at-large have to prop up the whole system with their taxes means only two things to me.

1. The government must do something desperate to have any hope of re-election in 3 years – this means either war (patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel) or economic boom-and-bust gambling.
2. They will do something desperate to have any hope of re-election in 3 years – this means either war (patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel) or economic boom-and-bust gambling.

Astute folk will see this as my prediction for government actions over the next 3 years.

Tories: Keep Friends Happy

Meanwhile, hundreds of extra Tory donors will soon be available to bankroll the “all is good” story.  They will arrive as beneficiaries of the windfall provided as the “former NHS” contracts are handed out to friends, much like Michael Ashcroft benefited from the first round of NHS privatisation during the Thatcher era.  This article on Powerbase and this one (sourced from a now defunct article in The Scotsman) show quite clearly that 1/3 of cleaning contracts went to Ashcroft’s businesses during this time, saying;

MICHAEL Ashcroft, (…) bankrolled an “independent” publicity campaign that allowed his multi-million-pound contract cleaning empire to prosper and led to a change in the law. The campaign was run from the London office of the former Conservative Scottish secretary, Michael Forsyth. A spokesman for Mr Ashcroft confirmed last night that he had contributed to the Public and Local Service Efficiency Campaign (PULSE), which was set up in 1985 to persuade the public sector to contract out services such as cleaning and catering. The campaign had been disbanded by the end of the 1980s after the Conservative government passed the 1988 Local Government Act .  Mr Ashcroft’s Hawley Services Group, a contract cleaning firm later known as ADT, flourished under the new regime, with ADT, winning a third of NHS contracts between 1983 and 1988.

For further information into the depths that the Tories will go to enable all public money to be fed straight to their business friends, see this article which pulls apart the dealings of Ashcroft, discredited Dame Shirley Porter, NIMBY Nicholas Ridley, Chris Chope (the dog turd of Christchurch) and current (dodgy expenses, remember) minister Eric Pickles.

THE PICKLES PAPERS

By Tony Grogan
First published by 1 IN 12 PUBLICATIONS 1989
21 – 23 Albion St. Bradford 1.
Copyright 1 IN 12 Publications 1989
ISBN 0 948994 04 5

Once read, apply the same logic to our dear NHS, and weep again.  The same modus operandi is being used;

1. discredit the current, imply alternatives are better;
2. farm out internal monies to external Tory benefactors.

It’s just more sleaze just like under Thatcher before, backed up with warlike rhetoric.  Remember, only 10 days ago we had the news of billionaire Tory donors at Cameron’s dinner table, and Cameron trying to defend the cash-for-access news that made Labour’s cash-for-questions scandal appear like a sweetshop-ish wheeze in comparison.  See 

Tory Party chairman Lord Feldman was one of the key figures in the ‘cash for access’ scandal which erupted after Tory party treasurer Peter Cruddas was caught offering a private dinner with David Cameron to undercover reporters who posed as wealthy party donors.  Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2123692/Tory-cash-access-row-David-Cameron-crony-pal-cash-questions.html

as well.

Related articles

• Tory MP David Davis criticises the Government’s surveillance plans (itv.com)
• “Email and web use ‘to be monitored’ under new laws” The BBC /finally/ spot that #CCDP is a story (dropsafe.crypticide.com)
• Email and web use ‘to be monitored’ under new laws. Wait till the Irish government bring’s in some horse shite like this as well, monkey see monkey do. (teddyoshea.wordpress.com)
• Campaigners criticise email and web monitoring plan – BBC News (bbc.co.uk)
• Ministers to monitor calls, emails, texts and websites (ffeirio.wordpress.com)
• ‘Class attacks on David Cameron are equivalent to John Major’s sleaze scandal’, says David Davis (telegraph.co.uk)
• Brian Monteith: Scot-free Tories wouldn’t rule England for ever (scotsman.com)
• Clegg must speak up against web snooping (newstatesman.com)
• Anger At Coalition Plans To Snoop On Emails (news.sky.com)
• Dave And George Take Flak (oyiabrown.wordpress.com)
• Tory MPs turn on Cameron and Osborne (newstatesman.com)
• Plans for greater email and web monitoring powers spark privacy fears (victimsofatoscorruption.wordpress.com)
• Why are Libdems so silent about this bill? (liberalconspiracy.org)
• Taxpayers must foot £200 million bill to have their emails snooped on (telegraph.co.uk)
• Cameron pays price for dining toff mates – Morning Star Online (morningstaronline.co.uk)
• Plans for greater email and web monitoring powers spark privacy fears (guardian.co.uk)

ESA Notes Sheet ESA 40 04/09

That it was.  I first threatened and then did leave the Labour Party over it.  Right at the time they were trying to bring in Identity Cards and lock uncharged people away for 90 days, reduced to 42 days (yes really, they were – It’s like a bad dream) they also added some “rules” for state benefit claimants.  These are well explained at the top of Ron’s blog entry:

A police state for benefit claimants? « Ron’s Rants….

Ron writes;

It’s been brought to my attention that page 16 of the ESA Notes Sheet ESA40 04/09 contains this gem:- You must also tell us if you or your partner (among much else):- My parentheses and italics. go away from home, even if it is for a day

Ron (for it is he!)

And indeed it is so!  The document can be downloaded in full here on the DirectGov website.  A screenshot I’ve taken, highlighted the important bits and shown it here.  n.b. Ron is disabled, in several ways, not least by having the fat burned from the soles of his feet with a lightning strike!

Why Is This Important?

A.    Well actually, it contravenes everything that Britain and other freedom-loving peoples have fought for regarding the right not just to life, but to a decent life, free of oppression, free to move and enjoy living just for its own sake, the UK having signed up for all of this in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

It’s part of the United Nations Charter, adopted in 1948 and part of International Law since 1976.

Image via Wikipedia

Here are the bits in which the highlighted line in the screenshot above breaks the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

• Article 2: Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status – BROKEN.  Ron’s status is different from others in that he is disabled.  And, by limiting his freedom of movement as described, this breaks
• Article 1: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. BROKEN.  Ron’s freedom of movement is not the same as those not on benefit.
• Article 5: No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.  BROKEN.  It is degrading to have to inform faceless bureaucrats of one’s location on a daily basis.
• Article 12: No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks. BROKEN AGAIN.  It is degrading to have to inform faceless bureaucrats of one’s location on a daily basis.
• Article 27: Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.  BROKEN:  Ron cannot participate freely.  Neither can his partner (if he has one).  He must inform the government of his movements which then prevents his free enjoyment that life in a free society provides.
• Article 30: Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.  BROKEN.  The UK state has removed Ron’s rights as defined and make law in the articles above.

What Else is Bonkers About This?

You may have noticed I highlighted another line.  For the lazy, this is how it reads, and when you’ve read it, then realise how bad these draconian rules really are:

You must also tell us if you or your partner, DIE!!!

Laughable bureaucracy, eh?

Finale

Of course, I can see why the state may want to do all of this – the powers-that-be have been making a big play in rustling up public opinion against “scroungers”.  But what Labour started, the Tories, as I predicted, have taken all of this up with a vengeance.  True, it’s fine to have paid work and/or a vocation that enervates oneself.  It’s part of the human condition to feel wanted and valued among one’s fellows.  But it’s all wrong to penalise the weakest in society and those that need the most support, by infringing and removing their basic human right of free movement to enjoy the society we’ve created.

Q. How to solve the conundrum?

A.  I don’t know and I don’t care actually, because I’m not in government and don’t have the power to change.

Those that are, you know, the elected or non-elected ones who decide that they’re better than us, they’re the ones who must, should and can change the rules, because they’re the ones that set them up in the first place!

Related articles

• U.N. Secretary-General Defends LGBT Rights In Africa (thinkprogress.org)
• On how Islam violates individual rights (capitalisthistory.com)
• UN calls for Africa to respect gay rights (haleybehre.wordpress.com)

Why?

All my sites go off-line tomorrow in what-is-to-be-hoped a world-wide protest against the proposed SOPA & PIPA acts in the USA.

SOPA? Briefly.

Under intense lobbying from the entertainment industry behemoths, the law, far from protecting copyright holders like myself, will actually make it a simple process for any person or organisation with enough ‘clout’ to close down whole websites or force them to change content without any call to the process of law which has been bloodily built up over centuries in our Western world.

This means that those with ‘clout’ can censor – anyone – for anything – on their own whim.

This is draconian.  This is bad.  Very bad.  Essentially, it’s the beginning of end of what little civilisation we have and the start of a dark dictatorial era which can only end badly.

Internet Content

The internet started and spread because content is king.  If SOPA goes ahead, content will be at the behest of and regulated by vast faceless pan-global entities.

• You will see what they want you to see.
• You will read what they want you to read.
• You will think what they want you to think.

My websites are just a pimple in the sea of internet content.  But many others are also closing for the day.  The 18th of January 2012 is the day the internet self-censors.  Many large websites are closing too.  It shows us what the future could become.

• For all you yanks reading this, follow the links to find out how you can help.
• For the rest of us, because the USA has traditionally and historically been a bastion of freedom, pray hard – because what the USA does affects us all.

Stop the SOPA Bill

Sausages

Laws are like sausages — it is best not to see them being made.  Perhaps I should re-phrase this as:

The Rules of Law and International Diplomacy are like sausages — it is best not to see them being made

It’s a strange world out there.  Two recent political events have brought two previously unlinked ideas to my mind.  The events are:

• the Wikileaks exposures of Diplomatic communications between US embassies – the US Embassy Cables.
• the use of mercenary forces to suppress local populations in Bahrain and then Libya – see The Bahraini Authorities Recruit of Mercenaries from Makran Town, Pakistan and Bahrain: a different wind of change and Tuaregs ‘join Gaddafi’s mercenaries’

Wikileaks disclosures

Innocents Killed In Iraq by US gunship

For the Wikileaks disclosures, I see them as a highly embarrassing thing for those involved, but an empowering thing for us mere mortals who are divorced from the diplomatic process.  Normally, all the guts of the process are hidden.

In the case of the cover-up of the turkey shoot of unarmed civilians by US helicopter crews, it is something of which we should all be aware, no matter how discomforting for us.

In truth, we need better leaders in the West, people of real morals and guts so that we do not have to see the guts of innocents sprayed on the streets ever again to realise how crap the current bunch are.

Mercenary Forces

Mercenary forces I see as a fact of current and historical life, the old colonial powers especially – indeed, the UK has its own dirty hand in this.  For nigh-on 200 years the UK has even had its own full-time mercenaries, the Gurkhas, typically used in near-suicidal conflict situations.  Also, currently, from the standpoint of an Afghan tribesman, the British Army in Afghanistan could be seen as little more than mercenaries in the employ of a puppet king, Hamid Karzai.  For the tribesman, little has changed – there’s money about but he sees none of it whosoever is in charge.

Diplomacy

Sausage Making

In the meantime, we have diplomacy.  For the West, this is a world of essentially astute well educated  folk, usually adept in law not technology, that seek to make deals with not-so-nice folk for our own country’s benefit.

Because these deals are done at the guttural level, like sausage-making, it’s an unpleasant process to stumble upon – which is exactly what we’ve seen with the Wikileaks Diplomatic Cable exposures.  Naturally we are aghast that such things go on in our name.  For me, it seems to be a wholly unpleasant process in our current world and something I’d wish to eliminate.

Earth in an oil drop

Taking the current crisis in Libya;  for the previous three years the Blair/Brown Labour Government has made overtures with Libya, sold arms and even SAS training, but all with the aim of ensuring Libya kept it’s hands off the nuclear button.  Seems good-ish.  Laudable aims, jaw-jaw nor war-war and all that.

This process, now revealed, is ugly – but no more so than our current Prime Minister Cameron sucking up to some Gulf Arabs who, like Libya, run a similar kind of oligarchic, autocratic, nepotistic state, full of outlandish greed and luxury with no voice for the inhabitants!  Seems pretty bad.  ………   It is bad.  Really bad.  It’s the same process as before, and we only do it because we need their oil.   Forget about Grand Prix cars and World Cup Football – it’s all about the O. I. L.  – OIL.

So What to Do?

Use Oil?  Sell Bullets.

Most of the recent interventions of the West’s (let’s call them wars should we – after all, thousands have died?), have been into countries that maintain a nice, steady flow of oil to us rich, lazy, westerners.  We think nothing of flying the globe or motoring to the shop for a cheap item that has most probably already crossed the globe once on its way from China, so yes, it’s important we can do this, right?…

On the other hand, our presence in places like Sudan, Rwanda or Congo has been notable by our absence.  Millions have brutally died.  (a.k.a. we don’t care as you’ve no oil.)

Meanwhile our presence in places like Nigeria or Bhopal, India has been notable for our poisoning of the local inhabitants without a trace of remorse or compensation by those involved.

Not Use Oil?  Don’t Sell Bullets.

• 

  A Planned Self Sufficient Korean City

  Consider our own little part of the world.  It’s a place that many people in the world aspire to live because we are essentially free and most material things in our lives can be satisfied.

• Consider how bright and technologically advanced we consider ourselves to be.

Now consider a world where we eliminated our dependency on chicken dictatorships – a world where we used our technological prowess to eliminate the consumption of oil and our addiction to the making and selling of arms, mostly to these self-same oil rich oligarchies. It’d be a world where we, the citizenry,  didn’t have to look on aghast as all our tax money was spent on bribing simple crooks to talk to us nicely.

Surely, like Egypt & Tunisia, those sort of oligarchies would collapse if we stopped buying their oil and stopped selling them our finest weaponry?

And if they didn’t, so what? There’d be no need for us as a nation to be thrown into hypocritical situations and taking ghastly actions for which we’d later be thoroughly ashamed.  Those areas of the world could take their own destinies into their own hands.

Green Shoot Of Peace

And Diplomacy? For us, we should see more not less of the words and processes done in our name.  We are not children and sooner or later, if the diplomats have fucked it up, we’re going to find out anyway, much as we did after WW1, WW2 and anywhere else our sons and brothers get killed in someone else’s war.

• We need a proper, ethical, foreign policy.
• We need diplomats of guile and courage, just like now,  to promote it.
• And really, we really, really, need to be self-sufficient for all our needs and not rely on corrupt tin-pot states that have not left the Middle Ages in outlook.  This single thing is the most important thing for us and the peaceful futures of our immediate descendants.
• We need a bit of courage to do this – to wean ourselves off this drug-like dependency on crooks of no substance who happen to sit on stuff we just happen to need, now.  Lets use our technological nous and make the current now a thing of the past – like stone axes and bronze swords, historical curiosities.
• Mercenaries have courage – after all, if caught they’re usually the first one’s strung up.  See Dead Mercenary Taken to Tripoli Morgue, Libia Protests 2011.   But if the mercenaries have a proper home – what then?  There’d just be the few psychos like there’s always been, because you know, most people, even young hotheads, don’t want to wind up in an early grave.

Remember;

Courage is Contagious.

Get the t-shirt!

Back in 2009, Trafigura nearly put the blockers on free speech and the reporting of parliament.  Twitter claimed to be part of this unlocking process…  whatever.  It was all to block the publication of the Minton Report.  A long BBC Newsnight video report was also blocked with the article mysteriously vanishing from the BBC website.

But Now?

Now the BBC article is found here, along with the banned video!  The video is below in two parts.  It was uploaded after its removal from the BBC website.

In the second part video, Trafigura boss Erich de Turckheim fatuously states that nothing untoward happened with the poisoning vessel, the Probo Koala whereas last year the company was fined (only sadly…) €1m for the very same poisoning.

Trafigura also state that the emails are selective and biaised.  Well I’ve read them and they totally back up the BBC story.  Here they are.

Alastair Mullis – his view of damages.

In this video, Mullis, a professor of law, states that because the BBC paid damages to Trafigura over their story, this implied guilt.  It took Wikileaks‘ Julian Assange to point out thje fallacy in this argument. See video below:

Trafigura’s View of Damages

Back in 2009, the BBC here told the Trafigura story which also includes a link to a statement from Trafigura here.  This Trafigura statement shows their view on the money that they had already paid to the Ivory Coast, prior to their EU fine.  It’s point 13:

The settlement involved no admission of liability. Trafigura believed that the settlement was the best way for the people of Abidjan, the Ivorian government and Trafigura to move forward.

The People’s View on Trafigura and Damages

W.T.F.?

The thousands of people affected by this corporate profiteering nonsense are of course left with bog-all except sores, child defects and an everlasting hatred for all things western.

This site has an even more enlightened view from the west about Trafigura.  Quoting the final piece:

The Trafigura case, like the financial crisis, suggests that in business there are people ruthless enough to shut their eyes to almost anything if they think they can make money.

Business without regulation is scarcely distinguishable from organised crime.

Regulation without strict enforcement is an open invitation to mess with people’s lives.

Tedious directives, state power and bureaucratic snooping – the interference that everyone professes to hate – are all that stand between civilisation and corporate hell.

Well said.  Jesse Willms take note!

The appearance of “our” police is becoming more and more like some hellish dystopian vision of oppression from all the best science fiction of the last century.

Compare and contrast the two shots below; one from the finale of the BBC series Blakes Seven, the other from the Whitehall kettle during the recent student protest against fees increases.

Blakes Seven Federation Troopers

Student Protest

Blakes Seven Overall Plot Examined

Now check out the script description from the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) entry for Blakes Seven and you will realise how far along the route to totalitarian oppression we have really come since the futuristic script was written….

In the third century of the second calendar, a corrupt galactic federation, with Earth at its center, drugs its billions of citizens into placid submission. A rebel named Roj Blake, who once tried to organize a resistance group to overthrow this regime, was caught and divested of his memories.

But Blake’s revolutionary spirit is revived when he witnesses a mass slaughter by police that is covered up by the federation officials. He escapes exile on board a prison spaceship and, together with a lovable band of outlaws, takes over a vacant alien space cruiser of awesome drive capability. Naming their new ship as “The Liberator”, Blake and his group travel the Milky Way to seek any opportunity to undermine the evil federation.  (the emphasis is mine, SP)

Thank Goodness for Wikileaks!

Of course, this is exactly why Wikileaks is so necessary nowadays.  But just because it has become so wearily tiresome to see the endless evidence of corruption, torture and nepotism done in our name, does not mean we should not see and know about it!

MIRROR

TERMINATED

Genuine Wikileaks Mirror © Foetus Products 1980 – 2010

http://wikileaks.foetusproducts.com/ pulled by Site5

This is a follow up to my post here.

These images will take you to the current IP addresses of Wikileaks. It follows on from my earlier help to the organisation here when a bunch of Swiss bankers mysteriously managed to influence “independent” judicial decisions in America.

The fact that I even have to do this is an abomination on the face of our so-called freedoms.

Governments: Unfit for purpose.

The Wikileaks “Cablegate” revelations have ensured that the vested interests of non-elected mad Arabs (UAE, Saudis) insisting that the US should bomb an elected group of mad Arabs (Iran) are plain for all to see.

They’ve also have ensured that a whole raft of dirty tricks are now afoot. Coincidentally (not), as soon as Wikileaks released all the”Cablegate” stuff into a full download, the US Gov could then see what was coming and the dirty tricks have become even deadlier, nastier, and even less freedom-loving. It obviously proves that worse revelations are to come.

The Obamas/Clinton democrats are now joined in unison with the US republicans bellowing for instant executions without trial, Israelis, Arabs, Chinese and a host of other countries in an amazingly eclectic unholy alliance that proves that the whole diplomatic world is a very unhealthy cabal of back-scratching plebian egoists with the safety and reputation of their own peoples far below that of the maintenance of their own expanding clique of free-loading arse-lickers.

The fact that they can get the tiny oligarchy of the DNS servers to pull the website index globally on whistle-blowers says it all about internet freedom and even the Internet’s resilience to nuclear attack (yes – its first purpose was to ensure that all nukes got released and that there would be some vestige of command and control, when invented by DARPA).

The fact that normal journalism is now so economically cow-towed that they are for the most part meekishly submissive to the authoritarian demands of various states and multi-national corporations, also says it all.

The fact that sexual allegations against Wikileaks founder coincided with the start of the leak about helicopter gunships mowing down unarmed civilians in broad daylight and have since been expanded to continue with the recent shut-down of the site following an unprecedented DDoS website attack says it all.

The fact that Wikileaks has upset all sides of all governments says it all and reveals them all to be unfit for purpose.

It makes me wonder if my father should’ve bothered turning up at D-Day or Okinawa. What was he fighting for, or against?

Buddhism, Ikeda, Mandela and Education

Today (coincidentally!), Daisaku Ikeda in his Daily Encouragement address to the world, said;

Monday, December 6th, 2010

—- DAILY ENCOURAGEMENT —-

“It has been more than 20 years since I first had the privilege of meeting with Nelson Mandela, the lionlike champion of human rights. Recently, former President Mandela, who had just turned 92, sent me an inscribed copy of his latest book. …I wish to share these words…as an expression of my deepest respect: ‘To the youth of today I also have a wish to make: ‘Be the script writers of your destiny and feature yourselves as the stars that show the way towards a brighter future–for our country, our continent and the world.’ ‘Education is the most powerful weapon we can use to change the world.‘”

What we see with the attacks upon Wikileaks, is an attack on freedom as it attacks the open knowledge base with which people need to be informed and thus educated. Without knowledge we are nothing.

We are like the women of Afghanistan, shackled by their surroundings of a male hierarchy and ignorant of everything except that which they’re told – except in our case, it’s our elected representatives who choose to hide the truth from us. And in the USA, with over 850,000 people now holding “top secret” status, (which is 1.5 times the population of Washington), we see that the weight of state machinery now devoted to hiding the truth, is immense.

What must be remembered, is that in nearly every single prominent Wikileak, the government has been found out to be doing bad things in our name. It’s nothing to do with national security as they claim, and everything to do with protecting those with comfy state jobs and a falsely clean reputation, no matter what they do.

Further Reading:

• WikiLeaks Exposes Rumsfeld’s Lies
• WikiLeaks: Internet backlash follows US pressure against whistleblowing site
• Opposing government and corporate censorship of the web
• WikiLeaks.ch goes down as EveryDNS pulls the plug again
• Mass-mirroring Wikileaks – unfortunately I cannot do this on this site until I find out how!
• WikiLeaks Now Has Hundreds of Mirrors
• https://twitter.com/wikileaks
• The Shameful Attacks on Julian Assange
• Swiss registry under pressure over WikiLeaks.ch
• WikiLeaks and the sham of “public diplomacy”

This is a copy of the main page entry.