The articles on this page reflect the personal opinions of John Andrews To borrow a thought from Bertrand Russell: "We are born ignorant, not stupid. It's education that makes us stupid". He might have added:and it's the media that maintains that condition. Comment aims to shed a little light on a pretty dark world. 22 July 2010 Sometimes The Times prints useful or interesting information – not often, but sometimes; which means it does need to be checked from time to time. Last Saturday (17th July) were two related pieces that were worth reading (I could supply the links – but these days you have to pay for the Times’ online content, and it ain’t that good). An article by Andrew Ellson was all about how benefit fraud is routinely punished in British courts with a jail sentence, and how tax evasion almost never is. Beginning with the legendary quote from US billionaire Leona Helmsley that “only the little people pay taxes” Mr Ellson relates a couple of cases to help illustrate his point. We learn how one Susanne Rees was sentenced to 60 days in prison for defrauding her local council of £19,000 in benefits, but how a certain Michael Frost, who admitted evading payment of £65,000 income tax, was punished with a mere 60 hours community service. Mr Frost is no doubt a relatively small player – otherwise it’s unlikely he would have had to suffer even that small indignity. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, for example, a very big player indeed, pays “almost no tax worldwide” – according to Boyle and Simms in their ‘New Economics – A Bigger Picture’; but as Mr Ellson works for one of Murdoch’s papers I’ll excuse him from reminding us about that. Also omitted from Mr Ellson’s piece was any reference to the glee with which the entire nation’s media always and routinely leap upon any story of benefit fraudsters (and its even better if they’re immigrants), but how they usually appear to be looking the other way when it comes to cases of tax evasion. Mr Ellson went on: “A quick trawl through court records shows that defendants convicted of benefits fraud of more than £20,000 are often sent to prison...Yet fewer than one in every 1,000 people subject to HM Revenue & Customs investigation for tax evasion is prosecuted to the degree that a criminal sentence even becomes a possibility... Paul Malkinson, the chairman of Boston United Football Club, avoided jail despite defrauding the taxman of almost £400,000. Had Mr Malkinson’s cleaner fraudulently claimed even a tenth as much in housing benefit, you can be sure that she would have ended up in prison.” The second article related to today’s theme was by Christine Seib, writing from New York. Her piece was about banking giant Citigroup. Citigroup is having a hissy-fit because the British government has dared to send them a tax bill. The bank, with assets of around $2trillion, is squawking about a $400million tax bill (50% of what it paid out in discretionary bonuses), and has “threatened to pull out of Britain if the Government imposed further swingeing taxes (sic) on banks.” Our trusted leaders, clearly concerned about upsetting the corporate world, humbly rub their hands Uriah Heep-like and assure them that the tax bill is a “one-off”. Why the British government should be so anxious to appease foreign companies who don’t want to pay any taxes whilst imprisoning home-grown petty fraudsters is a fairly interesting question. It’s yet another example of how far removed our government is from its people, most of whom would respond by offering to help hasten the bank’s departure (or words to that effect), AFTER they’ve paid up of course, or done their time just like any other villain should. Britain arguably leads the world in the gentle art of tax evasion. It has for many decades hosted the wishes of the world’s super-rich through the super-discreet services of the shadowy operators residing in its numerous island dependencies, safe and sound from any prying eyes. (Poacher-turned-gamekeeper John Christensen’s superb essay ‘Dirty Money: Inside the Secret World of Offshore Banking’ is a must-read for anyone slightly interested in this quite obscene little subject.) So whilst your average working stiff struggles to pay her taxes like a good girl, and meekly accepts our trusted leaders’ exhortation to tighten her belt and wave goodbye to the public services she hopes her taxes are paying for, because There Is No Alternative; whilst we meekly accept the right of US investigators to pry into almost every personal bank account in Europe in the holy name of the ‘war on terror’, the super-super-rich are sulking about trifling tax bills and thinking about taking their custom elsewhere... Well allow me to get the door. 3 July 2010 "I never had much faith in leaders. I am willing to be charged with almost anything, rather than to be charged with being a leader. I am suspicious of leaders, and especially of the intellectual variety. Give me the rank and file every day in the week. If you go to the city of Washington, and you examine the pages of the Congressional Directory, you will find that almost all of those corporation lawyers and cowardly politicians, members of Congress, and mis-representatives of the masses -- you will find that almost all of them claim, in glowing terms, that they have risen from the ranks to places of eminence and distinction. I am very glad I cannot make that claim for myself. I would be ashamed to admit that I had risen from the ranks. When I rise it will be with the ranks, and not from the ranks." Eugene Debs There is only one lesson of history that’s really worth anything, and it’s a lesson that no school teacher ever teaches. Those very few people who learn it at all must invariably find it out for themselves. Yet The Single Most Important Lesson of History is a very simple lesson, and it is this: People can never fully trust leaders. No one should ever make a statement like that and not be able to back it up with a substantial proof. But proving that particular statement is actually quite simple because there’s not just one good proof, but three irrefutable proofs: the empirical proof, the logical proof and something I’ll call the absence of proof, which I’ll explain shortly. 1. The Empirical Proof The empirical proof is abundant and blindingly obvious – it is the permanent existence of Permanent War. No one can deny that the history of the world is one long litany of warfare. War, the single greatest barbarity to blight human existence should have been rendered impossible many centuries ago. Yet it hasn’t been. Not only has it not been rendered impossible, it exemplifies the cutting edge of technological advance, and always has done. In other words it is always young and modern, boasting the very latest in scientific gadgetry. It’s necessary to clarify at the outset the meaning of the word ‘war’. I use the word ‘war’ to mean the forcible subjugation of people by foreign armies. Revolution is something entirely different, and is invariably a wholly justifiable action by oppressed people overthrowing their oppressors. This single damning piece of evidence, the existence of Permanent War, is more than sufficient to substantiate the claim that people cannot trust their own leaders; for it is leaders that take nations to war. War is never a voluntary desire of the people. If the mere existence of Permanent War were not enough to indict our leaders, there is in addition the fact that our leaders routinely lie to us about their reasons for war, and always have done. Wars are fought to make tiny handfuls of rich and powerful people even richer and more powerful. Elites know this, and have always known it. The earliest open admission of this that I know of appears in the bible (Joshua Chapter 6) where we learn that the famous destruction of Jericho was all about plunder, and that the mighty Joshua sold the enterprise as merely doing what the ‘Lord his God’ told him to do. For although Joshua’s army “utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword”, and “burnt the city with fire, and all that was therein”, they carefully preserved the riches of the city: “only the silver, and the gold, and the vessels of brass and of iron, they put into the treasury of the house of the Lord” ... the key to which was no doubt in the safekeeping of the good Joshua. When the Spanish began the greatest holocaust in human history – the annihilation of native Americans – their mission was sold to the people as having a holy purpose. More than two hundred years ago Adam Smith, hardly the raving-eyed radical, describes it thus in his seminal work on the subject of wealth: “…the council of Castile determined to take possession of countries of which the inhabitants were plainly incapable of defending themselves. The pious purpose of converting them to Christianity sanctified the injustice of the project.” One such holy man active at the time, Father Domingo de Betanzos, believed that “the Indians were beasts and that God had condemned the whole race to perish for the horrible sins that they had committed in their paganism.” Yet the real purpose of war is never what the people are told. The people are never told that they must murder, and die themselves, in order that their leaders may become even richer and more powerful than they already are. It’s ordinary people who must do the murdering, and be killed themselves, and leaders know perfectly well that for this reason they cannot mobilise ordinary people by telling them the truth, so they must manufacture some righteous cause. The real history of wars shows a variety of trumped up reasons. Religion is probably the oldest ally of Permanent War, since at least the time of Joshua up to the present day, where ‘jihad’ or ‘holy war’ is still cited as a common ‘justification’ for murder. Countless hundreds of millions have been murdered under the pretext that their murderers are serving some god or another. Yet not a single one of the multitude of leaders and their religious spin doctors who have used this excuse since the beginning of ‘civilisation’ could actually prove the existence of the god they say they want their people to murder for, and to die for themselves. Once it can be accepted what the real cause of war is and has always been – plunder – it becomes quite easy to see why Permanent War is so beloved by our trusted leaders and those who maintain them: it makes them richer and more powerful. No matter the destruction and suffering they cause. Once again the evidence is blindingly obvious: name one leader of a victorious war (not counting revolutions remember) who has personally lived in modest circumstances, and ensured his generals do the same. It isn’t easy. So this is the empirical proof that people cannot trust their leaders. Not only do those leaders relentlessly search out any opportunity to plunge their people into war, they deliberately lie about their reasons for doing so. 2. The Logical Proof If one actually thinks about it for a few minutes the logical reason for not trusting our leaders is arguably even more compelling than the empirical one. The trust people invest in their leaders is wholly founded on the assumption that those leaders will ceaselessly and selflessly strive to act in the best interests of the people. Yet it is a completely groundless assumption with virtually no significant evidence to support it. Leaders live lives of abundance and luxury while vast numbers of their people struggle even to survive, sometimes enduring unspeakable conditions and hardships. History shows that nearly all the prominent leaders of nations have been practising capitalists, and the economist John Maynard Keynes summed up the point perfectly: “Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone”. It is indeed ‘astounding’ that we are that well conditioned. Although there are very few people who say they trust politicians, they nevertheless turn out in their droves to vote in elections. Given that our leaders all live personal lives of pampered luxury and worship the religion of capitalism (which, according to Andy Grove the ex-chairman of Intel, is best defined as ‘shooting the wounded’), how can anyone seriously think those same leaders serve the interests of the people, few of whom live as well as their masters? It simply isn’t logical. 3. The Absence of Proof If the empirical proof that people cannot trust their leaders was not enough, and if it was not quite sufficient to show that there is absolutely no logical reason for trusting our leaders, perhaps it would help to point to what I’ll call the Absence of Proof. This refers to the complete absence of proof that our leaders CAN be trusted, that they DO labour tirelessly in our best interests. No doubt some would argue that many of the comforts and advantages of modern society in the western world were once supplied by enlightened leaders: our relative freedom, health facilities and education, our democracy... all these things were at some point in time introduced into society by far-sighted reforming leaders, they might say. But that’s not quite true. In fact the very opposite is a far easier case to prove. The few freedoms that we enjoy today were not bestowed by various wise leaders. In fact the few (slowly diminishing) freedoms we enjoy today were fought for by oppressed people, freedoms that were bitterly opposed by their leaders who thought nothing of beating, imprisoning or murdering the common forgotten people who truly fought for liberty. Virtually every revolution in recorded history is a vindication of this view. The record is in fact unassailable. From Jesus Christ to Martin Luther King via Ghandi; from the Reformation to the liberation of Cuba via the American War of Independence, French Revolution and Russian Revolution – all of the social reforms and freedoms introduced by individuals and the movements of ordinary men and women who supported them were fiercely opposed by the leaders of the day. Conversely, social reforms introduced voluntarily by elitist leaders (i.e. without the threat of impending revolution peering over their shoulders) are so few in number that I cannot think of a single example. This is the Absence of Proof, the non-existence of evidence to prove that leaders CAN be trusted, which, given thousands of years of recorded history, is a fairly convincing proof in its own right isn’t it? The Single Most Important Lesson of History – that leaders cannot be trusted – is implicit in the spirit of anarchy, which has probably existed for as long as there has been oppression to resist. The fact it has existed this long, and will continue to exist for as long as there are leaders to oppose, is testimony to its truth. But simply learning that lesson, by itself, is not enough – because the implications of it are truly staggering. The entire fabric of our society is founded on the belief that leaders are essential to our existence, that they are the very glue that keeps it all together. Understanding that leaders cannot be trusted must mean that society must inevitably fall apart. Wrong. When we examine history and learn that the great and wonderful leaders we were taught about at school were, for the most part, nothing more than murdering, lying, thieving opportunists who happen to have been luckier than others of their kind, we should also be able to grasp another important lesson: that we are routinely misinformed almost from birth. If we can be so misinformed about historical leaders, for example, what else are we misinformed about? Could it be, perhaps, that the view that leaders are absolutely essential to society is similarly misinformed? Whose view is it, exactly? Could it be the view of leaders, or would-be leaders, or the followers of particular leaders? I don’t want to suggest that we are intentionally misinformed – not all the time anyway. I’m sure that for the most part the overwhelming majority of people who misinform us don’t themselves know they’re doing it. Take priests for example. I’m sure that a sizeable number of priests really truly believe the rubbish they teach. I’m also sure my parents never deliberately misinformed me (except for that stuff about Santa Claus), nor most of the teachers I had at school. Yet some of the time, that’s exactly what they did. Then there are those who misinform us ‘for our own good’ – something I call the Santa Claus effect – tell us ‘white’ lies, in the name of the greater good; and there must be a huge number of ‘news’ editors (the vast majority?) who subscribe to this principle. Is it not possible, therefore, that the view that society absolutely must have leaders, that without leaders there simply cannot be society, only chaos, is misinformation by one of these processes, or a combination thereof? Society needs organisation, and administration, and a decision-making process wholly controlled by the people, well informed. For a civilisation that can transport people to the moon, and bring them safely home again! or communicate instantly with someone anywhere on the planet, or re-engineer our genetic make-up... For a civilisation that can do these things, and far more, how difficult can it really be to design a humane, just and peaceful society? And is the reality of that question not the most obvious proof of all that leaders cannot be trusted? 24 June 2010 The longest tennis match in history has just been completed. It was played at Wimbledon by Nicolas Mahut of France and the giant American (6ft 9) John Isner. At about 20 games all in the final set the spectacle was starting to appear gross and obscene – a little like bear-baiting, or bullfighting. When play ended last night, at 59 games each, there occurred the quite nauseating spectacle of spectators booing the decision by Mahut to break for bad light. Both players must have been utterly exhausted, and the fact that there were some morons in the crowd who placed their viewing pleasure above the physical suffering of two heroic young sportsmen was a sad indictment of modern society. The match eventually ended, three days after it started, with victory for John Isner at 70 games to 68 in the fifth set. If their match doesn’t force a change to the ridiculous rule that demands a two clear game winning margin in the fifth set (or third set for women) in grand slam tennis matches, there is no justice in the world. I won’t hold my breath. * I had a phone call from Linda Neal yesterday afternoon (See previous article - dated 16 June). She was calling to say she wasn’t interested in my proposal for how SKDC could save money. Of course it was the result I expected, but I was moderately interested in finding out what reason she would give. Obviously she is too savvy a politician to be trusted with telling the truth, but her given answer might be entertaining. It seemed her main objection was that my proposal took no account of something called the Staff Appraisal and Evaluation Guide... or some similar-sounding piece of pure bureaucracy... which apparently defines who can do what job in the council and at what grade. Because my proposal had people acting out of grade it was clearly impossible to implement it. I half-heartedly suggested that she obtain permission from her controllers (but I think I used the word ‘partners’) to waive The Guide for the duration of a pilot; but that had the same effect you would expect if you suggested to a priest that he ignore the Holy Bible for the period of a pilot trial on Burmese Shamanism. This fondness for Rules, Regulations and Guides is the default response of Power whenever that power is challenged, or even questioned. The fact that those same Rules, Regulations and Guides can effortlessly be set aside at the drop of a hat if Power so chooses is conveniently forgotten. Laws, like taxes, are for little people. Of course it was the outcome I expected all along. But you have to try these things. I formed no opinion of Mrs Neal other than she seems to be an Accomplished Politician. You can never really tell if someone is lying or being evasive, but Accomplished Politicians exude a dazzling fluorescent aura that shrieks out to anyone near them that not a single word they say, or thing they do, should be wholly trusted for the truth. My proposed ‘Lateral Administration Model’ would not only save significant public money without undue loss of public service, it would improve the efficiency of those services also – but it would be at the cost of expensive (and largely unnecessary) bureaucrats, and possibly more importantly, the loss of Power from bureaucrats. So it’s fairly obvious why Linda Neal (or any other Accomplished Politician) wouldn’t implement it without a struggle. But you have to try, in order to validate that fact. I strongly suspect that our government’s apparent obsession with cutting public services has absolutely nothing to do with saving money. It’s for precisely the opposite reason – to make money, for those who are already obscenely rich. It works something like this: As public services are starved of money and therefore die, the service they once provided must still be done by someone. Enter some private corporation or another. Under the pretext of providing the same service at a lower cost to the public, the corporation picks up a juicy government contract. In some cases the service may indeed be an improvement (as the public sector was hardly ever a model of efficiency). The essential difference is that money the taxpayer previously paid to a considerable number of useless bureaucrats is now enjoyed by a tiny handful of useless millionaires or billionaires. So either way, the taxpayer is stuffed, obviously; as vast chunks of the taxes she pays (expecting the money to go directly to essential services) goes instead into the pockets of useless bureaucrats or the mega-rich. It can therefore be argued that it doesn’t really matter whether our services are provided by the public or private sector. But one quite important factor, however, is this: The chunk of taxpayers’ money that used to be squandered on useless bureaucrats did at least remain within our own economy. Taxes were paid on civil service salaries, and those salaries were mostly spent within our own shorelines. That does not apply to the mega-rich globalised corporations that now run our public services. If taxes are paid at all by these institutions it will only be some token gesture to the act; and although some of the loot so generously provided by the taxpayer may indeed be spent in Britain, it will mostly be spent on luxury goods and services for company bosses – not ‘trickled down’ through the wider economy. Mostly of course, it will fly abroad, into offshore bank accounts or to be frittered away in various elitist playgrounds around the planet. Another very important consideration for those of us who actually care about people (a fairly substantial number) is the issue of employment rights. Traditionally, even the lowliest of civil service jobs had reasonable conditions of service. You were never going to get rich working for the civil service (in the lower pay grades anyway), but you weren’t overworked, had pretty good holidays and could retire on a moderately comfortable pension. There were probably a couple of million employees around the country who enjoyed these conditions of service through their working lives, and whilst these jobs existed a role model for similar jobs in the private sector existed. But once public services are provided by the private sector, the race to the bottom means that that role model disappears; and the slow descent of all workers towards abject slavery, whilst the ruling elite gorges itself more and more on the profits of their slavery, becomes inevitable. But apart from those minor concerns, it doesn’t really matter whether public services are run by the public sector or private corporations. 16 June 2010 It was a busy day yesterday. In the afternoon I had a very short meeting (about five minutes) with Linda Neal, leader of South Kesteven District Council, and in the evening Lorraine and I attended a ‘workshop’ run by the council because, according to their website, they needed our help in deciding priorities for their budget for the next few years. The meeting with Mrs Neal was...strange – not the meeting itself, but how it came about at all. It began about three months ago, when the pressure being exerted by government to cut public services was just beginning to be noticed by the media. I e-mailed Mrs Neal offering my help on one possible way of dealing with that. Fully expecting to never get a reply, I was quite surprised when I received an e-mail from her asking for more information (the first message from me hadn’t been very detailed). Did I live locally? Was I looking for consultancy work? I answered straight away saying that I wouldn’t mind being a consultant – but it would have to be on the understanding that I wasn’t paid any more than the lowest paid council worker. Silence. I e-mailed again a couple of weeks later asking if my previous e-mail had gone missing. No reply. The woman clearly thought I was some kind of nut. Fair enough, I’d tried. Two weeks ago the national news is softening us up for the savage public sector cuts that we are being conditioned to accept as a TINA option (There Is No Alternative). We get told that our new Prime Minister wants the public to get involved, to tell him what services they could do without. I was quite surprised to see included in some of the ‘news’ reports comments from one or two people that it was just a cynical exercise whereby the government could sell its pre-determined plans as a consequence of ‘listening to the people’. It just goes to show that no matter what you can’t fool all the people all the time. It fair warmed my heart. Anyway, as David had asked for my help I thought it would be churlish to refuse it; so I wrote to him saying I was available, and that funnily enough I’d recently offered the same assistance to our local council leader – but had not yet had a reply. Then I wrote a short article for the Journal telling this story. A few days later (last week), the phone goes. It’s Mrs Neal. She wants to meet me. I have to admit I was pretty stunned. I’m so used to my letters to the great and the good being ignored that I don’t really know what to do when one of them responds. We fix a meeting – for yesterday. I’m puzzled by the remarkable coincidence of the timing of her phone call with my recent letters to David and to the Journal. I ring the Journal to ask if they’d contacted her about my article – maybe to verify my story? Bob Hart says not; suggests she has simply caught up with her e-mails. Hmmm... after about 3 months? Well, maybe. Anyway, I prepare a paper for her, basically proposing my admin model where expensive managers are deleted from the public sector and replaced with ordinary administrators receiving ordinary clerical workers salaries; and those actually directly delivering public services decide between themselves how best to do so (under the overall direction of an elected official). Knowing full well that she won’t actually do anything with my proposal (other than perhaps give it a quick glance on its way to the bin) I keep the meeting itself very short – no point in wasting anyone’s time. I just quickly explain my motives (that I really believe in my work and that as an unpublished writer, having my ideas put into practice somewhere might help me get my work published), hand her my paper, thank her for seeing me and leave. (She shows no interest in detaining me to learn more.) Later on Lorraine and I go back into town to attend a council ‘workshop’. Last week the Journal informed its readers that SKDC has arranged a couple of ‘workshops’ where we might express our views on which council services should be saved, and which ‘discarded’ in the forthcoming assault by central government on public services. It was too good an opportunity to miss. I mean, it’s not every day you get the chance to get cast iron proof that your cynicism is one hundred per cent justified. About fifteen people attended, most of whom, it seemed, were either councillors or council staff. We each had two worksheets and a set of coloured pens. One of the worksheets listed 22 areas of public spending, such as CCTV monitoring and provision for homeless people. We were to use this piece of paper for a complicated little game designed to suggest that whatever we put on it might actually influence the spending cuts the council will make. I must admit I couldn’t take it seriously and lost the will to live within about five minutes of starting it. What’s much more important is what the ‘workshop’ did not include. For example, we were not told how these 22 items had been selected for the game from what must be several hundred possibilities. Nor was there any interest in what we thought outside of the two worksheets. When my wife wanted to make a point that wasn’t listed she was told she could jot it down on the back of her worksheet. We were not invited to comment on the possible savings that could be made by reforming the grossly overpriced management structure at the council – a particular area of interest to me. Of course I never expected the exercise to be truly useful. Like many others I’m deeply suspicious of the government’s motives for ‘consulting the public’, and am reminded of Henry Ford’s comment that customers for his cars might have any colour they like – so long as it’s black. But it’s always quite nice when your predictions are confirmed by events. This savage attack by government on public services is completely unnecessary. The public debt was caused by predatory banks being allowed to operate in a lawless environment. Their gluttony has been rewarded by committing the taxpayer to find about one trillion pounds – a number so huge that no one can really comprehend it. No one ever asks when the banks are going to repay this money. The other day I heard someone on the BBC say that the banks should eventually repay about 700 billion pounds. Should? EVENTUALLY? When I took out my mortgage there was no clause suggesting I should repay the loan... eventually... when I can get around to it. The public debt has been mostly created by banks, aided and abetted by politicians – the selfsame politicians who now tell us There Is No Alternative to butchering public services. Wrong. Let the banks pay for the mess they created. * Question: how much does it cost to get the government to admit that it was wrong? Answer: at least £200m and forty years. Yesterday the Saville Report, which has taken about twelve years to prepare, proved what anyone with half a brain already knew. Although it took 5,000 pages to say so, the fact is that thirteen innocent, unarmed civilians were murdered by British paratroopers in the Irish town of Derry on 30th January 1972. Yet another obscene day in the very long catalogue of similarly obscene days that is English history. It’s difficult to say how many people are culpable for the outrage of Bloody Sunday, and the 40 years it has taken to be recognised for what it was. Of course there are the likes of those who pulled the triggers, and their commanding officers; but what about the politicians and businessmen who have profited very nicely from the carnage of Northern Ireland? What about all the complicit ‘news’papers, TV stations and radio shows that have always maintained the innocent victims were armed terrorists who fully deserved being shot? At least Saville’s work will ensure that one crime by Britain’s Permanent War machine will be reasonably accurately recorded for all time – at a cost to the British taxpayer of £200m, and forty years of struggle. 27 May 2010 Many years ago, when I was growing up in Rhodesia, it was quite normal to hear white people being openly racist in the presence of non-white people. Not all white people behaved that way, you understand (my parents, for example, never did), but quite a few did. Very often the racism was not intended maliciously. For example, a group of white people might be calmly discussing something within the hearing of black servants, say, and if they wanted to refer to black people they would use the word ‘kaffirs’ or, ‘munts’ or ‘jiggaboos’ even, completely indifferent to the fact that a black person could hear them. This is just one, quite small feature, of having absolute power. At the time it was completely normal, not just in Rhodesia, but pretty much anywhere else in the whites-run world, for white people to behave this way – and for black people to ignore it, quite possibly to sometimes not even notice it. Comedians, for example, routinely included racist material in their work, and white people laughed at it in their hundreds of millions. I was reminded of this little ‘perk’ of absolute power a couple of days ago. I was browsing the history section of the International Monetary Fund’s website, and was reading their glowing tribute to Harry Dexter White – pretty much the founder of the IMF. The IMF is arguably the most powerful non-military force on the planet, and understanding a bit about it is therefore quite useful. It was created in the closing stages of World War Two. The old king (the British Empire) was dying, and the new king (the American Empire) was fidgeting impatiently in the wings looking at his watch. As their representatives gathered at Bretton Woods to carve up the planet, the final showdown occurred between White (for the new king) and John Maynard Keynes (for the dying one). This is how the dispute is described by the IMF’s website: “Where the two founding fathers differed most was on the third theme: how independent and how powerful should the IMF be? To Keynes, what the world needed was an independent countervailing balance to American economic power, a world central bank that could regulate the flow of credit both in the aggregate and in its distribution. To White, what was needed was an adjunct to American economic power, an agency that could promote the balanced growth of international trade in a way that preserved the central role of the U.S. dollar in international finance.” As the old king was in his final death throes it’s perfectly understandable that Keynes should have been such a passionate advocate for an ‘independent’ counterbalance to the new young upstart (ten years earlier it’s highly unlikely the thought would have crossed Keynes’ allegedly powerful mind). But now it was all too late, and there was never any doubt about whose view would prevail, so the ‘adjunct to American power’ was born. It’s that little phrase ‘adjunct to American power’ that took me back to my Rhodesian childhood. When you have absolute power you can afford to be completely indifferent about casual expressions of that power. Most people have no idea what the IMF is. And if they were to give it any thought at all they might say it’s some sort of international organisation – like the United Nations – and that its decisions are probably made by all sorts of different countries. I mean, it’s called ‘International’ isn’t it? Those of us actively engaged in the War On Error are fairly used to the glazed expressions we see in people’s eyes when we start yet another rant about the real threat to world peace. You can see them thinking: “Here he goes again: more conspiracy theory.” So it’s always quite pleasant to see our opinions reinforced and confirmed by the Empire itself. After all, you can’t get much better than the IMF’s very own website admitting that it was originally designed as an ‘adjunct to American power’. As my dictionary defines ‘adjunct’ to be something that is ‘subordinate or incidental (to or of another)’, it’s fairly clear to even the dullest mind that the IMF is a very long way from being the independent economic policeman its servants and supporters claim it to be. The activities of the IMF’s employees seldom make the evening ‘news’; which is a bit of shame because these busy people are invariably jetting around the planet where they are often engaged in something they call ‘Article IV Consultations’. A quick glance at the ‘News’ section of the website shows what I mean. Just this week, for example, these busy people are having their ‘Article IV Consultations’ everywhere from New Zealand to Senegal; from Zimbabwe to Switzerland. What’s Article IV? It’s about the IMF’s rules on currency exchange rates. Now whilst I don’t question the principle that “someone” ought to be doing this, I strongly question that it should be those working for an ‘adjunct to American power’. Like the racist society of my early childhood that never thought for one second about casually using the word ‘kaffir’, we now live in a society that doesn’t think for one second about the implications of the world’s most powerful non-military institution casually referring to itself as an ‘adjunct to American power.’ Some might argue that is all now ancient history – that it might have been the view of Mr White, but we now live in far more enlightened times – just as white people would now no longer refer to black people as ‘kaffirs’.... except for one small glitch. The tribute about Mr White was written relatively recently, in 1998, and is still on the IMF website today. The piece concludes with these words: “What remains of his [White’s] legacy is the International Monetary Fund, which still bears his imprint more than any other's. 20th May 2010 One of the new puppets supposedly in charge of Britain, Nick Clegg, yesterday tried to steal the spotlight from his more popular brother puppet, David Cameron. Mr Clegg, in an obvious attempt to ingratiate himself with the public, announced that he would be introducing the most radical political reforms of government ‘since the 1832 Reform Act’. It was quite a clever effort. It tries to show he is an intellectual, a man with a sense of history. For example, the headline in today’s Independent telling the story reads: ‘Clegg makes his bid for a place in history’. The problem is that quite a few of us have also read the occasional history book, and know full well that the greatest thing about the ‘great’ 1832 Reform Act was the great illusion that it reformed anything at all. For although it made a few changes to electoral boundaries, and a few more people were given the right to vote in elections, absolutely nothing was changed about the most important function of government – how it makes its decisions. Like I say, the truly great thing about the ‘great’ Reform Act was how that absolute non-event was sold to the public as significant political reform. I’m sure that point has not been lost on Mr Clegg or the army of advisers, spinmasters and other assorted ‘experts’ in the paid employ of the puppet masters. I have no idea what ‘great’ constitutional reforms Mr Clegg says he is about to launch. The examples given in the paper seem to be mostly about scrapping a few laws – which is a very different thing to constitutional reform; but there’s one thing I’m 100% certain about: his claim that he will ‘hand power back to people’ is an absolute falsehood. Mr Clegg is very careful not to tell us exactly which people he is referring to here. The inference is obviously that he means the ordinary voter. Well the ordinary voter has never had any power, so ‘handing power back’ to her is completely meaningless. The only ‘power’ allowed to the voter is the right to provide the figleaf for our non-democracy by her complicity in its very occasional and carefully choreographed elections. My guess is that what Clegg actually meant by his generous offer to ‘hand power back to people’ was to ‘hand bribing power back to the Tories’ financial supporters’, as they’re the ones who have been relatively disenfranchised the most during the previous Labour government. I’m on to you Mr Clegg, and I’ll be watching your ‘great’ reforms with some interest. 18th May 2010 It’s not very often we get such a wonderful demonstration of hypocrisy by our lords and masters as occurred yesterday, and I’m truly grateful to all the relevant players (British Airways, the High Court, the government and the media) for being so obliging. A proposed strike by BA cabin crew was yesterday declared unlawful by the High Court. The BBC informs us that 7,482 people voted to support the strike, with 1,789 opposing it (80% in favour of strike action). But yesterday a High Court judge decided that the strike would be illegal – because of the union’s failure to notify its members that there had been eleven spoilt ballot papers! This touching concern by BA for the letter of the law does not, however, extend to passenger safety. For on the very same day that this High Court outrage was announced we also learnt that another law, which says aeroplanes should not fly through clouds of volcanic ash (a law the airline doesn’t like), is to be changed. It seems that all of a sudden it’s now perfectly O.K. for planes to fly through volcanic debris. No doubt the airline industry knows best what’s good for it – a bit like banks, which are far too honourable a set of institutions to need regulating. I wonder if there was a meeting of the suits recently where some sums were done. In the one column would have been a number representing loss of income by keeping planes on the ground. In the other column would have been a number representing the potential cost to an airline in damages claims if a plane fell out of the sky because its engines were clogged up with half a volcano. I wonder if such a meeting took place, and what the outcome might have been. All in all, not a bad day’s work for BA’s CEO. I mean, it’s not every day you can give such a blatant exhibition of raw corporate power – picking and choosing which laws you decide to obey in the full glare of the public eye, and not hear a single word of censure form any of the nation’s media. I bet Mr Walsh’s bonus will be quite a spectacular sight this year. Well played, sir! 4th May 2010 This Thursday the British people will be invited to display their ignorance, yet again, of how their own country really works. For we are being invited, nay, ‘herded’ towards the ballot box in order to show that our ignorance of our own political system is so complete that we seriously believe the little ritual of scratching a cross by the side of some complete stranger’s name, just because he/she belongs to some large political party, is going to bring some improvement to our lives. Nothing demonstrates the political naiveté of the British people better than their routine submission to this farce that masquerades behind the name of ‘democracy’. That my fellow citizens are so completely beguiled is, of course, understandable. Indeed, it’s almost impossible they should not be; for we are all taught a series of important lies almost from the day we’re born – lies which are cynically perpetuated and reinforced by the tiny handfuls of powerful plutocrats who rule our planet. Three of the more important of these lies are: 1. That our leaders are good and honourable people, driven only by their selfless desire to do what’s best, not just for those of us directly ruled by them, but for the rest of the entire planet too. 2. That we little people are too stupid, selfish and nasty to know what’s right for ourselves, let alone anyone else; and we are only really useful to society and our planet so long as we keep on breeding and submitting ourselves and our offspring to the control of its rulers. 3. That there is some sort of benevolent supernatural being living somewhere in the sky who not only genuinely cares about each and every one us, but also serves in alliance with our trusted leaders acting as an ‘invisible hand’ guiding each and every one of their actions. There can be no real hope of real political reform until these powerful controlling lies are more widely recognised. And the first real indication that such recognition is beginning to dawn will only occur once ordinary people simply stop voting for political parties. All of the well known political parties are the cancer of democracy, ruthlessly perpetuating a system of government guaranteed to maintain the people in a condition of ignorance and slavery. Once the people stop voting in significant numbers for political parties, hope for real and meaningful reform becomes a distinct possibility; because it will be a sign that the game is finally up. So one extraordinarily powerful action we can all take is blindingly simple: just don’t vote. Don’t play. Don’t dignify through your complicity the cynical farce that’s sold to us as ‘democracy’. BOYCOTT THE BALLOT! 22nd April 2010 Tucked away in the bottom corner of page 50 of the Times last Saturday (17.4.10), was a little article comprising just two sentences. Under the heading “’Obscene’ payout” it advised the few of us who might have noticed it that one Todd Stitzer, the American businessman who sold off one of the very last bastions of independent British manufacturing, Cadburys – to a giant American corporation – ‘received a £40 million payout’ for doing so. Well done Mr Stitzer. Not only was Cadburys one of the last sizeable British manufacturers that was still working well, it was also perhaps the very last British manufacturer that provided humane conditions of service for its employees. Ever since Cadburys was founded by the eponymous Quaker family, it has had a reputation for looking after its workers. Although providing better working conditions than other British manufacturers has never been a difficult thing to do, the important thing is that it was done at all – AND DONE SUCCESSFULLY – for the best part of two hundred years. In other words, the established dogma of manufacturers – that workers must be oppressed in order for profits to be made – is well and truly exposed for the absolute bunkum that it has always been. Indeed, were it not for the fact that some American came along to kill off a successful British company, so that a giant American competitor can become even more giant-sized, there might still be one humane manufacturer left in the world to show a finger to the slave drivers who run today’s industry. Another piece that was moderately interesting was an article suggesting that an organisation supporting decent conditions of service for Gurkhas had been fraudulent in its fundraising. Half of the page was given to a rather cynical and sneery photograph of Joanna Lumley, the celebrity actress passionately committed to this issue. The purpose was very obviously to suggest that Joanna Lumley herself was behind some fraud that may, or may not, have taken place. Lumley recently won a significant victory for ex-Ghurkha soldiers, at the expense of the establishment, and very clearly the establishment has now struck back. Their efforts are really quite pathetic. But rather more interesting was an article headlined: “Families ‘held captive’ in drive to sterilise 10,000”. As a piece of pure propaganda, presented in what is supposed to be the nation’s most trusted ‘news’paper, this story takes a little beating. Consider for example a section supposedly given over to providing a little factual background information under the heading: “Family planning”. This section openly boasts, as one of its sources, that well known peddler of the truth the ‘CIA World Factbook’. The times ‘journalist’ responsible for this two-page spread is one Jane Macartney. Now China is perhaps the US’s real Public Enemy Number One, because it is possibly the only country capable of offering serious resistance to US domination of the planet. And because Britain is one of the US’s favourite lapdogs, it stands to reason that its premier ‘news’paper would do everything in its power to fling a little mud eastwards. However, the fact is that China is the only country in the world to take seriously the threat of the human population explosion, and the fact that the Times seeks to ridicule and attack a position that is absolutely right for the long term welfare of the planet, is to state, in unequivocal terms, the paper’s absolute allegiance to the get-rich-quick-and-beggar-the-future school of economic philosophy that so plagues our planet today. 29 March 2010 Once you know how our so-called ‘news’ is manipulated in order to deceive us it’s quite difficult not to see it in action wherever you look. The Times last Saturday was, as it invariably is, rich in examples, and because the Times sets itself up as the leading authority on news reporting this is obviously quite serious. I mean, if it was a paper that was commonly known to peddle absolute rubbish, and didn’t pretend otherwise, we could safely ignore its lies on the assumption that no-one in their right mind would believe it anyway; but the Times is supposed to be a serious paper, so obsessed with the truth that it used to claim it would rather be late to report a story than report one inaccurately. All this creates an impression of trust: we can always trust the Times to tell us the truth. The problem is of course, we can’t. Headlines are a very important part of the propagandist’s art. They are seldom written by the same person who writes the article to which they refer. As far as ‘news’ reporting is concerned, headlines are the vanguard of subliminal brainwashing. We automatically think they summarise a news report, telling us in advance what we can expect to learn from that report. A headline will remain in our memories as a summary of that article. Even if we do not actually read the article at all, we will probably have noticed the headline, and a little note will be stored in our memories that we have read something, somewhere about whatever that story is about, and the vague memory of the headline will be our sole recollection of that story. North Korea has been a popular western whipping boy for about as long as Cuba. It is identified as the same sort of threat to world peace that Iran currently enjoys. Consequently when a headline in last Saturday’s Times read “South Korean ship ‘sunk by torpedo from North Korea’”, we naturally expect the attached ‘news’ report to inform us of how that arch-villain North Korea has been spoiling for a fight again. The problem is the article which accompanies that headline simply doesn’t provide a single shred of evidence to justify it. The very first sentence of the report reads: ‘A South Korean naval ship sank last night after an explosion that may have been caused by a North Korean torpedo.’ Note the words ‘may have been’, as they’re quite important. As soon as they’re employed the writer is at liberty to conclude the sentence any way they like. They could claim the explosion ‘may have been’ a suicide bomber, an asteroid, the cook forgetting to turn off the stove... anything. So we read a little further to find the evidence of this North Korean torpedo, but already feeling a little suspicious of the words ‘may have been’. Next we learn that ‘Six naval ships and two coastguard vessels’ were in the area. As these vessels rescued most of the crew of the sunken ship, and because the article doesn’t say otherwise, we can probably assume they were all South Korean. Then we read that ‘it was not clear whether North Korea was the cause of the explosion’. Not clear? That’s a little different from the very clear headline. So too was this sentence: ‘”We have been unable to pinpoint the exact cause of the incident,” a spokesman for the South Korean Navy said.’ Next we learn that a ‘South Korean ship in the same area fired shots towards an “unidentified target”’. In short, apart from a vague reference to unattributed ‘reports from Seoul’, not a single word in the actual article offers any evidence at all that North Korea had anything whatsoever to do with the sinking of the South Korean ship. In fact what the ‘news’ report tells us is that the only ships in the area appear to have been South Korean, and the only ship that appears to have been doing any shooting was South Korean – a very different set of circumstances to that suggested by the headline. The similarity between this story and the ‘Gulf of Tonkin Incident’ is quite remarkable. That scandal is now known to have been made in America two months before the USS Maddox was allegedly attacked – an action that was used to trigger a full scale US invasion of Vietnam. Not that the Tonkin Incident was the first time the US had taken itself to war on the back of an alleged attack upon it. In 1898 the sinking of the USS Maine in mysterious circumstances off the coast of Cuba was used to provoke the brief Spanish American war over ownership of that blighted island. How on earth is the Average Person supposed to have any chance at all of forming a reasonable understanding of how her world works? When pillars of the journalistic profession such as The Times routinely peddle such obvious propaganda, presumably on behalf of The Empire, what price truth? 17 February 2010 There are some good things about our education system, and about the institution that continually supplies us with information once we leave school – the media; but there’s also a serious flaw: some of the information we acquire along the way is flat-out wrong. And because we seldom know what that wrong information is until it’s too late (if indeed we get to find out at all) it’s all but impossible to know what information we can really trust. Most of the people we instinctively trust (like teachers, parents, and priests) don’t intentionally deceive us; but sometimes they do – like when they’re about to do something we’re not going to like, and they tell us they’re doing it for us - in our best interests. I don’t know how many beatings I had as a young person that were accompanied with the words ‘it’s for your own good’. (Not that the beatings weren’t deserved, I hasten to add – mostly they were – but they didn’t do me any good). But it’s much harder to say that about the institutions we trust (that they don’t intentionally deceive us) – such as our employer, or the BBC, or our daily newspaper. The history of employment relations is bursting at the seams with accounts of employers lying to their workers; and autobiographies of such eminent journalists as John Simpson and Jon Snow both include stories of involvement with our ‘intelligence’ services, and according to writer William Blum the CIA admitted in 1977 that it had direct access to ‘at least one newspaper in every foreign capital at any given time’. (1) This access by ‘intelligence’ agencies to those sources we trust for our news is required not only to glean information from reporters (who can often get to places normal spies would find quite difficult), but also to feed misinformation to an unsuspecting public. In the general mayhem caused by this sort of interference with the information we rely upon to form opinions about the world around us we can be led to trust things we should fear, and fear things we should trust. Take the word anarchist as one small example. We’re conditioned to automatically react with fear to that word – as though someone said ‘murderer’ instead. The dictionary defines anarchy to mean ‘without government’, and if we hear the word used at all it’s always in connection with people causing wanton destruction. So the image most people have of anarchists is of masked hooligans whose ambition for the world is lawless chaos – for whatever sick reason. But if anyone actually bothers to scratch beneath the surface, to ignore this image our trusted guides create for us, and to read some of the work of self-confessed anarchists, a rather different picture emerges. Consider Emma Goldman, for example, who said: ‘No one has yet fully realized the wealth of sympathy, the kindness and generosity hidden in the soul of a child. The effort of every true educator should be to unlock that treasure.’ (2) Why do you suppose we should be conditioned to fear such people? I agree absolutely with the words of Emma Goodman, but I’m no anarchist: I not only don’t believe that society without government is possible, I don’t even believe such a society is desirable. However, for all their anti-anarchist rhetoric and propaganda, I’m not so sure our trusted leaders share that view. If that seems a little odd, perhaps it’s because you’re not seeing the bigger picture. Although every country in the world has more government than it knows what to do with, the world itself is entirely without government – if by ‘government’ we mean something that provides security for ordinary people. If we looked at the world objectively from some other planet, what we would see is a small community controlled by gangs – like parts of L.A. say, but on a far bigger scale. For most of the history of the Earth relatively dominant gangs come and go completely unimpeded by anything approaching a world government drafting world laws to protect ordinary people and enforced by a world police force ensuring those gangs cannot thrive. About a hundred years ago the first attempt at world government occurred. It was called the League of Nations and about thirty years later evolved into the United Nations and various satellite organisations, such as those to control world’s economy. But almost from the moment they were formed these institutions were turned into playthings for the new tough kid on the block, and gangster supremo: the US government; so that today this fig leaf for world government is in fact no more than The Boss’s Licensing Department. Daniel Moynihan, for example, when he was the US ambassador to the UN, famously said: ‘The Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. The task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success.’ (3) Utter contempt for the UN by the gangster-in-chief is so routine that relatively junior lieutenants like White House chief of staff Andrew Card feel sufficiently emboldened to proclaim: ‘the UN can meet and discuss, but we don’t need their permission.’ (4); or the even more junior official Francis Fukuyama: ‘[The UN] is perfectly serviceable as an instrument of American unilateralism and indeed may be the primary mechanism through which that unilateralism will be exercised in the future.’ (5). There’s nothing new in this, of course. Law, which is the skeleton of government, has only ever been intended to control the little people; it’s always been perfectly understood that it doesn’t apply to leaders. The economic historian H.O. Meredith, writing almost a hundred years ago about controls created by the British government in order to squash any ideas of freedom being inspired by the French (or American) Revolutions, observed: ‘The legislation of 1799 and 1800, combined with the law of conspiracy, made it criminal to join a trade union or organise a strike. Technically, combination of the employers was as illegal as combination of the men: in practice it seems to have been easy to convict the men, impossible to convict the masters.’ (My emphasis) (6). Or consider the common law which says it’s wrong to kill people. True for little people, who shouldn’t go around committing the odd murder; completely irrelevant for leaders who may murder as many people as they choose, so long as they feel it’s ‘the right thing’. Ask Tony Blair. And if your country’s leader can casually ignore possibly the most important law of all, what other laws might he play fast and loose with? So who are the real anarchists? Those few individuals who occasionally smash a couple of windows and perhaps throw the odd firebomb or two (and who might be working for the sate)? Or that other set of individuals who openly defy what’s supposed to be the world’s government, and rampage around the planet ruining the lives of millions? One set wear facemasks and live in constant fear of the police; the other set strut the world stage in thousand pound suits and own the police. But who are the real anarchists? And who really champions the interests of ordinary people? Who should we really trust, and who should we really fear? 1. ‘Killing Hope’ by William Blum p. 120 2. ‘Living My Life’ by Emma Goldman p. 409 3. ‘Hidden Agendas’ by John Pilger p. 302 4. ‘Hegemony or Survival’ by Noam Chomsky p. 32 5. “ p.29 6. ‘Economic History of England’ by H.O. Meredith p. 292.) 11 February 2010 It was announced yesterday that Birmingham City Council is to shed 2,000 jobs. With recent similar announcements from councils in both Leicester and Nottingham, how soon will it be before cuts are announced in Grantham’s public services? The reason for the cuts, we’re told, is that public spending must be reduced to pay back huge budget deficits. Those deficits were caused by a handful of people who ruined the world’s economy, and profited very nicely by doing so – and these are the same people who now presume to advise on how we should recover from the disaster they created. No word is mentioned about the banks having to pay back the hundreds of billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money they’ve had (plus interest); not only must we fund multi-millionaire bonuses we must also forego the public services we expect our taxes to pay for. A few years ago, realising that my lack of knowledge about economics was seriously hindering my understanding of the world, I decided to teach myself something about the subject. Now, having read quite widely, I see a little more clearly; and perhaps the most important lesson I learnt about that artificial topic is best summed up in the words of Paul Bairoch, a Swiss professor of economics, who said: ‘‘If I had to summarize the essence of what economic history can bring to economic science it would be that there is no “law” or rule in economics that is valid for every period of history or for every economic structure.’ (see ‘Economics and World History’ by Bairoch p. 164) In other words, there’s no such thing as the ‘right’ economic model; yet the one that’s relentlessly forced down the throats of a generally unwilling world is the so-called ‘Chicago School’ model of capitalism as preached by its leading guru, the much reviled and completely unmissed Milton Friedman. This philosophy preaches total destruction of public services. Its perfect world is one run entirely by private corporations whose only interest is maximising shareholder profit. As corporations now control the Whitehouse in everything but name (as of 21st January corporations may now directly finance US election campaigns), it shouldn’t be too long before they achieve their ultimate goal. The world’s economy is managed from the United States via its puppet triumvirate the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organisation. As you might expect, their primary mission in life is securing economic domination of the planet by their parent (which largely ignores all the advice and strictures those fine foundations impose upon every other nation). That Britain’s leaders aid and abet this holy purpose is something people should wonder at. But if one remembers that our government comprises people who not only assisted in destroying the world’s economy (deregulation of banks and financial services), and who also cheerfully plunge us into illegal wars (Iraq), assist foreign governments in the torture of innocent people (see the Independent 11/2/10 – ‘Britain did know CIA tortured suspect’) and then either lie about it all or do everything in their power to ensure the people don’t find out (ibid), perhaps we should not be too surprised. Cutting public services when the economy is suffering is pure Chicago School economics, which has caused mayhem wherever it has been imposed, from Chile to Russia, as intended (consider Nixon’s instruction to CIA director Richard Helms to “make [Chile’s] economy scream” – using the Chicago model – see Naomi Klein ‘Shock Doctrine’ p. 64). Cutting public spending must be resisted with every breath we have. If anything, it should be increased. If the government is so concerned about budget deficits it should stop financing American wars and tell the banks to pay back our money, not tell us to do without the services we expect our taxes to pay for. 26 January 2010 One Baroness Prosser was featuring very prominently in yesterday’s ‘news’. The government’s propaganda department, popularly known as the BBC, was promoting Downing Street’s push to make it even harder for people to retire than it is now. The good Baroness was given considerable time and space to peddle her opinion that people did not want to be forced to retire at 65, and that with a supposed increase in the number of old people the state could not be expected to bare the cost of their pensions. A few older workers were found (notably at ASDA – owned by possibly the most famous scourge of employment rights in the world), and interviewed, all enthusiastically regurgitating the party line. Not a single dissenting opinion was shown. Well here’s one loudly dissenting voice: It’s absolutely scandalous (but not surprising) that the government is planning to make people work way past retirement age. That they are attempting to dress this up as a response to the people’s wishes is a completely normal example of the cynicism that passes for government in our country. Whilst there can be no argument that people should indeed not be forced to stop working if that is really their genuine preference, that preference should never be felt simply because there’s no real choice, that their pensions are so miserable they must continue working in order to survive. Those people who will be due to retire in the next decade or so have paid National Insurance contributions to the state all their working lives on the understanding that they will be able to retire on a comfortable pension at the age of 65 (60 for women). That previous governments have all presided over regimes that plundered pension schemes and created systems where the very rich will be able to retire anytime they like on small fortunes is not the fault of ordinary people who ask for nothing more than modest comfort in their twilight years, and to now demand that ordinary people must continue working for longer in order to pay for the rich is an obscenity of immense proportions. No doubt Baroness Prosser will be able to put her feet up in complete luxury anytime she likes. That the ordinary worker must continue in slavery in order for her to do so is...is... Where did I put that guillotine? 18 January 2010 Ever since the infamous Monroe Doctrine of 1823 Haiti has had the dubious pleasure of being considered an ‘American interest’ – an honour now shared by the entire planet. Of course the people of Haiti had no say in the matter – they might have thought of themselves as capable of running their own affairs (having been the first slave nation to successfully overthrow their oppressors) – but then as now, Washington knew better. I don’t know about anyone else, but if my country had just been devastated by some awful catastrophe and I had to rely on a foreign government coming to save me, a government that had quite cheerfully ignored the plight of tens of thousands of its very own citizens when they had been similarly struck down, I’d be fairly worried. We have had blanket news coverage this week of the aftermath of the recent earthquake in Haiti. Amidst all the usual terrible scenes of human suffering and tragedy one very brief incident is transfixed in my memory. It was of a news conference with some senior US politician who had something to do with the ‘relief’ effort. I forget who he was – it doesn’t matter: if it hadn’t been him it would have been a clone. A reporter asked him why they didn’t just parachute in essential supplies, like food and water, to the desperate survivors who were wandering around the ruined streets of Port-au-Prince quite naturally scavenging anything they could. The politician dismissed the question almost as though some naive child had asked it, and, before quickly moving on answered that if they did that there would be carnage as desperate people fought over whatever was supplied. In other words they’re not supplying immediate relief because that’s in the Haitians’ best interests. Let’s give that gentleman the benefit of the doubt, and say that he actually believed his own words; so I won’t call it a lie, I’ll simply call it the biggest load of rubbish I’d heard since... I don’t know... the previous night’s ‘news’ maybe. The only situation where this gentleman might have been correct is if the available aid was so miniscule that it could not possibly have provided significant relief. If that is the case, why is it? I mean, the west is absolutely swimming in ‘humanitarian’ organisations of one kind or another, why are they so poor and disorganised that they can’t respond to a crisis when it actually happens? If that were the case it would mean either that these organisations just don’t have or can’t get stocks of essential food and water; or there is a transport problem i.e. they can’t get it there. I simply don’t believe that is the case. I cannot believe that a professional relief organisation doesn’t have the ways and means to obtain food and water instantly; and as the world’s media have arrived in Port-au-Prince without any difficulty, and the US has had enough time to send half its navy to the scene (together with thousands of ground troops), I’m struggling to see that there might be a transport problem. There must be another reason. They say a picture tells a thousand words, and another brief clip shown on the BBC this morning was particularly helpful in this respect. It showed the US marines helping the relief effort. Ahhh... This was they how they were doing it: one marine was handing one small bottle of water to one Haitian child. Behind that child was another, and perhaps another child behind that one. All very ordered; all very controlled. You could almost see that image on the recruiting page of the US Marines website beneath a caption reading “Saving Childrens’ Lives in World Disasters.” There’s no love lost between the people of Haiti and the United States. The US managed the military overthrow of the people’s chosen government under Jean-Bertrand Aristide, just as they’ve done in many other places in the region, and have helped to cruelly oppress a tragic land that Christopher Columbus once described as ‘rich and bountiful’ (just prior to his nation exterminating the quarter of a million of so Arawaks who were living there). Disaster ‘relief’ is seriously big business where corporate profits and political prestige must be considered long before anything as mundane as helping desperate poor people. With the US ‘leading’ the relief of Haiti, quite apart from feeling even more sympathy for the Haitians than we otherwise would, the single most important thing to understand is that that ‘relief’ effort will be managed not by ordinary caring human beings but by big business – because the US government and big business are one and the same thing; and big business is legally mandated to maximise its profits. Maximising profits means controlling supply, and making that supply as cheap as possible to produce, and as expensive as possible to buy. From a profit point of view the idea of just parachuting food and water to desperate people whist proper support systems can be set up is pure madness. Not only does it cost money but it would also mean that desperate people aren’t quite so desperate anymore, and therefore aren’t quite so easy to control. In a country like Haiti, which has every reason to be deeply suspicious of American soldiers, the population needs to be adequately ‘prepared’ to accept the authority of a foreign army. Normally the preparation of suspicious populations requires considerable bombing and armed invasion – but just because nature provides the prerequisite devastation free of charge (if that was in fact the case here), that doesn’t mean you can afford to be more liberal with the supply side of the equation, it simply means the costs are even lower and therefore the profits even more bounteous. The United Nations is the only organisation that has truly legitimate international authority. The fact that it is being muscled aside in Haiti, with the US marketed as ‘leading’ the relief effort, is of course no surprise. But the fact is that it is the UN and only the UN who should be left alone to co-ordinate the relief effort. That’s the only way we can be reasonably sure the job is being done with minimal ulterior motive, and that the people of Haiti are getting the best support and assistance possible. My heart goes out to the people of Haiti. Not only have they been struck down by a terrible catastrophe, but they are forced to rely on the most ruthless government in existence for their relief. 12 January 2010 I first identified the Great Swine Flu Scam last spring (see comment below for 29/4/09, and 3/9/09). The scam is now more or less official. It was on Channel 4 news last night. For much of last year we were manipulated into believing that a major flu ‘pandemic’ was about to ravage the country. ‘Contaminated’ schools were closed on no better evidence than little Johnny turning up with a sniffle; doctors’ surgeries were partitioned off so that ordinary sick people didn’t have to risk contagion from blighted people; the wearing of face masks became strongly encouraged, and we were all urged to rush out and stock up with anti-flu vaccine, while stocks last. It was, as I strongly suspected, and tried to point out at the time, all one big con, engineered as all the really big cons are these days, in the United States - on this occasion by the drug companies. But they are far from being the principle culprits. Indeed, corporate law being what it is, they are more or less legally obliged to do anything at all that might produce a profit for them. No, our own trusted leaders, together with the media, are far more culpable. From the World Health Organisation being manipulated into re-defining the word ‘pandemic’ to mean almost anyone with a sniffle, to Andy Burnham telling the House of Commons in July that he was expecting 100,000 new cases A DAY by the end of August, all our trusted leaders leapt to attention like the obliging sheepdogs they are when their corporate masters are blowing the whistle; all of which, and considerably more, was faithfully reported by a complicit media - a fact which cannot be ignored. It started with reports from Mexico about people with sniffles. We were treated to endless TV coverage of healthy Mexican troops sporting face masks and distributing face masks to all the healthy people passing by. (But the military overthrow of President Zelaya, the elected president of Honduras, which was happening at about the same time just down the road was completely ignored). Then almost daily throughout the summer about half of every ‘news’ bulletin was lovingly devoted to stories of people with sniffles. The wheels started to come off in the autumn when it emerged that people weren’t buying their vaccines as instructed, and weren’t getting sick either. We’re now told that about 300 people died in the UK from Swine Flu – but we’re not told how many of these cases were SOLELY down to Swine Flu, and we’re not told how many people normally succumb to flu every year anyway. Much of Western Europe is now awash in unwanted and completely unnecessary flu vaccines, and governments are trying to renege on multi-million dollar contracts they were coerced into signing. Whilst politicians are more or less obliged to report health concerns reported to them, there was absolutely no empirical evidence that the media had to pay as much attention to the scam as it did. The media therefore have more than their fair share of guilt in this particular scandal. It will be interesting to see how much of it they admit. 4 January 2010 Last night the BBC screened a classic piece of twenty first century propaganda. It was a documentary presented by Michael Portillo and was supposed to be a ‘balanced’ inquiry into why Obama is not going to meet his pre-election promise of closing the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay. Portillo is a polished performer – with his background how could he not be? He was calm, reflective, caring; he was careful to include one or two people who pointed out the fact that not one scrap of evidence exists to justify the internment of any of the inhabitants at Guantanamo; he included people who had lost relatives in the Twin Towers, and spoke to one or two people who had been prisoners at the infamous prison; he explained the ‘pressures’ and ‘difficulties’ that face Obama, with a view to helping us to understand why the latest Washington puppet has failed to do what he promised. Those of us who know better could stifle a yawn and ask ‘What else is new?’ Portillo concluded with a troubled, confessional expression to camera and told us that because he too was also a political animal he understood the terrible difficulties Obama faces (meaning we should too), and that if he (Portillo) was president he would probably do exactly the same thing. That the US government has for many decades carefully picked and chosen those laws and protocols it likes, and therefore adheres to, and ignored completely those it doesn’t – like its illegal sanctions against Cuba – was obviously never mentioned. Like I said - it was a polished performance. I could almost hear the violins in the background, and thought I detected a little misting of the Portillo eye as he contemplated the terrible burden of being the most powerful puppet on Earth. Churchill once said that ‘in wartime truth is so precious she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies’. So he definitely would have loved Portillo’s plea that we should understand it when our ‘great leaders’ lie to us ‘in the wider interest’. But Churchill also said ‘The power of the executive to cast a man into prison, without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgement of his peers, is in the highest degree odious, and the foundation of all totalitarian government’. So I don’t know how the ‘great’ man would have felt about rounding up thousands of innocents and locking them up indefinitely thousands of miles away from their families and routinely torturing them for good measure – all without a single shred of evidence of any wrongdoing on the victims’ part. (Mind you, as they’re mostly brown skinned Middle Eastern people, he might have just gassed them.) That Portillo would probably do the same thing as Obama is of course no surprise to me – I would have been far more surprised if he said he wouldn’t; but even if he had said so I wouldn’t have believed him. 20 December 2009 Apparently some managers were whooping and doing ‘high fives’ following the decision by Mrs ‘Justice’ Cox to declare illegal the recent BA strike ballot. The good judge’s decision turned on the fact that some of those voting were not allowed to vote. However, The Times reports that that number was about 6% of the total ballot which, being 92% in favour of strike action meant it would have made absolutely no material difference to the outcome. Another great day for the champions of democracy. Still, the last few decades have provided plenty of precedent for the principle of never letting the wishes of the majority stand in the way of corporate power. Since the very first CIA interventions in the state elections of post-war Italy to the recent military overthrow of the President Zelaya, the democratically elected of Honduras – via Guatemala, Iran, Congo, Florida and Gaza, to name but a few examples – the principle has been widely copied: democratic decisions can be tolerated – providing they produce the desired outcome. It is of course understandable that the vast majority of Britain’s media are similarly crowing with delight – our media being controlled by huge corporations – but just how great a victory is ‘Justice’ Cox’s verdict for Mr and Mrs Average? Our economy has been completely destroyed by the corporate business world, and it’s quite possible it will never recover. The multi-nationals that have now virtually taken over our government, many of which are not even based here, have absolutely no responsibility to Britain, no duty of care to our people. They have completely destroyed the nation’s engineering and manufacturing industries by gorging themselves on the biggest asset-stripping exercise since land enclosures and the Highland clearances – all overseen by our trusted leaders in cahoots with the judiciary and their loyal enforcers. Well done chaps. The temporary ‘victory’ by BA managers over BA staff is just more of the same – state sponsored asset stripping and oppression of working people. The nation’s airline is poised to go the same way as the nation’s postal service, great engineering companies and utilities – not to mention the banks – all whilst their senior managers whoop it up, do their ‘high fives’, trouser the mega-bonuses and run for it. Mr and Mrs Average need to see what’s happening: our country is being plundered by those we trust to lead us, by people like last year’s bankers, people who fill their pockets just as fast as they possibly can before flying into the sunset and leaving us to pay for the ruins they create. When the state casually overturns a 92% democratic ballot, and our media respond as though that’s some sort of victory, surely even the very dullest mind can see that the last illusion of British democracy has long fizzled out. * * * The latest international party to celebrate ‘global warming’ broke up a couple of days ago in Copenhagen. Everybody who’s anybody was there – from the Emperor up to sandal-clad vegetarian protestors, via Gordon Brown gurning to the voters. If there was nothing else that proved absolutely the complete vacuousness of the ‘global warming’ charade it’s the fact that so many of our trusted leaders appear to take it so seriously – after all, really serious issues like Permanent War, overpopulation, and the fact that the world’s only hope for international justice, the United Nations, is completely sidelined from the subject altogether – these issues are never even discussed in polite society, let alone celebrated in international media jamborees. I haven’t quite figured out what’s really behind all this interest in the planet’s climate. The only thing we know for sure is that it won’t be any sincere concerns about human life or the Earth’s fragile eco-systems. As money and power are the only things our trusted leaders are interested in there must be some sort of financial incentive in it all. My best guess at the moment is that the international policing agencies the Empire is so keen on establishing around the globe supposedly to ‘monitor climate control targets’, are going to see far more action monitoring imperial economic dominance. 5 December 2009 So another inquiry into the 2003 Iraq War has begun. The chairman of the present inquiry says there’ll be no whitewash. We’ll see. Already the evidence provided has proven what a million marchers (and many more besides) strongly suspected at the time: there was absolutely no justification for Britain going to war. The Hutton inquiry proved it in 2004. How much more evidence is necessary before we hear of Blair being indicted for war crimes, instead of the jaw-dropping suggestions he be crowned president of Europe? Permanent War is the most important issue facing our country – and it is routinely sidestepped. Climate change is, by comparison, a minor distraction. As the death toll of wasted British servicemen creeps inexorably towards that event horizon so beloved by warmongers (where more and more young people might be sucked into wasting their lives so that earlier lives will not have been wasted in vain) there is one vitally important subject studiously avoided by the mainstream press: the hundreds of thousands of mostly innocent civilian lives our young people are being illegally ordered to terminate. And this number is so staggeringly huge that it can only be guessed at – it is disputed to the order of plus or minus hundreds of thousands (see the Lancet’s 2006 study on the subject). Our own pointless dead is an appalling enough fact, but coercing our young people to behave like war criminals is infinitely worse. International law is perfectly clear about the reasons where war is justified, and therefore legal. See Chapter VII Article 51 of the UN Charter (to which the UK is a signatory) which states that war is permissible only for individual or collective self defence. As Iraq had attacked no one in 2003 (quite the opposite: Iraq had been the victim of years of ruthless economic warfare), it is perfectly obvious that this condition did not exist. Furthermore, UN Resolution 1441 is often cited as the legal pretext authorising British involvement – yet nowhere in 1441 does it suggest that military action against Iraq is sanctioned. The Iraq war was not lawful, and the presence of our forces in Afghanistan today is every bit as questionable, to say the least. If Britain’s involvement in America’s wars was legal, our forces would be wearing pale blue helmets and representing the United Nations. They’re not and they don’t; therefore their involvement in the Middle East is unlawful. The casual flouting of international law succeeds not because it isn’t a fact, but because no other country or organisation can bring the principle rogue government to account; and a law without the means to enforce it is almost useless. But not quite – because what the law can clearly indicate is the difference between right and wrong. This is a vitally important issue. Our forces are being used as accomplices for war crimes, and the wider population is being duped into complicity exactly as ordinary Germans were duped by Nazi propaganda in the 1930s. Britain must end its involvement in these endless battles in the Empire’s cynical and illegal Permanent War, where our young people are being needlessly killed and, which is far worse, are being used to kill countless innocent and defenceless civilians. British involvement in America’s wars must stop, and our forces must be brought home – now. 17 November 2009 Armistice Day 2009 Armistice Day is so last week. I stopped buying poppies a few years ago, and I’m unlikely to ever buy one again. What was once, perhaps, a sincere desire to keep alive the memory of the unspeakable horror that was the First World War, in order, perhaps, that people learnt to abhor war, has become instead a celebration of war. It has elevated the status of millions of deceived young men far beyond mere heroes (which was, for most of those tragic victims, never appropriate) to that of gods; thus creating immortal role models to aid the propaganda machine for current wars, and for those to come. It is now a ritual on Armistice Day for people to stop wherever they are, and whatever they’re doing at 11.00 a.m. and stand in silence for a minute, sometimes two. People are supposed to remember all those young gods and their ‘heroism’. But how many remember one of the many lies those young gods were told – that they were fighting the ‘War To End All Wars’? And how many wonder why it is that ninety years after the guns of the War To End All Wars fell silent there has only been one year when British soldiers have not been killed in action? How many of those brave young souls who sincerely believed they were fighting the War To End All Wars would rage, if they could, at our annual celebration of Permanent War being held in their name? How many of those silently standing Armistice Day celebrants actually think about World War One at all, and its many lessons? How can they when most of the images they see on their televisions and newspapers are of today’s tragic lost generation? Exactly as the young people of 1914 were coerced by a relentless propaganda machine to go and waste their lives so that tiny handfuls of immensely powerful men could amass obscene personal fortunes (the British Empire expanded by about 10% as a direct consequence of the war), so too are today’s young people being relentlessly brainwashed by exactly the same type of people for exactly the same type of cause – plunder. As yet another failed war in Afghanistan begins to draw to a close seven years after it started, the first signs of the excuses are beginning to emerge. Hardly a day goes by when our complicit media are not bemoaning the failures or shortages of kit and equipment being supplied to our troops, or the fact that not enough troops are being committed to the slaughter. We continually hear that the war would be a mere formality but for the want of a few more helicopters. We hear about MP corruption and bonuses being awarded to the civil servants of the MoD - all of which will also no doubt be cited to explain the ignominious withdrawal from that blighted country when it inevitably happens. Yet no mention is made of the fact that the rag-tag enemy has not a single helicopter to their name, or any other type of air power, and carry out their most deadly attacks with pathetic home-made bombs. No mention is made of the huge profits being trousered by the international arms industry, or the reconstruction and private security contracts being awarded to those especially favoured sponsors of election campaigns, or the banks that handle the financing of ‘reconstruction’. No mention is made of the international spread of permanent US military bases. No mention is made of the staggering increases to the budgets of the ‘defence’ forces and their partners-in-crime: the police and various so-called ‘intelligence’ services who together perpetuate the myth of the ‘war on terror’. And of course no mention is made of the complicit media who stoke the flames of it all by their omissions, half-truths and outright lies. From the illegal war in Iraq to the all-too-predictable disaster of Afghanistan to … where next? Where next are Britain’s youth going to be sent to kill defenceless peasants, and to be killed in return by crude home-made bombs cobbled together by angry young men with nothing else to lose, in order that arms makers, generals and bankers will continue to thrive? Iran? Pakistan? North Korea? When are the people who stand around in silence every year at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month sporting their little plastic poppies going to realise they are being tricked? When are they going to see that their well-meaning gesture is not being interpreted as it should be, as those millions of tragic souls might actually wish – a plea for world peace – but as ongoing support for the wars of today and tomorrow; for Permanent War? 21 October 2009 There is supposed to be a national postal strike tomorrow. No one should be in any doubt that it deserves the total support of the entire country. It is all but impossible for the normal person to comprehend what the strike is about because the corporate and government media between them completely control the information we receive. But there is one considerable fact that has managed to filter through and it’s this: Royal Mail management have refused to accept the ‘independent’ mediation services of ACAS. To some that may some a trivial point, but it’s every bit as significant as Arthur Scargill’s refusal in the 1980’s to ballot the miners about strike action. These seemingly trivial technicalities establish the moral high ground in disputes; and just as Scargill was wrong not to ballot the miners, so too are Royal Mail wrong not to accept independent arbitration. The odd thing is that just as Scargill may well have won a strike ballot had he called one, Royal Mail management would probably gain the support of ACAS were they to call on it, as the so-called ‘independent’ arbiters are basically government lackeys (being civil servants); and we have a government deeply committed to crushing the British worker. There are various high-profile government figures who have long been committed to privatising the post office i.e. selling off, probably to some international corporation, yet another national asset that was paid for with public money. They will probably win, as they have overwhelming power; but that doesn’t mean they should win without a fight. Never forget: THE REBEL, THE STRIKER AND THE HERETIC ARE NEARLY ALWAYS RIGHT! Up the Postal Workers! 21 September 2009 Britain’s three political parties are all trying to out-cut each other. Cameron’s government-in-waiting started this particular fiasco a few weeks ago. About the only thing that might reduce the Tories’ otherwise inevitable electoral success next year is if half of their number was found to be child-molesters, or secretly in league with Osama bin Laden. Knowing this, they had no problem letting the world know how they were going solve Britain’s disastrous financial problems by savaging our public services – in other words, behave like normal Tories. Once they started, the others felt safe to jump on the band-wagon. Brown leapt to his feet in a televised speech somewhere and waving his hand around like some manic axe-murderer he ranted about how he would cut this and cut that. This week it’s the turn of the other lot and surprise, surprise, they too are going to cut this and cut that. Not a single one of them has suggested getting back the hundreds of billions of pounds of the nation’s money so generously gifted to the rotten banks that caused the collapse of the world’s economy in the first place, and that’s now sloshing around in their virtual vaults doing very little other than continue to pay out huge bonuses to bankers. The most ludicrous thing of all, of course, is that any of these people are still listened to – after all it was their economic policies that allowed the banks such absolute power to ruin the world’s economy. Even those that didn’t actually create the legislation to de-regulate financial services, didn’t resist it much either. Why these selfsame people should presume to be worthy of our trust is frankly farcical. The fact that they can get away with doing so is down to another situation that they have carefully contrived. I refer of course to TINA, the “There Is No Alternative” situation – the only ‘alternative’ political parties that are permitted to thrive are absolutely no alternatives at all. They all peddle exactly the same corruption – à la our US role model. The only ‘alternative’ the voter is offered at election time is ‘which particular gangster do you prefer?’ There Is No Alternative because no real alternatives are allowed to exist. It stands to reason that while the system itself is permitted to continue without change, the corruption that is the very heart of that system will also continue without change. Whilst the individual players will come and go, it is exactly the same farce being played out on the stage. The whole rotten system must be completely gutted and reformed from top to bottom. The People’s Constitution proposes exactly the sort of changes necessary. 17 September 2009 It was announced on yesterday’s news that two schoolchildren from Manchester, who have been languishing in prison for the last six months having been charged by the police and Crown Prosecution Service with plotting to blow up a school to ‘celebrate’ the tenth anniversary of the Columbine High School massacre, were released by a jury after just forty five minutes deliberation. It turns out that there was not a trace of evidence for the ‘plot’ other than an air rifle, a few common fireworks and a few pages of rather sick, fantasy-world, writing. Whilst I have no real sympathy for the particular individuals concerned – it seems they have dreams of joining the army where I’m sure their fantasies could be legitimately acted out – the incident itself must be condemned in the strongest terms. It is difficult to over-emphasize the rage that stories like this generate. What better example does anyone need of the police state Britain has now become? And these stories are becoming more and more common. It is now almost routine for ‘terror’ suspects to be released by the courts for lack of evidence only to be re-arrested and tried again and again until the ‘right’ verdict is eventually achieved. Ordinary people are having their homes smashed up all around the country by gangs of Robocop wannabees acting on “credible intelligence” of one sort or another, only for them to depart empty handed leaving behind a shell-shocked citizen with a ruined home and hefty repair bill. That the police get away with this is substantially due to the complicity of magistrates who must sign the pieces of paper that ‘legitimise’ these raids. Just as Hitler’s Gestapo, South Africa’s apartheid police and the Israeli police never did anything illegal, so too do our police seldom break the law. How much more evidence do we need of the sheer evil of our legal system? Thank God for juries, and the ordinary people who comprise them, to still bring a little sanity into our so-called “justice” system. Young People Beware! Young people beware! You are being lied to. The single biggest lie you are conditioned from birth to accept is that your country’s leaders can be trusted; trusted to always act in your best interests. It is a lie of monstrous proportions. There is only one set of interests these leaders protect: their own. Almost every adult you know is complicit in spreading this lie. However, the really dangerous thing is that the vast majority of them don’t even know they’re doing it. It’s a bit like people who spread infections: most of the people who transmit colds and flu say, don’t even know they have colds or the flu during the early stages, when they are most infectious. One of the first deliberate lies that most Christian children learn is the Santa Claus lie. This lie is ‘justified' on the grounds that because children are showered with presents it makes them happy, and because it makes them happy it is therefore acceptable to lie to them. Compared with the lies that start to follow this one in very quick succession, and then continue throughout a person’s life, it is indeed very trivial. Most of us can remember the moment they discovered that Santa Claus does not exist – a moment when we learn a very important lesson; a lesson that for too many people is almost instantly forgotten: adults cannot always be relied upon to tell you the truth. I call this lesson the ‘Santa Claus Effect’: the proof of the principle. Just as our parents and families knowingly lie to us as small children ‘in our own best interests’, so too do teachers and preachers, news readers, politicians, kings, queens, sports, T.V. and movie stars. The number of lies we are told from all these trusted sources probably exceeds the truths we learn by a very long way – because ‘truth’ is incredibly illusive. If we combine all the lies told to us by those we trust and who know they’re lying (e.g. prime ministers and presidents), together with the lies told to us by those we trust but who don’t know themselves they’re lying (e.g. parents and teachers); and when we add to this number the astronomical volume of blatant lies, half truths, deceptions and omissions that comprise almost every newspaper, radio and TV news bulletin – all of which is done, like the Santa Claus lie, ‘in our own best interests’ – it isn’t very difficult to begin to see the scale of the problem; and that’s without examining the ‘factual’ content of advertising companies, or the subliminal lies of TV shows and film studios. A very good rule is to run away very quickly from people claiming to be ‘acting in your own best interests’ – especially if they want to do something you don’t like. There is only one person you can ever fully trust to act in your best interests: yourself. But even that isn’t as easy as you might hope because, as I said earlier, the truth is incredibly illusive. However, there is one simple technique that will always help you better than most to discover the truth. It is a very old and well known technique, a technique that is widely used in courts of law all around the world: adversarial debate. In order to come as near as you can to the truth you don’t need dozens of experts all saying the same thing – in fact they make things worse – all you need is two experts… who disagree with each other. If you always actively seek out dissenting voices, without fully trusting them either, but just listen to why they are dissenting voices, you stand a reasonable chance of getting quite close to the truth. That you desperately need to get quite close to the truth cannot be in doubt. The world you are about to inherit is in a state of Permanent War. It is on the brink of total ecological destruction, and the social conditions for 90% of humanity are barely better than slaves – and deteriorating. This situation is not a natural disaster, like an earthquake or tsunami – it is entirely man-made; a situation deliberately created by those we trust to tell us the truth. 3 September 2009 On the 3rd July The Times reported that the new health secretary, Andy Burnham, informed the House of Commons that Swine Flu was spreading at such a rate that 100,000 new cases a day were to be expected by the end of August. The figure was obtained, he said, from ‘experts’ who had been advising ‘Cobra’ – that overly-pretentious title for a bunch of government mandarins. I am not an ‘expert’, thank God (if there is a God), and I have been predicting the very opposite almost since this Swine Flu ‘emergency’ first dominated the nation’s news in the spring. I do not, of course, have the first idea why our lords and masters decided to create this particular piece of hysterical nonsense, but the fact that they did do so is now almost beyond doubt. As the end of August came and went, Swine Flu had not only failed to produce anything like 100,000 new cases a day, it had all but disappeared entirely from the nation’s newsrooms, noting only that the massive stockpiles of ‘Tamiflu’ were now almost redundant. They will probably have to be destroyed. Oh well, when the taxpayer can gaily dish out hundreds of billions to failed banks, what’s a few tens of millions into the back pockets of friendly drugs companies? It is now a well recorded fact that the present Empire has long indulged itself in the sport of occasionally infecting its own population with various diseases (deliberately infecting other nations has been just too routine to comment on) – from using its own armed forces as guinea-pigs in nuclear and biological fallout experiments, to releasing various poisons, viruses and bacteria into public places (e.g.the US Army has admitted infecting 239 populated areas in the United States over twenty years – and those are just the cases it owns up to). So when I say I’m a little suspicious over the total non-event that has been Swine Flu 2009, I hope you can see why. * * * Right girls, so you want to save the planet; here’s what you do: 1. Understand that the long term survival of the planet depends almost entirely on girls – not boys. 2. Forget all the nonsense about global warming – whilst the Earth is definitely warming up, it has been doing so for at least ten thousand years, and will continue to do so with or without any interference from humans for as far into the future as we’re capable of seeing: it started warming all by itself without any involvement by humans, and will most likely stop warming in exactly the same way. The fuss about global warming is nothing more than a deliberate distraction from the real problem. 3. Ignore every ecological ‘expert’ you come across unless their work is wholly focussed on the following fact: the world’s human population is growing at a rate of two people a second, and the rate is increasing. Note that that figure is not the planet’s birth rate, it’s the growth of its birth rate. 4. Go to your favourite internet search engine. Type in the words ‘human population’. Access the site called “World Population Clock” – it’s run by the maths department at Berkley. Your mission, girls, is to stop that clock. Reversing it would be good, but stopping it is essential. 5. In one generation’s time young families with more than two children must be as socially unacceptable, everywhere on the planet, as smoking in public places is now. It’s fairly obvious to anyone who bothers to think about it for five minutes that the biggest threat to Earth’s fragile ecosystem is the runaway train of human population growth. This thing can only be stopped by girls. The greenest people on the planet are girls who don’t have any children at all – they should all be given some sort of award for services to nature. China once offered a fragile glimmer of hope with its one-child policy. It’s rumoured that it may now be about to abandon that policy in compliance with its conversion to the religion of capitalism. If true, it’s the most tragic piece of news for real ecologists since dinosaurs became extinct. However, all is not lost. All it takes is for girls to realise that they have the power; they and they alone can choose how many babies they have. They must understand that the very survival of the planet’s precious, delicate, beautiful wildlife and wildernesses is wholly dependent on them choosing to have no more than two babies. That and that alone is the only hope of really saving the planet. 16 August 2009 Dirty Tricks in Paradise? Last week the British governor of the Turks and Caicos Islands (TCI), Gordon Wetherell, suspended the democratically elected government of the islands for ‘up to’ two years whilst he “puts the islands’ affairs back in good order”. The islands’ premier, Michael Misick, resigned in March supposedly as a consequence of a damning report on his administration by retired British judge, Sir Robin Auld. In addition to wholly suspending TCI’s constitution and sacking interim premier Galmo Williams (who has called the decision a coup), together with the entire cabinet in the name of good governance, the British have also suspended trial by jury for the duration of their takeover. It is of course all but impossible for the average citizen to glean the real truth behind events such as these. We can only filter through the various snippets of information provided by the corporate press and try to work out what’s really happening by reading between the lines; and then hope against hope that what we come up with is a little closer to the truth than what’s being sold. The given reasons by the British government for their actions can obviously be dismissed out of hand, like the bit where Governor Wetherell says “it is not a British takeover” (In fact it’s a pretty good rule of thumb to usually believe the very opposite of what governments tell us). The good governor’s statement was full of the usual professional bureaucrat’s flannel: “We need to stabilise TCI’s finances and help rebuild a more diverse and vigorous economy.” (But according to the Independent, TCI’s economy grew under the leadership of Premier Misick from a GDP in 2003 – when he came to power – of $216m to $722m, and tourism grew from 175,000 visitors per annum to 264,000) And the bit I particularly liked: “We need to clean up public life and start to develop a fairer, more open society” – by sacking the elected administration and suspending trial by jury? Other news reports suggest that Misick and his government were indeed living the high life – but that sort of thing never usually disturbs the slumbers of HMG; indeed, it’s more usually an essential qualification. So what might really be going on? For me, one particular sentence stood out from a quite good report in the Independent way back in March (25th): “Sir Robin's commission heard how Mr Misick and other ministers had grown rich by acquiring publicly-owned Crown land, selling it to developers and receiving commissions.” In the same article another interesting little gem claimed: “Canadian legislators have made regular overtures to unite with TCI. Nova Scotia voted in 2004 to invite the islands to join the province.” Surely those dastardly islanders wouldn’t be presuming to decide for themselves what to do with their own land would they? Sorry, I meant to say HMG’s land? The arrogance of the British government’s decision to scrap the islands’ democratically elected government is of course reason enough to arouse our suspicions – especially when none of the story has made it into Britain’s mainstream media (like the recent military coup in Honduras); but the real clincher is the fact that the government has also chosen to scrap trial by jury for the next two years. Something very dirty is happening in paradise. 3 August 2009 The Times recently reported that China might be on the verge of abandoning its one-child policy. The really interesting question is why? China’s one-child policy has always been controversial, to say the least. Originally introduced in the late 1970s it was seen by the authorities as the proper means to address the problem of overpopulation. It was never universally applied or rigorously policed (by Chinese standards) with fewer than half of the population actually subject to the rule. In recent years I have become something of a convert to the principle, so am a little disappointed to see that China may be abandoning it. For the inescable fact is that the world IS overpopulated, and China’s efforts to confront the issue are really something that should be admired and emulated by anyone seriously interested in the long term survival of the planet’s fragile eco-systems. The Times article interested me for the slant that was applied. For the suggestion was clearly that human population reduction is unwise because it would mean that old people won’t have enough young people around to pay their pensions for them. Although this argument no doubt has some legitimacy, I wonder if there are other reasons that are not being aired quite so freely. The core principle of capitalism is growth. Growth is arguably the capitalists’ single most important driving force. If things are not growing and expanding, panic and mass hysteria quickly follow. But the obvious fact that the Earth has finite resources and cannot therefore sustain permanent growth does not seem to impinge in any way upon their guiding dogma. This rather obvious paradox actually serves as wonderful example of the true mantra of modern capitalism: fill your pockets today and let someone else worry about tomorrow. So what’s all that got to do with China’s one-child policy? you might ask. Well, quite a lot. There are two essential requirements to sustain the capitalist gospel of permanent growth: growing numbers of customers and growing numbers of workers. The notion that both should stop growing or, shock! horror! go into decline! is more than enough to maintain your average little capitalist in a state of permanent cold sweat. It is of course a standard trick for our controllers to sell their schemes and dreams to us in terms of supposed social benefits to womankind; and their touching concern for the welfare of small children and grannies at times like these is truly heartwarming. The apparent worries of our capitalist masters for the pensioners of the future should, like everything else they say and do, be taken with a substantial pinch of salt. After all, state pensions are, relatively speaking, a brand new invention; it makes you wonder how on Earth mankind managed for the last couple of million years without them. Presumably old people just starved to death as soon as they stopped working. Well no, actually; they didn’t. In almost every so-called ‘primitive’ society, on every continent, there is considerable evidence that old people were generally venerated by their communities. They were, quite rightly, acknowledged as the living recorders and keepers of history, and their accumulated life’s wisdom regularly consulted and valued. Their few necessities, wants and comforts presented no overwhelming burden for the community to cope with. It is only in recent times, under modern capitalism, that old age has suddenly presented a ‘demographic crisis’. So what else might generate our controllers sudden concern for the welfare of old people? There is a very revealing comment that was recorded in a Poor Law Commission Report in 1834. In a section discussing the effects of the new Speenhamland System (the originator of state welfare in Britain) appeared the following remark: “I was informed that the consequences of the [S]ystem were not wholly unforseen at the time as affording a probable inducement to early marriages and large families; but at this period there was but little apprehension on that ground. A prevalent opinion, supported by high authority, that population was in itself a source of wealth, precluded all alarm.” (my italics) Do we have here a more likely explanation, not only for China’s new concern for the welfare of its pensioners, but also for the complete and utter disregard of almost every other society on Earth for the planet’s rampaging population growth? It doesn’t take too much effort to understand why our capitalist controllers are so enamoured by exploding populations: they satisfy those two essential requirements of capitalism – the ever-growing supply of customers, and the ever-growing supply of cheap/slave labour. It is almost inevitable that our controllers will survive the most recent economic disaster over which they presided. After all, it was not the first time the cycle has been completed since its first outing a few centuries ago, and there’s absolutely no reason to think it will be the last. It goes something like this: create an artificle money bubble whereby a tiny handful of people make eye-watering fortunes through largely fraudulent financial speculations; continue until the buble bursts; wait for the government to demand that the taxpayer pays for the failed speculations; bide your time in five star luxury on tropical beachs, plush ski resorts and majestic yachts whilst the furore dies down and tens of thousands of little people all over the world quite literally die as a direct consequence of your actions; retire from the game if you wish as you definitely never need to work again, or go back to go and start again for the sheer fun of it all. Such are the people who have been in charge of the world’s economy for a depressingly long time. Such people do not lie in their beds at night worrying about how old folk might have their pensions paid. China originally adopted a one-child policy because its leaders clearly understood that ‘growth’ was not only the Holy Grail of capitalism and therefore anathema to communism; and that it was also obviously an unsustainable principle given that the Earth has finite resources; but that ‘growth’ was simply unnecessary once any society achieves a self-sustaining human population level. As China now firmly embraces the religion of capitalism to its breast , together with its long-established understanding of the direct relationship between population and wealth, it seems to be on the verge of abandoning the most important cause in which it was the planet’s undisputed leader. The Earth long ago passed a self-sustaining human population level. It long ago arrived at the point where its human population can only continue at the cost of the permanent destruction of some eco-system or the exhaustion of some irrepacable resource. China’s one-child policy offered a very real light of hope at the end of the capitalists’ cataclysmic permanent ‘growth’ tunnel. It’s a sad day indeed to think that that light might now be extinguished. 12 July 2009 Bring Them Home. Now! Exactly three years ago the Grantham Journal printed one of my articles calling for the return of our troops from Afghanistan. At the time British troops had been based there for about six years and had ‘only’ lost five men – less than one a year. However, it had just been announced that our forces were to take over the Helmand province, and things were expected to go rapidly downhill. In my article I reminded readers of the ancient history of that unconquerable land, of the numerous empires that had come and gone, winning their occasional battles, but never the wars. I knew of course that my call for the return of our troops would be ignored by most, opposed by some – but it was the right thing to do, so I did it. Today, as we mourn the bloodiest week for British troops since the start of that campaign, as we slowly become used to an average of one British death every couple of days, it’s high time once again to do the right thing. British forces must come home. NOW! No one who truly values our armed forces could say anything else. They should not be there. They must all come home. The cynicism and deceit of our political masters as to WHY our forces are dying in distant deserts and killing unknown, uncounted, and largely innocent and defenceless peasants totally eclipses the trivial (albeit legitimate) scandal over parliamentary expenses. We are told about their touching concern for the health and education of Afghan children, and the (quite feeble) number of schools and clinics that have been built in response (mostly for their propaganda value); but we’re not told about the oil and gas pipelines being frantically constructed across the country for western energy companies. We are told of our leaders’ misty-eyed vision of a free and democratic Afghanistan, but we don’t learn about the awesome and permanent US military bases being built (by American contractors) to ensure that Afghan freedom and democracy conforms to imperial requirements. We are told how some Afghani families are now receiving electric power in their homes for the first time ever – but not about how the profits of those supplies go to western utility companies, not Afghanistan. Sending our armed forces off to kill and die in distant lands for spurious humanitarian reasons is an old trick; and winning popular support for political trickery by conflating the people’s affection for their troops with approval for politicians’ actions is equally well tried and tested. About eighty years ago Major General Smedley Butler, once the most highly decorated officer in the US forces, wrote: “I spent 33 years in the Marines, most of my time being a high-class muscle man for big business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for Capitalism.” It’s obscene enough that our young people are still being killed and injured serving as muscle men for big business, paid for by the taxpayer. That they are ordered to kill unknown numbers of innocent and mostly defenceless civilians for exactly the same cause is every bit as obscene. Our forces must come home. NOW! 9 July 2009 Just over 10 days ago, on 28th June, President Zelaya, the elected head of Honduras was overthrown in a military coup. Initially he was exiled to neighbouring Costa Rica. Within a week of his forced expulsion he was supposed to return to Honduras (the soldiers’ coup appearing at first glance to not have any international support), but his plane was refused landing permission at Tegucigalpa airport. According to reports, a huge crowd that had assembled at the airport to greet him was dispersed by the military, and at least two protesters killed during a public demonstration condemning the coup. Only time will reveal the full story behind this event. For now there is little to go on. However, there is one quite interesting hard and irrefutable fact: somehow the story has completely escaped the attention of the British media. Whilst we have endured endless coverage of the sad demise of Michael Jackson, heard about civil unrest in China and even had several reports about the kidnapping of an American soldier in Afghanistan, we have heard not a word about the kidnapping of a state president, and the considerable civilian unrest in Honduras. Now why might that be? It is rumoured that President Zelaya is something of a humanitarian. Apparently public transport, schooling and health care have all improved during his short time in office. His kidnapping occurred on the eve of a public referendum he intended to hold on whether to make some mild liberal reforms of the Honduran constitution. Whilst the US has so far refused to recognise the military coup, it has done little else and, as I’ve already pointed out, the media have been curiously coy about covering the story. At the time of writing it’s reported that President Zelaya has recently met Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Washington. There can only be one possible interpretation of that: a spelling out of the conditions for any US support for his return home – and you can bet any continuation of Zelaya’s constitutional and social reforms will be a pretty long way down the agenda. It’s always interesting to compare the news that can be found via the internet with the content provided by our established media. Most of the media seldom indulge in blatant lies – that sort of behaviour is reserved for the tackier publications or quite exclusive ones. However, the telling of half truths and selective omissions is every bit as effective. 16 June 2009 Yesterday the Prime Minister announced that an inquiry is to be launched into the events leading up to the illegal war in Iraq in 2003, in which Britain played a significant part – not just in contributing armed forces and weapons of war, but also by adding its significant moral weight behind the American adventure –helping to provide an illusion of respectability to the so-called ‘coalition of the willing’. However, the ‘inquiry’ is not to be held in public. Instead it is to comprise privy councillors meeting in secret. It’s to be chaired by a Whitehall mandarin instead of a judge and, according to General Mike Jackson, quoted in The Times today: “Apparently there’s to be no subpoena arrangement for witnesses to attend the inquiry because there is no legal status for it, so there’ll be no swearing to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” It really does make you wonder why they bother. As no one alive today, with half an ounce of grey matter to spare, will trust the outcome. One possible explanation is that by holding an inquiry it might remove this highly emoptive subject from the public arena on the grounds that the government couldn’t possibly comment whilst an inquiry is in progress. This might then serve as a delaying tactic during the next general election. But the government must know that the findings of a secret inquiry will never be trusted. The public ones are dodgy enough, so a secret inquiry has absolutely no chance of silencing a cynical public. Another possible explanation for this shameful piece of theatre is that it may be the formal creation of the first pages of the history of the war. Accepting that nothing short of a full public inquiry will satisfy those of us alive today, who can still remember with perfect clarity the shameful events that led to British forces participating in the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocent unarmed Iraqis, our controllers have moved on to creating the story that tomorrow’s innocents will learn through their history books. The official report, contrived from an official inquiry, will have the air of respectability that will more than suffice for the history books of the future. No matter that the report is a skillfully crafted compilation of half truths and ommissions drafted by carefully selected experts meeting in total secrecy. * Featuring quite prominently in yesterday’s news were images of policemen beating up a defenceless and unarmed man in Nottingham. The images were filmed by a passer-by using their mobile phone. The victim could be plainly seen lying on the ground defencelss (having already been ‘tazered’) as two hefty police officers mauled him around. Failing to do whatever it was they were trying to do, two more policemen turned up, one of whom decided that the man (who seemed almost unconscious) clearly needed more ‘tazering’. So after considerately waiting for his colleagues to stand clear, he blasted the helpless victim once again. Then all four piled onto him once more with one of them clearly swinging punches at the man’s back and head. And the police wonder why we hate them. 14 June 2009 Truly terrifying news is seldom found on page one of our newspapers. It’s usually tucked away somewhere obscure where it’s less likely to be noticed. Such was the case yet again last Saturday. The front page of the Times, where you might expect to see the most important stories affecting the nation, was given over to the Iranian presidential election and to a story about some comment expressed by the editor of Vogue magazine. Neither is of much importance to Britain. Many readers would have given up by page 37, having lives to live, and quite probably not expecting to learn anything more of interest anyway. Yet last Saturday, on page 37, was one of the most terrifying stories I have seen in recent times, a story that should have every parent out protesting at the school gates and on the streets. The piece was written in a sort of jokey style, so that even if you did get that far through the paper you might be ready for a bit of light relief and therefore tempted to laugh it off. I was so appalled I too wondered if it was a wind-up. It wasn’t. The story concerned an ad in the Times Educational Supplement – one of the nation’s leading notice-boards for teaching opportunities. MI5, spy HQ, is recruiting teachers. To make sure it wasn’t a wind-up I checked the TES website, and true enough there it is, large as life, at the top of the section titled ‘Other Positions’ titled: “Operational Intelligence Officers” and showing MI5 as the employer. What’s all that about? Anyone who still doubts the headlong gallop of our country towards full-blown police state needs to think about that ad; because what it tells us is that professional spies will soon be prowling the corridors of the nation’s schools, and not only directing the education of our young people, but eliminating anyone who might be deemed a ‘threat to national security’ – like dissenting teachers and student activists. Our spymasters have long been active in institutions where most people would not expect them – like the media for example, where journalists have been actively recruited for decades (the secret services had an office at the BBC until the mid-eighties, where they vetted all new recruits; both Jon Snow and John Simpson tell in their autobiographies how they were approached by MI5; Sandy Gall worked with MI6 in Afghanistan; and the CIA once boasted that up to the 1970s they either owned outright or could influence at least one newspaper in every major city in the world). But surely schools are hallowed ground? Surely this is one step too far? 5th June 2009 Local county elections were held yesterday. I stood as an Independent for the Grantham North District. I finished fourth out of five candidates, obtaining 333 votes representing about 11.5% of the total number cast. A 40% turnout, down from the 67% turnout of the last elections, reflected the real opinion of the silent majority: utter disillusionment. It is reasonable to say that as far as elections are concerned any result other than a win is a failure. However, to do so in my case would not only be an insult to the 333 people who voted for me, it would also disregard a few very important points. The first point to make is that I am not well or widely known, and the philosophy of Free Democracy is even less well known than that. Secondly, Grantham North is a huge Tory stronghold, and a very safe seat for any Tory candidate. It is a sad, but true observation that if a sack of potatoes were to stand under a Tory label, it would win a significant number of votes. Thirdly, we had very limited funding. My campaign could not have cost more than £100 in total, and apart from our next door neighbour kindly volunteering to post about 150 leaflets, relied totally on Lorraine and I doing the donkey work. Lastly, and perhaps most significantly, Free Democracy is an incredibly radical philosophy. Never in human history have the British people been allowed to make their own political decisions, so to propose a mechanism whereby they might do so is truly uncharted territory. My campaign leaflet was completely unequivocal about our beliefs, aims and aspirations, yet I was still supported by one voter in every eight. That is not insignificant or unimpressive. So all in all it is obviously sad that I did not win; but then I never really expected to. However, the most important achievement was the fact that I provided an opportunity for 7,319 voters to do the right thing – something that was unfortunately not available to any other voter in the land. 333 of that number wisely took advantage of that opportunity; but some 4,412 chose the second best alternative: to boycott the poll altogether. 29 May 2009 It was recently reported that David Cameron intends to reform government in order to ‘return power to the people’. It seems that this was a reaction to his fury at the outrageous abuses of the parliamentary expenses system that has been taking place under his very nose, and seemingly unnoticed by him until he read all about it in the Daily Telegraph. I was intrigued by the use of the word ‘return’. It made me browse through my (admittedly imperfect) memory banks in the section marked ‘History’, to try to recall the time to which he could have been referring. I couldn’t find one. When was power ever ‘in the hands of the people’? Amongst Mr Cameron’s fine ideas for actually achieving this noble aim is to notify us by text message when parliament has decided something. Gee, thanks David. That would really make me feel in control, and would definitely help eliminate parliamentary corruption. When I was browsing my memory bank I paused on the year 1832. The public mood in the country concerning the ruling elite was possibly similar to what it is today, and the word ‘Reform’ was on everyone’s lips, and for very similar reasons: government was affectionately and widely known as ‘Old Corruption’. A titanic and quite fascinating struggle ensued in parliament where Lord Grey sought to quell public unrest by introducing the ‘Great’ Reform Act. Although Grey’s reforms were passed by the Commons, they were rejected by the Lords, a decision which triggered rioting throughout the country (one of whose victims was Nottingham Castle). Grey dissolved parliament and a general election was held where there was only one issue – ‘Reform’. Although the pro-reformers comfortably won, the Lords still tried to scupper Grey’s proposals, and only conceded defeat when the PM threatened to create however many new lords were necessary to pass his bill. Although the PR machine of the day widely proclaimed the ‘Great’ Reform Act of 1832 to be a major triumph for the people, it’s really quite impossible to see how it increased the decision-making authority of the people one jot. Like so many other ‘triumphs’, before and since, there was considerably more froth than beer, and it wasn’t too long before the very considerable number of dissidents around in those days began to realise it. It was about this time that the Chartist movement became firmly established. Few people today have heard about the Chartists, as history quietly tries to airbrush them into oblivion; but they were without doubt the first powerful national organisation wholly committed to representing the interests of the British working class, epitomised with their idea for a People’s Parliament. (Although the Levellers were also a significant movement two hundred years earlier, with some similar ideals, they never became as powerful or as well organised as the Chartists.) When the Chartists organised a rally at Kennington Common in 1848, to be addressed by the charismatic Feargus O’Connor, the authorities were so concerned that they mobilised 8,000 troops and artillery, deputised thousands of special constables especially for the occasion and evacuated Queen Victoria to the Isle of White. That particular rally turned out a flop, but the Charter of the eponymous Chartists had become a firmly fixed political aspiration of the working classes and the government knew they had to do something, or face permanent revolution. The dilemma facing them was summarised by the writer Thomas Carlyle, who said: “How, in conjunction with inevitable Democracy, indispensable Sovereignty is to exist: certainly it is the hugest question heretofore propounded to mankind.” The government eventually responded (in 1867) with the Second Reform Act, and once again with considerable internal dissent. Although this move was also widely trumpeted by the state PR machine as delivering power to the people, Benjamin Disraeli, widely held up in breathless admiration as a ‘great statesman’ said of it: “I hope it would never be the fate of this country to live under a democracy... (The Second Reform Act is…) a bulwark against democracy.” However, many of the so-called (but rapidly diminishing) ‘freedoms’ we enjoy today owe more to the actions of dissidents such as the Levellers, Chartists and Suffragettes, and the very considerable personal sacrifices and suffering of all-but forgotten nineteenth century working class heroes, than the much trumpeted Magna Carta and the aristocrats who drafted it (Magna Carta, incidentally, was never intended to represent the common man, most of whom were considered the property of feudal lords and therefore without rights of any kind). The so-called ‘British Constitution’, deemed to be so perfect that it doesn’t need writing down anywhere, is of course a device to allow the elites who rule us to do so according to whatever whim possesses them. One of the leading authorities on the subject is still considered to be Walter Bagehot. He wrote: “Constitutional Royalty…acts as a disguise. It enables our real rulers to change without heedless people knowing it. The masses of Englishmen are not fit for an elective government.” A cartoon recently appeared in The Independent. It showed a sketch of David Cameron dressed up as an armour-clad Guy Fawkes deep within the empty bowels of parliament waving a children’s sparkler around. The message was of course that his proposals to ‘reform’ parliament are about as much use as a sparkler would be for blowing up the place. The cartoon could have represented with equal accuracy Brown or Clegg, or any of them. Meaningful reform will never come from those benefiting very nicely from the status quo. They might tinker around with a few cosmetic alterations and then use their awesome PR machine to deceive us into thinking significant change has been made, as with the so-called ‘Great’ Reform Act of 1832, but they will never ‘return’ power to the people for the simple reason that the people have never had power; and until the entire corrupt system is replaced, never will have. Our People’s Constitution proposes real and meaningful power to the people, and it does this by one simple device: it transfers all political decision making authority from the hands of powerful self-interested elites into the hands of properly informed ordinary citizens. This device, that would be so simple to do, represents the acid test of any politician’s sincerity when they bluster on about ‘returning power to the people’. None of the existing parties will ever subscribe to it because they would have to give up power, and all its material benefits. Providing ordinary people are properly informed they will invariably produce good and humane decisions; and until the people have that ultimate authority no amount of tinkering with relatively petty issues like parliamentary expenses will make one scrap of difference. Only the People’s Constitution would truly deliver real constitutional reform placing political power where it really belongs – for the first time ever – in the hands of the people. 10 May 2009 I’m intrigued by all the fuss on MPs’ allowances. The story has taken over from last week’s panic about our impending annihilation by swine flu, and is being endlessly covered by all the national media. MPs have been filching from the public purse one way or another since MPs were invented. In fact it’s so normal that it’s not even against any rules. So all the current hysteria must be intended for some other purpose (the general rule of thumb is that when the media are frantically pointing you in one direction it’s very important to look behind you). The question is: what? Finding out the truth about our rulers is very difficult. Take history. History is always taught in schools from the winners’ viewpoint, the unspoken assumption being that the winners’ cause is always right: good always triumphs over evil. History is taught as though the most important thing is to be factually correct: that dates are correct, that peoples’ names, places and events are all as accurate as existing evidence can show. This is all in the holy name of Objectivity, we are taught. However, it all starts to unravel once we venture into why an event occurred; and if by chance we touch upon the subject of the actual winnings of the winners (the losses of the losers are invariably ignored altogether), then the role of fiction assumes significant proportions. Consider for example the blood-soaked progress of the Christian Empire around the world. This thousand year long episode was, according to our teachers, the steady march of progress and enlightenment – never an excuse for slaughter, rape, enslavement and pillage. Ditto for the Roman Empire. What our history teachers consistently fail to teach us is the endless glorification of megalomaniac emperors and the elites who prop up their regimes, together with the terrible human costs required to feed their greed and power. We are taught that these people were ‘great’ – faultless role models for our breathless admiration and awe. Of the billions of ordinary people who have endured unimaginable suffering so the ‘great’ may be recorded in our history books as ‘great’, we learn next to nothing: their stories are the stories of losers, and therefore worthless. History is taught this way for a reason: to perpetuate the system; to condition our minds into acceptance of our servitude as the natural order of things. And the hypocrisy behind it is really quite breathtaking. The motto of the British monarch is ‘Ich dien’ – I serve. This is meant partly to create the touching illusion that the monarch’s first duty is their service to the British people – but more particularly to instil in the minds of their subjects that their first duty must therefore be to the monarch, in a sort of reciprocal arrangement. Whereas the truth of the matter is that the only cause the monarchy has ever truly served is its own enrichment, and that of its closest allies and enforcers. In a classic example of the general principle of government: rules and laws (and mottos) are only intended to keep the little people in check – it’s clearly understood they don’t apply to rulers. The little people have always been irrelevant, except where their existence can be turned to the one true timeless cause. Once this vital role of history in our conditioning is clearly understood, it becomes a little easier to see why the truth behind the daily current events that fill our newspapers and TV screens is so very difficult to determine. The dates and places and names may all conform to the standard requirements of historical accuracy, and therefore pass the ‘Objectivity’ test; but the reasons for those events are far more difficult to grasp. So to return to the controversy of the day – the very generous allowance system our leaders have chosen to provide for themselves. There is absolutely nothing new in this. More than two hundred years ago Tom Paine observed that: "Change of ministers amounts to nothing. One goes out another comes in and still the same measures, vices and extravagance are pursued. It signifies not who is minister. The defect lies in the system. The foundation and superstructure of government is bad." About thirty years later William Cobbett wrote: "The Duke of Marlborough is renting Marlborough House in Pall Mall to the Prince of Saxe Coburg for £3,000 a year. The good Duke himself pays just under £40 a year rent to the government for the selfsame building." Both comments could be contemporary news stories, instead of two centuries old. So the question is: why all the fuss about something that is as deeply ingrained into British government as the monarchy itself? At this stage of the game we cynics can only speculate. We have no more inside knowledge than any other normal mortal – but we can and do suspect that there is far more to it than meets the eye at first glance. A clearer understanding will slowly emerge as the inevitable changes to ‘clean up’ government are introduced; but one thing this particular cynic is quietly sure of: there may well be change, but government will not be one jot cleaner than it was last year, or two hundred years ago. After all, MPs’ expenses are just the tiny tip of an enormous iceberg. 9 May 2009 Last Saturday we were all doomed. We were all being urged to stock up with face masks and a particular anti-flu vaccine produced by a particular international drugs company. People holidaying in Mexico were returning home early and those planning to go there were cancelling their trips. School children were being told to stay at home. Mothers were refusing to let their children mix with any other children who had not been thoroughly dosed up with a particular anti-flu vaccine. The cause of the world-wide panic, swine flu, the ‘global pandemic’ that had possibly claimed fewer lives than lightning strikes over the same period, was never likely to do any more harm than normal seasonal flu; but last week it was not possible to pick up a newspaper or turn on the television or radio without endless coverage on the subject. This Saturday I couldn’t find any news at all about swine flu in The Times, and only noticed it being used as a subject by one of the paper’s columnists. The BBC possibly began the switch-off process a couple of days ago, when I noticed Fiona Bruce in some news bulletin ask the question: have we all been over-reacting to the swine flu story? A little knowing smile played across her face, like a kindly school teacher trying to bring calm and order to a class of over-excited eight year olds just in from the playground. As though the whole thing was our fault, a product of our childishness: a story created entirely by millions of silly people behaving just like the silly-billies we are. The media had nothing to do with it – they were only reporting what they saw. What a perfect example of how well programmed we are. When our media-masters click their fingers and demand mass hysteria, how dutifully we respond. And when they click their fingers once more to turn our flickering attention elsewhere, we instantly obey, like entranced stooges responding to a master hypnotist; none questioning for a minute the ridiculous spectacle they have just been required to perform for the master’s amusement. Who knows how many real stories passed under the radar while our international attention was being diverted by this wholly manufactured non-event; not for the first time, not for the last. 29 April 2009 Flying Pigs? As a hardened cynic I cannot in all honesty say that it was only the face masks that made me start to wonder, but they certainly piqued my curiosity. Mexican governments are not famous for their compassionate concerns for their own people. If ordinary Mexicans were truly important to their government why do they have to leave their country in their tens of thousands every year in order to be treated like slaves and fugitives in a hostile land? Why would you need to leave the comfort of your home and family and friends for such misery and hardship if you had such a kind and caring government? But what we see on our TV screens almost every day are images of ordinary Mexicans going about their business wearing pale blue face masks. We see images of uniformed face mask-wearing personnel strolling around the streets handing them out ‘free of charge’ to people not wearing them. It seems a strange thing to do for a government that is so unconcerned about its people that it’s quite happy to engineer its society in such a way that a life of slavery and fear in a racist xenophobic foreign land is preferable to life at home. The face masks are supposed to be a response to an alleged outbreak of ‘swine-flu’, that supposedly originated in Mexico. At least half of our TV news bulletins are given over to the topic, and it features on the front pages of all the national papers. We see the various ‘experts’ lining up to talk about ‘pandemics’ and to remind us all of the great flu outbreak in 1918 that killed more people than World War One. To bring it closer to home we see a story of a young Scottish couple who recently had a holiday in Mexico and are now in quarantine in a Scottish hospital where they are being treated for ‘swine-flu’. We see reporters going around the couple’s hometown interviewing citizens who might have breathed in the same air. We see the panic-stricken faces of those same citizens as they share their very real concerns about their safety and that of their loved ones. We haven’t quite got people running around hysterically pulling out their hair screaming that it’s the end of civilisation as we know it – but that doesn’t seem far off. Yet if we have a little look at the facts, as far as we know them, you can only scratch your head and wonder what all the fuss is about. At the time of writing the young Scottish couple who have shown ‘mild flu-like symptoms’ are the only confirmed cases in the UK, with a mere fifty other people being tested. According to The Independent today (29th April) the US has reported a total of 64 cases. In Mexico itself, where you would assume the disease must be completely out of control, about 2000 people are supposed to have it and 152 people are supposed to have died because of it – from a population of about 109,000,000. So this international panic reduces to the possibility of one in every 50,000 Mexicans having flu. Yet intriguingly the same report devotes just half a sentence to the rather conflicting information that ‘the World Health Organisation said it had notification of 79 confirmed cases worldwide.’ The report did not tell us how many people had been struck by lightning worldwide since the outbreak of this ‘pandemic’, but the comparison might have been interesting. In a different article in the Independent we learn that: ‘The World Health Organisation have said the deadly swine flu virus could no longer be contained and raised its alert to just two steps lower than the maximum of six, signifying a "significant increase in risk of a pandemic". Presumably this is the same WHO that reported “79 confirmed cases worldwide.”’ Let’s get back to the face masks. Why is the Mexican government distributing them to all and sundry? One of the many ‘experts’ gracing our TV screens yesterday, whose name escapes me, informed us that the face masks are all but useless for people hoping not to catch the infection, as contaminated air could pass around the sides of the mask. Furthermore, apparently the masks quickly become unserviceable because they become damp through the moisture in the breath of those using them. So why is the Mexican government distributing them so generously to all and sundry? Perhaps its intentions are not to help people remain infection-free themselves, but to help stop them spreading the virus. If the outbreak had occurred in Sweden say, one of the few countries that does seem to care about the welfare of its people, I might have thought that a credible explanation. But this is Mexico, whose government really couldn’t care a tinker’s cuss about the overwhelming majority of its people, and doesn’t seem a likely candidate to waste too many pesos on dishing out freebies. I’m sure there’s nothing suspicious about the fact that Emperor Obama apparently requested an extra $1.5 billion from the US congress yesterday to ‘build anti-virus stockpiles and to monitor the spread of the disease’ (presumably the WHO are not up to that particular job). Or the fact that whoever it is that’s in the business of making face masks is doing extraordinarily well at the moment (according to the Guardian: ‘The Department of Health is also in talks to "urgently increase" stockpiles of surgical face masks, to be used by doctors and nurses if infections spread more widely here.” – even though most ‘experts’ seem to agree the masks are all but useless); or printers (more from The Guardian: ‘The government is today preparing a mass information campaign that will see leaflets about swine flu delivered to every home in the UK as fears grow that the virus will become a pandemic.’) To say nothing of the assorted spooks and spin-doctors whose careers are entirely wrapped up with keeping the public in a permanent state of twitchy anxiety. I’m sure there’s no connections between any of these things. I predict this curiously named swine-flu ‘pandemic’ will go exactly the same way as the equally curious bird-flu ‘pandemics’ of the last couple of years; that a few more billions of taxpayer pounds will find their way into some dubious bank accounts; that no more people will die from flu than in any normal year without millions of government leaflets and face masks; and that our governments will proclaim this long and loud as ‘major victory’ and a direct consequence of their ‘vigilence’ and ‘leadership’. Having said all that I might actually try and get myself a freeby face mask if I can – it might screen the overwhelming aroma of pig shit. 27 April 2009 An All-American Boy Grows Up As a young chap growing up in far-away Rhodesia I used to be a huge fan of all things American. I used to view my dad’s deep-rooted mistrust of Americans as just another of his old-fashioned prejudices that was basically founded on jealousy – his dislike evolving from World War Two when he and his fellow undernourished British soldiers could not compete for the girls against the limitless supplies of nylon stockings and chocolate readily available from hunky well-fed American GIs. For me, however, someone wholly addicted to American movies, comic books and TV programmes (that comprised most of our supplies of those products), I just could not wait until I was old enough to emigrate and immerse myself in that wonderful culture of freedom. And this is the really interesting thing; not, I think, just as far as I’m concerned. Because what really appealed to me about all things American were their values: that they passionately believed in freedom and democracy and justice, and fought all their wars for those values. It wasn’t the fact that you could make lots and lots of money pursuing the American Dream that caught my interest, but that you could be really free. I never doubted it for a minute – why should I? Every movie, comic book and TV show I watched confirmed it all beyond a shadow of doubt. I cannot point to a single moment in time when I grew up, and realised that what I had believed for so very long was in fact a lie. It was probably quite a gradual process. Today, when I understand the phenomenon so much better, I cannot even soften the lie by seeing it as an ‘honest mistake’. Although I’m sure some of the writers of the comic books, TV shows and movies genuinely believed in the goodness and badness of their heroes and villains, being even more immersed in their own culture than I had been, the fact that absolutely no dissenting comic books, TV shows or movies were being made and marketed can only have a far more sinister explanation. Once I started to actively seek out truth, the flood gates opened, and the massive scale of the illusion and fraud became apparent to me. The one hope of real freedom and justice that I believed existed somewhere on the planet, happily in the most powerful country on Earth, was in fact the very opposite: the most cynical and corrupt regime anywhere to be found – made the most monstrous by the unchallengeable military machine that reinforced it. The self-styled champions of freedom and democracy were in fact the very opposite: the gangsters of oppression and tyranny. It felt like an old and valued friend had died – no, worse – had been gang-raped and murdered very slowly. The situation quite depressed me for quite a long time, and it took quite a while for me to realise the situation wasn’t quite as hopeless as it first appeared. Because once it dawned on me that most of the American people must be every bit as brainwashed about their country as I had been, being even more immersed in its elitist propaganda than I was, the solution slowly crystallised. There is no force on the face of the planet that the US government actually fears more than its own people. This fact is regularly proven by its paranoid rhetoric, getting ever more frenzied, a rhetoric intended to keep its people fearful and therefore accepting of any brutality it hands out – at home or abroad. So surely it must be that force, the American people, that must be carefully nurtured. This was a significant relief for me – as though discovering that my old and valued friend wasn’t actually dead after all, just very, very ill. Obviously the vast majority of ordinary Americans are just like I was. Having bought all the same PR merchandise, and more, why shouldn’t they be? And, just like me, it will be those same values of the PR merchants’ American Dream they love: the freedom, equality and justice, rather than a burning desire for limitless wealth that inspires them. What happens when they, like me, realise they’ve been tricked? Today international anti-American sentiment is probably at an all-time high, and growing exponentially as her imperial ambitions become more widely understood. I’m very relieved to be able to say in all honesty that I don’t share those sentiments. It’s essential to realise that the American people have nothing to do with their government – that although they live in relative comfort, they too are its victims. It is the US government that is the most sinister terrorist regime on the planet, not the American people, who are currently as powerless as the people of Timbuktu to do anything about it. Slowly, slowly more and more people are realising that the cynical illusion of western democracy is no more than a cheap trick to keep them oppressed; that they have no more power to influence their rulers than our descendents had a thousand years ago; that, to quote Tom Paine from more than two hundred years ago: “Change of ministers amounts to nothing. One goes out, another comes in and still the same measures, vices and extravagance are pursued. It signifies not who is minister. The defect lies in the system. The foundation and superstructure of government is bad.” Ironically, if the US government were to actually practice the values it preaches to everyone else: the freedom, justice and equality, it would be universally admired and caressed and, because it would still be the most powerful military machine on the planet, even more secure than it is today. And the truly ironic thing is that it would be economically richer and more stable too. Its real vulnerability is its tyranny over its own people – a natural product of the get-rich-quick economic policies it has pursued since its creation; policies designed to enrich whatever crop of plunderers have kicked and gouged their way into power without a care in the world for those who must supply the wealth, or for tomorrow’s generation. Simple solutions are available. First is self belief – even more important than education. We are programmed from birth into a culture of leadership, into believing that we as individuals are not capable of doing anything unless someone is leading us. Leadership is grossly overrated. We need to realise that each and every one of us is capable of independent thought and independent action, that each and every one of us can take some small action within our means and abilities to help effect real change. But the action must never cause physical injury to anyone: non-violence is a far more powerful and effective tool than violence for changing our society – ask Ghandi and MLK. Self belief is not only essential for effecting change now, but also for managing change in the future. Next is education. Just one person acting on their own can educate others. It isn’t necessary to do anything more complicated than distributing reading lists. People love lists, and a list of your ten favourite dissident books, and three favourite radical websites (make sure they’re all easily readable and not too hysterical – loud and aggressive people must always be avoided) is bound to attract some attention. Nothing inspires action as much as education. Once people know what’s really going on it’s almost impossible not to act, to do something, even if the action is no more than passive opposition to the system. Third is voting. People need to realise that political parties are the cancer of democracy and at the very heart of the corruption that controls us. They are an essential part of the leadership culture that destroys individual self belief. Until such time as Independent believers in Free Democracy can provide a system of government where the people may take direct control of their governments’ decisions, citizens should only vote for ordinary Independents. If there are no Independents to choose from the people should not vote at all – follow the wonderful Haitian ‘Closed Door’ example and boycott the polls, refuse to dignify a corrupt and broken system by using it. Fourth is to stand in elections as an Independent believer in Free Democracy (or something very similar). The mere act of competing in elections is a fine way of educating people into the realities of life at the same time as offering real choice. Losing votes doesn’t matter – a valuable public service is served simply by trying to unseat the established parties. Fifth is not quite so simple – but not that difficult either, and is anyway essential: drafting a new Peoples’ Constitution (Free Democracy has a fine example of one that others can adapt). New constitutions are important – much more important than human leaders. A new Peoples’ Constitution serves the vital function of an intellectual focal point that can serve the individual self-reliant citizen far, far more usefully than human leaders (who are too easily corruptible). It serves the equivalent purpose of Marx’s Manifesto or Mao’s Little Red Book. But your constitution must ensure that the people have real and actual control, not the illusory controls through third parties of better known constitutions; that only the people can change it; that it is the supreme law of the land and that each and every public servant is obliged to serve the constitution as their first duty, and in defiance of superiors if needs be in the sure knowledge they could not be victimised for doing so. Most of these few things are simple and cheap to do, and serve as those essential first steps. These solutions are floating just out of reach of the hands of the American people, people who cannot in any way be held responsible for the considerable sins of their governments – past and present, and future too unless they acquire some self-belief. The overwhelming majority of Americans, being carefully brainwashed from birth, are as ignorant of the truth of their own country as most other people are, and have no real choice of how they are governed. How could they not be ignorant, or given any real political power? Their system ensures both situations are carefully maintained and perpetuated. But it is a fragile control. The people need little more than to be properly educated, and then offered real choice at the ballot box by an abundance of Independent candidates who believe in Free Democracy, or something very like. It’s not that difficult. 6 April 2009 Hollow Victory "The truth, carefully crafted, is the biggest lie of all" The word ‘victory’, reinforced with an unnecessary exclamation mark, was sprawled across the front page of the Grantham Journal on 3rd April 2009 in letters two inches high. Just below was a photograph of some happy-looking elderly chaps, presumably ex-soldiers. The story related to a local campaign recently run by the Journal to raise money for a memorial to service personnel who have died since 1945. When the paper launched their campaign about a month ago I wrote to the editor pointing out that their project was, at the very least, misguided, for the very simple reason that every conflict that has involved British troops since 1945 has been opposed to spreading freedom and democracy, not supporting it, as the Journal’s campaign claimed. I cited Kenya, Congo, Palestine and Egypt as a small sample of cases in point; there are of course, many others. Unsurprisingly, the editor chose not to print my letter. However, despite the fact that Grantham is a garrison town, and given the Journal’s relentless propaganda campaign for their little memorial, together with the almost daily jingoistic rhetoric from the national media, the paper tells us that ‘donations have been received from more than 50 individuals.’ Wow. Overwhelming or what? As I pointed out in the letter the Journal refused to publish, to equate the causes of those who died fighting Nazi fascism with those who die today helping to police international American gangsterism is not only an insult to World War 2 victims, which is bad enough, it is also a vindication of the cynical abuse of today’s armed forces, which is considerably worse. It would seem from the embarrassingly sad number of contributions to the Journal’s cause that the public have not yet been totally numbed into senselessness. Anti-war activists have always been routinely criticised by people such as newspaper editors. In the past there have even been calls that we should be tried as traitors. Our virulent hatred of war is translated for its propaganda value as treachery to our troops. Yet the simple fact is that no-one cares more for the safety of our troops than an anti-war activist. We want them so safe that they are never put into harm’s way in the first place. Our armed forces are meant to protect Britain, not act as imperial stormtroopers. It was bad enough in the days when it was our own empire they were brutally enforcing; today they are stormtrooping for someone else, which is just about the most obscene abuse of our own forces imaginable. Make no mistake, I’m no shrill opponent of the British Empire peering primly through my rose tinted spectacles and a hundred years of hindsight. At the time, with half a dozen other European countries competing for world domination, it was kill or be killed. If it hadn’t been the British Empire over which the sun never set, it would have been someone else’s, France probably. It’s a slim excuse for international gangsterism, but it was nevertheless a legitimate excuse. Today that excuse is no longer valid. We have an international body called the United Nations which, if it were permitted to do its job, could eliminate war altogether. The fact that it is not allowed to do its job is directly attributable to the current empire which has, since the end of the Second World War, been resolutely committed to ensuring the UN’s uselessness – except, obviously, when it suites the purposes of empire. The vicious attacks on our anti-war activists by our own media are of course entirely consistent with a propaganda machine. Herman Göring, who was no slouch on the subject, once observed: “The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. All you have to do is tell them they’re being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism. It works the same way in any country.” It really is quite obscene, this sycophantic subservience of our media to the ruthless elites who rule us and who send our armed forces to distant parts of the planet, there to enforce the savage looting of scarce resources in the name of More, the God of Plunder, while all the while cynically pretending an interest in ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’, worthy values they actually snuff out at every opportunity. This is NOT what our forces should be doing, and the fact that our media whip up popular frenzy for this sick abuse of our young people makes the media every bit as culpable for war crimes as Joseph Goebbels once was. The Journal’s propaganda campaign is anything but a victory, and the mere fifty contributors to it after weeks of relentless promotion pretty well shows that most people know it – and they wonder why their sales are falling. 30 March 2009 April Fool Last Saturday (28.3.09), The Times published an opinion piece by one Carl Mortished. My first reaction to it wasn’t so much one of anger, it was more a sort of jaw-dropping incredulity. Mr Mortished is apparently the world business editor for the Times, so you might assume he’s reasonably bright. When I pointed out his article to my wife she quickly reminded me of the fact that it’s almost 1st April, the day when journalists like to produce truly ridiculous stories as a mild distraction from the more normal misinformation that comprises their daily fare. Of course, the thing must have been Mr Mortished’s idea of a joke. Nevertheless, it was interesting that the joke was clearly intended for rich elites at the expense of ordinary people, rather than the other way around; but then I suppose that is what you might expect from a world business editor. The joke was nicely summarised in the title of the column: “Abolish MPs’ pay. Politics is not a career.” When you read it to find out exactly how Mr Mortished proposes MPs might feed themselves, you learn that he proposes: “During their time in parliament, the MP’s previous employer would be required to give financial support.” It’s a very good thing that we realise Mr Mortished’s piece is a joke. Otherwise you could only conclude the man secured his position through intimate family connections rather than any intellectual ability – or the Times is an elitist publication wholly opposed to the notion of democracy (and that cannot possibly be, can it?) One of the many clever devices our supposedly ‘serious’ media employ to deceive us is the carefully contrived half-truth: that old trick where they tell you the truth, but they only tell you half of it; the half that conforms to the particular propaganda model they’re peddling. Mr Mortished used a similar device quite effectively in his column by including several points that were either entirely true, or widely perceived as true. For example, he starts off by attacking the bankers and those corrupt politicians making today’s headlines, knowing full well they’re all everyone’s favourite bad guys at the moment. Then he affects to be one of the people by pretending to be a real worker himself: “The whole cabal of bankers, MPs, ministers and CEOs seem to have their snouts in the trough, roistering while we toil. We are overworked and underpaid while they are always on the gravy train.” This from the world business editor of an international news organisation. Then he attacks politics, which is usually a fairly safe bet (and especially so when the Home Secretary’s husband is in the news for trying to claim public expenses for subscribing to a TV porn channel): “What manner of work is politics?” he asks, answering the question himself a little later: “An MP is not employed. Therefore he should not have a wage.” This populist nonsense is then mixed with one or two perfectly valid points: that CEOs are obscenely rewarded as though they were real entrepreneurs, which of course they’re not; and that in an ideal world all public servants (including MPs) would see their work as a vocational service rather than a pampered, privileged, secure existence entirely funded by the gullible taxpayer. He even throws in a reference to Plato’s Republic to create the impression that in addition to being ‘overworked and underpaid’ he is also a man of culture. Of course the piece was a joke, wasn’t it, not intended to be taken seriously? Surely no one could take seriously the suggestion that our law makers should be in the full time employment of corporations; could they? However, the very final question of his piece does just make you wonder: “If the Commons in 2003,” he writes, “had been filled with intelligent, independent men and women with real outside careers, would it have voted to go to war in Iraq?” Even now, after reading that sentence about ten times, I still find my jaw dropping in disbelief. To quote a very famous American: he cannot be serious. Can he? After writing an article whose title tells us that ‘politics is not a career’, he concludes by proposing that our law makers should be people with outside careers, many of which would significantly depend on the laws they pass. Can he possibly be serious with that word ‘independent’? Can the world business editor possibly not realise that nothing is as good for business as a war? Does he really imagine that an employee of an arms maker, say, is going to have an ‘independent’ view about whether the country should go to war? So the obvious answer to his question, an answer that even the slowest child must surely see, is yes, of course his Commons filled with such ‘independent’ men and women would have voted for war in 2003; and most probably also every year since then. It’s just as well we know Mr Mortished’s piece was a joke. Wasn’t it? 21 March 2009 A Lesson to be Learnt Politicians are well known liars; so well known that it hardly needs pointing out. Whether they are lying about spying on political rivals (Nixon), closing down coal mines (Thatcher), women they’ve had sex with (Clinton), or mythical weapons of mass destruction (Blair/Bush), lying and politicians go together like pigs and brown smelly stuff. However, the very sizeable arsenal of tools of deceit available to their fingertips is not confined to the more obvious porkies such as these few crass examples. Indeed, for everyday purposes there are far more subtle devices available. Take the ‘honest mistake’. Hardly a day goes go by without a very brief appearance of some important person in a suit on TV informing the nation about some inquiry or investigation into yet another government failure, where ‘lessons have been learnt’. It will always be some earnest-looking individual who appears to be truly shocked at the catalogue of ‘mistakes’ his/her investigation has revealed. The phrase ‘lessons to be learnt’ is now almost as familiar to our daily news as ‘and now for the weather’. The most obvious and familiar calamity where the words ‘lessons’ and ‘learnt’ are as common as ‘failed bank’ and ‘government bailout’ is of course the destruction of the western economy. Almost every politician in the world, together with the media lapdogs who obediently peddle their lies, is standing solidly behind the cover story that the disaster was entirely unpredictable; that it was the result of numerous ‘mistakes’; and that inevitable ‘lessons have been learnt’ to prevent it ever happening again. Well that’s o.k. then. Why ordinary people should waste a single second of their time listening to exactly the same people who ‘led’ us into the cesspit earnestly advising us on how to get out of it instead of grovelling for their lives as they should be doing, is a legitimate question that many are asking. The institutionalised ‘honest mistake’ is nothing new. It has comprised a significant part of US foreign policy for at least half a century, and has been successfully employed internally by that nation almost since its creation. The American sponsored holocaust of South East Asia in the 1960s and 70s is officially recorded for the history books as a ‘well-meaning blunder’ – something that was admittedly disastrous but was an ‘honest mistake’, made by good people with the world’s best interests at heart. It is the sort of deceit that is almost plausible – were it not for the fact that an exactly similar ‘well-meaning blunder’ had occurred not ten years earlier – in Korea. You could be forgiven for thinking that even the slowest mind must have started to smell a rat when the failure of mythical weapons of mass destruction to materialise was basically excused by faulty ‘intelligence’. However, as that great teacher John Pilger has pointed out on more than one occasion, quoting the dissident writer Milan Kundera: ‘The struggle of people against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.’ (‘Freedom Next Time’ p. 37.) In other words, whilst history continues to selectively ignore the memories of those who can well remember the ‘mistakes’, the ‘mistakes’ may be safely repeated over and over again. This systemic ability to continue making ‘honest mistakes’ has been noticed by many others of course, and even excused by some such as historian Gabriel Kolko: ‘The world’s leaders and their governments have time after time revealed an ignorance that has cost humanity a price in suffering beyond any measure.’ (‘Century of War p. 454) The assumption that the world’s condition of Permanent War is a product of the permanent ‘ignorance’ of our leaders explains how ‘honest mistakes’ may be endlessly made – it’s through honest ignorance. Ignorance is something with which we can all identify – it is, after all, the condition in which we ordinary mortals are all carefully kept; so at first glance it seems reasonable that our ‘leaders’ might also suffer from the same complaint. Except for one small problem: all our ‘leaders’ have at their fingertips a wide range of very expensive experts who are supposed to guide them from one faultless decision to another. Either these experts routinely fail in their duty, or their guidance is routinely ignored. So ‘ignorance’ cannot be a valid excuse; it is either incompetence, or something far more sinister. The examples from history of this ‘ignorance’ in practice are truly legion, as Mr Kolko pointed out; but let us focus on perhaps the most recent well known occurrence: the destruction of the world’s economy. Hardly a day goes by without some ‘expert’ or ‘leader’ commenting on the ruin of the world’s economy in terms of the ‘mistakes’ made and the ‘lessons that have been learnt’ to ensure it never happens again. Included in the long catalogue of ‘mistakes’ is the one that no one saw it coming; the collapse of world banking took everyone by surprise. This is simply a flat out lie; and the evidence is widely available. The first inklings of a serious problem started to become widely known about twelve years ago; for it was about twelve years ago that tens of thousands of UK home owners with mortgages began receiving letters from banks and building societies telling them that the endowment policies they held in the hope they would pay off their mortgages, in fact wouldn’t. It was about the same time the first major banking scandal of modern times had rocked the world with the revelation that a ‘rogue trader’ – Nick Leeson – had caused the collapse of Barings Bank through his dodgy deals. Dodgy deals that soon transpired to be quite routine and common practice; Mr Leeson’s misfortune being only that he was found out. A few years later, an exactly similar story from Germany demonstrated that absolutely no ‘lessons had been learnt’ from the Leeson saga. In other words, the banking world knew exactly what was going on and, as our ‘leaders’ presumably have access to the same news as the rest of us, we can assume that they did too. They all simply chose to look the other way. ‘Ignorance’ had nothing to do with it. It was simply a question of make as much cash as quickly as possible while the sun still shone and hope the rain stayed away until it was someone else’s problem. Whether we look at the world’s carefully maintained condition of Permanent War, the destruction of its economy, or the ruin of its delicate ecology we find a common thread: ‘leaders’ making decisions that are later seen to be ‘mistaken’ or ‘ignorant’ by new ‘leaders’ who have ‘learnt lessons’ and ‘moved on’. In fact the most important lesson of all is studiously avoided – not because no one knows about it – but because our ‘leaders’ depend upon it for their existence; and that lesson is this: the whole decision making process of the world’s most powerful figures is institutionally corrupt and designed with the sole purpose of their own enrichment and empowerment. The welfare of today’s ordinary people is entirely irrelevant to them, and the welfare of tomorrow’s ordinary people is even less significant. This, the single most important ‘lesson to be learnt’ should be learnt not by our ‘leaders’, who know it already, but by the ordinary men and women who alone comprise the only body capable of doing anything about it. For it is only when ordinary people take control of their own lives by making their own political decisions that global institutionalised corruption might be permanently consigned to the blood-soaked pages of history where it belongs. 3 March 2009 Leading today’s news is the story that the government is to impose some new restrictions on the purchase of alcohol in Scotland. Now that they have finally succeeded in banning smoking almost everywhere except the privacy of one’s garden shed, it is now very clear that the one remaining pleasure available to us – drink – is next on their hit list. Of course their campaign has all the usual hallmarks of a well-oiled propaganda machine in full swing. Our TV screens are filled with images of people falling over in the street at midnight; of the sad families of people killed by drivers who have had a drink; of grim looking medical-types complaining about the number of alcohol-related illnesses that are clogging up their precious NHS. Consistent with all crude propaganda campaigns we do not get a single glimpse of the other side of the coin: the tens of millions of people who go out every night for a few drinks with their friends and who somehow manage to get home safely without falling over in the street; the possibly far greater numbers of accident victims where the drivers are completely sober; the fact that those NHS patients with alcohol problems have paid into the NHS all their working lives and are fully entitled to good health care from a service they’ve entirely funded. I’m not very convinced the government’s apparent concern for our health is as pure as they would have us believe. Being an entirely venal administration the chances that someone somewhere is looking to make a quick buck is not unlikely. Qui bono? Who benefits? Our all-but-completely-privatised health service is largely run by corporation types who aim to make big profits from providing our health treatment. The very last thing they want to see is sick people. Sick people require treatment which equals expense which equals reduced profits. Having successfully cleared out a huge number of sick people by successfully killing off A&E services in hospitals, and getting the government to criminalise smokers, they’re moving their attention to the next batch of people who sometimes need a bit of help – those who enjoy a drink or two. The government’s anti-alcohol campaign has nothing to do with their concern for our health (free sports facilities would be a more sincere gesture of their compassion – if they had any). This latest witch-hunt of theirs is just like any other supposedly done on our behalf – to produce profits for cronies. Not entirely unrelated to this was a story about some parliamentary jolly-boys outing to Northern Ireland (not a bad venue now it’s a bit safer for the little darlings). Their purpose, supposedly, was to canvas opinion about pots of public money being doled out to bank managers. Why the jolly-boys had to go to Ireland for this exercise is a total mystery to me (only a cynic would think it might have had something to do with the fact that it was right after the weekend when England played Ireland in rugby). Anyway, whilst I’m all in favour of heaping as much public opprobrium upon the heads of bankers as is humanly possible, I wouldn’t like the wider public to lose sight of the fact that the bankers are only the very well paid fall-guys. The real villains have not yet been held to account. The real villains are of course the politicians, because it is they who are ultimately responsible for scrapping the legislation that had been in place to prevent the destruction of the world’s banking system. I’m all for Sir Fred and his buddies being stripped of their scandalous, obscene public pension handouts, BUT… if we’re going after obscene public pension handouts we should also be including Brown, Blair AND their Tory opposite numbers all of whom silently acquiesced in dismantling the laws that policed the banking system. The vacuous twittering about the ‘mistakes’ that were made, and the ‘lessons they’ve learnt’ is not good enough. These people knew exactly what they were doing; and they should all be held to account along with the noble Sir Fred and his gang. Also in the news was a piece about Blair and how ‘shocked’ he was at the devastation inflicted in Gaza by the Zionists. Apparently it was his first visit to the area. He was appointed to the gravy-train position of Middle East ‘Peace’ Envoy TWO YEARS ago! So concerned has he been about the genocide being perpetrated under his nose it’s taken him TWO YEARS to go see for himself! Finally a piece of local news. The Grantham Journal, our local paper, is campaigning for support for its plan to erect a war memorial to the British forces who have been killed since World War 2, ‘fighting for peace and freedom’. I am totally opposed to their campaign and wrote a letter to the Journal to say so. It did not get published. So I’ll put it here: “Your memorial campaign, though well-intentioned I’m sure, is fundamentally flawed. To equate the causes of those who died fighting Nazi fascism with those who die today helping to police international American gangsterism is not only an insult to World War 2 victims, which is bad enough, it is also a vindication of the cynical abuse of today’s armed forces, which is considerably worse. “The conflicts sited in your article: Borneo, Malaya, Korea and Aden, and a few more besides: Kenya, Congo, Palestine and Egypt were all conflicts where British troops were used to oppose freedom and peace not, as the proposed wording of your memorial states, to support it; and the Falklands conflict was no more than a PR exercise for a crippled Prime Minister staring at electoral defeat. “Our armed forces have been terribly abused since 1945, cynically manipulated as political pawns to lend an appearance of respectability to US imperial ambitions. Those British personnel who have paid the ultimate sacrifice should indeed be remembered, but in the right and proper context, as victims of their very own political leaders, as tragic evidence of exactly why no young person should consider taking the queen’s shilling today.” 26 February 2009 It was announced today that that honourable knight ‘Sir’ Fred Goodwin, ex-CEO of the Royal Bank of Scotland, is beginning his retirement (age 50) on a cool £50k a month. It simply beggars belief. How can someone who presides over the destruction of his own company, to the tune of billions of pounds, be rewarded with a fifty grand a month payment for the rest of his life? How can such thing happen anywhere other than a nation run entirely by gangsters entirely for gangsters? Not that such an obscene event is the only evidence of exactly why our system of government must be replaced. In the space of just over a week our illustrious leaders have provided us with three more shining examples of exactly why the system they carefully protect is broken beyond repair; and proving beyond any reasonable doubt that replacement is the only solution. Last weekend saw the introduction of The Banking Act 2009; then two days ago we were informed that Jack Straw had vetoed a ‘freedom of information’ request to provide details of the cabinet discussions leading up to Britain’s illegal war in Iraq; and postal workers have been protesting against the government’s clear intention to sell off yet more of the postal service. The Banking Act appears to be every bit as insidious as the various government decisions taken over the last ten years and more to de-regulate the banking industry – the prime reason for the collapse of the world’s banking system and the existence of such gross obscenities as ‘Sir’ Fred’s golden handshake. This latest piece of legislation allows for government intervention in future banking crises to take place in secret. There is no conceivable situation where such secrecy could be required. It is completely unacceptable to allow a failed and discredited system to play fast and loose with taxpayers’ money and draft legislation to ensure those same taxpayers never find out about it. In a move directly related to the government’s desire to keep secret their questionable handling of taxpayers’ money, Jack Straw has vetoed a request under the so-called ‘Freedom of Information Act’ to allow the release of documents detailing cabinet discussions prior to the illegal war in Iraq. His excuse for doing so is that it is not ‘in the public interest’. Mr Straw has done more to expose the deep cynicism of this piece of law than any humble hack such as myself could ever hope to do: the quite ludicrous and Orwellian ‘Freedom of Information Act’ provides for the release of government information - unless the government doesn’t feel like releasing it. Then that other great pillar of our establishment, ‘Lord’ Mandelson, contributed on Tuesday to our cause to replace the government, by assuring us that the Post Office will not be privatised – it just needs private money. Can there possibly be any more convincing spectacle of government corruption or incompetence (for it must be one or the other) than to see it pouring hundreds of billions of pounds worth of taxpayers’ money into banks that the private sector have ruined, at exactly the same time as it tries to sell off yet another public asset, paid for with public funds, to that same private sector? It would be interesting to know how much of the ‘arrangement fee’ for killing off our post offices will be sticking to ministerial fingers. Not that we’ll ever find out – it wouldn’t be in the public interest. 20 February 2009 Here’s a funny thing. Three nights ago (Tuesday) I heard on BBC news that the trial had started of eight men charged with plotting in 2006 to blow up various aeroplanes. The story was quite prominent, and featured the following day in most of the newspapers too, with one of them speculating that the trial was expected to last ten months. Then on Wednesday night, towards the end of the Beeb’s news, a very short mention that the trial had ended… because the judge had dismissed the jury. I couldn’t find any coverage at all of that little snippet of news in any of the papers the following day. The BBC website says only that the jury was dismissed ‘for legal reasons’. How is it that a trial so important that it makes all the nationals on one day, a trial so important that it’s expected to last ten months, yet when it ends in very mysterious circumstances after just one day, it doesn’t rate reporting at all in most if not all of the nationals, and is worth no deeper explanation on the BBC than ‘the jury was dismissed for legal reasons’? On exactly the same theme, we’ve recently been informed that the Muslim cleric Abu Qatada, who has been imprisoned in the UK without charge for a few years now, may be deported to his native Jordan – one of the empire’s client states known to torture prisoners – where it seems he will almost certainly be jailed once again. When he was discussing this story on TV last night, the Beeb’s ‘security’ expert, Frank Gardner, informed us that Mr Qatada has been imprisoned without charge for all this time because bringing him to trial would mean using government witnesses whose identity cannot be revealed. We’ve had trials before where witnesses have had their identity concealed. Why not this one? How long will it be before this farce of a judicial system is overthrown? Today’s Independent reports that almost 60 new restrictions on our liberty have been created through 25 new acts of parliament since Labour came to power in 1997. This in the total absence of any evidence whatsoever that our society is one jot more dangerous than it was thirty years ago. Police state Britain is well and truly here. Changing the subject somewhat... A few years ago, when it was located on St Peter’s Hill, I worked at the Jobcentre. Today, as one of the two million unemployed people that the government admits to, I attend Jobcentre ‘Plus’ as a ‘jobseeker’. In my day, when it was a humble Jobcentre, its stock in trade was jobs: it was where you went if you wanted to find work. You could also go there and pick up an information leaflet on most aspects of employment law if you had a query about your employment rights, and probably talk to a helpful human being as well. Not anymore you can’t (not through any fault of the frontline staff I hasten to add). When I first appeared at the newish Jobcentre ‘Plus’ tucked away in Castlegate a few weeks ago I wondered why it was so quiet, compared with the permanent queues of my day. The answer, it seems, is that the Jobcentre no longer deals in jobs, which might explain why it is known by many of its users as ‘the joke shop’; and its newish location, well hidden from any passing public, no doubt helps keep people away. If you turn up there hoping to look for work you might be directed to a machine where you could search for vacancies anywhere in the country. Very impressive. You might even be allowed to use a telephone to enquire about them; but as for seeing a human being to help you find work in Grantham, forget it; you would probably be re-directed to one of the now numerous ‘employment agencies’, which have spread everywhere like mould and seem little more than modern slave markets. And as for information about your rights… not a leaflet in sight; you could be forgiven for thinking you haven’t got any rights to enquire about. George Orwell would have loved the term Jobcentre ‘Plus’. Today’s public services could be lifted directly from the pages of ‘1984’ where the titles of government departments were the very opposite of their actual functions. Consider: our Ministry of ‘Defence’ would be far better called the Permanent War Department; the BBC could be the Ministry of Deceptive Services; the ‘National Health Service’ would be more accurately titled International Medical Investments plc; and it would be far, far more accurate if Jobcentre ‘Plus’ were re-named Jobcentre Minus. 14 February 2009 I am not a big one for poring over the details of tragic accidents. In my view there’s something rather ghoulish about doing so. Pain is something private, and those enduring it, if they cannot be helped, should be left to endure in private and the care of friends and family until time can work its magic. Making public spectacles of their grief is simply macabre. So when I glanced at the front page of this morning’s Times and into the unmissable sad eyes of a lady whose husband was killed in the Twin Towers I was already half way to turning the page; but I noticed the headline informing me that she too had been killed… in an airplane crash two days ago just outside New York. Tragic enough, I thought, that a Brit should have been amongst the many victims of 9/11, but how ironic that his wife should be killed in a similar accident so far away from home. It made me wonder what part of the country she was from. So I found the article and read it. There was no mention of where she came from; and her husband seems to have been an American. A bit of further checking revealed that it seems they were both American. It is, of course, a difficult thing to question a tragedy, and it is a reasonable story for the Times to find space for; but on the front page? Is a tragic accident of an American in America really the most crucial piece of news that British people should be aware of? Contrast it with the ‘news’, if you could possibly call it that, on page 27 of the same edition. Taking up just two sentences, the nation is informed that the police officers responsible for shooting Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menezes seven times in the head – not exactly an accident – are not to be prosecuted; even though the killing was ‘not a “lawful killing”’. What is really the more important issue to Britain? A tragic accident involving an American in America, or British police walking away scot free from committing an unlawful killing? 1 February 2009 Part of me wants to say: ‘Why are we still even listening to them? Why is the media paying so much attention to economic solutions offered by the very same people who have shattered the world’s economy and destroyed the western banking system? Why are we doing that? It’s bad enough when someone you trust knowingly stuffs you once, so why, why do we bend over and ask them to do it again?’ But I know the answer: we are given no choice. We are still listening to the likes of Gordon Brown, Peter (‘Lord’) Mandelson, and the endless series of ‘experts’ on TV blaming banks and speculators (anyone but the government) for ruining the world’s economy for the simple reason that no one is offering any alternatives; or, if they are, they are being kept well away from the limelight. Yesterday’s paper was quite illuminating, in a sad sort of way. Leading with the news about the series of strikes across the country in protest at the use of gangs of foreign workers whilst domestic unemployment soars, The Times assumed its expectedly sniffy position – the sort of position that is often assumed by well-fed, comfortably employed, very well paid creatures of the establishment. There were concerns about increasing racism and ‘oxygen for the BNP’; but not a word about the very real problems and dangers that the strikers, not for the first time, have highlighted and are trying to bring to the nation’s attention. The essence of the problem appears to be this: British companies and foreign companies working in Britain are entitled to use workers from anywhere in the EU. The strike in Immingham that started the ball rolling was over Total (a foreign company) employing a largely Italian workforce (who seem to be housed in a barge somewhere offshore) whilst local British workers are unemployed. I ask the reader to bear with me. I find it very difficult to write about this stuff because of the rage inside me: the shear evil behind this situation is something that should have every decent citizen up and down the land out on the streets. Whilst I stop short of calling for the guillotines to be sharpened, it is only just short. You see, the law has been carefully crafted in such an iniquitous way that companies have every incentive and opportunity to exploit the entire European labour force. Companies may shop around the continent to find the cheapest and most vulnerable workforce available and employ those people in foreign countries where employment rights and half-decent working conditions are next to impossible to police. I mean, if one of Total’s Italian workers, for example, injures himself in Immingham or is unfairly dismissed, just what exactly can that worker do about it? Which court is going to hear his case? The law has been fashioned to enrich elites and convert the workforce into slavery. Saturday’s Times featured an article by Mandelson. It was titled ‘Four sober steps on the road to recovery.’ The fact that one of the country’s leading opinion formers gives half a page of space to someone who has not only been twice sacked for questionable activities in the performance of his duties and who I understand is still being investigated for questionable activities whilst employed by the EEC, but was also a highly prominent figure in the same Blair government that engineered the country’s economic demise, should speak volumes. Nay, it shrieks volumes. Why, dear reader, why is this pillar of media respectability supporting one of the gang who might reasonably be held accountable for our country’s ruin? That some of our ‘trusted leaders’ have not only actively conspired to create this situation but have been ‘ennobled’ for doing so should really be the final straw. I mean, just how many times must we be shafted by our own government before the system that sustains it is overthrown? How long before Free Democracy is installed and the people can finally assume control of their own lives? THE REBEL, THE STRIKER AND THE HERETIC ARE NEARLY ALWAYS RIGHT. 23 January 2009 The Emperor is dead. Long live the Emperor. Last Tuesday we were treated to endless saturation coverage of the coronation of Emperor Obama. If it achieved nothing else, it did just confirm how very much work there is to be done: that so many people (millions, we were told, flocking into Washington for the big day) seriously think that this new figurehead is going to make a single scrap of difference to a planet whose sacred purpose of enriching the motherland is more and more being taken for granted. The BBC coverage was gloriously sycophantic, as befits an organisation so deeply immersed in subservience to human deities. Having spent minimal costs covering the holocaust of Gaza (which conveniently ended two days before the Emperor’s coronation), the Beeb was able to have plenty of reporters on hand to cover the really big story. However, try as they might to erase the blip of Gaza from our memories, Gaza itself was not quite ready to be dismissed from our news. Yesterday it emerged that when British charities approached the Beeb for two minutes of its precious airtime to screen an appeal for funds for the relief of Gaza, the request was denied… because the Beeb did not want to compromise its objectivity. Now no one appreciates a spot of objectivity in news reporting more than me; but there was a slight inconsistency in the Beeb’s position... because of another story they were running at more or less the same time. This concerned a report of a couple of complaints that the Beeb allegedly received from British soldiers serving in Afghanistan. Apparently some wounded soldiers had objected to being treated in the same hospital as wounded Taleban fighters. These concerns were given quite a bit of news coverage in the Beeb as well as other news sources. However, no mention was made of anyone inquiring how the wounded Taleban fighters felt about being treated in the same hospital as the racist invaders of their country. Whilst we do not expect objectivity from the various newspapers that covered the story (Times online did not print this comment in their ‘have your say’ section), the Beeb claims to specialise in the thing, so you might reasonably expect some attempt to find out the Taleban position… in the name of objectivity of course. I did point this out to their head of news but at the time of writing I have had no reply, nor noticed any new information about Taleban opinion on the subject of having to share hospital facilities with invading armies. As we have been faithfully promised that the new Emperor is going to be introducing all sorts of new changes, perhaps media reform is coming. Just to be on the safe side, I don’t think I’ll hold my breath. 10 January 2009 Open letter to The Times Today’s leading article, ‘In Defence of Israel’, is absolutely correct. No one should indeed be in any doubt who is, in the end, responsible for the suffering of Gaza. Having bravely defied 99% of UN opinion for many years, as well as numerous International Court rulings, there can be no doubt that the heroism of the Israeli government is truly inspirational and should serve as a model for every other government on the planet. Added to this there is the steely-eyed courage of their tiny under-resourced army as they daily face the terror of lethal stone-throwing children and brown people disguised as civilians, not to mention the occasional homemade firework let off by brown people who think they have rights just because they’ve never known any other homeland and happen to have been elected to government. You are so right to point out the injustice of a cold and heartless world that cannot see the wisdom of ejecting worthless brown people from their homes and land in order that fascist supporters of genocide from every corner of the globe may have a nation to call their very own. Well done, The Times, for your courageous stand for Zionism; and as you can see there is at least one person who, like you, is in no doubt of who is, in the end, responsible. John Andrews 7 January 2009 I have been a fan of George Monbiot’s writing for about three years, since I read his ‘Captive State’, which is one of the most important books a British person could read. Many of the articles he pens for his column in the Guardian and various websites are simply superb; and I have always enjoyed his more personal essays where he describes his passion for growing his own produce; and yet… there is also something vaguely discordant about his work. Now I know it’s impossible to always produce a work of art – not even geniuses can do it; so what hope we more mortal hacks? But the disquieting thing about his writing is not the occasional piece of mediocrity – which would only show he’s human – it’s more a vague sense of hypocrisy that sometimes permeates through. Most people would label Mr Monbiot ‘left wing’: he writes for the Guardian, therefore he must be quite pink to say the least, surely. He has long campaigned vigorously, almost hysterically even, on behalf of environmental issues, which must make him a raving red; and his political writing often seems angry and indignant on behalf of the oppressed majority. You could be forgiven for thinking he might be a staunch opponent of the establishment in all its forms; but that is not the impression I have been slowly coming to, and I find that quite worrying. Why do I feel that way? The first thing that troubled me was his apparent awe of science. Most of his articles are presented in a style that might be suitable for some scientific research paper, with long lists of impressive-looking references appended; and he is always scathing of criticism from anyone who is not an acknowledged expert in whatever subject about which they dare to voice an opinion. Now I would be the last person to challenge the value of science. If it were not for science’s rigid determination to produce hard verifiable evidence in the relentless search for truth we would still be in utter darkness, and subjected to the ruthless controls of superstitious shamans. But… science often gets it wrong; and it is often manipulated; and the awestruck subservience to its priests, such as Mr Monbiot frequently demonstrates and demands from others, is exactly the opposite quality that is most precious to science – a doubtful, questioning mind. In other words, although scientific method is an infinitely more useful tool for the truthseeker than superstitious faith, it should never be wholly trusted; a little room should always be left for doubt. And then I wonder about Mr Monbiot’s apparent concern for the ordinary person, whom so much of his work would appear to support. Consider two of his recent articles, one of which concerned something he called an ‘aggressive interview’ with the CEO of Shell; and the other was a nice piece about Welsh railways. Mr Monbiot appeared to quite like Shell’s head man, or at least not dislike him (he’s probably very well qualified). There is absolutely no reason why this should not be: I have friends whose politics are an absolute anathema to me; and I have often met convicted criminals who it is difficult not to like. So I have no issue with Mr Monbiot’s personal feelings for the man; my problem with the article was the subtle misdirection given in the concluding paragraph. Having shown Shell’s head man to be fairly economical with the truth Mr Monbiot closes with: “On this issue Jeroen van der Veer and I agree. Oil companies, he says, should not seek to determine a country’s energy mix: that is for the government to decide. Saving the biosphere, in other words, cannot be left to goodwill and greenwash: the humanity of pleasant men like van der Veer will always be swept aside by the imperative to maximise returns. Good people in these circumstances do terrible things. Companies like Shell will pour big money into alternative energy only when more lucrative or immediate opportunities are blocked. Where is the government that is brave enough to block them?” So it’s the government’s fault. Except for the fact that, as Mr Monbiot knows only too well, modern western governments are indistinguishable from international corporations. Not only are senior governmental positions routinely filled via a busy revolving door with corporate boardrooms; but parliamentary bills are routinely drafted by lawyers acting for the corporations those bills will most benefit. That Mr Monbiot, a supposedly rabid environmentalist, should so easily provide comfortable excuses for one of the largest oil companies on the planet is curious, to say the least. I also found one tiny remark in his Welsh railways piece unsettling. Writing with real affection for his new-found homeland, he gives as one of his reasons for this affection: “When I wrote to a very active councillor, asking his permission to recommend him for a gong, he replied, ‘I would prefer not to seek such an honour.’ “ Britain’s ‘honours’ system is directly connected to its class mentality, which is a key lever of control and instrument of oppression. That Mr Monbiot should even think of supporting it sounds alarm bells in my ear. Mr Monbiot has taught me an awful lot, and I have not yet reached the point where I no longer trust his voice, but I am reading his work with a sadly growing doubt. 30 December 2008 There are times when the rage inside you makes it almost impossible to write in a reasonably calm manner; to write in such a way that the line into hysteria may be approached, but never crossed. Once again we are forced into such a time. The Zionist occupiers of Palestine are once again unleashing shock and awe upon the desperate people of Gaza. The Zionists claim to be defending themselves, by using the full might of one of the most powerful military machines on earth, against a handful of largely ineffective homemade rockets, the occasional petrol bomb, and stone throwing youths; against half-starved people who are slowly being crushed into oblivion by the most monstrously evil regime on earth today. That the Zionists do this with the unwavering support of The Empire goes without saying; that they also do it with the unquestioning support of Britain is not only sad, it borders on complicity in a crime against humanity. The pathetic attempts by Hamas to offer up some token resistance to their oppressors should be admired not condemned. If I had to try and live in the terrible conditions of Gaza I’m sure I too would be an active supporter of Hamas (if I had the courage). What is all but completely ignored by British media in their reporting of this obscene crime is the fact that Hamas are the elected leaders of the people of Gaza. When the Zionists set out to eliminate Hamas, their stated aim, they are waging war on democracy. In exactly the same way as the Iraqi people were forbidden to elect their chosen representatives after The Empire’s display of ‘shock and awe’ in their country, the same fate has been decided for the suffering people of Gaza. You can almost see the Zionist property developers putting the finishing touches to their plans for ‘liberated’ Gazan beaches. Is it any wonder why a real democrat struggles to write without rage? 13 December 2008 Two weeks ago I sent a letter to the Grantham Journal saying pretty much what is shown in my 30 November entry. It was not published. I let them off on that occasion because the next edition of the paper carried an article saying that the police had apologised to the lady whose house they had wrongly vandalised adding that she would indeed be compensated. So I immediately wrote to the paper again, expressing my delight that the lady was going to receive some compensation, and had apparently received an apology from a junior police officer. However, I repeated my basic point that England is turning quite rapidly into a police state. That too was not published. Yesterday the results of the inquest into the death of Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menezes, shot seven times in the head by Scotland Yard police whilst minding his own business on an underground train, returned an ‘open’ verdict. However, the jury was extremely critical of the police, failing to believe any part of the killers’ story. Considering the fact that not a single one of the numerous civilian witnesses present at the scene could corroborate the killers’ account, that was hardly surprising. The killing of Mr de Menezes, which some could reasonably call ‘murder’, was bad enough, and substantial proof of my central claim that England is very nearly a totalitarian police state; yet there is more: the coroner, one Sir Michael Wright, QC ‘instructed’ the jury that they would not be permitted to return a verdict of unlawful killing. It is a desperate state of affairs when the police can gun down innocent people with impunity (the killers are still on active duty and at least two of the officers connected to the incident have been promoted); yet the truly scary part of the tale is the role played by the coroner. For when the gross excesses of the police are legitimised by the judicial system (as they also were in Grantham, albeit a far lesser excess than shooting an innocent man seven times in the head); and when the whole is meekly accepted by an uncritical press, then the final conversion into totalitarian police state is very near. I repeat: no fascist dictator ever did anything illegal, and the stormtroopers they traditionally employ for their dirty work always act lawfully. 30 November 2008 Last Friday the Grantham Journal printed a story about a woman whose house was raided by the police. They smashed down her door and spent over an hour rooting through her things apparently looking for drugs. They found nothing. It seems that the police do not need to compensate her for her vandalised property, nor even offer an apology, because their action was lawful. The lady in question was not the only victim. Two other homes received similar treatment, and although neither provided any evidence of drug dealing ‘a small quantity of cannabis’ was found at one. The police are out of control. It’s official. From gunning down innocent Brazilian electricians, through arresting our elected representatives on vacuous petty charges, to trashing the homes of innocent single parents, the evidence is patently obvious: Police State Britain is Here. Most people get a little hysterical if we dare to criticise the police. They see our law enforcers as good honest citizens performing a thankless task, who should be supported no matter what. It is identical reasoning to that applied to our forces fighting wars in distant deserts: that they are performing heroic action for which we should all be eternally grateful. This is only partly true. Most folk who join the police and armed forces do indeed start with good and honest intentions, but they are quickly betrayed. Almost instantly they are brainwashed into mindless automatons and forget that their first duty is to protect the innocent, not terrorise them. All these people need to consider one or two facts: 1. History is cluttered with murderous dictators who never did anything illegal. 2. The stormtroopers they employed to do their dirty work always acted lawfully. 3. People do not usually progress from ordinary citizen to concentration camp guard overnight; nor do others become apologists overnight for their actions. It is a gradual process that deteriorates by degrees. The innocent single parent who had her home trashed by state stormtroopers should not only be compensated immediately for all the damage they caused, she should receive a public apology from every police offer who took part in this disgraceful action together with the magistrate who 'legitimised' it. That might help all those involved ensure that their ‘intelligence’ is a little more reliable in the future. The transition back from police state to free state will be long and hard, but the longer we leave it, the harder it will be. 3 November 2008 Open Letter to all US Voters from a British TV Viewer Hi Guys, I hope you’re all well. Now that the big day is almost upon us I feel I can write to you in a sort of comradely spirit – you know what I mean… as soul mates who have been travelling a long, no, a VERY long journey together. You see, I reckon we here across the pond must have had almost as much of our TV time as you have taken up with the long, LONG story of the elections campaigns for your next president. Our own royal family might as well not exist for the amount of TV time they get by comparison (not that I mind that bit). The very slight advantage you guys have over us is of course that at least you get to make your token gesture at the ballot box. So because I feel so very well informed about all the vitally important issues that your candidates have been discussing for the last half century or so, I’m sure you will be eternally grateful for my opinion on how best to vote. Sadly you don’t have any Free Democrats competing, or I would advise you to vote for them, naturally, as Free Democracy is of course a real solution. But in the absence of this option my advice to you is this: whatever you do, do NOT vote for anyone who belongs to a political party. Fortunately, there is invariably some independent standing. That’s your woman. Vote for her. If you don’t even have that option, stay at home guy, it’ the best thing you can do. Political parties are the cancer of our so-called democracies, so the obvious way of curing it is not to vote for anyone who belongs to one. Independents, though obviously not as safe as Free Democrats, do at least have one enormous advantage over the competition: they are almost impossible for big money to control. In other words, small though it admittedly is, the degree of control you have over an Independent is considerably more than the control you have over someone who has to dance to the party tune. Think about it guys. You know it makes sense. Party politics must be eradicated, and the only way to do it is never to vote for anyone who belongs to one. Happy voting, john p.s. I should come clean...I haven't really followed any of the saturation 'news' coverage about the elections. I mean...I might be sad, but I have my standards. 2 November 2008 The following is a short extract from the 4th edition of my book 'Free Democracy - Government for the Twenty First Century', which I hope will be ready shortly: I started this book with an account of the Permanent War society that our ‘leaders’ have created. Because Permanent War is an obscenity of immeasurable proportions, any effort to replace the system that promotes it must be worth pursuing. If the world were a Free Democracy, war would quite simply be impossible, and it is the purpose of this section to explain why. As I stated earlier, probably the first duty of any government is to provide for the security of its citizens. In a Free Democracy this principle begins with the establishment of the People’s Constitution. This law enshrines the right of the individual to the full protection of the state – the protection of his person, and the protection of his property. Because any law is only as good as the ability of the state to enforce it, the People’s Constitution has unique provisions to ensure this actually happens (see appendix). I showed earlier that the mere existence of a constitution is no guarantee of good governance. One of the main reasons for this is that individual law enforcers of the state are controlled by rigid hierarchies which demand their blind subservience to the orders of superiors. It is the machinery of tyranny, and is the single biggest cause of Permanent War. The essential elements for ensuring security comprise the police, the militia and the judiciary. Under the People’s Constitution, each person employed in any of these roles is individually obliged as their first duty to uphold the terms of this constitution, to protect the rights and enforce the duties of the citizen. Furthermore, if these individuals receive any instruction that conflicts with the constitution, they are required to disregard it and refer the matter to a magistrate’s court for adjudication. So the constitution provides firstly the legal authority to ensure the rights and duties of each citizen; and secondly, places the responsibility for protecting and enforcing those rights and duties on individual police officers and militia volunteers, providing those officials with the authority and the protection to disregard any instruction they may receive to the contrary. Most people who join the police and armed forces do so for the very best of reasons, with genuinely held intentions of serving their fellow woman, not oppressing her. However, all forces dehumanise their own personnel by erasing these noble values and substituting instead an unquestioning submission to authority through a process that is indistinguishable from brainwashing. In addition to making individual security officials personally responsible to serving the constitution, and protecting them for doing so, Free Democracy proposes that the whole hierarchical command structure that is at the heart of Permanent War is replaced with the Lateral Administration Model (see below, and appendix – addendum C). Because most people are good people, and do not join police and armed forces with the intention of harming others, Permanent War would, in a worldwide Free Democracy, be eliminated. This is because all wars begin by someone starting them. None (excepting revolutions against tyrannies) are started by popular demand. Popular revolution in a Free Democracy will never occur simply because the people are already in control, and no Free Democracy would ever initiate a war against some other country because the constitution expressly forbids it, and the armed forces are obliged to uphold the constitution. Of course there will always be criminals and rogues, and containing these deviants is the proper function of the security forces – not serving them. 13 October 2008 Half of the front page of last Saturday’s Times is given to four photographs of a young city trader having a bad day at the office. Ahhhh. On page 7 we learn that ‘Traders say they have never known such a time.’ Given that their average age is about sixteen and a half that’s hardly surprising. The story was, of course, about the terrible pain being felt by people who don’t know where their next million pound bonus is coming from. I couldn’t find anywhere in the paper four photographs of people being evicted from their homes, even though house repossessions have increased by 48% - nor could I even find any slight reference to the subject. Naturally I fully understand that ordinary people being forced out of their homes is nowhere near as important as the bonuses of millionaire stockbrokers, therefore quite rightly should not make it to the front page of the nation’s greatest newspaper – but you would have thought a little space might be found, somewhere in between the full page colour ads and the fascinating ‘news’ about who might win X Factor, for just one of the 48% being kicked out of their homes because of bankers’ bonuses. Directly related to all this subject was a view expressed on page 7 by one Gerard Baker who, we’re told, is ‘US Editor’. It was a curious little piece. Titled ‘Let’s go back to somewhere near Bretton Woods’, we have to wonder if he meant for a holiday, perhaps, because he writes, towards the end: ‘Most economists agree, however, that a return to Bretton Woods today would be impractical.’ This is not the only apparent contradiction. Mr Baker informs us that: ‘Its collapse [Bretton Woods] in the early 1970s was followed by a decade of inflation and, in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, a succession of financial crises.’ Just two sentences later he says, presumably with approval: ‘For all the misery of the present crisis, [the] free movement of capital has produced astonishing increases in wealth and income around the world in the past 25 years.’ He neglected to add…’into the hands of the very few, from the hands of the very poor.’ Earlier, explaining a little about his subject, he tells us: ‘In July 1944, a group of economists, lawyers and bankers gathered in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. Led by John Maynard Keynes, they drafted a treaty that led to the establishment of the IMF and what later became the World Bank.’ Now I’m no economist, nor an expert in the life and works of Mr Keynes. However, according to my very limited understanding of the subject, it was very unlikely that the Bretton Woods meeting was led by John Keynes. He was definitely there, heading the British delegation, but leading the whole thing? I don’t think so. In July 1944, the end of WWII, Britain was on its knees, and uppermost in the minds of the new world leader was to ensure it stayed there. There is no chance at all that the US was going to let a British economist draft the new world order; and I believe that is pretty much what history shows. John Keynes was entrusted with chairing ‘Commission II’ at Bretton Woods, which was about establishing what became the World Bank (but he probably would have been appalled with the finished article); and probably would have totally opposed everything about the International Monetary Fund. I only mention this because it’s interesting that Mr Baker appears to suggest that the World Bank and the IMF (substantially responsible for the dire condition of the world’s economy) were the brainchild of John Keynes; whereas I think Keynes would have abhorred the way both institutions turned out. Baker’s curious little piece of contradictions proposes a return to humane Keynesian values (never actually expressed in the World Bank or the IMF) – but then tells us this is impractical as: ‘It would require the imposition of restrictions on the movement of capital that would choke off global growth.’ Or, in other words… providing it does not require any restrictions on the gangsters and pirates who have plundered the world’s economy so successfully. Mr Baker does not suggest how exactly we might achieve this. Mr Baker, you can have an humane economic model or you can have gangsterism. You can’t have both. 28 September 2008 More, the God of Plunder Oh government you’re broken, it’s time you took the blame, Red or blue or any hue we know you’re all the same, So pack your corrupt laws and illegal wars, just leave; don’t come back; Get out of town, go far away, we’ve given you the sack. Oh government you’re broken, it’s time for you to go, We’re tired of your terror trade and the fear you sew, We know it’s just a tyrant’s trick: this magician’s spell we’re under, To make us serve your god of gods: More the God of Plunder. Oh government you’re broken, it’s time we tried again, Yesterday we were almost free – you could have stayed on then, But peace was bad for business (or so your generals said), Permanent war is what they want, and you listened to them instead. Oh government, you’re broken, it’ time that we were free, Free to rule ourselves through Free Democracy, The citizen, well informed, is demanding something new, Government by the many, not government by the few. 22 September Given that we know our system of government is broken, and that this no longer really needs proving, my work is primarily aimed at moving the debate on to how best to fix it. So I would like to look at a key element of that requirement - taxation. I firmly believe that if we could grab government by their taxes, their hearts and minds would quickly follow. Before developing this theme a little further I need to repeat my core assumption: The citizen, properly informed, should have the right and the means, if she chooses, to make the political decisions of her government. If you can accept this, it’s only a small step to see that the taxpayer, properly informed, should also be in charge of how her taxes are used. After all, it’s our money, gained by our labour and enterprise – why should we NOT decide how it is used? You wouldn’t walk into a shop and hand over a wadge of cash to someone in a suit and hope he gives you what you want based on the notion he knows better than you how to spend your money – so why do we do it with our taxes? Our leaders are permanently telling us what a great thing freedom of choice is, so why don’t they give us the freedom to choose how our taxes are spent? There are two main things to consider on the subject of taxation: how much is collected, and how it is spent. (For most countries trying to be civilised, not collecting taxes at all from its citizens is not an option – public services have to be paid for somehow. If you were unfortunate enough to live somewhere with billions of barrels of oil just under your feet you needn’t bother taxing your own people – but then you’d have every nutter on the planet with a spare A-bomb or two making your life a living hell. Better to pay taxes.) Contrary to most left wing opinion, I do not believe that super-taxing the rich is the panacea for all social problems. It isn’t, for reasons I’ll give shortly. Most of us are not very comfortable with having something for nothing. Most of us like to feel we’re paying our way, or at the very least making a meaningful contribution. Paying your way gives you rights. Ten per cent seems a reasonable level of income tax to me, and I believe that everyone should pay a tenth of what they earn, no matter how much that is. In addition I think we should pay a further 10% in National Insurance, half to be paid by employers. National Insurance should be ring-fenced to provide against unemployment – to take care of essential bills when you’re out of work, things like food and water, power, healthcare, education and housing. Finally I think there should be a minimum purchase tax of 10% on all non-essentials, rising to 50% on luxury goods. So why is super-taxing the rich not the answer? Because the amount of money that government has is not as important as how they spend it. Our worsening public services are not a product of insufficient funds. Prior to the current economic meltdown, our treasuries were awash with the stuff. The demise of our public services is a product of the fact that generals and big business control public spending, and that lethal combination will always ensure that they and they alone will be the beneficiaries. It isn’t necessary to tax the rich differently to any other worker – let the rich keep their money - providing it is not achieved through the exploitation of workers and consumers or vandalism of the environment. Providing the worker has a decent income, good conditions of service, access to reasonable public services and is well protected when out of work (all products of proper government, not necessarily rich government), who cares how much money the rich have? Having passed much of my working life as a public servant in England at a time when the country was coyly flirting with socialism (quite a long time ago), I’m here to tell you from personal experience that government waste on wholly useless bureaucracy is not just a minor irritation, it can be a monster of gargantuan proportions; with vast amounts of public money going on the salaries of useless bureaucrats rather than the decent services that money should be providing. Let me define bureaucrat. A bureaucrat is NOT the stressed out little clerk you get to see in the welfare office. The lowest level bureaucrat you might just get to eyeball is likely to be the boss of the stressed out little clerk; and her boss’s boss will definitely be a bureaucrat; and the whole mountainside of bosses above that boss, all ‘public servants’ who would never go anywhere near a member of the public if their lives depended on it, comprise the vast bulk of completely useless lard who account for unbelievable volumes of public money. Don’t get me wrong, I know there are some lowlifes at the bottom of the heap who revel in their little bit of authority to fully exploit their naturally sadistic natures – but in my experience these are a minority who, if their overpaid bosses were doing a proper job, would never be appointed in the first place; or if they were would be quickly weeded out. Also I fully accept that a few of the parasite managers might occasionally do something useful; but the fact is the overwhelming majority of their number do nothing more complicated than simple clerical work, and should therefore be paid the same as any other clerical worker and nothing like the obscene salaries they actually receive. So it’s important to be very clear that public servants and bureaucrats are not necessarily the same thing. The clerk who looks you in the eye at the town hall, the cop on the beat, the teacher’s assistant, the guy trying to keep the street clean – mostly these people do good and worthwhile work to the best of their ability and their limited resources. Their bosses, on the other hand, are a whole different can of worms. The public servant who looks you in the eye is usually the lowest of the low – on the lowest pay, doing the hardest work, and having to explain to you the bullshit they are forced to feed you. Nevertheless, they often like their job, knowing that in spite of the system they still sometimes manage to help people; and though they wouldn’t mind another pair of hands and a bit more money, are probably content to continue doing what they do until they retire. Bureaucrats on the other hand exist for one reason and one reason only – promotion. The quality of public service for which they are responsible is completely irrelevant to them; and to remain in the same post until they retire is their idea of hell, an unacceptable admission of failure. I have worked with some bureaucrats who, from they moment they take up post to the moment they leave (usually not very long) do little else except trawl through promotion opportunities, fill in transfer applications, and yammer on the phone to other bureaucrats about how their promotion opportunities are doing. The fact that these guys are paid way, way higher than the stressed little counter clerk trying to do an honest day’s work is truly, truly obscene. I won’t go into the other vile abuses of the way our taxes are spent – bailing out mega-rich bankers who’ve plundered the economy; the corporation sweeteners and pay offs for services rendered; the perpetual growth of the permanent war economy; the tax dodges that allow billionaires to boast to their yachting buddies about how their taxes are less than their migrant worker gardeners. We all know about that stuff – but these too are all just further examples of the misspending of our taxes. The point is this: it’s useless to super-tax the rich unless public spending is properly controlled; and the best way to properly control public spending is to let the taxpayer do it. Grab government by their taxes and their hearts and minds will definitely follow. Now of course we could never individually control the spending of a whole government department – but we could have the satisfaction of knowing that at least our taxes were going to the departments we think are really useful and well run, and not those we think are a complete waste of money. If government departments were suddenly required to justify to the taxpayer the quality of service they provide, and compete with other government departments for the taxpayer’s buck, some very serious focussing of mandarin minds would quickly occur. Personally, I’m a huge fan of decentralised government. I think 80 to 90% of our taxes should go to local government, with just 10 to 20% going to central government. With a well funded, well organised local government whose decisions are directly controlled by the citizen voter, and whose finances are decided by local taxpayers, government would be as tightly controlled by the citizen as it’s possible to be. (My Public Sector Accountability Model and my Lateral Administration Model, which I will explain in another essay, both suggest a way this might be achieved.) I do not believe that taxpayers would resent paying their taxes quite as much as they do if they had direct control over how their money was used. The business world would also be able to choose which government departments benefit from their tax payments (bribing politicians would no longer provide value for money to them because Free Democrat politicians have no more political power than any other citizen). This should create a rather more transparent relationship between business and government than currently exists, with sizeable sums of money finding its way to government departments rather than into fatuous election campaigns. Free Democracy could deliver real democratic controls to the citizen decision maker. Direct control over how our taxes are spent would fully complete the picture placing the citizen exactly where they belong – at the heart and soul of government and with their hands firmly on the purse strings. 26 August 2008 In the economic world inflation is a serious subject. Most of us tend to glaze over at the mention of the word: it’s something we don’t fully understand, something that interests boring people like bankers and accountants – and who really cares about their interests? Well inflation is definitely something we should all care about – not so much the thing itself, but how governments can, and do, manipulate it to serve their purposes. To economists inflation means the rate that prices increase. The National Statistics Office (NSO) tells us that on the latest figures available (July ’08) the rate of inflation in the UK was 4.4%. If this figure feels a trifle low, it’s because it is. Inflation is measured by comparing the cost of a ‘shopping basket’ of goods and services over a period of time. The NSO uses over a hundred thousand items for their ‘shopping basket’ – which is one or two more than most of us are interested in. Now, not only are those items continually changed, so no two ‘shopping baskets’ are identical, and can therefore never be accurately compared, but a random selection of those items are ‘weighted’ according to some arbitrary measure of their importance. In other words (although I don’t for one minute suggest it is done) it’s perfectly possible to start out with a desired result, say 4.3%, and fiddle with the contents and ‘weighting’ of your ‘shopping basket’ until you get it. The very term ‘shopping basket’, as used by economists, is interesting. It is obviously chosen to create the illusion that it represents our routine monthly expenses; but how many people routinely purchase more than a hundred thousand different items a month – and then keep changing those items every month? The government might explain the need for over a hundred thousand items in their ‘shopping basket’ by telling us that no two people have exactly the same spending priorities, and therefore a huge ‘shopping basket’ better reflects a huge range of spending habits. Poppycock. Whilst it’s perfectly true that people spend their money on different things, there are some weekly expenses which are essential to most of us, and are broadly the same; things like food and water, housing, electricity and gas, transport, communications. I did a brief comparison of some of these figures for our home, looking at the months of August in ’07 and ‘08 and this is what I found: Gas increased 32% Council Tax increased 11% Water increased 46% Phone increased 12% Weekly shop increased 37% Electric DECREASED! 15% Our circumstances between those two months were essentially unchanged. My list excludes the increase of petrol prices because I didn’t keep my petrol bills, and our mortgage payments are left out because we were lucky enough to pay a bit off the capital sum during the last year. This amounts to an approximate net increase in our cost of living of 25%, quite a long way from the government’s figure of 4.4%. Now it is not beyond the whit of economists to obtain a rough but meaningful measurement, as I have done, of the real increase in the cost of our essentials. So the fact that they can interpret a 25% increase as 4.4% must be intentional. Why do you suppose that might be? If pay was increasing by 25% there would be no problem. But of course it isn’t (not for real workers anyway – bosses are getting it, and more). To help ordinary people deal with a real inflation increase of 25%, the government is set to raise the National Minimum Wage in October from £5.52/hr to £5.73/hr, a mouth-watering 3.8%. The government’s figure for the rate of inflation may well be linked to price rises – but not quite as innocently as it appears. The figure is deliberately manufactured in order to crush benefit payments, pensions and workers’ pay rises. The word ‘inflation’, like so many other words whose real meanings are deliberately distorted by our rulers, is NOT a measurement of the price increase of essentials – which is what it should be. The real use of the word ‘inflation’ is to create an arbitrary figure substantially lower than the real increase in prices above which wages, benefits and pensions are not be allowed to rise, but which elite pay increases may ignore altogether. To the barricades mon braves! 5 August 2008 ‘The One Show’ is a sort of news magazine programme the BBC screens every weekday evening. I’ve never watched a whole one, but occasionally catch a snippet or two as I flick through channels in the forlorn hope that something interesting might be on somewhere. Last night one such snippet caught my attention. It was about an elderly chap and his wife, who is pretty much confined to a wheelchair. They like taking photographs – a fairly harmless pursuit you might think. Wrong. Whilst out in some shopping centre the other day the chap decided to take a snapshot of his wife outside some building. Within minutes some beefy security guard appeared out of nowhere and told them that taking pikkies was forbidden, and moved them on. Now this didn’t happen outside some top secret establishment, or an animal testing laboratory, or any such place where you might understand a little sensitivity on behalf of the occupiers – it was in a public thoroughfare. A reporter from the ‘One Show’ went out to investigate and did exactly the same thing – took a couple of snapshots; and exactly the same thing happened – some toothless goon moved him on. Taking snapshots of buildings is now considered a ‘security risk’. The beautiful irony of this utterly farcical piece of paranoid nonsense is that Google is in the process of filming the whole of every single road in the country. So when Google wants to film in intimate detail every brick of every street in the country for any terrorist anywhere on the planet to view, that’s O.K. But when Mr Blogs wants a snapshot of his missus that no self respecting terrorist anywhere in the world would even notice, that’s a security risk. Mr Bin Laden must be laughing his turban off. * * * * * I've just finished reading 'Manufacturing Consent' by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky. It's now quite an old book, but should be compulsory reading in every school. Almost anything written by Noam Chomsky is worth reading. But... almost everything of his I’ve ever tried is almost impenetrable: for all his expert linguistic talents the man seems physically incapable of writing a simple sentence. It’s a crying shame he never took time out earlier in his career to study journalism – his legions of fans around the world might have numbered twice as many, and his vitally important message might have reached even more than that. ‘Manufacturing Consent’ is about as difficult a read as anything else by Mr Chomsky. The print is small, the paragraphs long and the sentences so convoluted that by the time you reach the end of one you’ve long forgotten how it started. Yet here it is, the suggested read in this month’s Edge. Too right it is; for however hard to read anything by Mr Chomsky is, it is always an important read. As the title suggests, this book examines how our masters manipulate the information we receive through the media in order to manufacture our consent for their actions. The importance of this particular work is that this accusation, although not uncommon, is here well proven. It opens with a study of the word ‘propaganda’, and takes a good look at the concept of ‘worthy’ and ‘unworthy’ victims. Most people believe that propaganda is something our enemies do; not us. We only deal with the truth. Our media never lie to us because we’re the good guys, and our leaders are good people motivated only by pure thoughts, noble deeds and the general welfare of mankind. It doesn’t really need much quiet reflection to see that this is only just one step removed from still believing in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and fairies at the bottom of the garden. Our ‘normal’ idea of propaganda might be called a Nazi or Communist model – one where censorship is ruthlessly enforced and where the media is totally dominated by the state for the purposes of manufacturing the people’s consent to the wishes of the government. Herman and Chomsky argue that modern propaganda, a ‘Western’ model if you like, needs to be a little more subtle and sophisticated. Because our media is not directly or predominantly controlled by the state, but by rich and powerful corporations constantly competing with each other, the consent of the people must not be shaped so much according to the wishes of government, but to the wishes of the corporations (which is now pretty much the same thing). Whilst our masters have moved on slightly from simply lying to us (it’s too easy for competing corporations to expose such behaviour), they have developed into a fine art the telling of the half truth; the judicious replacement of one piece of news for another; and the diversion of our attention away from the seriously important to the frivolously trivial. In order to demonstrate this, Herman and Chomsky examine through a microscope the media reporting of election results in Central America. On the face of it this might appear quite dull. However, it becomes more and more apparent that the example is perfectly chosen. Sufficiently far away from the US to attract little public interest, but close enough and rich enough in natural resources and cheap labour to be extremely interesting to corporate America, the area was perfectly positioned to serve as a laboratory for western propaganda to hone its skills. H & C’s analyses of exactly how the media assisted in securing favourable election results for hated bloodthirsty dictators (who were only too willing to plunder their own countries as agents for corporate America), in preference to popular nationalists (who were not), is about as scientific a study as it’s possible to achieve. The results make compelling reading. The second half of the book is, I suspect, mostly the work of Chomsky, as it focuses on Indochina in the seventies – where he cut his dissident teeth. The outrageous American destruction of this land is still poorly known or acknowledged. Chomsky shows exactly how the world media aided and abetted the process. I think an important omission from this work (though admittedly it could be the subject of a book in its own right) is how we are prepared and conditioned into being the gullible audience upon which our leaders can work their tricks and illusions – how we are educated; for surely this is where the process begins, where we’re first taught to accept as gospel truth anything we’re told by those in authority. Instead of being taught to critically examine for truth anything we’re told, we’re ordered simply to believe it. Manufacturing our consent really does begin in the cradle. 27 July 2008 Yesterday's Times offered up one or two mildly interesting talking points. The front page headlines read: ‘Shape up in 2 months or go, ministers tell Brown.’ Following hot on the heels of a humiliating by-election thrashing in his own back yard, Gordon Brown is now supposed to be a target for a cabinet coup d’etat. It’s an interesting feature not just of British politics, but the whole elitist system that rules us, that whenever something goes wrong, a victim should be quickly found; the ‘fall guy’ as the Americans so elegantly put it. The illusion this creates is the next person to come along will put everything right. The fact is they never do. The corrupt system that created the problems in the first place – things like involvement in unwinnable wars, and developing a gangster economy – remains obscured from view whilst the public’s attention is diverted to some witless soul who hasn’t been quick enough to jump ship in time. Brown has made a number of big mistakes. He must obviously take responsibility for the gangster economy that he helped establish for more than ten years. Then his ambition to be Prime Minister at a time when his party was on its way out of public affection was mistaken. So too was his failure to call a general election once the Prime Ministerial crown had been transferred – his one fleeting chance of securing office for a measurable length of time. If he truly had any traces of the soaring intellect at which the media has occasionally pointed, he should not have touched Blair’s poisoned chalice with a ten foot barge pole, but retired quickly and quietly to the back benches, there to bide his time for a better opportunity; or at least to avoid the taint of failure that will now certainly blight the rest of his career. Not that I really care. * There was an interesting story on page 49. It was about the number of prosecutions in France for the crime of ‘outrage’. It seems that this heinous offence can only be committed against public servants, and carries a maximum possible sentence of six months in prison and a fine of 7,500 Euros. It was introduced under Napoleon, supposedly to protect ‘the dignity…of a person charged with a public service mission.’ Successful prosecutions include someone who used the word ‘Facho!’ (Fascist) to a senior civil servant; ‘Milice de Sarko’ (Sarkozy’s militia) to police officers; ‘Vous etes nul’ (You’re useless) to a teacher; and ‘Qu’est que c’est que ces trois rigolos?’ (Who are these three jokers?) – said by the actor Gerard Depardieu when three work inspectors turned up at a set where he was working. Voltaire, who famously said ‘I disagree with everything you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it.’ must be turning in his grave. Not a million miles away from this grotesque account of the abuse of state power (but something I have NOT seen mentioned in the Times) is the alert raised by that true champion of the people, Media Lens, on the 10th July. This was a story about News International, the media conglomerate, who has threatened Media Lens with legal action. Media Lens is quite unique, and incredibly important. It exposes in a ruthlessly clinical and professional manner, the very considerable problems with our media – who are of course our eyes and ears to the world, and very often volunteer to serve as our brains too, telling us how we should process the information they generously provide for us. But in addition to the wonderful analyses the Lens provides they have hit upon a singularly clever strategy for what we can do about the anger the Alerts generally inspire. At the end of each of their Alerts are listed the e-mail addresses of the specific journalists and editors behind that Alert together with a short note from the Lens suggesting that readers should contact those individuals and express their opinions. The Lens editors (who have definite Buddhist leanings) always quite rightly request that people should be polite and non-threatening in tone. It is a simple but powerful device, and as the Lens enjoys quite considerable popular support, the number of unaccustomed e-mails that must appear in various newsrooms is clearly quite significant – for it is this nefarious action that has so incensed News International; and you can see their point: how dare anyone possibly challenge or question what they say? It seems that one Bronwen Maddox, a journalist at The Times and clearly more impressed by her lofty status than she has any right to be, has strongly objected to receiving “vexatious and threatening” e-mails from Media Lens readers, which constituted “harassment”. This threat to Media Lens, and all the rest of us, cannot be understated. Britain, that noble champion of freedom and democracy, has the most vicious libel laws in the ‘free’ world, and George Monbiot, one of the finest journalists working today, has a superb article on the subject which is essential reading (See Mobiot.com/archive/ 15th July/ ‘Censored by Money’). An organisation as rich and powerful as News International is more than capable of inflicting terminal damage to minnows such as Media Lens, resulting in exactly the same savage suppression of dissent that News International would have us believe exists only in certain Islamic states. * I am always completely bemused by the media frenzy that accompanies any stumble, grunt or burp that emerges from Amy Winehouse. Apparently she’s a singer. I once saw her very briefly on telly staggering around a stage. I couldn’t call it singing – not even using the Smiths very liberal interpretation of the word. Given that in the showbiz world just about any publicity is good publicity, I just wonder if we would have ever heard of her if she had Palestinian roots instead of Jewish ones. 10 July 2008 James Purnell is someone I’ve never heard of before, but seems to be a rising star for the future. At 38 he has to be one of the youngest people to oil his way into a job in Brown’s cabinet. Now operating as the head of one of the nation’s largest bureaucracies, the Department for Work and Pensions, he is poised to return welfare provision to the dark ages from whence it came with a green paper ‘of tough new measures designed to encourage people off benefits and back to work’. As someone who worked for fourteen years in various incarnations of the DWP, I must have heard these words at least a dozen times before. However, the cherubic-faced Mr Purnell’s vision does appear to have some originality about it; if by originality you mean reinventing the wheel, a very broken and rightly much discredited wheel: workhouses. His great vision is to force people to work for state benefits, and is happy for private companies to benefit from this source of slave labour. ‘It doesn’t matter if they make a fortune doing it,’ he says, ‘if they get the job done.’ He sees ‘job advisers’ in GP’s surgeries. ‘GPs could prescribe job advisers instead of medicine.’ He resurrects the old chestnut of benefit cheats and fraudsters, and wants to fill claimants’ days with meetings and courses: ‘You have to create a system where people who are working illegally don’t have the time to do that.’ The stupidity of all this rubbish is simply breathtaking, and that’s without considering the sheer evil of it. All his ‘green paper’ really needs is a catchy title like ‘Work Liberates’, and his fitness for inclusion as a disciple of Nazism would be complete. I mean, consider his idea of forcing people on long term sick benefits back into work through the GP job adviser. Employers are not exactly famous for their desire to employ people who might have a day on the sick; how many bosses can you think of are likely to want to employ someone referred to them by a ‘GP job adviser’? And the nonsense about ‘meetings and courses’ whose first purpose is supposedly to make it too difficult for fraudsters to work whilst claiming benefits... I just despair. Like I said, I worked for DWP for 14 years. Yes there were a few people on the fiddle, but for every person who was fraudulently claiming benefits I bet I could show you someone else fully entitled to benefits but who wasn’t claiming a bean. I could also find you a totally unnecessary bureaucrat for every dole cheat, being paid at least twice as much. Mr Purnell’s final solution for eradicating benefit fraud is to employ more bureaucrats to run wholly pointless ‘meetings and courses’ (anyone who’s ever been on a DWP ‘Restart’ course knows how totally useless they are). In other words, it’s going to cost more to run Mr Purnell’s wonderful meetings and courses than it is to accept a little fraud in the system. But sickest of all is Mr Purnell’s idea for modern workhouses – where private companies ‘might make a fortune’ by using labour forced to work there as the only means of feeding themselves. Britain’s welfare state grew out of the policy of land enclosures introduced almost three hundred years ago. Land enclosures were a deliberate policy to further enrich elites, and to starve people into the slave labour required to fuel the Industrial Revolution. Mr Purnell’s great vision is no more than a twenty first century variation of the same cynical thinking. 19 June 2008 Sadly it will never be my good fortune to be telephoned by some Whitehall flunky and told that my services to the British people have finally been recognised and I am to be offered a knighthood. Sad, not because I actually covet any such ridiculous bauble, but because there are simply not that many things that would give me greater satisfaction than telling said flunky exactly what they could do with their ‘offer’, and getting as much as possible from the opportunity to publicise what a sinister practice the whole ‘honours’ farce really is. This year’s Queen’s ‘Birthday Honours’ have recently been published. The list filled some four pages or so in The Times. I don’t know how many names were there, or who was being so ‘honoured’; I just wasn’t interested enough to look. A thousand? Two thousand? I don’t know. I looked very briefly for a list I would have been interested in seeing, but knew wouldn’t be there; I looked for a list of the very few people who each year tell the crown to stick their ‘honour’ where the sun don’t shine. I was right – it wasn’t there. Most people, and by most I really mean most, suffer under the delusion that to be awarded an ‘honour’ really is an honour. It isn’t. The most charitable view you could offer about anyone who actually accepts the disgusting thing is that it is an indication of simple mindedness – it is like putting a large pointy arrow over their head with a caption saying: ‘simpleton’. Proof? I’ll give you proof. Recall the most recent ‘cash for honours’ scandal? This was a police investigation into the interesting coincidence of peerages being awarded to people who just happen to have made substantial ‘donations’ to political parties. The history of ‘honours’ is steeped in blood and misery. ‘Honours’ were originally handed out like sweeties by the monarch to favoured aristocrats who had attracted the regal eye by virtue of supplying armies for especially lucrative expeditions plundering and slaughtering weaker victims. As these brave folk were then lionised by the propaganda industry of the time (which informed the history books of today) as heroic champions of liberty and justice instead of grasping murderous villains, there was formed a pretty strong association between the awarding of ‘honours’ and the concept of goodness and greatness. Whilst the generals are still rewarded, as generals always have been, for that most iniquitous of crimes – war – the favoured aristocrats of yesteryear have been replaced by a new breed of aristocracy: government mandarins, bent politicians and gangsters masquerading as captains of industry, many of whom are paid off for less obvious crimes against humanity. But here’s the really clever bit: If ‘honours’ were only awarded to grasping soldiers, bent politicians, mandarins and gangsters they would quickly become widely discredited; so they are also issued to good and decent people like voluntary workers and outstanding achievers whose work and effort is truly exceptional – not so these achievements may be dignified by association with the aristocracy, but so the aristocracy may be dignified by association with genuine achievers. The same thing happens with universities who award ‘honorary’ degrees to sports stars and pop singers who can barely write their names. The thing has nothing to do with dignifying the sports/pop star with a degree that is utterly useless to man or beast, the thing is done to promote the university, and hopefully provide some new pockets to pick clean in the future. The ‘honours’ system is possibly the greatest public display of cynicism in British society. Every country has their motley collections of common gangsters who have oiled their way into the very upper echelons of the elite; but Britain is one of the few places where these people are openly rewarded by the state, and their often considerable crimes protected and dignified by adding the same new title to their names as is awarded to those good and decent folks whose efforts have been genuinely exceptional. This deliberate blurring by our government of the shameful activities of rogues and scoundrels with the genuine achievements of good and dedicated people must be the ultimate expression of institutionalised cynicism. Far more worthy are those very few people who do not go weak at the knees when offered an ‘honour’, but instead snort loudly in derision and instantly offer the caller half a dozen well chosen expletives for what they might do with their ‘honour’. This is the list of names I want to see published each year, for these are the real and true heroes of Britain. 12 June 2008 I’ve long believed that British ‘democracy’ is not only a total fabrication, it’s a deliberate illusion designed to trick ordinary people into thinking their opinions are important. So I’ve never bothered to watch a parliamentary ‘debate’. Yesterday, because a quite important ‘debate’ was scheduled, I watched the live broadcast on telly. It was the government’s proposal to extend the time whereby people may be imprisoned without charge from 28 days to 42 days. I always love it when my prejudices are confirmed by events, and yesterday’s ‘debate’ was an absolute classic. We have almost 700 MPs. Only about 50 bothered to turn up for this ‘debate’, which was about a direct assault on our hard won civil liberties. Not a single shred of evidence was presented to justify the government’s proposal. Although MPs were told that Ian Blair, head of the Metropolitan Police, supports it, they were also told that the most senior Asian police officer does not. They learnt that the nation’s main intelligence service, MI5, did not request the extension, nor did the Crown Prosecution Service. They heard that since the 28 day provision was made only 6 cases have actually used it and that at least two of those could have been charged within a week or so. They heard that there is not a shred of proof to back up any assertion (were one made, which there hasn’t been) that the existing, and draconian, 28 day law has made Britain’s streets safer. Whilst not one MP could give a half decent reason for why the 42 day law is actually needed (other than because the Prime Minister wants it, and we should therefore support him) one MP after another rose to their feet to give powerful claims for why it should be rejected. The most significant of these was the completely unacceptable continued assault by the government upon civil liberties and human rights, which once forfeited, will not be easily restored. The house emptied for the division. When it resumed to hear the results of the vote there was standing room only – most of the 700 had miraculously materialised from somewhere. The result was 315 votes for the government and 306 against. The temporary extension of Gordon Brown’s job has been won at the cost of the freedom of British citizens. Q.E.D. BBC’s ‘Newsnight’ on the evening before, Tuesday, had one moderately interesting little item. It was an interview with some MP who I’ve never heard of, and whose name I’ve already forgotten (it doesn’t matter anyway – they’re all basically the same). He was a government ‘whip’ and was explaining how MPs were being bullied and bought by the whips to vote as instructed for the government’s proposal to kill off habeas corpus. He stood there telling the world how MPs were being approached to find out what particular issues mattered to them in their constituencies – like closing post offices – and then taking this information back to the PM and saying: ‘So-and so will vote our way if we can do something about his post office closures.’ Now this type of vile horse trading that characterises the way our country is run is nothing new to any radical worth his salt, and is almost not even worth commenting on here – it’s just business as usual. However, what was quite interesting was the sheer brass necked blatancy of it all: the fact that this quite prominent politician could stand up there on national television and expose how government really works without a care in the world. The arrogance of it; the utter contempt for any trace of morality about what is trumpeted around the world as the ‘mother of all parliaments’. The fact that MP’s votes for things as vital as imprisoning people without charge, or as important as closing local post offices, are not decided ‘after careful reflection by honourable people upon the weighty moral issues’, but are simply swapped like so many children’s football cards, is nothing new; but I cannot think of a better example of the cynical arrogance of British ‘democracy’. The fact that the whole shoddy process can be so publicly exposed without a second thought about the public’s reaction to how their country truly operates shows the yawning chasm that exists between the noble ideal of democracy and what we actually have. 1 June 2008 There was a most excellent piece in Dissident Voice (www.dissidentvoice.org) posted last week by a chap called James Petras. His work is always worth a look and this particular essay, called ‘Provocations as Pretexts for Imperial War: From Pearl Harbour to 9/11’, is no exception. It links nicely to the point of this note: brainwashing young people to join the armed forces. Our local paper, the Grantham Journal, doesn’t usually print anything controversial enough to note in a radical blog (Is This Total Absence in a Newspaper of any Political Controversy Worthy of Radical Attention? Discuss), but a recent piece by our MP Quentin Davies succeeded in catching my eye. Mr Davies is locally famous for ‘crossing the floor’ from the Tory benches to Labour, and failing to substantiate his claim that people voted for him not his party by resigning and standing in the subsequent by-election. Not well known for consciously missing an opportunity to promote himself, the piece he wrote on Friday was all about how he has ‘embarked on a study the Prime Minister asked me to lead’, which appears to be about recruiting young people to join the armed forces. Basically anything short of pressgangs and conscription seems a legitimate means of achieving this aim. I should think that what is not included in Mr Davies’ recruitment campaign is any of the less savoury aspects of taking the queen’s shilling. For example there is the fact that young people are indoctrinated into a rampant class system run by elites; a bigoted environment where the very worst form of brainwashing forms a major part of training: the essential requirement to Follow Orders and Not Think for Yourself. Then of course there is the inferior, often fatally faulty kit and equipment; and the inadequate health and psychological care for ‘other ranks’ wounded and traumatised by the experiences Mr Davies and other recruiting sergeants forget to mention – the killing of mostly innocent, defenceless poor people. The link to James Petras’ piece in DV is something else that is likely to be omitted from Mr Davies’ recruitment campaign: the reason wars are fought. If our country was threatened with invasion by foreign hordes I’d be the first in the queue for a gun, and actively encouraging everyone else to do the same. But of course we are not so threatened. There is absolutely no risk whatsoever of our country being invaded in the foreseeable future. There is absolutely no reason for our young people putting their lives at risk and, which is worse, destroying the lives of other, mostly innocent and defenceless poor people. Mr Davies has previously demonstrated his remarkable facility for poor judgement. Enthusiastically encouraging our young people to take part in wholly immoral, illegal wars is quite probably the grossest achievement of his otherwise quite ordinary career. 19 May 2008 I don’t usually watch television in the daytime, but ours is an old telly that struggles to keep up with digital broadcasting, and packs up quite often in protest, requiring me to retune the thing. So last Sunday morning while I was performing this little ritual I chanced upon some religious programme or another. You know the sort of thing, a live broadcast from a church service somewhere. Of course the content of the actual service itself was wasted on me, but I couldn’t help watching in fascination the people involved. The head honcho was well wrapped up in long flowing robes and wore a pointy hat that must have added a good yard to his height. He sort of sang in a whiney monotone while reading from some book (I don’t think it was a bible). I have no idea what he was saying – I wasn’t paying attention – but when he finished he closed his book, assured us it was the very word of God and reverently kissed it and held it above his head like some sort of sacrificial offering. The camera panned around some of the faces in the congregation, and the grim attentive expressions they wore, together with the show itself, would have been hilarious were it not for the fact that this stuff is actually quite serious. For what those faces mostly reflected was a sea of mindless brainwashed drones. Here and there were the occasional wide-eyed, almost psychopathic, expressions of those scary born-again evangelist types, probably equal in number to the frightened-rabbit look of those wondering if God spotted them nicking an envelope from the office last week. What I wouldn’t have given for the sight of a couple of schoolboys at the back surreptitiously poring over a copy of ‘Bountiful Boobies’, or just someone tucked behind a pillar having a crafty snooze; but no such luck, nothing – just a sea of mindless brainwashed drones. We quite rightly gawp in disbelief at the spectacle of fanatical Moslems flogging themselves and beating their chests as they parade through the streets of various Middle Eastern holy sites in their tens of thousands; or chuckle at the sight of crazy-eyed half starved Indian mystics and the thousands of followers that hang on their every grunt and groan; yet we never view our own religious leaders with that same sceptical bemused expression. Why not? Their grasp on reality is no different to any Indian mystic or Moslem dervish, and their spiritual authority is certainly no better founded. The real power and significance of religion in our society must be clearly understood. Although it has a quite useful (but false) function in providing real comfort to many people in times of despair, its real purpose is as an agent of power and control. It works in tandem with our secular leaders, in a mummy/daddy, hard cop/soft cop sort of deal; each benefiting from the existence of the other, to ensure that we obey unquestioningly their authority and right to rule us. In the west our secular leaders clearly rule, like a Victorian daddy; but when moral approval for daddy’s actions are required, like starting illegal wars on the other side of the planet, mummy’s approval is needed, and is always forthcoming; because mummy knows that her only chance of retaining at least some power over us is by absolutely reinforcing everything daddy says whenever he tells her to. The only way of breaking up this highly effective double act is by refusing to wholly trust either of them; to make up our own minds; to seek out the evidence for ourselves and form our own opinions. This process begins with education. Philosopher Bertrand Russell pointed out that man is made stupid by education, a view reinforced by writer Gore Vidal who said he seldom saw a boring six-year old, and had never met an interesting sixteen-year old. In those few core years, so many of us have our naturally inquiring minds surgically removed to be transplanted with the critical faculties of Zombies. Religion, all religion, must hold up their hands and share the responsibility for this. Who else requires us to believe unquestioningly in fantasy worlds whose existence cannot be proven, occupied by fantasy beings whose existence cannot be proven? 25 March 2008 Today, whilst BBC TV’s morning news frets over the alarming cost of children’s parties, and reported the fascinating story of some chap who slept through his wife giving birth, ZNet was telling the world how the United States has declared war on Iran. In a fascinating article posted on ZNet yesterday John McGlynn, a Tokyo based economic and financial analyst, informed the world about a move by the US government which has been completely ignored by the mainstream media. His first sentence reads: ‘March 20, 2008, destined to be another day of infamy. On this date the US officially declared war on Iran.’ Mr McGlynn mentions a few non-stories that appeared in the US press on that day instead of that rather crucial bit of information before saying: ‘But make no mistake. As of Thursday, March 20 the US is at war with Iran.’ This story appears to start on the 3rd March when the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1803. Part of this says: ‘[The Security Council] called upon all States to exercise vigilance over the activities of financial institutions in their territories with all banks domiciled in Iran, in particular with Bank Melli and Bank Saderat.’ By the 20th March FinCEN, a very powerful policing unit within the US Treasury, had changed the wording of this resolution for an ‘advisory’ it sent to all the world’s financial institutions that read: "[The UNSC] calls on member states to exercise vigilance over the activities of financial institutions in their territories with all banks domiciled in Iran, AND THEIR BRANCHES AND SUBSIDIARIES ABROAD." (my capitals) Now UN resolutions are not worth the paper they’re written on until the US says they are. If UN resolutions do not conform with US policy, they can safely be ignored. Ask Israel. So the FinCEN ‘advisory’ carries far more clout than the Security Council ‘resolution’. Mr McGlynn goes on to explain exactly why this apparently innocuous piece of bureacracy is so poisonous: ‘What it really means is that the US, again through FinCEN, has declared two acts of war: one against Iran's banks and one against any financial institution anywhere in the world that tries to do business with an Iranian bank.’ He cites a similar FinCEN ‘advisory’ against a small bank in Macau in September 2005. The action caused a run on the bank and the freezing of North Korean asetts deposited there. As it was a relatively new piece of US legislation that allowed this, it was something of an experiment, a pilot exercise for the US administration, and they were no doubt overjoyed with the results. Whilst taking on the whole of Iran is a slightly different proposition to bullying a small bank in Macau, we can still see Mr McGlynn’s concern. Even accepting the fact that Iran has recently stopped trading its oil in US dollars, and is a major player in the new economic zone comprising China, Venezuela and various other countries dissatisfied with a US-centric universe, the American action is just about as hostile as its possible to get short of ‘shock and awe’. 11 March 2008 Ten days ago the Times, which together with the BBC comprise the British Establishment’s leading propaganda organs, agreed as they often do that there was only one story the nation wanted to hear: Prince Harry had been to Afghanistan. The story was so important that it took three Times journalists to tell it. ‘Prince Harry returns to England today,’ they gushed in their article, ‘A hero to the Army, a changed man in the eyes of the public, and a target for jihadists.’ I feel sorry for Harry. He seems a nice chap, and I’m sure if I knew him I would like him. The fact that he, like the rest of his family, is manipulated for propaganda purposes is not his fault; and that this latest fairytale was just another propaganda stunt to support the war by terror as it clebrates its fifth birthday, cannot be doubted . We’re told that the young man had been serving in Afghanistan for the previous ten weeks, and the story had supposedly only just been broken to the world by an American website. Exactly how the American website got the news would be far more interesting than the story itself; but the fact that as the story broke half the nation’s press miraculously appeared on cue somewhere deep in the Afghani desert in order to get some photographic evidence is mildly curious. I have no idea whether Prince Harry had been on active service for ten weeks, but I would happily bet my mortgage that unlike many other young men in the British army, he had been in no more danger from the Taliban than I was, and is no more a ‘target for jihadists’ than he was this time last year. A week later and the Times had on the front page a nice photograph of a pretty young woman in an Air Force uniform. The caption read: ‘First woman DFC – and unafraid to wear uniform in the street’ I turned to the inside pages to learn more – the DFC is supposedly awarded for an act of supreme bravery. It seems she’s a helicopter pilot, and what she did was fly to the middle of Basra where there had been a firefight, pick up a wounded soldier and fly out again. According to the paper her crew were attacked as they flew in and attacked when they flew out. When I was in the forces this type of operation was called a casevac (casualty evacuation), and it was absolutely routine fare for our chopper pilots. Looking for the explanation for the second part of the headline, about the heroic Ms Goodman being unafraid to wear her uniform in a British street, it transpires that this refers to an incident in that well known centre of anarchist insurgency – Peterborough. Apparently the station commander of nearby RAF Wittering ordered personnel at the base not to wear uniform in town. This was because of alleged incidents of ‘abuse’. The only ‘evidence’ of said ‘abuse’ was from a serviceman who did not give his name who had ‘been the target of abuse at a Tesco supermarket by young boys.’ The nature of the ‘abuse’ was not revealed. I do not question for one second the courage of Ms Goodman or any other service personnel on the front line. However, her DFC and the accompanying Times article are pure propaganda. Ms Goodman was performing the job of her choice, for which she is extremely well paid. It was a job that would be expected of absolutely any front line helicopter pilot, and her gong seems to have been awarded simply because she might have been shot at - pretty much like anyone else choosing to go to war in someone else's country. But at least that does indeed require a little more courage than being ‘unafraid’ to wear her uniform in a British street, because someone might have been ‘abused’ by some yobs in a Tesco’s carpark. The government lost its credibility over its illegal adventures in the Middle East within weeks of sending our young people there to kill and be killed. The DFC story, like last week’s slush piece about ‘Hero Harry’ is cynically crafted solely in order to get people to conflate their reasonable sympathy with front line forces and affable young royals who cannot be blamed for their unfortunate family connections, with the government’s grotesque foreign policies. 19 February 2008 Two months ago I wrote that something that could be usefully promoted by the world’s various types of tree hugger would be to encourage population control. George Monbiot, an excellent and provocative writer (with whom I do not always agree) wrote on the subject in his Guardian column (29th January). In a quite typically contradictory conclusion he first wrote: ‘Even if there were no environmental pressures caused by population growth, we should still support the measures required to tackle it.’ Followed by: ’But to suggest, as many of my correspondents do, that population growth is largely responsible for the ecological crisis is to blame the poor for the excesses of the rich.’ It’s not a question of blame, George; not, at least, blame of those who don’t know any better. As human population growth expands at the phenomenal rate that it is, more and more of the earth’s resources must be consumed, and consumed quicker than many of them can be replaced. In his column Mr Monbiot refers to the subject as the ‘p’ word, suggesting considerable sensitivity surrounding it. I think I understand what concerns him. I first remember coming across the subject almost forty years ago when I was working in Rhodesia. The huge growth rate of the native population had been causing concern for some years, and half hearted efforts were made to encourage birth control in the tribal areas. The move was deeply unpopular and never really got going. The main problem was the fact that African families were traditionally huge, and any efforts by the then white government to change that tradition were viewed with considerable suspicion. Most parts of the third world are populated by poor people whose traditions, like the African tribes I worked with, require huge families. Any suggestion by we ‘enlightened’ possessors of first world comforts that these traditions need to radically change for the sake of the planet will be treated with the utmost contempt. Nevertheless, the argument is sound and is in no way restricted to third world families. The contempt of the poor is not, however, the only source of potential resistance. The capitalist corporations that run our planet require two essential conditions in order that their God (Expansion is His name) is satisfied. Those conditions are: an endless supply of cheap (preferably free/slave) labour; and more and more consumers of their products. Any suggestion that might inhibit these two essential conditions is not going to go down terribly well. Therefore to suggest that the human population should not only control its own growth but actually go into reverse is out and out heresy as far as our capitalist masters are concerned because of the negative effects it would have on market size and the supply of free/slave labour. There is a fine analogy from history. The Catholic church, whose once dominant influence over secular leaders is now replaced by corporate boardrooms, have always resisted population controls (unless the population in question were non-Catholic), and for very similar reasons: bigger populations equals bigger congregations which equals bigger collection plates. Consistent with the principles of Free Democracy I am totally opposed to any form of legislation that enforces population controls – that way leads to fascism. Like everything else, education and rational debate is the way ahead. People need to clearly see the link between the rampant expansion of human beings on our planet and the demise of its resources and our natural environment; and then content themselves with producing no more than one child. It isn’t difficult, and it isn’t, as Mr Monbiot suggests, a question of blame; people who already have large families must not be seen as environmental vandals – but they should educate all their offspring about not repeating the ways of their parents. However, this proposal must never be suggested for poor families alone. Elites have never supposed that poulation controls should apply to them. They feel exempt because they can afford large families and that their offspring are more important to the world than peasant children. This thinking is obvious tosh. The principle must apply to all families. Human population growth must be reversed. Never mind the pathetic distractions of carbon footprints and alternative energy sources. Although these may be worthy enough actions to mention, they are like treating an outbreak of Spanish Flu by issuing free tissues – the heart of the problem is being ignored. No one should be lecturing others on how to save the planet unless they have an idea or two about how to reduce the number of people on it. 31 January 2008 Summerhill School in Suffolk is an almost unknown beacon of piercingly dazzling light. The fact that it is surrounded by carefully maintained darkness should cause deep concern to anyone with a passing interest in freedom and democracy. I heard of it quite by chance about a month ago. Turning on Radio 4 in the car I caught the last couple of minutes of an interview with Zoë Readhead, daughter of the founder and current principal. The little I heard intrigued me enough to run an internet search as soon as I got home. Although everyone has heard of Eton or Harrow, no one I know has heard of Summerhill, which is a shame, because it is one of the few English schools about which we should all be truly proud. The school was established in 1921 by A.S. Neill and was dedicated from the start to the notion of empowering children to make their own decisions. This philosophy is still very much alive and well today. There are about eighty children at Summerhill and ten teachers. The children’s ages range from around five to sixteen. The kids are free to make all their own decisions: about what classes they attend, or even if they want to attend any classes at all. They are left to fill their time any way they choose. All the school’s decisions, including maintaining discipline, are made by the children during general meetings which occur about four times a week. The meetings are run by the children. Anyone may contribute to the discussions and debates, which are then decided by majority vote. As the majority of people are children, it is clear to see that children do actually run the place. Big and small decisions normally made by adults in other schools are routinely made at Summerhill by the children. Decisions such as allowing a child to go to town on their own, or whether the school should defend its survival in court (as happened when Ofsted tried to close it down in 2000) are made by the children’s meeting. Zoe and the teachers are allowed to speak and vote in the meetings but are often out-voted and therefore overruled. That Ofsted tried to close Summerhill eight years ago was almost inevitable, and the only surprise was that it took the government seventy years to get around to it. There can be little doubt that they will try again, and again. Summerhill operates outside the box, and we can’t possibly allow that. The Organisation of Free Democrats aims to extend to the whole of society exactly the same principles that Summerhill has been using with considerable success for the last eighty years. Whenever we explain to people the idea of Free Democracy, that every citizen should be empowered to make the decisions that only politicians are currently allowed to make, we are met with stunned or amused looks of disbelief and incredulity. The main objection is always that people are too stupid to be entrusted with so much responsibility. This conviction about the ignorance of people is a common belief carefully nurtured by the cynical elite who rule us and who want to ensure that the reins of power remain permanently in their hands. The key is information. When people are properly informed, they are perfectly able to make rational and humane decisions, irrespective of their class, colour, religion or education. As we have pointed out many times before, the appearance of an ignorant population is not due to some genetic weakness, it is the result of keeping that population in permanent darkness. Switzerland is possibly the freest and most democratic country in the world, where citizens routinely vote to accept or reject government proposals. Summerhill is yet further proof, were it needed, that real democracy not only works, it works extremely well, producing confident, responsible and happy individuals. It is a model that must be extended to the whole of government. 4 January 2008 The two leading stories on BBC news this morning were firstly that Barack Obama is ahead of Hilary Clinton for the Democratic Party nomination for president; and secondly, that Britney Spears was taken to hospital for a suspected drug overdose. I suppose these are marginally more fascinating than their story three days ago that a West Country woman had managed to stop her house burning down by throwing a large pair of knickers over something that caught light on the stove – but it would be a tough call. One of the many things the BBC did not tell us was a report two days ago about a UN Security Council (AKA George Bush) decision on Tuesday to provide legal justification for troops to remain in Iraq for another year. That cold fact by itself is about as interesting as a pair of smouldering knickers. But when you learn that Bush’s decision (agreed with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki – one of Bush’s many poodles) came as a complete surprise to the Iraqi Parliament, the story takes on a more sinister appearance. The much lauded new ‘free’ Iraq, complete with shiny new ‘democratic’ constitution, requires Mr al-Maliki to obtain parliamentary ratification before committing his country to UN decisions. This is partly as a result of the UN bulldozing a similar extension to the mandate without Iraqi agreement last year. There has long been considerable Iraqi opposition to foreign forces remaining there, and when their parliament voted on a resolution last year that no new agreements were signed until a timetable for troop withdrawals had been produced, it passed by 85 votes to 59. This of course was not the outcome desired by the Whitehouse. So they ignored it. Democracy American style. However, never let it be said that the media are without a sense of humour. The story received scant attention from any of them, but where it did appear it read that the new mandate had been agreed - AT IRAQ'S REQUEST! The story is fascinating and should be read in full as I have not done it justice. (See Joshua Holland’s piece on ZNet for 2nd Jan). 8 December 2007 You have to laugh. Last night’s BBC news told the story that Gordon Brown is boycotting the EU/Africa summit in Lisbon because Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe is there. According to the BBC and this morning’s Times, the reason for Mr Brown’s personal boycott is in protest against Zimbabwe’s human rights abuses. Like I say, you have to laugh. Mr Brown leads a government that thinks it’s perfectly OK to imprison people without charge or trial for 2 months, and wants to make it 3 months. It is a government that thinks it’s perfectly OK for its police to gun down unarmed Brazilian electricians minding their own business on a train. It is a government whose best friend (the US) thinks it’s perfectly OK to lock up people without charge or trial, thousands of miles away from their homes, indefinitely, and who thinks that letting crazy people run amok with guns in schools and shopping malls several times a year is also OK. It is a government that thinks its perfectly OK to wage wars thousands of miles away from home against countries who pose absolutely no threat whatsoever to Britain. And Mr Brown dares to lecture us on human rights abuses! Our ‘democratic’ government chooses to ridicule Zimbabwean democracy. Yet this is the same ‘democratic’ government that has an unelected person as their head of state, the same ‘democratic’ government whose House of Lords (half its parliament) is entirely unelected, and whose House of Commons are obliged to vote according to the instructions of a handful of party leaders. This is the same ‘democratic’ government that refuses to acknowledge the democratically elected leaders of the Palestinian people and actively participates in the genocide being perpetrated by the settler occupiers of Palestine. This is the same ‘democratic’ government that has colluded with its best friend (the US) for the last six decades in overthrowing democracies all around the world. And this same ‘democratic’ government dares to lecture us on democracy! The British government has of course specialised in hypocrisy for hundreds of years, and there is nothing new in this latest bit of evidence of that fact. However, there is no reason for those of us who recognise it as such to keep quiet about it. Quite the opposite. I do not doubt that the Zimbabwe government is far from perfect, and has done things that it would have been wiser not to do, but Mr Brown, his government and best friend (the US) are just about the very last people on the planet to be pointing fingers. 4 November 2007 I set out to write a piece contrasting the leadership of the western world with that of the Islamic world. What I wanted to demonstrate was that the one significant problem that prevents the Islamic world from receiving a sympathetic hearing in the west is the fact that its leaders are completely off their heads. I very soon ran into difficulties. No sooner were those words on the page when I caught myself making the very obvious observation: ‘Well that doesn’t make them any different from our lot.’ Yet there is a difference. Whilst Islamic and western leaders are identical in their manipulation of the masses in order to empower and enrich themselves, by deceiving and brainwashing people into believing the most arrant nonsense, the position of western leaders is considerably more precarious than that of their Islamic counterparts. I don’t mean that individual western leaders’ jobs are more endangered, I mean that the whole crumbling edifice that keeps them in power is more at risk. Western democracy, for all its many faults, nevertheless contains the tools for self-improvement. Islam does not, because, like every other religion, it preaches that as it is the very word of God; it is therefore already perfect - or so it believes. All that’s needed for western democracy to modernise is for a group with a new idea, such as Free Democrats, to win elections. This is entirely possible and achievable. It can do this because there is no ‘perfect model’ of democracy handed down to our human leaders by God himself, making changes impossible. We can and do challenge conventional political opinion in relative safety because everyone knows it is only opinion - it is not the word of something whose existence is not proven. Like Islam. It is not for nothing that it is still bogged down in medieval rituals, customs and beliefs. Systemic change of any sort is almost impossible in the Islamic world because of the complete conviction that their system has been directly ordained by God. In other words, it is not just resistant to new ideas; new ideas are sacrilegious, and those suggesting them are heretics whose proper place is on a slab in the nearest morgue. The fatwas ordered on Salman Rushdie for writing a book, and on a Danish cartoonist for scribbling a few sketches perfectly illustrate the very real dangers of Islam to freedom of the individual. It is this fanatical intolerance that is so very scary. Whilst Christians too have more than their fair share of raving lunatics, at least they are not in direct control of the state, the way the Islamists are in many Arab nations. The liberal would argue that Islam may well be a psychotic medieval anachronism, but because it’s no threat to the west it should be left alone. To a large extent this is true – people should be left to their own beliefs, however bizarre they may be. However, as shown by the fatwas mentioned above, Islam is a slight threat to the west, seeking to assault the little bit of freedom we enjoy, and would no doubt instantly impose, if it could, its prehistoric values on all of us. The most effective method the west has at its disposal for tackling the Moslem world has never been tried; and that is to directly challenge the very basis of its existence. Guns and bombs are not necessary – all that’s required is a sound argument, and that argument is this: The Qur’an, upon which the whole of Islam is based, is just a book, written by ordinary, very fallible human beings. It is not the word of God, whose very existence is unproven. Because these are demonstrable facts, it therefore follows that any view relying solely on the Qur’an for its evidence or justification is obviously flawed. At first glance it seems strange that this simple device is not used more often by the west. Why don’t our leaders attack the Islamists’ core belief? It would not be difficult. Perhaps it’s because the exact same arguments we could use to destroy Islam in the mind of anyone with a rational brain apply equally to Hinduism, Christianity and Judaism. Communist regimes understood the menace of religion very well, which is why they tried to ban them. Their mistake was to do so by force rather than reason; but perhaps they too, like our leaders, feared the unfettered power of reason coursing through plebeian minds more than the enemies they were trying to eliminate. After all, why stop at challenging only religious leaders? 16 October 2007 Perhaps the most interesting thing about our leaders and their tame news providers is their unfailing ability to regale us with information that is truly breathtaking for the quality of its stupidity. I mean, one of the best reasons for turning on the evening news is to see what priceless gem is being served up today. Take last weekend for instance, and Alan Johnson, the Secretary of State for Health’s comment that ‘Britain's obesity crisis is as serious as climate change’. Now I happen to think he’s absolutely right – but not, I imagine, for the same reasons as Mr Johnson. Consider the first non-issue: obesity. What is it? According to NHS Direct, obesity is defined as anyone with a Body Mass Index greater than 30. At 29.5 I’m almost there. My dad, who was shorter and fatter than me, definitely would have qualified – but as he lived to a very healthy 92 on a diet high in sugars, fats, salts, tobacco and alcohol, the health experts would not be very interested in his example. The NHS definition of obesity would also mean that practically every professional rugby player is obese, along with most soldiers and manual workers, all of whom are probably considerably fitter than most NHS bureaucrats. Also included amongst the obese would be almost every Polynesian, many black African females and their tribal leaders, all of whom believe, as Europeans used to, that well built people meant healthy, fit, prosperous people. You can clearly see that allowing people to become ‘obese’ is every bit as serious as climate change. It is of course, because that second non-issue, climate change, is not at all serious either. Now the old planet has been spinning silently in space minding its own business for several billion years now. You could say it’s got the hang of managing its climate pretty well without any help from man, who have only been in existence, comparatively speaking, for the blink of an eye. Oddly enough the planet has never in all that time had a constant climate, or shown any obvious signs that it needs one. So why do our leaders and their PR people want us to work ourselves into a lather over these non-issues? There are a couple of plausible possibilities. Firstly, non-issues are immensely useful as distractions. The climate change distraction is currently enjoying huge success, with one of its leading disciples, Al Gore, being awarded this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. I can’t even begin to work out the logic of that, but it does manage to do for peace what the Tate Prize does for art. Non-issue distractions work very nicely to get everyone to dutifully look in the wrong direction whilst our leaders continue to plunder and pillage the planet to fatten their own bank accounts. Not that there’s nothing in it for the plunderers. Climate control is the ultimate weapon of mass destruction, and if our leaders can persuade people to see the virtue in wasting billions of tax pounds on various ‘climate control’ projects, not only will they discover new ways to rob our taxes, but they will get us to finance the ultimate doomsday device. The obesity distraction probably serves a similar purpose. In addition to the huge industries built around imposing weight loss upon a largely indifferent public, there is also a ready excuse for our newly privatised health service to not treat sick people, which obviously helps to increase net operating profits. Over the last couple of years (coinciding with PFI takeovers of our health service) it has become normal for hospitals to refuse treatment to ‘obese’ people. The fact that most ‘obese’ people have paid their fair share of taxes into that same health service is thought entirely irrelevant by the likes of Mr Johnson and his ‘advisers’. Still, whilst obliging people continue to fret over their waistlines and stress about balmy winter evenings, at least they won’t be wondering why our leaders are drooling over the prospects of the next cold war with Russia/China. 9 October 2007 Whilst BBC news was keeping us enthralled the other day with the absolute non-news of whether or not Gordon Brown will call an election, Seymour Hersch, the investigative journalist who broke the story of the Mai Lai massacre, revealed yet another interesting little tale which, surprise surprise, hasn’t made it into British papers or TV screens. The Man Without a Brain (George Bush to his friends) has informed US ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, that MWB was planning to attack Iran, and that, get this: ‘the British are on Board’. Well here is one Brit who is most definitely NOT ‘on board’. Mr Hersch’s story does put one or two of Gordon Brown’s recent little moves into perspective. Firstly, his supposed plan to call a ‘snap’ general election. Why would he want to do that? It couldn’t have anything to do with MWB’s war with Iran, could it? I mean, if he joined in with America’s next illegal war only to have to call an election a year or so later, he could be on his way to the dole queue. But if he got the election out of the way first, he would have a good four years before having to call another one – enough time to cause plenty of mayhem and wheedle his way out of it by repeating his second piece of recent PR spin, which was… Brown announced the other day that he wants to bring home a thousand British troops by Christmas. Aaah, what a kind caring man. The fact that Britain has cut and run from its disaster in Southern Iraq pretty obviously means that at least a thousand troops will be coming home anyway – Brown’s given us nothing new. And, what does he intend to do with all those troops? Send them off to Afghanistan? Offer them to MWB? Peace and quiet, however, is not likely to be high on Brown’s agenda – why else is every second TV and radio commercial imploring more and more of our young people to volunteer for canon fodder duties? We now know that Brown does not intend to call an early election. Why he's been dithering about telling us this if he never intended to do it is a valid question. He's trying to kid us that it was a clever trick to get the Tories to reveal that they wnat to cut inheritance tax (something FreeDems proposed 3 years ago). I suppose there are some people out there stupid enough to believe that (MWB?), but all it regveals to me is that Britain has yet another arrogant dictator at its helm who likes to play the British people for idiots - not that I ever expected anything different. Why should he be any different to anything that's gone before? 2 October 2007 General Sir Richard Dannatt has called for local councils to give ‘homecoming parades’ for troops returning from ‘the bloodstained earth of Iraq and Afghanistan’. In addition he wants to be sure that every soldier ‘knows that the people in their local pub know and understand what he has been doing, and why.’ Well I would be the last person to question anything a general says - in fact, I’ve been so keen on welcoming our troops back with open arms that I’ve been calling for them to come home these last four years. As for people in the pubs understanding what’s going on, I don’t think the good general need concern himself too much on that score. Most people know very well what’s going on, which is the main reason why forces recruitment is down and people like General Dannatt need to be doing a Kitchener. One of the general’s American colleagues summed it up very nicely eighty odd years ago: ‘War is a racket,’ he said. ‘It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious.’ These were the words of Major General Smedley Butler, the most decorated senior officer in the US Army, who went on to say: ‘I spent 33 years in the Marines, most of my time being a high-class muscle man for big business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for Capitalism.’ More recently Alan Greenspan, America’s top banker, has come out and admitted what most of us have known these last four years: the Iraq war was about oil. So is Afghanistan, well, gas anyway; although the Afghanistan Gas Pipeline Project doesn’t get an awful lot of news time for some strange reason. There can be little doubt that our leaders are desperately trying to boost flagging recruitment to the forces – but we don’t see many of their sons joining up or, when we do, it’s to see them being kept safely at home. In addition there are a number of seriously unpalatable truths standing in the way of all their efforts to glamorise life as a steely-eyed killing machine. Firstly, this war has nothing to do with fighting for freedom and democracy – it’s about plunder. Secondly, the enemy is not a sophisticated army hell bent on the destruction of Britain; they are mostly uneducated poor people fighting for their homes with little more than small arms and home-made bombs. Thirdly, British servicemen and women are being killed at the rate of about one a week, with about twice as many seriously wounded. Fourthly, more than 2,000 service personnel from Iraq have been diagnosed with mental illness. Fifthly, no end is in sight. There are three things we can and should be doing to assist General Dannatt: One – demand all our troops come home immediately. Two – encourage existing servicemen and women to refuse to leave British territory. Three – try to ensure that not a single new recruit joins the forces until we have a government that realises our forces are meant to defend us, not serve as muscle-men for big business in distant bloodstained deserts. 19 September 2007 The Northern Rock Bank has been headlining the news all week as its customers formed orderly queues around the country in order to withdraw their savings. The whole story as to why the run occurred is not yet clear, but the fact that it follows so closely on the heels of news of the world’s main gangster economy crashing the stock markets cannot be coincidental. Interesting though this story is, it is not quite so interesting as another fact which almost completely escaped the media’s attention: in spite of all the assurances from the nation’s economic leaders (Bank of England, Chancellor of the Exchequer) that Northern Rock’s savers had nothing to fear, that their savings would be guaranteed, the queues assembled. All week the bank’s customers queued for hours all over the country waiting to withdraw their money. Now these were not your fiery-eyed radicals trying to bring down the government. Nor were they the young and ignorant (show me a young person who’s able to save any money). Most of the faces were middle aged to elderly, the sort of faces who you suspect always obey the speed limit, who take care never to mix recyclables with non-recyclables, and who really believe the royal family are an asset to the nation. But none of these faces, the wise old heads of Britain, were taking a blind bit of notice of the soothing words of their leaders. Whilst no doubt each and every person standing quietly in their orderly queues routinely accepts everything else their leaders tell them, not a single one was prepared to trust their savings to the slick smiles of the establishment. This single action was infinitely more eloquent than all the opinion polls and all the election results combined. For it proves beyond doubt that deep down not even the nation’s quiet, law-abiding middle class really trust their leaders. A truly damning indictment if ever there were one. Apart from the Northern Rock story, which would have been difficult to hide, I had, as usual, to look elsewhere to find other bits of news we’re not supposed to hear. For example, according to reports from Associated Press and Asia Times, there is a little more to Bush’s ‘surge’ in Iraq than meets the eye. Most people imagine Bush’s ‘surge’ to mean a spot of extra policing in support of the puppet authority he created in Baghdad. But in reality it has meant a five hundred per cent increase in US bombing in Iraq, ‘hot pursuit’ operations by US forces into Pakistan and clandestine US operations into Iran. The bombing ‘surge’, running at about 10,000 missions a week out of the huge Balad air base north of Baghdad, has included using about 30 tonnes of cluster bombs – lethal to civilians for years after they’re dropped. Whilst the champions of freedom and democracy continue liberating Iraq, their heroic fighters have been busy in nearby Afghanistan (also unnoticed by Britain’s media). Reports from neighbouring Pakistan tell of a madrassa (school) being targeted for destruction by a pilotless Predator aircraft. When the smoke cleared there were 30 dead. US Predators, and the newer, far more lethal ‘Reapers’ are much loved by the Pentagon, being cheaper than using aircraft that need pilots, and there are plans to deploy 170 Predators and 70 Reapers over the next three years. For some strange reason our media are curiously coy about telling us of such amazing feats of technology. But shyness is not something with which American warriors normally suffer. ‘It is possible that in our lifetime we will be able to run a war without ever leaving the US,’ Lt Col David Branham of the US Air Force proudly told the New York Times. Also ignored by our media was a report published by the respected polling organisation Opinion Research Business, ORB. This survey estimated the number of Iraqi deaths since 2003 ‘as a direct result of the conflict’ at about one and a quarter million. To put this huge number in its proper context, it is somewhere between the 800,000 murders of the Rwandan genocide and the 1.7 million murders in Cambodia’s notorious killing fields. 7 September 2007 Last weekend headline news across all the media included a statement allegedly made by General Mike Jackson. Apparently he has written something to the effect that the US plan for dealing with post-war Iraq was ‘intellectually bankrupt’, and that Donald Rumsfeld should carry the bulk of the responsibility for the debacle. Now the timing of this earth shattering revelation obviously has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the launch of General Jackson’s book, which supposedly contains the remarks, nor anything to do with the fact that the Daily Telegraph is serialising it. However, since that good soldier decided to raise the subject, perhaps one or two observations would not go amiss. For example, at the launch of the illegal American adventure in Iraq General Jackson was head of the British army. That would have placed him in prime position to discover then, if he had so wanted, the full ‘intellectual’ content of the American plans for post-war Iraq. If he would plead that he did not know the plans, why didn’t he? As head of the army, supposedly bound by international law, he carries the responsibility for advising politicians about such awesome decisions as going to war in other people's countries. As a professional army officer he would know that winning a war is just a fraction of the story – there is a peace to be won also. This fake show of wounded indignation just doesn’t wash. Either the good general knew perfectly well at the start of the killing that the US plans were ‘intellectually bankrupt’, but decided to keep his mouth shut and lead his country into the gangster war anyway; or he just didn’t care what the post-war plan was, in which case there is a question of criminal negligence. I can almost hear him now, furiously huffing and puffing and spluttering that he is just a humble soldier obeying orders. Sadly for General Mike, that defence became ‘intellectually bankrupt’ at Nuremburg – especially for senior officers. Then there is the farcical suggestion that there might be an ‘intellectual’ element to war. There isn’t. There never has been, and there never will be. Starting wars in other people’s countries has only ever been about one thing – plunder. The only thing vaguely ‘intellectual’ about the job is beguiling ordinary people to support them, usually with their lives, in order that elites can become exceedingly rich whilst they remain exceedingly safe. There is nothing new in this fact. It is even recorded in the Old Testament (Joshua 6:21), and the most highly decorated American general Smedley Butler produced a more recent book full of supporting evidence honestly titled War is a Racket. The revisionist writing of history has clearly already started. But history will not be kind to General Jackson or the other British gang leaders who embroiled their nation in an illegal war, and their feeble attempt to re-direct the blame will be rightly seen for exactly what it is – cowardly hypocrisy. 18 May 2007 Two weeks ago we had the local council elections. I competed for the seat for Grantham St John’s Ward along with six other candidates. I never knew of course that that seat would be so vigorously contested (there were about half a dozen seats that were totally uncontested), but I was really glad it was a proper competition – even though I did get stuffed at the poll. I would rather lose an election than win an uncontested seat. The turnout was as low as ever (about 33%), proving beyond doubt that the real winner was apathy, but when the sums were done the 112 votes that I did secure amounted to about one in eight voters supporting Free Democracy and me which, considering we are about the most radical political party in Britain, is not bad. Not entirely unrelated is the coronation of King Gordon. If the media is anything to judge by I seem to be about the only person in the whole country who is absolutely scandalised by the way this succession from Blair to Brown has been fixed. If there is any poor misguided fool who still thinks that Britain is a democracy surely this automatic succession of the regents of that so-called democracy (on top of all the other overwhelming contra-indicators) is more than enough evidence to prove their error of judgement. I do not have the first idea as to whether or not Brown will be a half decent PM. That’s not the point. The point is that the position should be allocated to someone who has won a free and fair election. This has not happened. Brown is unopposed. Now in a political system that is almost entirely populated by self serving ambitious people, it is beyond belief that there is no one else who wants the job; so how is it that absolutely no one is prepared to at least pretend to make a contest of the job? Gordon Brown has zero personality. Personally I don’t have a problem with that – one of the greatest evils of our so-called democracy is the media’s over obsession with personality. It’s a diversion of course – if the media are prepared to play ball (as they obviously are) by fixating on a person’s looks, family, church attendances, and sexual proclivities, the important stuff – how the country is being run – can be safely ignored. So the fact that Brown does not fit into the ‘pretty boy’ mould doesn’t bother me in the least. It’s that his appointment to PM which has clearly been so shabbily manipulated that really gets under my skin. The whole thing appears to originate in a meeting that may or may not have taken place in a restaurant many years ago. The story is now folk lore. Allegedly Blair promised Brown to support his ambition to become PM providing Brown supported Blair first. Now I have no interest in whether this fairy tale is true or false. The insidious point of it is that everyone else appears to believe it; and over the years, as the story has been periodically taken out, dusted down, and regurgitated, so the hereditary succession has been carefully germinating in the nation’s mind. In a country that is entirely used to its head of state being determined according to some genetic lottery, the ground is well prepared for automatically accepting a similar situation for the office of prime minister. BUT WE’RE SUPPOSED TO BE A DEMOCRACY. Our elected leaders are supposed to be elected, not appointed by virtue of some fairy tale whose authenticity has never been proven. I am no great historian of previous British prime ministers, but I can’t recall any precedent for such a blatant manipulation of the succession as has been the case with the appointment of Gordon Brown. Last week there was a documentary on TV presented by Peter Oborne, a right wing journalist. The subject was Gordon Brown. Unsurprisingly Oborne savaged the man like a species of rabid dog. He portrayed an image of a paranoid, ambitious, ruthless loner, clearly intending for us to be scared, very scared. No doubt Oborne hoped to direct our eyes away to the pretty boy good egg Tory leader David Cameron who appears to be almost the exact opposite of Brown in every sense. Personally I liked the possibility that Brown does not trust civil servants – neither do I; I liked it when he supposedly said that the notion of service should be restored to the phrase ‘public services’, and that he thinks the country should have it’s own constitution – how radical would that be? Whether any of his words materialise into benefits for the increasingly downtrodden people of Britain will only be discovered in the fullness of time – but the fact that he is accepting his role in this shabby cynical abuse of democracy is proof enough for me that the man is perfectly at ease with the concept of corrupt tyranny, and will be no better than any other dictator. Why should he not be? None of his predecessors have been any different. 25 April 2007 Here we are, one week away from a round of local elections. I have two thousand leaflets on the table behind me ready for posting this weekend to the good people of St John’s Ward in Grantham, where I am competing for a seat in SKDC’s council chamber. There are seven candidates scrapping for two seats: two Tories, two Labour, two Independents and me. I’m really chuffed it’s a proper contest. There are a number of uncontested wards, such as Peascliffe, where I live. I couldn’t say I would rather lose than win because no one else could be bothered to compete, but it’s almost like that. The Party really needs a win in order that we can start to put theory into practice. Yesterday I saw the campaign leaflet for the two Tory candidates. It focuses on two local issues: hospital closures and roadworks, both of which subjects strongly inflame local passions. The leaflet obviously suggests how strongly opposed the candidates are to this disgraceful state of affairs. The leaflet does not in any way remind the reader that it was the Tory party who triggered this crisis in the NHS almost twenty years ago when it decided that PFI was the magic wand with which our health service should be beaten. Nor did the leaflet suggest that road maintenance (once managed by local councils) was one of the very first public responsibilities to be sold off by the Tories to this same magic wand. Not that I would like to imply that local councils did the job more efficiently, or that the NHS ran our health service any better. At our Party’s AGM last week we talked about focusing on these same two issues – hospital services and roadworks. I pretty much ruled it out which, because it’s me that’s on the firing line, I think was fair enough. The point is not that these issues are unimportant, of course they are; the point is that it’s quite an old electoral tactic for political parties to identify issues to campaign about and which they have no chance, or intention, of changing. The reason for this is that it diverts attention from things they could quite easily change, but would not want to – like providing a democracy for instance. I didn’t want to play the phoney issue game. First and foremost I couldn’t do anything in the short term to change the way our hospitals are run or our roads maintained; but more importantly, these hot air topics have nothing whatsoever to do with Free Democracy. The real issue as far as our party is concerned is HOW political decisions are made, whether by central or local government. Having just a small understanding of the history of government helps a lot. Traditionally, political decisions in England have been made by powerful aristocrats behaving just like dictators, which is of course, exactly what they were. Once this concept is clearly understood, making sense of current decision making processes becomes a whole lot simpler. Democracy is not only a completely foreign concept to our rulers, it is also positively hated and feared by them; but because the people are an immensely powerful force once sufficiently roused, they need to be kept in place by creating the illusion of democracy – an elaborate illusion making the people think they are in charge because they can replace one set of politicians with another. But the real decision makers are not our elected politicians. The real decision makers comprise unelected, unaccountable civil servants who ‘advise’ our elected representatives by carefully controlling the options available to them. Also hugely significant are business magnates, who are the aristocracy of today, the people who fund election campaigns, control the media, provide ‘consultancy’ services, and have the ears of important party bosses. And because these powerful forces are seldom exposed to the glare of publicity, this role being reserved for the sacrificial pawns of elected politicians, the real decision makers are never held to account for their decisions and are completely indifferent to whichever sacrificial pawn happens to be in office. Irrespective of which party is theoretically in charge, the real, secretive and corrupt decision making process creaks on regardless and is perfectly shielded from change. The government policies that infect our lives, from closing hospitals’ emergency services to fighting illegal wars in distant deserts, are never made with the interests of ordinary people at heart, the ordinary people who pay for those decisions; they are made in order that the powerful elites who control our elected representatives may squander public money building personal empires. So the smokescreen of hospital closures and roadworks is immaterial to Free Democrats. We can see through the smog. What needs to be addressed is HOW political decisions are made. The secretive elites who pull the strings of our elected representatives must be stripped of power, and that decision making authority which these elites currently wield must be placed into the hands of the people. After all, it is the people who pay for these decisions, why should they not make them? The elites may inform public opinion, together with other, dissenting voices, in order that sound decisions may be made, but they should never be permitted to dictate policy the way they do today. So I am campaigning for something I can change, straightaway. Small and quite ineffective though that change would be, but at least it is a real change that is entirely in my control to make. If elected, I can and will use my vote in council debates exactly as instructed by the majority of my electors – even if I personally disagree with that majority opinion. This is of course, a million miles away from giving real decision making power to the entire electorate, but it would be a might powerful first step. 4 April 2007 ‘Man had better be without education than educated by his rulers; for then education is but the breaking in of the steer to the yoke.’ Mechanics Magazine 1823 Ten days ago my political party, Organisation of Free Democrats, was very privileged to sponsor a public talk which was held at Grantham College, our local further education establishment. The talk was by a young lady called Alys Jenkins, who writes under the pseudonym Jane Smith. Now Alys is a real heroine in my humble view. Last year she worked for four months with the International Women’s Peace Service in Palestine, the country which is currently occupied illegally by Israel. Alys, together with many other volunteers called ‘Internationals’ and, it must be said, many Israeli campaigners who are strongly opposed to the actions of their government, work daily with desperate Palestinian families under the most horrendous conditions. Palestinian life is exceedingly cheap to the Israeli occupiers whose actions are quite indistinguishable from Hitler’s Nazis, and human rights activists such as Alys get up each morning and put their lives on the line as they stand shoulder to shoulder with unarmed Palestinians against one of the mightiest armies in the world. The presence of the Internationals amongst local families doesn’t of course stop the army, but it normally ensures the Israeli storm troopers exercise a little more restraint than if the Internationals are not there. Hence their work is vitally important. Alys is a quietly spoken diminutive figure with gentle eyes and a lovely smile. You just can’t imagine her unarmed and unprotected going eyeball to eyeball with Kevlar clad and heavily armed troops backed up by tanks and helicopter gunships. But that’s exactly what she did, almost every day. Ironically, on the very day of her talk here, BBC news covered a story about a young British female soldier serving in Iraq who was awarded the Military Cross, supposedly given for courage above and beyond the call of duty. I listened to the citation. She had done her job. Whilst I don’t wish to take anything away from that young lady (I’m sure she never asked to part of a government propaganda exercise) there is a world of difference between being in a dangerous situation supporting an illegal and immoral cause, whilst being well protected, heavily armed and supported by one of the world’s most powerful military machines; and standing up for international law and basic human decency whilst working unprotected, unarmed and entirely unsupported in some of the most lethal killing fields on earth. If the BBC really wants to talk heroines, they should get in touch with Alys Jenkins and her unsung comrades. But it’s not actually Alys’ talk that I want to discuss here. What I want to write about is oppression of free thought and expression where some might least expect it – right here in England, the home of freedom and democracy (or so the BBC would have you believe). About a month ago, when I started organising the talk, I approached Grantham College with a view to hiring a room there. Alys had told me she had photos and video clips to support her presentation, so I thought the college would be geared up for that sort of thing and a pretty good place to use if we could. It is perhaps a sign of the times that I automatically assumed I would not get permission for such a radical enterprise, but you have to try don’t you? My initial enquiry of a frosty faced receptionist started to confirm my suspicions, but luckily a friend of mine who lectures there suddenly turned up and offered to help. I rather bet he now wishes he hadn’t. My friend is not political, so never gave the thing a second thought, no doubt believing, as most English people do, that we live in a free society. He found a good lecture room for us and suddenly we were up and running. A couple of weeks later and I had the flyers and posters advertising the talk ready to go. I took some of the posters in to the college and asked my mate if it would be ok for me to put them up, thinking it was just the sort of thing that students should be hearing. He looked at one and thought they should be alright but said he would have to check it out with the principal and would get back to me. A couple of days later, my mate rings me up sounding very sheepish. He’s very sorry but the principal refused to allow us to put up the posters. The head man also told my mate that he could not mention the talk to any of the other college lecturers so they could not inform their students. Now the poster in question was standard A4 size paper. It showed two of Alys’ photographs depicting everyday life for Palestinian families: the illegal apartheid wall the Israelis are building, and a group of storm troopers moving a Palestinian family prior to demolishing their house. The title of the poster was ‘Why Do They Hate Us?’ Clearly the principal of Grantham College (if it was actually he who made the decision) disagreed with the content of the poster. But this is not the point. Our colleges and universities are supposed to epitomise freedom of thought and expression. They are supposed to be places where widely opposing views may be freely stated and challenged and cross-examined. Very obviously this is not happening on English campuses. What we have is a bureaucratic administration who is carefully vetting all information that is being allowed to penetrate student minds. Last year I wrote a regular weekly column for our local paper, The Grantham Journal. When I first learned about Alys and the work she was doing I submitted a piece about Palestine. I had often written on international issues before, but this one was censored and I was instructed to write only about local issues from then on; so I stopped doing the column. Last week, after Alys’ talk, I wrote a short report about the fact that the college had forbidden us to advertise the talk to its students, and sent it to the Journal – well it’s a local issue, I reasoned, might as well try. That too was suppressed. Radical writing is by definition a voice in the wilderness, and as such I know some of my views might be wrong. So it’s always sort of reassuring when things like this happen and you get the first hand evidence that your prejudices are entirely validated; but on the other hand, considering that England is supposed to be one of the planet’s shining lights of freedom and democracy, I also find these events scary and quite depressing. Sometimes I really would rather be wrong. For many years students have served a vital function as vocal critics of governments. Combining the considerable assets of youth and intelligence they have often been far more effective at sounding the alarm bells than the media, whose job it should be, and government opposition parties who cannot otherwise justify their existence at all. The actions of Grantham College confirm what I’m sure most of us suspected: not even this source of traditional dissent is being permitted to function. The banning of free expression by the college clearly confirms the fact that our students too are being more carefully groomed for imperialism than most people realise. 5 March 2007 Charles Dickens wrote, in 'Little Dorrit': ‘Whatever was required to be done the Circumlocution Office was beforehand in the art of perceiving How Not To Do It… How Not To Do It was the great study and object of all public departments and professional politicians. It is true that every new premier and every new government, coming in because they had upheld a certain thing as necessary to be done, were no sooner come in than they applied their utmost faculties to discovering How Not To Do It.’ There were two interesting pieces of news last week. The first was an announcement that the nations’ GPs will be required to take a test every five years in order to ensure they are fit to practice; and the second was a story about the workers from a shoe factory, now closed, who lost their retirement pensions when their employer went bust. The workers’ case had just been before the High Court which decided that the government, who had basically shrugged their shoulders and said ‘tough luck’, should think again. This was seen as some great victory for the workers. Didn’t quite see it myself. Now these two stories are directly related. The link is this: government spending. Nothing better illustrates our government’s spending priorities than a quick glance at last year’s national budget. Gordon Brown cheerfully doled out £31.3 billion on the Ministry of ‘Defence’ (that wonderful piece of Orwellian Newspeak which actually means ‘Ministry of War’), a figure which is more than the combined amounts spent on Education and Skills (£23b) and Work and Pensions (£7.8b). Bearing in mind that the country is not threatened by any nation on earth, nor likely to be in the foreseeable future, surely a questioning eyebrow should appear over even the dullest eye. This grotesque waste of our money bankrolling a gigantic killing machine whose sole purpose is to provide the muscle for multi-national corporations (most of whom are not even British), is the greatest obscenity of our time. Add to that the fact that our wonderful chancellor, who is allegedly heir to Blair, intends to spend £25b updating our nuclear arsenal whilst the nation’s hospitals are breaking down and our Accident and Emergency wards being forced to close for want of finance, and it quickly becomes apparent that the need for revolution is upon us. There is currently no system in place for the five year testing of the nations’ GPs. The supposed justification for the idea that there should be is that it would reduce the chances of another mass murderer like Dr Harold Shipman coming along. Because no such testing system exists it goes without saying that the administration of such a scheme will require the creation of a whole new government office. Bureaucrats love any excuse to establish new empires, and this entirely pointless, utterly useless idea will, like the overwhelming bulk of government functions, exactly serve that purpose and that purpose only. I confidently predict that not a single medic will be prevented from turning into a mass murderer by this ridiculous proposal. I predict with equal confidence that the long suffering taxpayer is about to be fleeced just that little bit more than she is already extremely familiar with. It is a moderately interesting exercise trying to learn exactly what ‘the government’ comprises. As I only have a very limited attention span for this type of stuff, I freely admit that I have not yet found a simple answer to this question. I never thought I would. Yet you would hope wouldn’t you that any taxpayer feeling so inclined should be able to easily discover exactly how his hard-earned money is being spent? There is a document called ‘Public Bodies 2006’. It is 372 pages long and lists 883 ‘Public Bodies’. That should be pretty comprehensive you might think, but when I tried to find just two that I thought of, the Electoral Commission and the General Medical Council, they weren’t listed. Although I eventually found them in another directory called ‘The A-Z of Central Government’ which also has a few hundred listings, neither directory shows the BBC, a moderately large public body. I was losing the will to live, so gave up without even beginning to investigate Local Government, which blows about one and a half times the amount spent on ‘Defence’. But I think a bit of a picture is emerging. The taxpayer is required to finance literally countless ‘Public Bodies’, many of whose purpose is extremely questionable, in addition to one of the most powerful killing machines on the planet, whose existence is entirely unnecessary. The poor old shoe workers on the other hand, many of whom laboured their entire lives contributing towards their company pension scheme, are hung out to dry. Helping old age pensioners who have been robbed by their own employers is obviously nowhere near as crucial as building useless bureaucratic empires. We have not learned if the owners of the now defunct factory are similarly destitute, but one somehow suspects not. The fact that our government is perfectly content to let real workers, people who have made a positive contribution to the nation’s economy, endure poverty and serious hardship whilst blithely digging a brand new bottomless pit into which taxpayers’ money may be gaily discarded perfectly illustrates the sick depravity of the country’s decision makers. If the nation’s taxpayers were given the choice between their hard earned taxes being spent on creating a new government quango or bailing out the luckless shoe workers, I’d wager my house on the quango getting pretty short shrift. There is of course nothing exceptional about this story. It’s how this government works. It’s how a Tory government would work; and as Mr Dickens testifies, it’s probably the way every British government has ever worked since British governments were created: squander the hard-earned taxes of the nation’s real workers lining the nests of the nation’s bureaucrats, aristocrats and government cronies. It doesn’t have to be this way. There is absolutely no reason at all why we taxpayers should not be able to choose how our taxes are spent; and given the fact that it is OUR money, there is a pretty sound argument for proposing we SHOULD choose how it is spent. Stories such as the two illustrated here are almost daily occurrences. Everyone knows that our decision makers are motivated solely by self interest. It is time our nation’s decision makers became the same people who pay for those decisions. 14 February 2007 Last week BBC news featured the story of a British Muslim cleric who was secretly filmed calling for the beheading of any Muslim serving in the British army. I forget the fellow’s name – it doesn’t really matter – one hysterical religious fanatic is pretty much like any other hysterical religious fanatic. When he was subsequently interviewed by a BBC journalist about his remarks, whilst he didn’t actually repeat them word for word, he still very clearly believed in what he had said. Almost on cue a day or two later the BBC covered a story of the police arresting several Asian men, one of whom was later charged with plotting to kidnap a British soldier. Now here’s a very important announcement for ALL spiritual leaders: no one has ever proven that God exists; therefore it is quite impossible to justify killing anything, let alone people, in the name of some unproven theory. It is equally ridiculous to die in the name of some unproven theory. Religion has probably existed ever since people lived in caves and ran around in animal skins. This does NOT mean, as the clerics would have us believe, that this is proof of some sort of God. Just because people believe in things doesn’t mean those things exist – millions of people believe in fairies, Easter Bunnies, Santa Clauses, ghosts etc. etc – doesn’t mean they exist. Religion was simply one of mankind’s earliest control mechanisms, a simple and effective device used to this day, to subjugate and command ordinary people to the will of some con artist who is marginally sharper than his fellows. The mere existence of religion since the dawn of time is not proof of God – it’s proof of the deviousness of leaders. It’s the old demons-in-the-dark trick: first convince poorly educated people that there is some sort of imminent deadly threat to them and their loved ones; then convince them that you and you alone offer the only solution to protect them, and Bob’s your uncle, mission accomplished – an instant army of willing morons who will require very little further conditioning before stooping to the most amazing depths of subservience and depravity. Now I would be the very first person to admit that there are many fine things about religion – ALL religion. Mostly, ALL of them teach tolerance and respect for others, loyalty to our families, non violence, and so on – all sound and praiseworthy virtues. Jesus Christ supposedly said many great and wise things, Buddha too. But the wheels come off as soon as religion – ALL religion – tries to tell us WHY we should behave like these things. If they just said we should behave like this because it’s nice, because it just feels right to most of us, everything would be fine, but oh no; that’s too easy. They have to dream up some ridiculous story about an old bloke living up in the clouds somewhere who only communicates with whichever curiously dressed person you have the misfortune to be listening to. They all point to some fusty old book or another as their source authority, and reverently inform us that we must behave this way because God himself has told us to in this little book. God personally controlled the hand, we are told, of whichever human instrument originally put chisel to stone, stick to clay or quill to parchment. And this is the sum total of their proof. Well I’m very sorry chaps, but some old book written by someone calling themselves the chosen instrument of God is not quite good enough for me. These days we have special places to accommodate such individuals, and it’s just a crying shame they weren’t around in ancient times. It’s very easy to understand why our religious leaders try to convince us that their particular little book is the actual words of this unproven theory, to the complete exclusion of anyone else’s little book – it keeps them in a job, sales of said little book high, licences them to empty our pockets, and provides a very effective means by which they can control those who are not clear-sighted enough to see through the smokescreen. Now in keeping with all my fellow agnostics, I should say at this point that although no one has ever proven that God exists, it is equally true to say that no one has ever proven God does NOT exist. Scientists deal with this sort of dilemma every day of their lives, and do so in a manner which everyone should replicate – the thing is called a ‘theory’. Whenever a scientist comes upon something they simply cannot comprehend – which is an awful lot of the time, they create a ‘theory’ – a possible explanation for why it is so. Anyone can do it, and until someone comes along with a proof that can be repeated anywhere on the planet, anyone’s theory is pretty much as good as the next person’s. This is a marvellously civilised way to behave. It doesn’t stop people taking sides and passionately arguing for one theory against another, but the bottom line is that everyone knows that until that vital proof comes along, there is a very real possibility that their pet theory is no more than a cart of dung. Scientific history is littered with too many shattered careers for any real scientist to believe otherwise. Consequently no scientist would ever dream of ordering people to kill those who did not support his unproven theory, nor lay down their lives for his unproven theory; so why, oh why can people not see that God is no different to any other unproven theory, and is neither worth killing for nor dying for? Whilst the BBC milked to death last week’s story of the Muslim cleric because it fits in nicely with popular anti-Islamic propaganda, there is nevertheless a point for the imams and mullahs to answer. They claim their authority to issue fatwas and the beheading of British soldiers is given them in the Qur’an. Listen in guys: it’s just a book, written a very long time ago by an ordinary human being who, just like anybody else, was completely incapable of proving the existence of the authority he claimed to represent. I used to have a maths teacher, a young hippy-type with long hair and a permanently spaced-out grin. He believed that God was a mathematical equation. How could anyone kill anything over a sum? 15 January 2007 Many moons ago, when I was a medical student, I remember having to do a physiology experiment along with my hundred or so fellow students. The doctor supervising the lab was a middle aged woman, eminently respected in her field, with degrees from prestigious universities on both sides of the Atlantic. She was a cold blooded creature, softly spoken and with pale blue eyes that stared expressionlessly at you as though you were a not very interesting growth in a Petri dish. She calmly demonstrated the experiment we all had to repeat. A trusting little white bunny rabbit was strapped to a bench and wired up to a machine that measured its blood pressure. The great scientist calmly sliced through one of the rabbit’s veins and softly asked us to observe how its blood pressure fell, and how soon death followed. We were all medical students, for Christ’s sake, supposed to be moderately intelligent. What were the chances of a single person in that room not being able to work out that if an animal loses its blood, its blood pressure will fall and it will die? Could the slower ones amongst us not have learnt it from a book? To this day I have mixed feelings on the vivisection debate. On the one hand I can’t wholeheartedly support the notion that all animal experiments are evil and totally unnecessary. Possibly the lives of many millions of people have been saved as a result of medication that would not have been discovered were it not for animal experiments. Yet on the other hand, I have personal experience of how ridiculous, pointless and obscene many (perhaps most) animal experiments are; and I always quietly applaud the masked vigilantes of the Animal Liberation Front who terrorise anyone with links to animal experimentation. But vivisection is not the subject of this essay. Rather I would like to consider the tactics of the anti-vivisectionists, and pose the question: why do we not have similar groups equally committed to terrorising people who work in the arms industry, the slaves of real terror? I was thinking about this the other day when another routine corruption scandal in Downing St flitted all too briefly across our TV screens. You may remember it – the British Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, ordered the Serious Fraud Office to stop investigating ‘alleged’ corruption charges by the government’s chief arms maker, British Aerospace. The reason given for his Lordship’s obviously honourable intervention was his concern for protecting the public interest. It seems that one of the many issues disturbing his Lordship’s slumbers was the fact that several thousand jobs might be jeopardised. Touching though his concern for British workers is, my first reaction was that no one with half an ounce of human decency should be involved with the manufacture of weapons of death and destruction anyway, and if the work of the Serious Fraud Office was likely to stop people constructing bombs, guns, landmines etc., etc. – well more power to their elbow. This is of course a common tactic of politicians. Whenever they want to justify their dubious actions, one of their favourite selling points is how many jobs they’re creating/saving/fighting for. About twenty years ago a similar thing happened here known at the time as the Westland Helicopter Affair. The Ministry of ‘Defence’ decided they needed some attack helicopters to play with. Now they could have bought them from the US who produced them in such vast numbers that it would be relatively cheap to do so. But no. That would be too easy. Instead a special helicopter factory was built and 59 machines were produced. The government made sure that everyone knew how many jobs had been ‘saved’, but they weren’t quite so candid about the details of their sums. Although about 755 British jobs were indeed ‘saved’, it transpired that the government could have bought the helicopters from America, given each of the 755 workers a million pounds in cash and still have saved the longsuffering taxpayer almost a billion pounds. In other words, I don’t have any reason to believe that ‘saving’ British jobs in the ‘defence’ industry is doing the British taxpayer any favours whatsoever; and I shouldn’t think the hundreds of thousands of people whose lives are going to be ruined by the efforts of these workers would shed too many tears if those jobs were lost. It has to be time to take a leaf from the book of the anti-vivisectionists. Jobs are important of course. But there are jobs and there are jobs, and jobs in the armaments industry should be perceived as a pariah occupation – beneath contempt. It should be seen on a par with those involved with torturing animals for a living. Cluster bombs to Cruise missiles are assembled by ordinary human beings. These individuals need to be taken to one side and the error of their ways explained to them. They need to be directed to more honourable work – garbage collecting would do. Almost anything is more respectable employment than making machinery that will kill and maim mostly unarmed and defenceless poor people – possibly even animal experiments. 8 January 2007 The England cricket team has distinguished themselves once again. Not only have they managed to lose the Ashes having held them for a mere 18 months, they did so in quite spectacular fashion - a 5 - 0 whitewash, the final two tests needing only three days each. It is arguably the worst ever Ashes series. A couple of friends of mine travelled all the way to Oz to witness the final two games. Whilst I'm sure they had an otherwise good time, I don't envy them the smug grins that doubtless would have met them wherever they went. Moving swiftly on to a subject that could surely restore British prestige on a global scale. This is potentially a landmark year for the history of British democracy. Many local councils will be holding elections on 3rd May, and for the first time in Grantham, our home town, local residents will be able to consider appointing a real democrat to represent them on their district council. O.K. realistically speaking, I know neither I nor any of my Party colleagues have much chance of being elected. Yet. But at least we shall be in there trying. At the moment we are too new, too unknown, too poor and definitely too, too radical. I mean, how could any political party in their right mind possibly consider letting ordinary people make political decisions? How crazy is that? Probably the most extraordinary thing about the British political system is the incredible success it’s had in convincing its citizens they live in a democratic country and that they, the people, are actually in charge. But the people fail to notice that: 1. We have an unelected, unaccountable head of state; 2. The ‘upper house’ of our parliament comprises a vast assembly (over 700) of unelected, unaccountable individuals, all of whom are either descendents of the nation’s ancient oligarchic elite, church elders or cronies of one of the main political parties who have purchased favour in one way or another; 3. Our elected representatives, who comprise our one and only tenuous link to democracy, are forbidden to vote in secret, and must vote not as we who elected them might wish them too, but as instructed by the tiny inner cabal who comprise their party’s leadership - an all powerful group who meet in secret and who seldom record their meetings in writing; 4. Most of Britain is run by a monstrously huge bureaucracy comprising at least 6 million souls. The mandarins who control these individuals are not accountable in any way to the taxpayer who pays for their extremely comfortable existences and funds the empires they all continually strive to build; 5. The taxpayer has absolutely no control whatsoever of how their taxes are spent; 6. Far from becoming a freer more liberal society with more control over our own lives, we are daily becoming more repressed, more watched over, more controlled. None of this will come as news to anyone reading these lines. It’s all been said before by many many writers far more skilled in the use of words than me. What is a little new is what we are doing about it. The pantheon of great writers past and present whose labours have educated and informed us may as well be unheard voices in the wilderness unless ordinary people like us DO something. Fine words and erudite discussion is all very well, essential even; but there comes a point when we must look the future in the eye and answer the question: ‘Well you knew what the problems were; what did you do about it?’ What our little band is doing is no different to what any of us living in the west can do. We are taking Three Steps to Democracy. Step One - Identify the Problem I make no apologies for repeating Tom Paine, because he identified the problem himself more than two hundred years ago, and the same problem is still blighting us today as effectively as it did in his time. ‘Change of ministers amounts to nothing,’ he said. ‘One goes out, another comes in, and still the same measures, vices, and extravagance are pursued. It signifies not who is minister. The defect lies in the system.’ One of the most perfect illusions of this system is that our elected leaders are in charge of government but under our control, so if we don’t like what happens on their watch we can replace with someone better, and then everything will be alright. But as Tom Paine rightly observed – unless the system changes, it doesn’t matter who our leaders are. No one on the face of the earth could use the system by which we are governed to truly do any good. The system just won’t permit it. If we take up our magnifying glass and focus on exactly what part of the system is especially dysfunctional, it quickly becomes apparent that it’s the way key decisions are made. Decision making is done by a tiny handful of immensely powerful people. Even if any of these people were entirely honest and selfless (a dubious proposition), they are simply not capable of deciding what is best for Mr Average, even if they wanted to, for the very simple reason that few of them have ever known the life of Mr Average, and even when they have, their only desire has been to leave it far behind. Decision making is, and always has been, performed by elites for elites which, by definition, cannot have the welfare of the majority at its heart. This is the problem. Step Two – Identify a Solution I must stress the ‘a’. There is no single perfect solution. But all we need do is aim for something, anything, that’s better than what we have. Utopia is not attainable; but improvement is almost impossible NOT to achieve. Tom Paine probably knew that decision making was at the heart of the problem. However, two hundred years ago when it took a day for news to travel a hundred miles, there wasn’t very much he could have suggested to change it. Today we have broadband. Today we can, if we choose, communicate instantly with anyone on the face of the planet. Today we can, if we choose, inform ordinary people about what is happening around them and ASK them what we should do about it. You cannot of course please all the people all the time but today it’s perfectly possible to please most of the people all of the time for the very simple reason that we have the ability to let citizens make their own decisions about every debate in town halls and parliaments. I’m not talking about those phoney ‘surveys’ which are routinely rigged or ignored, I’m talking real decision making authority. We could do that. That we should do it is, for us, a solution. Our country belongs to its ordinary people. They pay for it daily with their taxes, labour and enterprise. This gives them the right to decide, if they choose, what decisions their administrators take. Elites argue that the public are simply not capable of such responsibility. But this is just the same argument that elites have always used in the past to try to deny the vote to ordinary citizens, women and to black people, and it is every bit as stupid now as it was then. Most people are perfectly capable, if well informed, of making sound decisions. They only need access to proper information, and the means to communicate their decisions. Ordinary people should be empowered to make political decisions. This is a solution. Step Three – Implement the Solution Once a solution has been found, it should be tried. We’re very lucky in the west in that we don’t need to provoke and win a civil war in order to overthrow our tyrannical regimes. Radical revolutions can be achieved without spilling a single drop of blood - we can simply vote out the elites; but…we have to replace them with something completely different. Up until now simply voting out one group hasn’t worked for the simple reason that, as Tom Paine recognised, one lot of incompetent and/or corrupt individuals are simply replaced with another lot of incompetent and/or corrupt individuals, whilst the system that’s at the heart of the problem grinds remorselessly on…and on…and on. I do not suggest ours is a quick solution and, I believe, that is all to the good. Democracy such as we propose – where citizens can make their own political choices every day – has never yet been tried. Although the Swiss come the closest to our proposed model (and it hasn’t done them much harm) such radical changes to western dictatorships would be cataclysmic to the ruling elites, and would no doubt be bitterly resisted. Starting small, like the most successful businesses, is the key to sneaking in under the radar. I believe our best chances of success are small steps, small victories too insignificant for our arrogant masters to notice – the dripping tap water-on-a-stone approach. We begin by having real democrats elected onto town and district councils, one at a time if necessary. Obviously one person is not going to make enough difference for anyone to notice, but we can begin to put theory into practice. We can learn how to change the system, experiment, make mistakes, evolve, grow. Ultimately voters will be able to simply press a button and make a decision, and once thus empowered, it’s unlikely they will ever wish to return to allowing others to decide for them. It would be a bit like leaving home. No matter how much we love our parents, once we have left home and no longer have them telling us what’s best for us, we never choose to go back, to have them continue making our decisions. Our embryonic organisation is not yet able to deliver the finished product, but what we can do is this: Our local council meets once a month. There is absolutely nothing to stop our real democrat, once elected, from contacting a random sample of constituents before a council meeting and asking them how they wish their democrat to vote on every issue being debated. The majority view then becomes that councillor’s vote. That is not difficult to do, and it would be real democracy producing real decisions by the people who should be making them – ordinary voters. It’s a function that will at first be of little practical significance – yet it would be mightily symbolic: a revolutionary change in HOW decisions are made. This is how to implement a solution. I know there are problems to our solution: selection of the sample, informing the constituent about the issues being debated…etc. But it would be a start, and like the man said: ‘A thousand mile walk begins by taking the very first step.’ There comes a point when you have to stop just talking and start doing. No matter what we do it’s always important to have a realistic measurement of success. If I go onto the tennis court seriously expecting to hammer Roger Federer, I’m going to go home seriously disillusioned. But if I go onto that tennis court honoured and delighted just to see the great man on the other side of the net, I’m going to be a happy bunny no matter what the result. So too with our efforts to change the world. We can’t expect in the short term to have any impact on a well established, hugely powerful machine, so we mustn’t be downhearted when it doesn’t happen overnight. Our measurement of success must be, for some considerable time to come, to simply be in there competing. We know we’re right. We know our solution may not deliver utopia, but we also know it would be considerably better than what we’ve got; and that’s all the reason we need for doing it. 19 December 2006 Two days ago the British attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, announced in fewer than one hundred words that the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) investigation into alleged corruption charges at BAE Systems, the government’s flagship arms producer, was being shut down. The reason? Why, in the national interest of course. Lord Goldsmith is supposed to be independent, occupying as he does the highest position in the judiciary, which is also allegedly independent of government influence. However, the attorney general is appointed by the prime minister, and attends cabinet meetings where he is completely surrounded by Tony’s cronies. This particular attorney general has secured his place in history by ruling three and a half years ago that it was perfectly legal for Britain to go to war in Iraq. Even though this action was obviously wrong, it was, more to the point, completely ILlegal according to international law. He also appears to have a pivotal role in the ongoing murky inquiry into the ‘cash for peerages’ investigation which may or may not (more likely) become clear in our lifetimes. Such is the nature of the man now deciding Britain’s ‘best interests’. The SFO began looking at BAE’s relationship with Saudi Arabia several years ago. It is thought to have cost the investigators at least £2m of taxpayers’ money to date, all flushed down the toilet as of 14th December. That the SFO was onto something interesting cannot now be doubted. Two weeks ago Saudi Arabia told the British government that if the investigation was not halted within ten days they would cancel a proposed deal with BAE for £6 billion worth of Tornado jets, and buy from the French instead. The real truth behind this little story will not be known anytime soon, if ever, but it has attached to it a very strong aroma of fish. What else is new? In her excellent article ‘Underwriting Bribery: Export Credit Agencies and Corruption’ (www.thecornerhouse.org.uk) Dr Sarah Walters casts a very revealing spotlight on the murky world of international trade. We learn, for example that US and UK governments (amongst many others) traditionally use taxpayers’ money to underwrite contracts made between private companies and foreign governments, and that ‘commission payments’ to middlemen are routine business expenses. Her article is now three years old, but tells us that at the time US and UK ECAs were guaranteeing annual deals of $12-15 billion and $5-6 billion respectively. Although the UK introduced legislation in 2002 banning bribery, if the American model is anything to go by where in spite of quite long standing anti-corruption legislation 42% of American companies admitted to paying bribes in deals with Eastern European governments, we should not expect a sudden outbreak of honest trading anytime soon. The BAE contract with Saudi Arabia goes back to 1988, the so-called Al Yamamah deal where numbers around £20 billion are bandied about. Now the SFO investigation had allegedly already dug up details of a BAE slush fund of £60m to spend on keeping Saudi princes sweet, but it could reasonably be argued that if all this went on prior to the 2002 legislation no wrong had been done, so the question must be what has happened since then? The good officers of the SFO must have been getting uncomfortably close to their quarry. It seems they had ferreted out hidden offshore accounts in the Virgin Islands and were poised to crack infamously impenetrable Swiss bank accounts when the plug was pulled. Now it seems to me highly unlikely that Saudi Arabia should give a fig about whether or not the great British public found out about a little honest bribery. So why should they pressurize the British government to snuff out the SFO investigation? I mean, Saudi Arabia is a country almost entirely owned and ruled by one family who are about as democratic as, well, the Queen of England. This is a government that routinely maims people, stones them to death and chops people’s heads off in public squares for a bit of light entertainment – pretty much like her sublime graciousness’ quite recent predecessors. The open disgust of the Saudi regime by the British public is quite widely known, to little noticeable concern of the Saudis; why should they care what the British public think of a few secretive backhanders - especially when the focus of British ire would almost certainly be directed against BAE and their own government rather than the Saudis? What exactly is the particular British public interest that Lord Goldsmith is so nobly protecting – especially when this same esteemed peer is quite indifferent to the outrage of that same public to his pronouncing illegal wars legal? Is there anything to ponder in the almost incestuous relationship between the Saudis and the Whitehouse, another supposed champion of freedom and democracy curiously oblivious to the barbaric practices of the desert kingdom? Britain’s anti-corruption legislation was apparently introduced only after some considerable pressure from the US. It seems far more plausible that the British government and Saudis would prefer to keep the details of their ‘arrangements’ hidden from American eyes than the great British public, who frankly are an irrelevance to both kingdoms. 25 November 2006 The curious death by poisoning in London last week of Mr Alexander Litvinenko, described as a ‘Russian dissident’, is quite remarkable not so much for the death itself, but for the extraordinary amount of attention it has attracted from the media. I had never heard of Mr Litvinenko until he was admitted to hospital a couple of weeks ago, at which time he immediately became front page news. It was not as if he was some internationally known rebel leader or champion of Russian liberty. Yet his name has hardly been out of our papers, or his sad jaundiced face off our TV screens for these last ten days. Last night BBC TV devoted quarter of an hour of its prime time 6 o’ clock news bulletin to Mr Litvinenko’s demise. Saturday’s Times led with the story on its front page as well as giving it two full pages inside and full editorial attention. Why all the fuss? The Russian Secret Service is obviously everyone’s preferred choice of suspect, well, if the BBC and the Times are anything to go by. The luckless Mr Litvinenko apparently died from an overdose of radioactive Polonium-210, which we are led to believe is only available from Russian-type spooks. Now as someone who’s never contemplated murdering anyone, I’m poorly placed for offering an opinion on how I would go about the job, but you sort of think that if you did want to bump someone off, you probably wouldn’t leave your calling card, not if you’re the steely eyed professional everyone says you are. Call me a cynic, but the whole thing is rather wiffy to me, and not for the reasons the BBC and Times would have us believe. I worked as a public servant for fourteen years – nothing as sordid as MI6 I’m happy to report – but a servant of her gracious majesty nonetheless. After a while I learnt what the public ‘services’ are all about – empire building. They are nothing whatsoever to do with providing a useful service to those who can’t afford better. Whilst there are some very dedicated professionals working within all the public services, passionately committed to their careers for all the right reasons, these people are not the decision makers. The public services are led by faceless bureaucrats, unelected administrators, mandarins whose sole interest is the expansion of their own personal empires. Expanded empires equal higher salaries which equal bigger gongs which equal higher pensions and more important boardrooms in which to while away one’s retirement. A couple of years ago I was in the car listening to Radio 4’s Women’s Hour. It was at the time when Russia was our new best friend, a steadfast ally in the ‘war on terror’. Two elderly ladies were on chatting about their experiences as wives of MI6 agents, who had either retired or died, I don’t remember. The ladies were wistfully recalling headier times, when their husbands were heroically leading the struggle against communist domination of the world, the so called ‘cold war’. The quite remarkable thing was that far from feeling happy that the world was now a safer place since the ‘Russian menace’ was defeated, their mood was definitely melancholy; they were bemoaning the fact that there was ‘no excitement’ anymore. They didn’t say it in so many words, but they were clearly concerned that there was nothing for MI6’s spooks to do anymore. Unemployed spooks meant a collapsing empire, and we can’t possibly have that now can we? The mandarins of the secret services are more fortunate than their colleagues running more open government departments in that they have a permanent excuse for hiding the details of how and why they exist. But they still need to hold their hands out for state cash – they can’t just help themselves – yet. Although they can keep ducking and diving to some extent about their spending, compared with health or education bosses, say, even the dullest treasury minister is likely to raise a questioning eyebrow about the need for hundreds of spies when there’s no big bad bear to spy upon. Of course government apologists would pooh pooh any suggestion that some other explanation for Mr Litvinenko’s death might be possible other than that put out by establishment authorities. Whilst I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that Russia’s new KGB is quite willing and able to knock off almost anyone they want anywhere they want anytime they want, but I doubt very much that they would do it in any way that might implicate Mr Putin. And there was that rather curious recent spectacle of MI6 publicly advertising for recruits. Why? In exactly the same way that Syria, the West’s popular choice for the killing of Pierre Gemayel is a real possibility, it is also just a little too obvious, when there are others (Israel) who could benefit so much more. Two thousand years ago the Roman lawyer Cicero made legal history when he based his defence of a client around the question ‘Qui bono?’ – who benefits? How does Mr Putin benefit from the death of someone nobody’s ever heard of and who could be no possible threat to him in a manner and in a country guaranteed to point a finger at the Kremlin? How does Russia possibly gain by that, compared for example, to a crumbling spy network desperate to reinvent a purpose for itself? 20 November 2006 Her sainted queenliness looked positively radiant as she staggered to the throne weighed down beneath five times as many lumps of bling as any self-respecting LA drugs baron would wear. No wonder her holy superbness has been suffering from a bad back recently, carting around the accumulated baubles harvested from centuries of piracy and gang warfare – sorry, what I meant to say was spreading enlightenment and civilisation. Grovelling at her feet were the assembled ranks of the peers of her realm, packed together like sardines into the House of Lords and, wrapped up in enormous scarlet cloaks lined with the pelts of thousands of hapless ermines, they resembled a colony of brightly coloured woodlice. Had there been a single one of them under the age of eighty sunglasses would have been the order of the day as they gazed in awe at the blinding light emanating from her dazzling stupendousness; but sadly most of them found it hard enough facing in the right direction. Standing around wherever they could find floorspace, like groups of sulky schoolboys caught spying in the girls’ locker room, were the ‘invited’ guests of ‘the other place’, the elected representatives of the peasants, tolerated, for this one day of the year, in the presence of their unelected lords and masters. Her sublime graciousness had arrived earlier by horse drawn carriage closely guarded by various military types including the Yeoman Warders, affectionately known by visitors to the Tower of London as ‘beefeaters’, clad in centuries old regalia featuring very gay pink tights, and shiny shoes with giant flowery buckles, and ‘bonnets’ that would not have been out of place upon the heads of the more certifiable hotdoggers ‘taking big air’. The elected representatives of the peasants are summoned from their sordid meeting place by ‘Black Rod’, an old chap who likes his tights black to match the rest of his medieval costume. Black Rod’s job is to thump very rudely with a black stick upon the door of the peasants’ representatives to summons them to the presence of her gloriousness. Thus began the latest State opening of the British parliament, exactly as it has been doing for zillions of years. Her radiant stunningness addressed the assembled cast reading a speech, the writing of which she had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with, just one of the vast array of assorted hypocrisies on display. She referred frequently to ‘her’ government – that would be the one to whose upkeep she has only very recently, and very reluctantly, started paying a tiny sliver of her considerable wealth. I reckon one of the main reasons the state opening of the British parliament remains unchanged through the centuries is for the considerable amusement it must provide its organisers when they imagine the high pressured jets of steam emerging from the ears of people like me. The stupidity of it. The arrogance of it. The hypocrisy of it. The waste of it. This annual pantomime has an air of total incredulity about it - Salvador Dali meets Alice in Wonderland. You watch in jaw-dropping disbelief half expecting to see human sized bunny rabbits run on stage left, consult giant timepieces of melting plastic whose hands are moving in opposite directions, before running backwards from whence they came; and then you realise that these are the assembled leaders of one of the most influential nations on the planet, and your blood runs just a degree or two hotter. There are a considerable number of issues I could focus on, but the one that I’m currently obsessed with is this: it’s curious isn’t it, that the same government which continuously imposes changes on the reluctant masses, ruthlessly refuses to change a single facet of its own farcical traditions and customs? Why is it that our leaders ensure that change is something reserved strictly for the plebs? Later on the same day, in the Punch and Judy show that passes for ‘debate’ in our legislative assembly, David Cameron, current leader of her magnificence’s opposition, pointed out that the Blair government has, in its nine years of power, created almost four hundred new laws; each one a change; each one a new restriction; each one a new thread specifically designed to keep Gulliver tied firmly to the ground. Of course Britain is not unique in its penchant for ridiculous pageantry. Many countries do exactly the same, and churches too, and the assorted institutions of the elite – their schools, colleges and officers’ clubs. But why is it that timeless ‘traditions’ and ‘customs’ must be preserved intact in all detail and at all costs for elites and their spawning grounds whilst ordinary folk must continually change, ‘move forward’, grasp the ‘bigger picture, share ‘the vision’, ‘head towards the light’? Of course we change. Of course we need to change. But what is the difference between the changes that distinguish us from cavemen and the changes that tie us more firmly to the ground? The difference is this: free choice. There are not many of us who would choose to be without our TVs, cars and computers, our washing machines, microwaves and fridge freezers; few of us would rather have our ailments treated by the local barber with bread knife, leeches and blister jars than someone with ten years of training using antibiotics and anaesthetics. But how many of us would have chosen to create a single one of Mr Blair’s four hundred new laws? Who amongst us would choose to scrap habeas corpus; permit state torture; go to war? Changes imposed by our leaders serve a multitude of functions – none of them good. First and foremost the endless cycle of change employs entire armies of bureaucrats whose sole occupation is creating new schemes, programmes and initiatives – not because changes to existing schemes, programmes and initiatives are actually wanted or needed by the taxpayer who funds them, but because you have to pretend to occupy the legions of otherwise totally useless, unproductive, unelected, unaccountable administrators who manage your empire, and because without them there would be no empire to manage. Then of course you must keep on changing so no one realises how utterly useless you are, based on the very sound principle that it’s always harder to hit a moving target. If things are always new they are by definition untested, demanding to be ‘given a chance’ and then, just as they are being discovered to be as flawed as the schemes they replaced, the next one is coming off the production line demanding its turn to be ‘given a chance’. Feeding off both of these factors are the ranked masses of public statisticians and economists. Permanent change means permanent employment for these permanent wasters permanently dreaming up new measurements and standards of performance, none of which can be measured against anything that’s gone before for the blindingly obvious reason that you keep on changing the way you define, count and measure things, proving on an almost daily basis the utter pointlessness of their professions for anything other than maintaining the illusion. Over two hundred years ago Thomas Paine would have witnessed an annual state opening of parliament almost identical to last week’s. He once observed: ‘All this seems to shew that change of ministers amounts to nothing. One goes out, another comes in, and still the same measures, vices, and extravagance are pursued. It signifies not who is minister. The defect lies in the system. The foundation and the superstructure of the government is bad.’ Well Tom, I’m very sorry to tell you it’s still bad. I know that you would look around you today with a heavy heart knowing that absolutely nothing has really changed. 13 November 2006 Last Tuesday, 7th November, a 34 year old man, Dhiren Barot, heard Mr Justice Butterfield tell him that he would be sent to prison for 40 years. His crime? Genocide? Killing a child perhaps? Serial killer at least, surely? No, none of these. Mr Barot has been sent to prison for the rest of his useful life for the sins of writing a book, collecting rather dodgy video pictures, and making ‘plans’. Another great victory for British justice. The judge, no doubt a highly intelligent, respected, eminent champion of law and order said that Barot was ‘a determined terrorist, a highly intelligent and very dangerous man [who had] devoted most of his adult life to seeking means of bringing death and destruction to others’. No doubt the judge is a fine upstanding pillar of society, an expert in the realms of jurisprudence who must have heard overwhelming unequivocal evidence to that effect; the proof must have been so overwhelming that any village idiot could not have failed to come to the same conclusion, let alone someone with the razor sharp intellect of Justice Butterfield. I scanned Wednesday’s ‘serious’ papers (The Times, Independent and Guardian) to see if I could learn what this ‘evidence’ must have been, because for some reason it was overlooked on the TV news reports about the sentence. This, in a nutshell, is what I found: Barot was arrested by armed police in London in August 2004, not (as you might expect from a ‘determined terrorist’) whilst engaged in churning out bombs, hoarding guns and ammunition or holding some helpless innocent hostage, but in that other dead giveaway of hardened terrorists – getting his hair cut at the Golden Touch barbers in Willesden High Street. His name had come to the attention of the police after it was found in the laptop of another ‘hardened terrorist’ arrested in Pakistan. Initially imprisoned for two weeks without charge, the police eventually managed to find enough ‘evidence’ to prosecute Barot. In the two years that followed they seized 300 computers and thousands of storage devices, books, notepads and assorted documents. So what exactly did they find? They discovered that Barot had once written a book and had travelled extensively since the mid nineties on ‘reconnaissance missions’, taking lots of video pictures of London and New York. There was even an old clip of the Twin Towers with the image rotating slowly sideways as though the Towers were falling over (or he might have gotten bored and switched the video off a fraction after filming). Then there were the plans. He had ideas, we are led to believe, of parking limousines packed with explosives in underground carparks and detonating them; or using ‘dirty bombs’ full of radioactive waste. Or there was a scheme to gas the Heathrow Express or bomb a tube train under the Thames which he allegedly thought might flood the entire underground network. There were ‘plans’ to demolish New York Stock Exchange and the World Bank and ram oil tankers into things. But was there any evidence at all that all that any of these ‘plans’ had amounted to anything in the eleven years Mr Barot had been occupying himself with them? Did we have anything at all to prove that Mr Barot had any real intention of turning his peculiar fantasies into reality? Er…no. Justice Butterfield heard one counter-terrorism expert’s evidence: ‘It is no exaggeration to say that at the time of the arrest, there was little or no admissible evidence against Barot.’ Neither, in spite of two years of trying, could the combined weight of the police, ‘Intelligence Services’ (no doubt the same ones that ‘knew’ about Saddam’s WMDs) and Crown Prosecution Service produce a single scrap of evidence of any real terrorist activity this ‘determined terrorist’ has actually perpetrated in his alleged eleven year career with Al Qaida. Police could not find a single bullet, gun, detonator or hint of explosive material. Barot’s bizarre collection of home videos and deranged scribblings accumulated over a third of his life comprised the sum total of the prosecution case. I don’t doubt for one second that Justice Butterfield has a superb legal brain, but it seems to me he might be a little confused about the sort of activities with which ‘determined terrorists’ normally amuse themselves. I think the learned judge could benefit from visiting the ravaged terrorist victims of Gaza to gain a clearer understanding of the subject, or perhaps the good people of Lebanon. But if he was curious enough to learn from the masters, he could do no better than taking a stroll around Baghdad. I almost wish he would. It is a sad reflection of British society to observe that our legal system is the most democratic institution we have (well, the trial by jury bit of it anyway). By and large it works reasonably well, relative say to Saudi Arabia or North Korea. However, the fact that scandalous miscarriages of justice occur whenever the judgement has political implications gives the lie to the much trumpeted ‘separation’ of the organs of state. Perhaps the best known proofs of this are found in the cases of the ‘Guildford Four’ and the ‘Birmingham Six’ where ten innocent people spent many years behind bars damned in British courts for ‘terrorist outrages’ before the contrived ‘evidence’ that had convicted them was eventually thrown into the dustbin that should have been it’s fate in the first place. Then there was the three ringed circus which is the most generous description one could give for the great Lockerbie whitewash where the combined resources of British and American governments eventually managed to convict (13 years after the actual bombing) an entirely innocent man, Abdel Baset Megrahi, to life imprisonment. Or the farcical and much contrived ‘public inquiries’ such as the selling of arms to Iraq, the killings of Bloody Sunday, Hutton’s humorous conclusions about the apparent suicide of Dr Kelly (it was the BBC’s fault), and Butler’s positively hilarious reading of the dodgy dossier incident that ‘justified’ Britain going to war in Iraq (that was nobody’s fault at all). All these are all just the better known abuses of our legal system – the tiny tip of an uncomfortably huge iceberg. I’m sure Dhiren Barot has been a very angry young man most of his life, but absolutely no evidence has been produced to suggest he is any more dangerous than tens of thousands of individuals wandering around our streets on ‘care in the community’ schemes. He has done absolutely nothing other than fantasize about trying to provide some sort of justice for the hundreds of thousands of fellow Muslims slaughtered in the name of corporate America. No doubt Barot should have received a slap on the wrist, and perhaps a bit of counselling, and been watched from time to time by our glorious security services. Locking him up for forty years is just another in the long line of monstrous abuses of British law that has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with providing justice, and everything to do with spreading fear and intimidation throughout a nation deluded into thinking it is free and fair. 6 November 2006 There’s a curious custom carried out every year throughout Britain for the couple of weeks leading up to November 11th. Cheap imitation poppies are sold all around the country and it’s almost mandatory to pin one to your clothing – it’s the done thing old chap; patriotism; queen and country and all that; after all, one must remember mustn’t one. The proceeds from plastic poppy sales are used for various organisations involved with ex-service men and their families, which is obviously fair enough. On the Sunday nearest to November 11th, parades and memorial services are held throughout the land, and minute silences are observed in almost every town and village at the stroke of 11.00a.m. – the proverbial 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month when we’re all supposed to gather together and remember the moment in 1918 when the guns fell silent in the killing fields of Europe. Carved into the cold stone of countless memorials throughout the land, above their tragic tolls of names, are the words ‘Lest we Forget…’ But what exactly is it we’re supposed to have learnt, and that we might be in danger of failing to remember? I would suggest the real lessons of war are things that are never widely taught. I never learnt in school, for example, that all war is first and foremost about profit and plunder, or that war could be wholly preventable if that was what our leaders really wanted and set their hearts to achieving. Lest we Forget… As someone who’s never responded well to being ordered around you can probably understand why, as a young chap, I resisted for as long as possible joining the army. But living in Rhodesia in the seventies meant if you were white and male that is exactly what you had to do, and eventually I resolved to go and do my bit. It was the peak of our terrorist war and Rhodesia was literally fighting for its life. Apart from the orders thing, and the fact that I could get killed or crippled for life, the biggest problem I had about going into the army was accepting the possibility that it might be me doing the killing, and my writing from that time shows just how much I agonised about this before deciding that joining up was actually the right thing to do rather than legging it out the country as fast as possible (the quite popular alternative widely known as the chicken run). I passed an officers selection board, but politics intervened before I finished my training. The war was effectively lost, BUT there was to be no ceasefire. At that point the survival of me and those around me immediately assumed an even more pressing priority in my mind than it was before. As this sort of thinking is not normally encouraged in army officers I was politely invited to leave officer school and go finish my eighteen months as an ordinary national serviceman. A cushy little number in military intelligence opened up which allowed me to see out my time in relative peace and quiet. Whilst I witnessed my fair share of barbaric horrors and cruelty, I managed to emerge alive and unscathed and without having to hurt anyone else – top result. Tragically a large number of my mates weren’t so lucky. Nor were tens of thousands of entirely innocent and defenceless civilians. War is something that should never be tried at home – anyone’s home. Living through one is a very special experience, especially if it’s your homeland that’s being destroyed. Those who think anti-war pacifists are disloyal to our brave troops on the front fail to appreciate that many of us speak from first hand experience, and are therefore hugely loyal - we know what it’s like, and know that mostly there’s no need for a ‘front’ in the first place. We protest against our forces’ lives being needlessly wasted; against the pointless crippling injuries; against the killing they do for the American empire. I was lucky with my war experience - it could so easily have been very different. Although war experts come in many forms, none are quite as expert as those who’ve been there. Lest we Forget… There was some high ranking air force guy on TV the other week sharing his ‘expert’ opinion with us about the war in Afghanistan. I don’t know why they bother. Have you ever in your life heard generals and the like tell us anything other than they need more tanks/boats/planes and soldiers/sailors/pilots to play with them? Isn’t it wonderful how surprised all these ‘experts’ are suddenly appearing at the fact that Afghanistan is putting up a fight – as though they hadn’t heard that even the mighty Red Army had to admit defeat after ten years of trying to crush invisible opponents, eventually leaving with their tail between their legs and 50,000 fewer comrades than they started with? You would think these ‘experts’ didn’t know that the Afghans have never been defeated, even when the British army was the strongest in the world; that they had never learnt about that day, 164 years ago, when Dr Brydon rode into Jalalabad with a chunk of his skull missing, the only survivor from the 16,000 strong British garrison slaughtered in just one week in the lethal mountains of Afghanistan. Warfare is what the Afghans do, what they have always done. I live in Grantham, a modest English market town best known as the home of Isaac Newton. Our local paper, The Grantham Journal, told us recently about an RAF Chinook helicopter landing on a playing field at the town’s Kings School for a spot of subliminal recruiting. On board was an ex-pupil of the school, which proudly boasts its very own cadet force numbering 72 strong. The cadets were shown around the chopper and then taken up for jolly joyrides around the place. The Journal didn’t mention if there were any plans for the cadets to meet those veterans who no longer have any legs or arms or eyes, or can’t sleep nights for their recurring nightmares; or those whose marriages have fallen apart because the men who cheerfully went off to war are very different from the ones who returned. It was an interesting decision for a school to make – permitting the landing - because I for one could never do anything to encourage any young person to join today’s British forces. Britain is America’s most well behaved poodle, and has been for decades. Officer and NCO messes around the land should replace all their portraits of the queen with the smug mug of George Bush so the guys better understand who’s really making the decisions. If Uncle Sam was behaving like a responsible adult it wouldn’t be so bad, but he’s more like a power crazed international pirate and, which is worse, is dragging our boys down with him and the rest of his gangster underclass. Ordinary Americans are finally beginning to learn the truth about Bush’s wars, and with memories of Vietnam being revived everywhere, they’re not happy. November’s midterm elections might be interesting. Outraged and well respected voices such as Service Academy Graduates Against the War (www.sagaw.org) are campaigning for the president’s impeachment. Such is the government our forces are indirectly serving that even its own officer class is rebelling against it. If all that weren’t reason enough for not encouraging young people to sign up for the queen’s shilling, what about the way our very own War Department, conducts its affairs? There are few government departments that don’t waste taxpayers’ money as though it was confetti, but the Ministry of ‘Defence’ (that wonderful piece of Orwellian Newspeak) quite probably takes the biscuit. In his most excellent book ‘Lions Donkeys and Dinosaurs’, Lewis Page, an ex-officer in the Royal Marines records a handful of the grossest scandals in military spending that have occurred over the last twenty odd years. Literally billions of taxpayers’ pounds have been squandered on countless generals/admirals etc who have absolutely no risk whatsoever of ever going anywhere near a battlefield or doing anything more dangerous than supping one too many pink gins; and arms contractors with outrageously expensive toys that either don’t work, or arrive late, massively over-budget and out of date. I could not begin to give justice to the horror story Mr Page has to tell. Go buy the book – it should be compulsory reading throughout the country. But the really big question is why have we got such a huge military machine anyway? We no longer have a marauding empire for which we need to supply the muscle, there is no conventional threat anywhere near our borders nor likely to be in the foreseeable future, and the only real threat to world peace is our best friend (and who we couldn’t beat up anyway even if they weren’t). Until such time as there is an effective INDEPENDENT police force, Britain should of course be able to defend herself; but sending young troops to die needlessly in deserts thousands of miles away from our shores is a very long way from my definition of self defence. Lest we Forget… St Peter’s Hill Post Office is in the middle of town. Inside is a small memorial to Grantham’s postal workers killed in both World Wars. Like so many of its kind it reads: ‘None wavering, none doubting the cause’. At best it’s only partly true. Was the inscription writer there at each fateful moment? Did he pause over his chisel and actually ask each of those poor souls if there wasn’t perhaps a slight flicker of doubt creeping into their mind about whether ‘the cause’ really justified the fact they were about to be blown into atoms, or ripped apart by machineguns, or suffocated with poisonous gases; or doomed to die slowly, screaming in incontinent agony in some freezing shell hole? We know that many others most definitely did ‘waver’ and ‘doubt the cause’ (through their letters, poetry and declassified documents). An average of three British soldiers a fortnight were executed for ‘cowardice’ by firing squads of their own brainwashed fellows; the ultimate in ‘friendly fire’. Conscientious objectors filled the prisons, or served as non-combatants, and many officers feared mutiny by their own troops more than the German guns. The ‘doubters’ possibly included those who endured the trenches but afterwards saw out their days as gibbering wrecks in lunatic asylums or limbless bundles on icy street corners selling matches to survive, completely rejected by the king they faithfully marched away to serve; or what about the tight-lipped face of that mother who, having sacrificed five healthy sons to ‘the cause’, refused for the rest of her life to stand for the national anthem? Generals cynically manipulated the power of friendship. They commanded ‘pals’ battalions; regiments comprising young men from the same towns and villages, lifelong mates and family members who could be relied upon to ‘keep the dressing’ as they marched steadily into withering machinegun fire and tons of lethal limb-shredding explosive raining down around them, not because of some ‘great cause’ that none doubted, but because of heroic loyalty to friends and kinfolk trapped together in a moment of mindnumbing stupidity. The steel bonds of comradeship and brainwashed subservience to power crazed elites reinforced by firing squads should never be ‘remembered’ as unwavering devotion to trumped-up ‘causes’. War is an abomination. Its permanent existence is the single greatest proof of the criminal negligence of our leaders. War is not a natural disaster over which we have no control. Elites start them intentionally for personal power and plunder safe in the knowledge that it won’t be their lifeblood soaking away in a frozen foreign wasteland; it won’t be their sons dying slowly and alone in some distant ditch. The real lesson of war is not about the unquestioned bravery of young men, it’s about the steadfast refusal of every generation of leaders to create world peace. Every year they stand at cenotaphs shedding their crocodile tears for generations past whilst cynically ordering into early graves generations present. It could be ridiculously easy for a nation as powerful as America (or as Britain was when it had the chance) to create lasting world peace if it put its mind to the job. It could be done through international law. It could be made illegal to manufacture or trade in the weapons and equipment of war. It could be made illegal to establish an army, and to plan, lead or take part in war. And it could be enacted that no individual breaching the law is above and beyond the reach of its administrators. It could be. The real lessons that should never be forgotten during our annual minute’s silence are these: the only ‘cause’ that war has ever served is the greater enrichment of the obscenely rich; and that wars exist not because our leaders can’t stop them, but because they choose not to. 23 October 2006 Yesterday saw the final professional appearance of a true sporting legend – an international giant of his world standing head and shoulders over not only all his contemporary rivals, but over all those that have preceded him. If Michael Schumacher had won the Brazilian Grand Prix yesterday it would have brought his awesome collection of Formula One wins to 92, equalling the COMBINED wins of Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna, neither of whom were exactly lightweights in the sport. When I was a young chap growing up in the cosy sixties and seventies I remember my mum and dad often saying how much they wanted me to enjoy the privileges I had and which they had not. They were obviously glad that living standards had improved so much since their childhoods that I had all these wonderful opportunities which, being young and stupid, I could not appreciate and took for granted; but you also sensed a little sadness on their part that so much had passed them by. My mum’s dad was a fisherman in Kings Lynn, and my dad’s mum ran a working mans’ club in Walsall. In other words they had both had pretty tough childhoods, and knew the value of a bob. However, when I look at young people today, envy is the last thing I feel. The overwhelming emotion I have is sorrow. I pity them; and I feel a good measure of guilt. The world that my generation is passing on is truly shameful and, given the fact that we in the West were lucky enough to be raised in fairly peaceful prosperous times, the fact that we have not consolidated on our excellent starts and made the world a happier, healthier, securer place is something of which my generation should be deeply ashamed. The school leavers of today are entering a world where they will be expected to work until they are 70, a world where their rights and freedoms are being butchered on an almost daily basis. It is almost impossible for a young working family to buy their first home, and ‘mortgages for life’ are now standard practice. Spy cameras and satellite tracking stations monitor their every waking movement and activity. Armed police with bullet proof vests stalk the same streets where just a few short years ago it was unheard of to see a constable with anything more threatening than a wooden stick. These selfsame upholders of the law gun down innocent Brazilian electricians and routinely smash up people’s homes; they arrest and imprison people without charging them with any crime; bring our airports to grinding standstills searching for mythical explosives in jars of handcream. None of this has come to pass as ‘acts of God’ – species of natural disaster that no one could possibly do anything about. It’s all man made; wrought by the hands of our very own leaders, aided and abetted every step of the way by their most powerful of allies – our own complacency. The lives of comfortable torpidity that our parents so envied us have made us dull and lazy, too indolent to keep a distrustful eye on those whose decisions have so blighted the lives of the next generation. It’s not entirely our fault. First of all the system by which we are ruled is not ours – we did not devise it. Secondly, the systems by which we are conditioned – education and the media – are out of our control. Thirdly, it’s extraordinarily difficult to protest when you’re warm and well fed. However, excuses aside, the fact is I do not envy young people the world they’re inheriting from me, and I cannot look them in the eye without trying to put right this gross dereliction of responsibility. And it’s not too late to redeem ourselves. Switzerland is the only country on earth where real democracy is routinely practiced. It’s the only land where ordinary citizens routinely decide government policy. It’s the only nation that disdains personality politics to such an extent that few people ever know who the Swiss head of state is. And, landlocked and starved of natural resources it contrives to be one of the richest nations on earth whilst maintaining humane welfare programmes for the needy. It alone has kept its people free from war for two hundred years, even when completely surrounded by it – twice. In short, it’s living proof that real democracy works. It is the solution. Political parties committed to system reform need to be created and win elections - parties committed to handing over complete decision making power to where it belongs – the taxpaying voter. Politicians need to be changed from the lying, corrupt manipulators most of them are, into powerless administrators presiding over a system where the voter alone chooses. It isn’t pie in the sky – the Swiss have been doing it for hundreds of years, and it hasn’t done them much harm. Although most of the individual states in the US have direct democracy provisions written into their constitutions, the politician is still more powerful than the voter. Until this situation is reversed, democracy cannot be said to rule. The dire state of the world we are passing on to today’s school leavers is first and foremost a direct consequence of our system of government. It’s criminally corrupt and morally bankrupt. But it is also our responsibility for failing to change it; and we can change it. The one tiny piece of real authority we have is election of leaders. All it would take is to elect a political party committed to putting the voter in charge. We owe this much to the future. We can create a world where real democracy rules, and we must. 22 September 2006 I’m not a big golf fan – English clubs tend to be populated by pretentious twits more preoccupied with wealth and sartorial elegance than a person’s ability to hit a ball. So I don’t tend to watch much either. But. Ryder Cup is different. No other golf tournament comes close to the passions generated in Europe v USA. The fact that the US has been doing everything in its power over the last few years to make itself an international pariah has only heightened the tension. Before you wanted Europe to win simply because they were always the underdogs. Now you want them to win so that someone, anyone can stick it to the yanks. Yesterday we heard the sad news that Richard (The Hamster) Hammond, well loved presenter in Top Gear, had an horrific accident crashing a dragster at about 300 mph. He is still in a critical condition with severe brain damage. Comments in the press this morning include the usual sort of nannying twaddle that dangerous stunts shouldn’t be allowed in the name of entertainment; but I loved best the comment by his friend and co-presenter Jeremy Clarkson who allegedly told him in his hospital bed when he went to visit, ‘I told you you were a crap driver’. I’ve just finished reading Peter Oborne’s book ‘The Rise of Political Lying’. It’s a fairly detailed study of how the Blair government has routinely lied to the British public throughout much of its time in office. I don’t know much about Mr Oborne, and I’m not sufficiently curious to find out more. My guess is he’s fairly conservative. Given the fact that most of the political literature available in British bookshops is quite left wing, it’s moderately interesting to read an attempt at intellectual comment from the right. Whilst I don’t question any of the content of Mr Oborne’s book, it is quite ridiculous to accept his implied central thesis – that political lying in the UK is more or less an invention of the Blair government. I guess he half-heartedly tries to create the illusion of impartiality by taking a brief look at some Tory fibs, but rather blows his cover by suggesting that Margaret Thatcher was only guilty of two lies during her ten years in office, without mentioning at all her flat denial in the early eighties that the government intended to kill off the British coal industry, as accurately predicted at the time by union leader Arthur Scargill. Mr Oborne also clearly laments the fact that Labour Party spin doctors enjoyed unprecedented controls over the civil service who, Mr Oborne appears to believe, are simply incapable of any form of artifice. British public servants, he seems to think, specialise in indifferent objective analysis and are solely motivated by pure and selfless duty to the queendom. First and foremost Mr Oborne is wrong to suggest that political lying in Britain is a recent phenomenon, a creation of the evil monsters within the Blair government. It is highly questionable whether any British government has ever been truthful, or ever behaved with the welfare of the British people uppermost in its mind. If anyone would doubt this, they only need to ask themselves why all British governments classify so many of their documents as top secret, many of which are required to be kept secret for up to a hundred years. The second farcical implication of Mr Oborne’s is that the civil service is beyond reproach. The first thoughts that concentrate the mind of the Whitehall mandarin as he strolls into work are dreams of honours and titles to retire on, and the cushy and lucrative boardroom numbers that will certainly follow to boost the already substantial pension fund. The mandarin’s second most vital duty is the enlargement of his own department. The bigger the department, the bigger the resulting salary, pension, knighthood and boardroom appointments. Two hundred years ago Dickens accurately observed, in Bleak House, ‘The one great principle of the English law is to make business for itself. There is no other principle distinctly, certainly, and consistently maintained through all its narrow turnings.’ The same is exactly true of the British civil service. So is Oborne’s book completely useless? Well, no not exactly. It does give quite a nice account of the unquestionable deviousness of Blair and his cronies. The final chapter offers a couple of very sensible suggestions on how to improve matters (but is let down by his star struck faith in the integrity of civil servants). There are also one or two quite good general discussions around the subject of lies, half truths and spin; and in the final analysis I suppose you have to acknowledge that any book that helps to lift the fog from the eyes of the innocent as to how the world really works can’t be all bad, even if the fog is only half cleared. 8 September 2006 If you ever hear the often quoted view that British mainstream media is carefully controlled and manipulated, and think ‘yeah, yeah, more conspiracy theory tosh’, spare a thought for this week’s news. The lead story on this morning’s BBC Breakfast News was, exactly as it’s been all week I think, the fact that Tony Blair has not named the day for his departure from Downing Street. At the risk of stating the obvious, this is NOT news. If he had announced a date, it would be news, worth perhaps a minute or two of air time, no more. The entirely irrelevant information that he has not named a day is not worth one second of anyone’s time. Not receiving any attention at all by the BBC Breakfast team was information about three more British soldiers killed in Afghanistan two days ago. Like the killing of yet more unarmed civilians in so called independent Gaza by the Israeli Terrorist Forces, or the almost one hundred a day death toll in Iraq, these facts are deemed less important by the BBC than the non news of Tony Blair’s non departure from Downing Street. The timing of this sudden interest in this non-story is interesting. The Labour Party conference is due in about two weeks. In the absence of a departure announcement from Blair there is little doubt that the conference would be dominated by the subject. Airing it now pre-empts the very likely possibility of major disruption and descent into farce and chaos then. Without doubt everyone will be totally sick to death of the subject by the time the conference starts. So what we have is the country’s flagship news provider serving as propaganda vehicle for the Labour Party. Whilst the war in Afghanistan has had a couple of mentions recently it has been the heavy implication that our wonderful troops are ‘defending freedom and democracy’ whilst being terribly equipped and under-resourced. We have seen some general and some air force bod recently tell us with quivering lips that although they are managing with what they have – just – they have no doubts they will prevail. Ahh! My heroes. With a British soldier getting killed there every other day no one, NO ONE challenges what the hell they’re doing in that wasteland in the first place or demands their immediate return home! The wonderful movie ‘Welcome to Sarajevo’ was on telly last week (shown at 1.50 a.m.!). Set in the horrendous Bosnian War during the early 90s, it has a scene where some frontline journalists have risked their lives obtaining some grizzly story or another and have sent it in to London only to be told that it would not be screened because there was a far more important story concerning the Duke and Duchess of York. It’s a mystery to me why the mainstream media nearly always have identical top stories. With thousands of different events occurring in the country and around the world every single day how is it that exactly the same two or three stories lead on all the main TV channels and in all the national ‘serious’ newspapers? (The Independent being about the only paper to live up to its name most of the time). Of course there’s nothing new in people being lied to and manipulated by their own governments or media moguls. That doesn’t mean it’s right to continue the practice. The first priority of the country’s national news broadcaster is providing accurate information and informed opinion to the public, NOT serving as principle propaganda vehicle for the government of the day. The BBC must be given real editorial freedom and a mandate to stop serving as lackey for the ruling political party. The game is up. People are not stupid. We pretty much know how the world works and demand to be treated like the responsible adults most of us are. 22 August 2006 Talk about mountains and molehills… Sunday saw the biggest farce that has ever blighted test cricket. Pakistan v England at the Oval, Pakistan so far in front England needed two days of snow to have any sort of chance. Middle of the afternoon and umpire Daryl Hare decides the ball looks a bit dodgy and changes it, implying that Pakistan had been deliberately tampering with it. It costs them five runs – they could have been docked a hundred for all the difference it would have made to the inevitable outcome. They go off for tea and then refuse to take the field in a hissy fit protest against the scurrilous slur on the integrity of the entire Pakistani nation. England win by default. I have never heard anything quite so ridiculous (well, not related to cricket anyway). The police have finally (after about ten days of interrogation) charged 11 of the 23 people they arrested about two weeks ago with various acts of terrorism. I wait to see their evidence with baited breath, the experiences of the Guildford Four and the Birmingham Six still fresh in my memory bank, not to mention disappeared WMDs, Brazilian electricians and the innocent residents of Forest Gate. Meanwhile the craziness continues. After last week's debacle over the illegal handream (see 17 August below), this weekend saw passengers refusing to let a plane take off because two dark skinned passengers ‘looked like bombers’. There are times when you just have to pinch yourself to make sure you’re not trapped in some sort of surrealist time warp. Now that the Israelis are having a breather from the tiring business of murdering Lebanese civilians (but have continued trying to ethnically cleanse Gaza), George Bush announced yesterday that the American taxpayer has very generously ‘volunteered’ to pay $100m towards rebuilding Lebanon. So American bombs destroy the place and then the American taxpayer picks up a chunk of the bill. Why not cut out the middle man and just get the taxpayer to give directly to the bomb makers and the American contractors who will no doubt pick up a sizeable piece of the action? 17 August 2006 A major piece of news – Andy Murray beat Roger Federer last night in straight sets. Awesome! So here we are, eight days after the latest ‘credible intelligence’ fiasco brought chaos to every airport in Britain; and not a single criminal charge in sight. The police are still questioning over twenty Moslems who, we were all assured last Thursday, include the main suspects in some conspiracy to blow up a number of aircraft. Yet eight days on and NOT A SINGLE CRIMINAL CHARGE IN SIGHT. So much for credible intelligence – it must have come from the same joke shop that supplied ‘credible intelligence’ about weapons of mass destruction, innocent Brazilian electricians and young residents of Forest Gate masquerading as terrorists. In fact it is now so implausible that there was anything substantial to justify last Thursday’s airline mayhem that even if charges are brought, it will be reasonable to remember the Guildford Four and the Birmingham Six, wrongly convicted twenty odd years ago on trumped up terror charges. Yesterday we had the story of an airliner flying between London and Denver being forced to divert and land in Boston, accompanied by two F16 fighter jets because a 60 year old female passenger was armed with illegal hand cream! You couldn’t make it up. One brief news report on Sunday suggested there was some sort of rift between Britain and the US over last Thursday’s events. Allegedly Britain did not want to make the arrests but was ordered to by Washington. Hmmm, maybe. Nothing these clowns do surprises me. But as an unbiased observer the whole thing, last Thursday’s fiasco and the forced landing in Boston, both looked like drills to me – an excuse for spooks and cops to play wargames, a live practice session for the hundreds of little action and contingency plans that they will have been dreaming up for the last couple of years. Doesn’t matter if a couple of dozen innocents are locked up for a few weeks, and tens of thousands of people are inconvenienced, and airline companies hit with huge financial losses. The holy excuse of ‘National Security’ appears to justify any extreme of lunacy. Osama’s sides must be aching with laughter as he wonders what the west will do next to keep him amused. 26 July 2006 It’s the cynic inside me I know, but whenever our TV news is almost completely obsessed with one story I wonder what else is going on that we’re not being told. That’s what working as a civil servant for fourteen years does for you. Such is the case at the moment with the latest unpleasantness in Lebanon. So I had a little look around for what I might be missing. Straight away I found something. The Independent gave a fair amount of attention to a story that I don’t think was mentioned at all on the BBC – the collapse of talks between World Trade Organisation countries on new international trading rules. If you think that’s not surprising because it’s the sort of stuff guaranteed to cure insomnia, you might need to think again. Because although the eyes of many may glaze over at the mention of trading treaties, they spring very much open if you mention immigration, and the two subjects are directly related. If you were a struggling farmer in Africa, much of Asia, and Central and South America, the first thing that probably blights your life is the crushing corruption of your own government. The second thing, directly connected to the first, is the impossibility of finding a foreign markets for your produce. And the reason you can’t find a market is because of suffocating western trading rules hugely skewed in favour of western producers. Western governments pay vast farming subsidies for example, to their farmers, causing enormous overproduction, which is invariably dumped in third world countries. In addition the west imposes enormous taxes on third world countries wishing to send their produce to western markets. Because they can’t pay the tax, they can’t compete. So the western tax payer is stuffed two ways – subsidising overproduction and not having access to cheaper imports; and third world producers simply cannot market their goods. Because the third world cannot market their own goods due to the great western trading scam, they cannot get their economies running. This causes such poverty and deprivation that their people have no choice but to emigrate. It’s move or starve. It isn’t difficult to see that this arrangement perfectly suits the western conglomerates who pull the strings of our political leaders. It creates that dream commodity – slave labour, not only in the third world countries beloved by western manufacturers, but also at home by armies of desperate immigrants. The collapse of the recent trade talks in Europe, allegedly because of the absolute refusal of the US to modify its outrageous trading practices, was an event the BBC thought too trivial to trouble it viewers with. However, it is the single greatest cause of the legions of ravaged people clambering over our borders that is directly controllable by our own governments, but they chose not to. I wonder why. There are many words I could use to describe the Israeli government, but ‘stupid’ isn’t one of them; there isn’t much they do that doesn’t produce a net profit. A couple of weeks ago the father of one of the Israeli soldiers captured by Hezbollah militants was interviewed on television. He was absolutely adamant that the war had almost nothing to do with the kidnap of his son, pointing out that such things have been going on almost routinely on the Lebanese border for many years. Israel knows you can’t defeat terrorists by murdering innocent civilians (unless unlimited genocide is the hidden agenda). They know a limited blitz on Lebanon will produce more terrorists than it kills. There’s absolutely no gain for Israel in simply bashing Beirut. The open complicity of the US (and their favourite lapdog) in the Israeli action, and the immediate mass evacuation of Beirut that was ordered on day one tells us something else is going on. Winston Churchill said (to Joe Stalin in 1943, in Teheran coincidently), ‘In time of war the truth is so precious that she must always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.’ That the US decided over a decade ago to start a new war to occupy its gargantuan army and keep sweet the equally gargantuan arms industry that bankrolls so many election campaigns, is fairly obvious to most of us. The question is: who’s the enemy? The given answer, I suspect, is just one of many lies. It’s a war on terror, we’re told. But one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. If you consider the huge number of terrorist gangs operating around the world, many of whom are run from Washington, it soon becomes apparent that we’re being fairly selective about the terrorists we’re actually fighting; and it doesn’t take a genius to work out that the one thing our latest enemies have in common is their religion. This isn’t a ‘war on terror’, it’s a good old fashioned Crusade. It’s Christians v Muslims all over again, only our leaders haven’t the gumption to say so (yes I know the Israelis aren’t Christian, but your enemy’s enemy is your ally). Christians are far from short of their fair share of psychopathic bigots, but their influence is tiny relative to their Muslim counterparts. The rapid expansion in the west of Islam, coupled with its inability to control its own medieval fanatics and keep pace with western social reforms (such as reasonably free expression and the emancipation of women) is directly responsible for causing the Christian west to fear it. Given this inescapable fact, a very tiny part of me worries that maybe, just maybe, the Americans are right. 19 July 2006 A couple of nights ago there was a piece on the news about the G8 meeting that was just closing in St Petersburg. It featured Blair and Bush having a chat at a time when they assumed no one could hear them. But a sneaky microphone somewhere near picked up the dialogue. There was nothing especially revealing. Who does not already know that the British prime minister is no more than an amusing lap dog to his holiness the emperor of the universe? Did we really need confirmation in the form of his little whiny sycophantic voice, clearly so overawed by his master’s favour that he stuttered and bumbled and tripped over his tongue in his desperate effort to not offend his sublimeness? What they were talking about was the latest war being joyfully waged on innocent civilians by the gangsters of Israel. Unsurprisingly the G8 (America) had declared that the whole thing was the fault of Hezbollah, and the innocent folk of Lebanon deserve every bomb the Israelis choose to throw at them – in fact they should be grateful for the lesson they are learning and should do the decent thing and refund Israel their costs. I’ve always been completely mystified about how people who have been so appallingly abused by history as the Jews indeed have been, and about which abuse they have endlessly bleated to the entire planet as though they are the only class of people that have ever suffered, which they most definitely are not, could proceed to exactly copy at the first opportunity the same barbarity they have complained about. It simply doesn’t compute for me. You could sort of understand it if they were wreaking revenge on Germany, say, but the Palestinians have never had anything to do with Jewish pain. Why pick on them? There was something else about the little news clip about Bush and Blair. It was the chilling arrogance and smug indifference of Bush. Granted, you would probably be hard pressed to spot the intellectual difference between Mr. Bush and a retarded lemming, and the American president may have been looking pleased with himself for no better reason than a recent Nintendo victory over some armless person, but the cynic inside me saw someone whose puppet master is feeling very contented. The fact that Britain is launching a massive evacuation exercise of its nationals is significant. We should watch this space with dread. Something dastardly is going on. On a more cheerful note, and God knows we need one, I completed my Constitution for Great Britain, and have attached it as an appendix to the third edition of my Free Democracy book. Order your signed copy today! 6 July 2006 So the multi million pound superstars that clutter the front pages of glossy magazines and the back pages of newspapers failed miserably to get past the quarter finals in the World Cup. Again. Beaten by Portugal in a penalty shootout. Again. Different country, usual method. Tim Henman got stuffed at Wimbledon. Again. O.K. he did have the misfortune to meet Roger Federer in the second round. New hope Andrew Murray made it through to the last 16 before getting stuffed by Marcos Baghdatis. Who? Our cricketers have just been stuffed by Sri Lanka (whilst Andrew Flintoff was noncing about in top hat and tails with the unmentionables at Ascot), and our rugby team was annihilated down under. Reasons to be cheerful? Not many. Not that it improves much when you look at the work of our illustrious leaders. A sixth British soldier was gunned down yesterday in Afghanistan - that traditional foreign dustbowl where so much British blood has been wasted before. It was bad enough that Blair sent our troops to die in the American adventure in Iraq; that he should do so in Afghanistan too (the Americans quit the war that they started there leaving us to clear up their mess) just leaves me incandescent with rage. Unsurprisingly the generals are calling for reinforcements of cannon fodder. If there was just a hint of natural justice to be had the Blair government would be indicted for war crimes and murder. Yesterday North Korea tested a couple of ICBMs. This is an interesting little development. A pawn of China (Pyongyang wouldn’t sneeze without Beijing’s permission - in exactly the same way that nothing happens in Central America without a nod of approval at the very least from the Whitehouse) there can be absolutely no question that the yellow peril is flexing some imperialistic muscles. China is currently the third largest economic ‘partner’ (exploiter is a better word) with Africa (behind USA and France), and are elbowing in on traditional US hunting grounds in South America. The single biggest cause of Islamic extremism, Israel, is overreacting in its typically fascist style to the Palestinian kidnap of one of their soldiers. They have refilled Gaza, which is supposed to be a sovereign state now, with tanks, bulldozers and infantry which they are using to destroy the few places they haven’t got around to yet. The Israeli government are the true scum of the earth, exceeding even the extraordinarily high standards set by the Whitehouse. In spite of all this the BBC manage to devote a good chunk of this morning’s news to the scandalous outrage that the Women’s Institute is about to raise its membership subscriptions by £4 a year. Who said humour is dead? 21 June 2006 England managed a shaky 2 all draw with Sweden last night to win their group in the World Cup and go through to the last 16. Their first game in the knock out will be on Sunday against Ecuador. If they defend as well as they did last night they should be home on Monday. Poor old Tim Henman was knocked out of the Stella Artois in the semis, defeated by Leyton Hewitt, about four line judges and an umpiring system that clings to the middle ages like a bulldog with lockjaw. Tim actually had Hewitt on the ropes and should have won, but you could just see his spirit die after about the sixth appalling line call in a row. There’s no excuse for it. The technology to enable fair umpiring is there at courtside in the shape of Hawkeye, it takes about five seconds to use; but no, we can’t possibly use anything that questions some pompous overweight official’s authority. And talking about pompous overweight officials… The furore over some convicted paedophile’s ‘life’ sentence of about five years continues to rumble on. This started when Home Secretary John Reed criticised the judgement as too lenient, and all the law lords started shrieking like monkeys with their bums on fire about the ‘constitutional implications’ of politicians criticising judges. I love it when some stuffed shirt bangs on about ‘constitutional crises’. How can you have a crisis over something that doesn’t exist? At the height of the pomposity the Lord Chancellor in a fit of pique said that it was wrong to blame judges for lenient sentencing when it was not their fault. Well sorry old chap, but there is a place called the House of Lords, a substantial chunk of which comprise judges. No legislation is passed in this country without it being approved by these fine travellers upon the gravy train. Whilst I would never point the finger solely at the judges, they are at least as responsible as the likes of John Reed and his political buddies for the country’s rapidly increasing decline into the bureaucratic bog, with muddled prison sentencing just a tiny inlet of the enormous slimy swamp that swallows up anything at all the government touches. Our government is a bit like Tim Henman’s tennis umpire. We have the technology to do the job properly, but it is kept safely locked away by the incompetent officials whose power it would replace, and whose ability it would positively embarrass. 12 June 2006 Roger Federer failed yesterday to win the French Open, beaten more by his own poor play than the skill of Rafael Nadal. The World Cup is just getting going, with England off to a shaky start winning an unconvincing match against that well known footballing giant Paraguay. All the talk is still about St. Wayne’s foot. Home news is daily more incredible. I sit and listen to it with my mouth agape wondering if I’m attending the mad hatter’s tea party in some sort of Alice-type wonderland, and shortly I will wake up into normal surroundings where my leaders are not actually trying to outdo each other in breathtaking displays of ignorance and incompetence. Today we learn that this week’s Home Secretary, John Read, is on the verge of demanding that people stop ‘moaning’ about crime in their areas, and do something about it! It’s difficult to know if he’s serious, or being intentionally provocative in order to distract us from the unholy mess his police service is in. Last week the boys in black (250 of them!) raided a terraced house in London (perhaps they struggle with the difference between a terraced house and a terrorist house). They shot one of the young men who lived there minding his own business and spent a week tearing it to pieces searching for some mythical chemical bomb about which they had ‘real and credible intelligence’. Just after this yet another young black man was knifed on an inner city estate in London. People had tried to call the police and dialled 999 shortly before he was killed. They never attended. Short staffed no doubt. However, they did manage to imprison two innocent young men for a week before finally accepting that they really weren’t terrorists at all in spite of all the ‘intelligence’ to the contrary. ‘Intelligence’ about weapons of minor destruction is clearly as useless as ‘intelligence’ about weapons of mass destruction. I actually feel quite sorry for the plods on the street – I mean, they’re the poor muts who are being ordered to waste their time chasing shadows. It’s their faces we see on our TV screens, not the morons responsible for ‘intelligence’. If I seem unusually cynical this morning remember this little story: the Vietnam War began when a North Vietnamese fishing boat was ‘seized’ off China Beach early in 1965. It was packed full of weapons, irrefutable proof, the world’s media was told, of the communists arming the Vietnamese for war. Twenty years later it was learnt that the CIA had loaded the boat and floated it out, alerting the media to its ‘discovery’. This happened shortly after the ‘Gulf of Tonkin Incident’ in 1964 when North Vietnamese gunboats were alleged to have attacked the US destroyer Maddox. Subsequent documents would disclose the ‘Tonkin Incident’ being drafted by ‘intelligence’ officials in the Whitehouse two months before it was supposed to have happened. Whilst I’m well aware that these are American stories, don’t forget that the Americans learnt everything they know from the previous world imperialist power, and ‘special relationship’ buddy – Britain, and whilst our own country is not as active on the world stage as it once was, it’s unlikely to have forgotten any of its old tricks. 31 May 2006 There were two pieces of history making news yesterday. The first was the announcement that Vodafone had released figures showing the biggest ever annual loss recorded by a British company, almost £15bn. The very first thing they did was sack 400 people from their headquarters. Oh that it were as easy to get rid of useless bureaucrats in the public sector. The second bit of history occurred about 9 p.m. when Theo Walcott trotted onto the hallowed ground of Old Trafford as the youngest ever player to receive an England football cap. I don’t know how sensible his selection is in terms of purely technical ability, time will tell, but in terms of diverting media attention away from Wayne’s Foot, together with the national morale sapping effect of the loss of St. Wayne, I reckon it’s a piece of genius. Oh yes, and there was an item about US marines murdering 24 Iraqis. This story concerns an inquiry which is gathering pace in the States into an incident six months ago when a gang of marines butchered 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians (including women, children and a two year old infant) in reprisal for one of their number being killed by a roadside bomb. The only good thing about this story is the fact that an inquiry is being held at all. Without any shadow of doubt there will have been plenty of other similar incidents which will probably not see the light of day anytime soon. Like the My Lai massacre for example. This was not made public until Seymour Hersch picked it up a year after the event, not because no one knew about it – a soldier notified dozens of newspapers and magazines at the time of the atrocity – it wasn’t published mainly because it was thought too common an incident to be newsworthy. Well, you can see the point - at the time the Americans were killing about a thousand civilians a week. It's interesting to note that the word the military are using to excuse the Iraqi massacre - that it was an 'aberration' - was exactly the same word they used to excuse My Lai. However, even though we should be glad that an inquiry into the Iraqi massacre is being held now, and I am, there is the far bigger question to answer – what about the people at the top? When are they going to be held to account? Like the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuses. Frankly it’s just not good enough punishing the grunts at the bottom of the dungheap and then closing the book on the story. That sort of practice just smacks to me of cynical manipulation of the law, and has nothing to do with providing justice. Indeed, it even compounds the crime by deliberately hiding those responsible for the institutionalised brutality that little Lynndie England was just a minor part of. The war in Iraq was illegal from the start. Fact. The decision makers who plunged that blighted country into more blood-soaked anarchy than it was already familiar with should be tried for international war crimes. They are a disgrace to the people who entrusted them with the most powerful positions on earth, and have brought permanent shame to the history of their land. It is not enough to blame lowly soldiers for the crimes of their leaders – those leaders must themselves be held to account. 23 May 2006 I’ve started work drafting a Constitution for the government of Britain. Well, I thought, nobody’s bothered before, obviously too busy, so I might as well knock one together. There’s not much being reported in the news at the moment, which is sort of good, but, cynic that I am, I just wonder what we’re not being told. When you read such great writers as Pilger, Gelhorn and Noam Chomsky (not that he’s a great writer, but he writes great stuff), you do just begin to do that – wonder what you’re not being told. However, something which is getting mentioned occasionally, almost in passing, and is considerably more important than you would think given the amount of attention it’s getting, is Human Rights. The notion that Human Rights are ‘girly’, or gay pinko-liberal tosh; not something your macho manly sort of person should interest themselves in, is dangerously misguided. The rampant racists who write for papers like the Daily Excess, for example, have been leaping on the fact that high profile criminal cases recently involving asylum seekers have, rightly, mentioned the fact that these people have Human Rights, even if they are criminals. These so-called journalists screech on about the rights of victims as though they don’t have any, which is of course just unadulterated bollocks. Our politicians, taking their lead from two very dangerous places – America and corporate business, both of whom are passionately opposed to Human Rights, have been making noises about Britain withdrawing from the European Human Rights Charter as though it’s something you can dip into and out of according to your mood. Two of the greatest pieces of legislation in British history, Habeas Corpus and the Bill of Rights, have all but been torn up under the Blair government using the excuse that it’s all for the sake of national security. Rubbish. It’s all for the sake of burgeoning bureaucracy and profit. We need greater commitment to Human Rights from our leaders, not less. When Human Rights are sacrificed on the Altar of Profit, revolution is just around the corner. 10 May 2006 All the sports news is about some young 17 year old who's been chosen to play footy for England, but never yet had a premiere league game - Theo someone or another. I think it's a top move by old Sven. The nation went into mild shock when Wayne Rooney broke his toe, and we've had practically nothing else on TV ever since other than Rooney hobbling around on crutches. Alarm and despondency - how on earth can we win without Wayne? Then ol' Sven pulls an unknown 17 year old out the hat and overnight Rooney is almost forgotten - it's a piece of genius. Pity we can't have him running the country. Speaking of which... The present western position on banning aid to the Palestinian people is scandalous. A hundred thousand Palestinian public servants including doctors, teachers and police have not been paid for three months. Apart from the obvious fact that public services (such as they are in that desperate corner of the world) must be deteriorating even more if the people working in them are unpaid, there is the other obvious fact that the economy is being deprived from the spending power of a hundred thousand people. The west is doing this because it disapproves of the Palestinian leadership. If the Palestinians were being led by some ruthless dictator such as Kim Il Sung, you could possibly support the western position; but the fact is that the Palestinians are being led by people chosen by them. Being so-called democracies, we could almost justify opposing those countries which are non-democracies, but excuses for oppressing countries which ARE democracies are very thin on the ground. There is nothing new in this of course. Britain has only ever paid the mildest lip service to the concept of democracy that it can get away with, and has spent the last sixty years teaching its eager pupil every imperialist trick it knows so that today’s imperial power, the US, has discovered how very easy it is to get away with anything you like if you happen to be the toughest kid on the block. The Americans have taken to the idea like the proverbial duck to water. Since 1953 when the Americans (using a British plan) ordered the CIA for the first time to engineer the overthrow of a sovereign nation, Iran, they have never looked back. They have toppled democratic governments in Guatemala, Congo, Chile (including assassinating elected leaders), and initiated wars in a dozen countries costing millions upon millions of lives, and creating wastelands of poverty and hardship – all this whilst shouting as loudly as possible about being defenders of democracy and freedom! They do this because the US is run by corporate business (the biggest of which is the arms industry) whose sole purpose in life is to make itself even more grotesquely wealthy than it already is. The western boycott of aid to desperate Palestinians, who have been savagely abused for sixty years, is an obscenity that hasn’t been seen since western support for the mass murderer Pol Pot. It is difficult to ‘wage war on terror’ when our governments are doing their very utmost to ensure that terrorists have every reason to remain terrorists. 2 May 2006 Little Graham Dott won the snooker World Championship last night. I confess I wasn't interested enough to stay up until 1a.m. to witness the happy occasion, but I suppose I'm marginally glad that he won rather than Peter Ebdon on the grounds that Graham Dott has never won any professional tournament before. Ahhh. It's very easy to get paranoid about the news once you learn how much it is manipulated by those who control our lives. Such a doubt occurs to me today. Yesterday, Hispanic workers in the US organised a national strike in protest against government plans to criminalise illegal immigrants. If the logic of this eludes you, remember that the US has long used prisoners as a source of state subsidised slave labour, and has a dedicated organisation for the purpose - the US Corrections Corporation. We couldn't learn about the strike yesterday because of the time difference (the Yanks are only starting their day when our evening news is on), so I thought we should get some news about it this morning. I've just sat through an hour of BBC's Breakfast show and not a word. Most of their news was on local issues which is fair enough, but the only piece of foreign news they mentioned at all was about David Blaine, the American escapoligist, submersing himself in a large glass bowl full of water for a week. Interesting though that is, it is very small beer relative to the significance of the Hispanic workers' strike. I had to search the internet for an account of what happened, trying first 'The Times' website. The story didn't even make their front page, which is quite interesting, because as it turns out, much of the most powerful nation on earth was effectively closed for business yesterday as quite literally millions of people supported the strike. This is big news. Why is it obscurely tucked away in The Times, and not mentioned at all on the BBC? The First World nations all pursue foreign policies intentionally designed to keep the Third World in poverty. They do this partly in order to ensure a permanent source of cheap labour. The fact that millions of desperate people do not want to remain impoverished and resort to amazing extremes to move to the west and what they hope are better lives, is a very slight inconvenience to the masterplan. Very slight because what it does of course is provide local banks of cheap labour. It suits western governments/big business (same thing) to have armies of illegal workers who cost peanuts, and because they're illegal, have no inconvenient annoyances such as human rights. Rights to such nuisances as minimum wages, health care, employment protection, holidays, pensions etc. A couple of months ago Paris was in flames as migrant workers rioted against the brutality of the French regime, and yesterady the US came to a grinding standstill for basically the same reason - seems to me that deserved a bit of a mention, so I thought I'd do it myself. 23 April 2006 We had our first ever official Party meeting yesterday - With five paid up members at last it's been the first time a proper meeting has been worth doing. The main purpose of the exercise was to formally elect Party officers, and to debate the amended Party Constitution. It was not quite as slick as I would have liked, with all of us fiddling around with little bits of paper - it all seemed very twee, and Lorraine asked at one point why we didn't just do a show of hands. Whilst I know that would be a whole lot simpler, an essential component of democracy is the secret ballot, and I just feel we have to make an effort to do the job right even if it is a bit more unwieldy. Anyway, it went O.K. in the end and we did what we set out to do. It was good queen Bess's 80th on Friday. I thought about sending her a card and then thought fuck it, she never sends me one. The papers were full of the usual sycophantic rubbish, and side by side with the story that she has no intention of abdicating was the story about a couple of thousand car workers losing their jobs in Bristol as a result of Peugeot closing down there in order to take advantage of cheap Eastern European labour. The other top story was how Cherry Blair had charged the Labour Party £275 a day for her hairdresser during last year's general election campaign, billing them for a total of nearly £8,000. You couldn't make it up could you? 18 April 2006 Not much happening news-wise. The main BBC 'news' story this morning was how much GPs are being paid. The average, apparently, is about £80k per annum with a few allegedly receiving up to quarter of a million. They reckon it reflects a 25% pay rise for doctors over the last year at a time when the rest of the country (the real workers anyway) are getting about 3% pay rises. Coincidentally (not) it comes at a time when dentists are fleeing the NHS in droves. Yesterday there was yet another suicide bombing in Israel: another seventeen year old youth blowing himself to bits. Hammas refused to condemn it and the US government, obviously, immediately condemned Hammas. Whilst Iran's recent outburst about obliterating Israel from the map is totally unacceptable, it is no more obscene than US policy backing Israel's efforts to obliterate the Palestinians from the map. I'm reading another John Pilger book at the moment 'The New Rulers of the World', as well as Noam Chomsky's 'Rogue States'. God, what a pair of eye-openers. They should be compulsory reading in every school in the West. Chomsky is much harder reading because his style is very fragmented, with hardly a sentance of his own i.e. one not full of someone else's statements - but fascinating reading all the same. John Pilger is much easier to follow, no doubt thanks to his day job as a journalist. He has a powerful way of combining stories about ordinary people and interviews with the mighty. If you've never read him, go out and find anything he's done - no, start with 'Heroes'. 11 April 2006 (blog 1) Welcome to the Party's very first blog. It's a slightly historic day for another reason - we are now published in America! Browsing through last Saturday's Times I noticed in Ben McIntyre's column a passing reference to Lulu, who, until that moment was no more to me than the name of a sixties pop star. But no, Lulu, according to Ben, is an American e-publishing website. As I'd only just completed work on the second edition of 'Free Democracy - Government for the Twenty First Century', it had to be checked out. So that's exactly what I did yesterday, and I was seriously impressed. What a slick little operation. It doesn't cost you a bean to publish books, or record music and so on, with Lulu simply taking a cut of anything you actually manage to sell. Sweet. About an hour later and I had done it! There it was, my book, available for sale on a site that is almost as slick as Amazon - check it out - go to Lulu.com and search for John Andrews and you'll find it. You can download a version or buy your very own hard copy. Go on, take a look. ? ! ? There's something sort of unclean about the sight of lifetime trade unionists taking up seats in the House of Lords. Longtime leader of Transport and General Workers Union Bill Morris is about to be 'elevated' to the peerage, and on breakfast telly this morning was as coy and bashful about the job as a little schoolgirl whose just been told she can give a bunch of flowers to the queen. It was quite pathetic. I know he would argue that it's a good thing for leftwingers to be rubbing ermined shoulders with aristos because this is the best way to 'influence' their opinions. Fat chance. The only opinions that are going to be influenced (if they haven't been all along) are his. Whilst casual taxation increases are entirely consistent with leftwing thinking, I was not happy with Mr. Morris' stated intention to press for government funding of political parties. This view has been gaining some popularity recently and you can't help but wonder if the recent 'peerages for cash' scandals have been carefully engineered in order to support the call. God knows no political party could do with a bit more cash than us at Free Democrats, but I am strongly opposed to the notion that the taxpayer should be compelled to fund us. In addition to this moral argument is the fairly obvious fact that if the government is paying political parties, the government will be controlling political parties, which must never be allowed to happen. Voluntary donations are the only acceptable means of funding. What do you think? Check out our Straw Poll.
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