When some describe them as government mouthpieces …
The president of ABC News and the president of CBS News each have siblings in the White House working for Obama.
I’d say it’s a very important point to remember, whenever these organisations report on White House business, that it’s a family affair.
It’s difficult to imagine that an apologist for National Socialist mass murder would be treated politely, yet the apologist for communist mass murder (and friend of the Cambridge Spy Ring), the execrable Eric Hobsbawm, was feted, showered with trinkets, awarded a Companion of Honour and is eulogised still by equally execrable politicians.
Asked by the Canadian academic and politician Michael Ignatieff on television whether the deaths of 20 million people in the USSR – not to mention the 55 to 65 million victims of Mao’s Great Leap Forward – might have been justified if this Red utopia had been realised, Hobsbawm muttered in the affirmative.
The maxim is that you should say only good things about the dead. Ok, Eric Hobsbawm’s dead – good. The Commentator has a suitably honest appraisal of Hobsbawm, although it’s a touch unfair on much more pleasant David Irving.
Update: How fitting that Ed Miliband (now there’s a surprise) described Hobsbawm as “a lovely man”, and Tony Blair described him as “a giant of progressive politics”. Yeah, many progressives were happy propagandists for evil.
Watched the EDF advert on the box? All about how EDF is supplying Low-Carbon Electricity to all the Olympic Games sites and Activities? Just another Corporate blurb about how aware they are about the things which they believe we should be concerned about.
But if you gaze very very carefully at the base of the screen, in very small print, you will in fact see those who actually pay for the advert telling you the truth; which of course is that all the Electricity supplied to the Games actually comes courtesy of the National Grid, and not the silly, stupid, over-priced and underperforming wind turbines that they refer to as the so-called Low Carbon Electricity in their lying bloody adverts.
So when the clowns from the local Council attempt to tell me that I should move out of my own home in order to ‘free up’ unused bedrooms, and move into ‘suitable sheltered accommodation’ , will I be then arrested for attempting to disobey the word from ‘on high’, or will the armed thugs who seem to be on permanent call simply bundle me and my wife into their black vans and take us to a ‘home’?
Where are the cries from the ‘Liberal Elite’ that government plans to deprive ordinary Englishmen of their freedom and property are as welcome as leprosy? These proposals are being made in all sincerity by people who are supposed to be Tories!
The question, as asked in the Economic Voice blog is quite reasonable; “‘How long before the elderly ‘volunteers’ become the elderly ‘encouraged’ and then the elderly ‘morally blackmailed’ being forced out because they are made to feel that they are not worthy to stay in the home they paid for?’
After the ‘intelligence’ catastrophe ahead of the Iraq War (including an old student thesis bagged from the web and a supposed chat with a cabbie) you’d hope that people would be a touch more reticent to believe what they’re told to believe.
It turns out that a key point around the reporting of Iran’s nuclear programme was a lie. The IAEA report (apparently) cited a ‘Soviet nuclear scientist’ who had worked on the programme. The Washington Post named him as Dr. Vyacheslav Danilenko. He certainly exists, but the problem is he’s not a nuclear scientist. He never has been a nuclear scientist. His business is the production of nanodiamonds.
In the rush to scare everyone, the press jumped the gun and went to print before the IAEA report was made available. So what we know now is that even the IAEA acknowledges, in the appendix to the report, that Dr Danilenko is not a nuclear scientist and that he was in Iran dealing with nanodiamond production.
So here we go again? When our governments intend to commit great violence we owe it to outselves to be certain we are not being lied to, to be certain there’s a valid reason for that violence.
Day Three and disinformation continues to cloud events in the town where half the Pakistani Army cannot reach a prominent compound within the hour despite being ten minutes away when a chopper crashes and “an intense firefight” breaks out.
I think today’s updates are: that bin Laden was reaching for a weapon, or maybe not; his daughter alleges he was taken alive before being shot; the CIA boss declares that photographic evidence will be released while Gates and Clinton say no. That they cannot manage a coherent narrative of events totally under the control of the federal government tells you of its ability to manage anything.
The last time SEALs conducted such a high profile raid a young American woman called Jessica Lynch was lying wounded, beaten and at death’s door in an Iraqi hospital. The convoy she’d been travelling in had got into a spot of bother, came under attack and she fought off Iraqi infantry until she ran out of ammunition. At least she managed to hit a few in the meantime. Lying stabbed and in severe mortal danger there was only one option: send in the SEALs for a dramatic rescue and a hero’s return.
Unfortunately, much of it was a pack of lies.
So excuse me while I don’t believe everything on command when a bunch of powerful liars tell me to believe even though they have the evidence to back up their claims but will not release it.
+++++
UPDATE: Obamses has decided the people cannot take it afterall: no evidence will be released. Wikileaks, over to you.
I’ve said previously that if the government knew where the interweb would go they’d have banned it. On the day the Prime Mentalist launches the Labour Party manifesto, let’s remind ourselves what he recently told a court:
image from the anglo saxon chronicle
The pledge to hold a referendum on the EU constitution was in the Labour manifesto of 2005. In 2008 a member of UKIP took McRuin to court when he broke this pledge, citing breach of contract. Speaking through his barrister, he told the court “manifesto pledges are not subject to legitimate expectation”.
She says she was appalled to learn the extent to which they (Pakistanis in general) think it’s OK to bend or break immigration laws.
She says she never realised that she was being naive not to have realised that to her cousin Kamran and his immediate family, a British visa is like winning the lottery. It is a golden ticket to the West.
She and her husband were so taken with him that we promised to pay for him to visit England. He was delighted. Our initial application in March last year was declined because the authorities, rightly as it turned out, suspected that Kamran would not go back. Now what was the clue which told the authorities that he was just another scumbag on the make?
She states thet she became suspicious because of the constancy of her cousin’s father’s entreaties; but still went ahead with the sponsorship because “As the daughter of devout Muslim immigrants, I had been brought up to believe in the importance of the extended family – that it was my duty to help those less fortunate.”
Methinks the lady doth protest too much!!!
When the Olympics were ‘won’ by Great Britain, there were loud cries of ‘look how green our plans are’, and ‘sustainability’ will be our watchword. Even ‘Red Ken sang the praises of the planners’ dreams would provide a ‘greener’ London. Fair enough! that was the plan!
Consider the Beijing Olympics, with all their flash and failed promises; the statements of Enhanced Human Rights (failed), and of repression-free Internet access (none existent), the $20 billion squandered for a fortnight of athletic showoffs and drug-enhanced activity. One of the shadowy things which happened in the years before the Birds-Nest stadium rose from the dust was what was there before the dust. Ordinary people’s housing, which was expropriated without legal process and without compensation, was flattened in days to provide the basic foundations of the Beijing Olympic park. So, you might say, whats’ new about that? It’s China; they’re all communists, they can walk over anyone! It’s different over here!
