Someone noted by way of comment to an earlier post that I employ a fair bit of swearing in my blog.
To be honest I haven’t the faintest fucking idea what the fuck he’s talking about.
I’d be the last person to use gratuitous profanity to make my point. It’s not fucking big and it’s certainly not fucking clever.
Besides, there are plenty of alternatives out there - ( thanks for the link Rahid – that wouldn’t have been a hint would it? ;-) )
\ gets back to watching his Deadwood boxed set :-{
There was me thinking that MI6 was a tentacle of some kind of a covert Illuminati controlled global conspiracy when all along its real backers were Hasbro Inc.
It all makes perfect sense now.
A word of warning to anyone planning to click on the above link to BigDaddyMerk’s fine blog. BigDaddy is currently documenting the life cycle of a rather large boil on his neck and it is (was) a corker. The squeamish will suffer.
People with balloon phobias should also think twice about visiting BDM's blog right now, especially this post here.
Boil photojournalism…?
Ain’t the Internet grand
I’ve just picked up on a little gem of an extract from BBC’s Newshour program
I’ve stuck the audio file here
The clip is just over four minutes long and the interesting bit crops up in the very last 25 seconds
Charles Shoebridge, one of the legions of ex police/ ex army/ ex spook security consultants who have sprung up after 9/11, told Newshour that from the evidence little else can be assumed other than that one the 7/7 bombers, Mohammed Siddique Khan, was working for British intelligence.
"The amount of information coming out and the quality of information coming out. The fact that that has been so consistently overlooked it would appear by the security service MI5, to me suggests really only one of two options."
"Either, a) we've got a level of incompetence that would be unusual even for the security services. But b) possibly, and this is a possibility, that this man Khan may even have been working as an informant for the security service."
"It is difficult otherwise to see how it can be that they've so covered his tracks in the interim."
What an odd, dare I say bizarre, thing to say.
-
and whilst I was posting up pictures of MI6's London headquarters, just down the road from me in Vauxhall, I just couldn't help myself and fired up Google Earth to see what it looked like from above.
Given my admitted predilection for seeing symbolism and spooky faces, particularly spooky owl faces, in building plans - a hobby that sometimes gives people cause to doubt my rationality, you cannot imagine how relieved I was to discover that there is nothing spooky at all about the layout of the MI6 building
I think I can trump that. How about this one...
(yes, you're going to have to click on it to see it)
Jon Stewart takes a look at the case known to many as "The Miami Seven" in this video clip available here. He examines the careful and decisive evidence presented by Alberto Gonzales:
Gonzales: These individuals wish to wage a quote: "full ground war against the United States."
Stewart: Seven guys? I’m not a general. I am not anyway affiliated with the military academy, but I believe if you were going to wage a full ground war against the United States, you need to field at least as many people as say a softball team.
…
Dept of Justice spokesperson: One of the individuals was familiar with the Sears Tower- had worked in Chicago and had been there-so was familiar with the tower, but in terms of the plans it was more aspirational rather than operational.
Stewart: No weapons, no actual contact with al-Qaeda, but one of them had been to Chicago…
Heh heh. Those silly Americans. You wouldn’t catch us sophisticated British swallowing crap like that from our government
There’s an interesting piece in the Guardian today about scepticism over the ‘official account’ of the bombings in London last July. It focuses in particular on the work of Bridget Dunne and the other folks behind the July 7th Truth Campaign.
Bridget and the people behind July 7th Truth are understandably well-pleased that some of the causes for their scepticism have finally received an airing in the mainstream media.
Personally, I’m a little less comfortable with the content and the tone of the article.
Some key questions are mentioned, sure enough, but they are seamlessly mixed-in with ‘straw man’ arguments and vague implications of insanity and malice on the part of those who doubt.
This comment towards the end of the article pretty much gives away the objective of the piece…
‘Indeed, it is natural after an event as cataclysmic and unexpected as 7/7 to want to interrogate what happened. But interrogation is not the same as understanding, and after a certain point you must move on.’
Tell you what Mr Journalist. No. Go fuck yourself. I for one won’t move on. Not until the events of that day are subject to a proper and transparent public investigation.
It may have escaped the attention of the writer of that piece but 7/7 has been used, and continues to be used, to justify a whole raft of new ‘security’ measures and laws. So much for 'moving on'. And if there’s one thing that events like the de Menezes and Forest Gate shootings demonstrate it is that the people currently at the top of our police force have absolutely no compunction about lying - either directly or through unattributable leaks to the press. So, why should anyone assume that official accounts of 7/7 are any different – particularly considering the conspicuous lack of hard evidence from that day?
The anniversary of 7/7 is not far off now and I’m not relishing the prospect of the inevitable, stomach churning, media-manipulated events and speeches designed to promote our Government’s agenda under a veneer of giving a shit about the people who died.
And to anyone who thinks that the people behind and working for New Labour aren't that callously manipulative I've got just two words - 'Jo' and 'Moore'
We are talking about proven liars and spinners here. So, when a journalist writes a piece which implies that people who doubt what the police and government are saying about 7/7 are a little touched in the head I’m inclined to think that he’s a bit of a twat – or, possibly, writing a piece that can be sneaked past an editor who is a bit of a twat.
The good news about today’s Guardian piece is that, thanks in no small part to the efforts of the people at July 7th Truth, it seems that doubts about 7/7 are now so widespread that simply ignoring them doesn’t seem to be working any more.
And it’s not just an Internet thing. Many Londoners I know or have met over the last 12 months, not just Internet junkies, suspect that something isn’t quite right about 7/7 and have told me little anecdotes about things that happened that day. We’re not talking fully-fledged conspiracy theories here, just a nagging suspicion that we are not being told everything about the truth of what really happened last year.
Parallels can be drawn with the ‘9/11 Truth’ movement. First, the media tried to ignore it. Then, once it had grown to a level that couldn’t be ignored, the story was managed through a series of hit pieces that concentrated on the crankiest of theories, presented sceptics as being, at best, ‘eccentric’ or directed readers down blind alleys.
So, even though I think today’s Guardian article was a classic ‘hit piece’ I do take comfort from the fact that it was published at all.
It’s a sign of progress.
Congratulations to the people who made it happen.
And I did rather well, even if I say so myself.
One thing I couldn’t help noticing between beers was that Sainsbury’s had sent him a better birthday card than I had done
They’d also sent him a comparable present to mine – a voucher for a free bottle of plonk. Actually, Sainsbury’s was probably better as he gets to choose the wine.
For the 20+ years that I have known him my chum has always taken his food seriously and I respect him for that. Though I’m still unconvinced about his conversion to the benefits of Omega-3 in his children’s diet. Maybe if Omega-3 were extracted from pureed elephant I’d buy into it being some kind of brain food, but fish? Since when have fish been renowned for their powers of memory and concentration?
There’s also the small question of concentrated fish extracts being a rich source of other essential nutrients such as cadmium and dioxin which are arguably not the kind of things you’d want to be pouring down your kiddies’ necks.
But I digress
My mate eats, and buys, healthy and given that non–lethal food carries a hefty price premium Sainsbury’s love him for it; so much they’ve taken to sending him birthday cards.
I particularly enjoy the way that his computer-generated card was printed with a faux hand-written font from ‘all of us at Sainsbury’s’
The image of the entire Sainsbury’s management team taking time out to sit around the boardroom table to write out birthday cards brings a lump to my throat.
OK, maybe I’m being a little harsh on Sainsbury’s. After all who would want to receive something like this in the post…
Happy Birthday Customer BRM456787632/A
Based on our extensive records of your purchasing behaviour, our customer-profiling algorithm has identified you as someone who spends a shit load of money in our stores
On the off chance that you are slightly soft in the head and influenced by such things here’s an automatically generated birthday card
Statistical and psychological analysis has established that this is a cost-effective marketing tool
Sincerely
A. Computer
I mention all of this because the sight of that card rammed home to me just how inconsistent I am when it comes to the kind of technology behind that birthday card. I too have a supermarket customer loyalty card. I also have an Oyster Card to pay for my tube and bus travel in London. I have debit and credit cards. I occasionally switch my mobile phone on. And, yes, in spite of all that I still spout on about the fundamental wrongness of the proposed National ID card scheme.
Little by little, all but the most devoted civil libertarians are giving in.
Take the Oyster Card for example. I could continue to pay for my travel with cash but the fares have recently been revamped to make that a much more expensive option.
Consider the supermarkets. Many people will agree that supermarkets already have too much control over the retail business in the UK but they are so powerful and so sophisticated nothing and no one can stand in their way for too long.
There are a couple of fairly easy examples of the power and sophistication of the supermarket chains not too far away from me. In both cases the local council granted building permission for superstores, complete with large car parks, slap-bang on two busy local high streets. Shortly after the supermarkets were completed, the council obligingly placed severe restrictions on parking along both streets, policed by hordes of wardens. The result being that shoppers are literally herded into the supermarkets by supposed public servants.
Nice.
And, of course, you could refuse a supermarket loyalty card once you've been herded into the store but you effectively end up paying more for your food as you subsidise discounts to people who do accept the cards.
And once you start using the card the supermarket gets access to more information about what’s really going on in your life than any National ID card, travel pass, mobile phone log or, ahem, record of your surfing habits.
Think about how much someone can find out about you just by examining the contents of your shopping basket, week in week out.
And the more things the supermarkets sell the more complete their record of individual lives is becoming.
I’m not happy about that.
Or maybe I’m reading too much in a simple birthday card
Whatever, I'm off to my local Tescos to buy some Afro styling mousse and change my year of birth on their database to 1928. Let's see what they make of that.
I bumped into this guy and his rather special customised bicycle earlier today and I’m still giggling...
The photo really doesn’t do it justice
Fine work
Clearly the artist has picked up a few tips from the propaganda leaftlets we’re dropping on Iraq. The poster assumes that its target audience is illiterate and it carries a clear message that starkly depicts cause and effect
It also appears to be aimed at eight year olds…
‘Knives and Robbery are not a game’
Not good a sign. Not a good sign at all
Ann Coulter feasts on Paxman's soul...Nowadays, Jezzer just gets by through shouting at people he really doesn’t like, denying them any opportunity to respond, putting words into their mouths or asking loaded questions that aren’t really questions, taken from the ‘Do you still beat your wife?’ genre of interviewing.
These days Jeremy Paxman earns a living, and it must be said a very good living, as a second-rate Jeremy Paxman impersonator.
And Jeremy’s botched attempt at bushwhacking Satan’s most favoured blonde girl chile Ann Coulter last night must stand as some kind of benchmark of just how shite Paxman has become.
You can watch a video of the Paxo being stuffed, second by painful second, here…
Ann Coulter on UK BBC Newsnight interview with Jeremy PaxmanIf Jeremy were a horse someone would have shot him after that.
And for anyone unfamiliar with the Joy of Coulter why not try playing…
Did Hitler or Ann Coulter say that?
at the end of which you should get the general idea (BTW thanks for that link Rahid)
And, whilst on the subject of Ann Coulter, let’s not forget possibly the finest blog title in the history of the Internet…
I F^cked Ann Coulter in the Ass, Hardwhich, and I’m guessing here, was definitely NOT written by Jeremy Paxman
And where am I going with this post and the last one?
First off, it amuses me that once pervasive British Israelite beliefs, their associated cultural references and architecture have been so comprehensively forgotten.
Secondly, as peculiar and dated as Freemasonic British Israelism may seem to be its influence has percolated down to present day politics.
When British forces commanded by General Allenby, a British Israelite supporter, captured Jerusalem from the Turks in 1917, British Israelites believed that the Holy City was under ‘Israelite’, i.e. British, control for the first time since the destruction of the Temple in AD70.
Basically, a lot of people thought Jesus was due for a Second Coming shortly afterwards. The signing of the Balfour Declaration in 1917, guaranteeing a homeland for Jews in Palestine, fitted in with this Millennial belief and desire to fulfill Biblical Prophecy
It is now a matter of historical record that Jesus didn’t turn up on cue.
Surprise, surprise
No matter. Even though British Israelism now appears to be dead in the water many of its core beliefs are alive and well in the Christian Zionism movement, particularly in the United States. And, however fruity and peculiar all this stuff may appear to be, we are talking literally millions of politically influential Christian fundamentalists supporting Israel wholeheartedly as a means of fulfilling Biblical prophecy and doing what they can to give the Apocalypse and the Second Coming a helping hand.
Which is pretty fucked up in my opinion.
This isn't about being 'pro' or 'anti' Israel or 'pro' or 'anti' organised religion. I would describe any movement that cites the End of Times as being one of its core aspirations as being pretty fucked up.
There's currently a lot of chatter on the Internet about the Israel Lobby and the significance of its influence over US foreign policy. There is a lot less chatter about the fact that there are many, many more Christian Zionists than Jewish ones. Nor is there much discussion about the underlying beliefs of those Christian Zionists. I suggest that this side of things gets less coverage because it is er, well, frankly, strange. And more than a little scary.
And I’m not too sure what God is making of all of this. I’d guess that he will choose to unleash the Apocalypse at a timing convenient to him and not a bunch of tele-evangelists. The Fundamentalists will, of course, claim that they are merely instruments of His Will and that the timing really will be of God’s choosing. I suppose much of it boils down to whether you believe that Biblical Prophecy is a Prediction or a Mission Statement. If it is the latter, well, they may have a point.
It’s still pretty fucked up though
-
So, what have I learned from all of this?
It was the Summer Solstice yesterday
Cool
And what better time than Solstice to indulge my pet hobby of stalking around London in search of symbolic architecture and suggestive shadows?
None.
So, there I was standing in a very particular part of Trafalgar Square at 5.42pm yesterday afternoon waiting for something cosmic to happen
And it did
Sort of
Thanks to some quirks of astronomy, cosmically interesting things happen in London on Summer Solstice
For example, when the Sun is due West (or East) of you on the Solstice it is almost exactly 30 degrees above the horizon. That means it casts a shadow almost exactly equal to the height of whatever is casting the shadow multiplied by the square root of three – 1:1.732, a proportion known as the Vesica Piscis
Some fun Vesica Piscis facts
Another interesting little quirk of the London Solstice is that, at the same time as the Sun is due West and casting a Vesica Piscis shadow, the constellation of Orion appears to holding the Sun in its free ‘hand'
So, standing at the edge of Trafalgar Square yesterday at 5.42pm at the tip of the shadow of Nelson’s Column, I could see the Sun perched on top of the Column; whilst Orion was doing his thing in the background (hidden by the glare of the Sun, and the cloud).
And without going into the detail right now, application of some basic trigonometry suggests that the shadow cast by Nelson’s Column on the Solstice echoes the geometry and dimensions of the Great Pyramid at Giza.
You can also play the same games with the Monument to the Great Fire of London, just down the road from Nelson’s Column. Built by mad keen astronomer and freemason, Christopher Wren, it is exactly the same height as Nelson’s Column (202ft) and has a big flaming golden ball on the top as a bonus clue
I’m going somewhere with all this, honestly.
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From the 17th through to at least the early 20th century there was a popular belief in Britain that, back in prehistory, the lost tribes of Israel had settled in this green and pleasant land and, incidentally, that it was the ancient Israelites who had built the Great Pyramid. This belief was the foundation of British Israelism and followers swore blind that Britain was the new Promised Land and that London was the New Jerusalem. The intriguing astronomical alignments in London on the Solstice were taken as being expressions of Divine blessing for the New Jerusalem project.
And the British Israelites and Freemasons most certainly did set about constructing a New Jerusalem. For example, when he rebuilt St Paul’s Cathedral, Wren tilted it from the traditional East-West alignment so that it was aligned instead with Temple Church, mirroring the relationship between the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Dome of the Rock in ‘Old’ Jerusalem.
London also started suffering from a rash of lion and sphinx statues, in Trafalgar Square and elsewhere. The British Lion is actually the Lion of Judah...
Per Genesis 49…
Judah is a lion's whelp:
from the prey, my son, thou art gone up:
he stooped down, he couched as a lion,
and as an old lion; who shall rouse him up?
The sceptre shall not depart from Judah,
nor a lawgiver from between his feet,
until Shiloh come;
and unto him shall the gathering of the people be.
Not everyone was thrilled with the British Israelism concept though. William Blake thought all this New Jerusalem stuff was bollocks and penned Jerusalem as a criticism of the notion that anyone could think a country so blighted with industrialisation and squalor could be the Promised Land...
OK, the botched anti terrorism raid at Forest Gate has been done to death now but there’s one aspect of the story that, as far as I can tell, hasn’t really been covered by blogs and the alternative press.
It’s cardinal rule of faith on the Internet, and one that I largely share, that our governments are up to ‘something’. ‘Something’ that, with the collaboration of corporate media, they go to great pains to keep from us.
And, hand on heart and honestly trying to be objective as possible, when I look at events like 9/11, 7/7 or the Invasion of Iraq I believe that there really are a heap of unanswered questions that need answering.
People on my side of the room suspect that key questions remain unanswered because there was an element of complicity or foreknowledge on the part of our governments.People on the other side of the room blow-off the unanswered questions as being merely the result of ‘human’ factors such as incompetence or bureaucracy. They conclude that if there are any cover-ups going on they are quite mundane and exist merely to obscure the fact that some senior people have fucked up. Senior people who’d like to keep their jobs.
The division of opinion largely corresponds to whether you believe that the people who run things are either predominantly deceptively wicked or plain stupid.
One line of thought that is regularly trotted out to discredit what have been perjoratively described as conspiracy theories goes something like
‘When something world shattering and horrible happens there are many people out there who feel the psychological need to create meaning out of that event. They cannot come to terms with the fact that the world is essentially driven by random, meaningless events and accidents. So, they weave conspiracy theories instead of facing up to reality’
There is, of course, some truth to that. Just after the December 2004 Tsunami I came across some websites and blogs that swore blind that the tsunami was deliberately triggered by nuclear or scalar weapons and that warnings were deliberately withheld.
It goes without saying that there was biff all evidence, or proof of suppression of evidence, that supported any of this.
So, yes, some people do make up paranoid fairy stories to account for major events. No doubt.
Having said that, wars, terrorist bombs, dubious car crashes and suicides are not the same thing as tsunamis and hurricanes. They are acts of Man, not of God. So, the suggestion that a hidden human hand or two may be behind some of them is logically more possible.
And I am more than a little suspicious of people who dismiss the more credible, evidence-backed ‘conspiracy theories’ by lumping them in with all the crap out there. At the very least, it is intellectually lazy. Unless, that is, you believe that abrogating your responsibility to make sense of the World and leaving the task to journalists and politicians is intellectually hard work.
And let's not forget that the entire Al Qaeda thing; including the official accounts of 9/11 and 7/7 are themselves nothing but government-sanctioned, credibility-stretching conspiracy theories
And, if you need confirmation of how bent and unrepresentative the mainstream media is on these matters just consider how uncritical the press is of something like the War on Terror. The media may whine about the occasional balls up here and there but it has never critically questioned the thinking behind the overall paradigm. The central myths are taken as an unchallengeable 'given'.
Anyway, back to the Forest Gate raid.
If there’s one thing about the Forest Gate raid that really stands out for me it’s the complete lack of any widespread conspiracy theory associated with it. The raid happened weeks ago now, which is a lifetime on the Internet and, so far, about the only things that pass for a conspiracy theory I’ve heard are…
Meagre fare indeed
What this all means is that even the most hardcore conspiracy theorists out there have been unable to weave an alternate narrative concerning Forest Gate. When confronted with the question ‘Were the Metropolitan Police being deceptive or stupid?’, stupid is winning-out, hands down. As in...
And if last weekend’s story that the ‘reliable intelligence source’ that triggered the huge raid really was a former pizza waiter with an IQ of 69 who’s been in prison for a few years on a bullshit terror charge is true that is really, really bad news.
Our senior police officers really do appear to believe in the full-fat version of the War on Terror; no matter how hyped-up and hysterical much of the narrative appears to be. And they’re so committed to it they’re willing to grasp at straws in the process.
This is a recipe for an unending stream of fuck-ups; resulting only in increased ethnic division and plummeting police credibility.
Well, if that's the game plan I think the Met should get their hands on one of those $2,000,000,000+ nonnuclear missile armed submarines I mentioned in my last post and stick in the Serpentine (conveniently located near to the London Central Mosque). They could then directly wire up the fire control system to half a dozen imprisoned people with 'educational issues' and, based on their ramblings, automatically target and launch a first strike on any terraced house filled with bearded men in the Northern Hemisphere within minutes.
It’s the only way to be really sure.
We’re talking the ticking bomb scenario that fans of Fox’s ‘24’ have grown to know and love, as in…
"people putting together some terrorist weapon, and while they are putting it together we can take it out, and if we miss that opportunity it may show up on the streets of New York City or Washington, D.C."
This is, of course, a totally demented idea straight out of Dr Strangelove, which presumably means that it will receive full-funding and become operational within a couple of years. Donald Rumsfeld is reportedly a strong supporter of the concept
Donald Rumsfeld
For people who can still remember all the talk of Peace Dividends at the end of the Cold War this story is a nice pointer towards what the War on Terror is really all about.
There never was going to be any Peace Dividend. There’s just too much money and influence tied up in the ‘Defence’ industry for that ever to be the case. The challenge faced by those who make a living out of War was to come up with a new menace, before your average voter began to notice that defence spending wasn’t being reduced in response to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Cue the War on Terror
And, from a Defence Industry point of view, the War on Terror is working a treat. Defence spending is now even higher than it was during the Cold War.
And, whatever your politics or opinion on the War on Terror, you can be sure that the entire business is one great big con just by looking at what the bulk of that money is being spent on.
Take the nuclear submarines for example. Any strategist with half a brain cell in the Pentagon or Whitehall knows that the Russians or the Chinese could fuck us good, if they ever chose to, without recourse to nukes. The Russians could simply turn Europe’s gas supplies off and the Chinese could stop supporting America’s colossal national debt. They could shag the West blind at the drop of hat.
The concept of large fleets of fabulously expensive nuclear-armed submarines is dead.
The plan is to turn nuclear deterrent systems into fabulously expensive anti-terrorist systems before too many people notice.
During the last Iraq War some people, including a few military people, started questioning the sense in using cruise missiles costing $2,000,000+ a pop to demolish mud huts and slaughter the occasional goat. If the nonnuclear SLBM concept ever flies that sort of disproportionate insanity will start looking like small change. And is it any wonder that our military armed as it is with hugely complex, deliberately expensive weapons systems hasn’t got the insurgencies in Iraq or Afghanistan under control. Countless billions spent on stealth bombers, nuclear submarines and God knows what else, not enough money to kit everyone out with decent body armour.
OK, this is all a bit highfalutin for a personal blog but the point is that the same kind of nonsense is taking place across the board. No matter how ludicrous or expensive the concept you are trying to sell is, if you can work a War on Terror angle into it there’s a good chance you’ll get to trough out on some public money.
Really.
Here’s something a lot closer to home than SLBMs for example
I’ve just spent an amusing few minutes running the demo videos (highly recommended) for Ipsotek’s ‘Intelligent Pedestrian Surveillance’ system being marketed in the UK and elsewhere which I read about here. Apparently, the key characteristics of 'suspicious behaviour' can be digitised in such a way that they can be automatically identified by CCTV systems...
What makes watching the Ipsotek demo videos so amusing is realising just how useless the concept clearly is. Sheer uselessness was, of course, no impediment to the system being trialed in two London Underground stations.
Look around, you’ll see useless and expensive crap like that sprouting up everywhere. And at an ever-increasing rate.
It’s there to make us safer
and poorer
and more afraid
I saw a couple of peculiar looking men carrying heavy shoulder bags at London Bridge station yesterday. They spent their entire time peering through binoculars, photographing trains and scribbling in small notebooks. They appeared to be well-motivated and highly organised. Someone in authority really should get round to locking them up, or at least finding them some girlfriends...
/ adds Muslim train spotter to list of world's most dangerous sports
First I read a story that disgraced glam rock star Gary Glitter has just lost his appeal against his kiddie fiddling conviction in Vietnam.
Then, a little later on, I encounter this image on Flickr dating back to happier, less complicated times...
Thanks to A.Nonymous for posting a comment that made reference to Sefton Delmer, one of the Godfathers of Modern Psywar and Cointelpro.
Quoting from Wikipedia…
COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program) is a program of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation aimed at investigating and disrupting dissident political organizations within the United States. Although covert operations have been employed throughout FBI history, the formal COINTELPRO operations of 1956-1971 were broadly targeted against organizations that were (at the time) considered to have politically radical elements, ranging from those whose stated goal was the violent overthrow of the US government (such as the Weathermen) to non-violent civil rights groups such as Martin Luther King Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference to violent racist and segregationist groups like the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party. The founding document of COINTELPRO directed FBI agents to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" the activities of these dissident movements and their leaders.
Bear in mind that Wikipedia is, of course, suspected by some people of itself being a COINTELPRO operation and this definition may therefore be a fiendishly subtle deception.
…as may the story in the Guardian/ Observer that MI6 is infilitrating British Muslim activist groups as part of a ‘black propaganda’ operation.
After all, our security services wouldn’t get up to stuff like that would they? And even if they did, they would only be working for the Greater Good anyway.
Of course, not all psychological warfare is practiced by Caucasian ex paratroopers, Nazi Satanists and Daily Express journalists who have apparently become fervent converts to Islam. Sometimes, particularly in war zones, you can deliver 500lb of mindfuck in one go like this…
Inspired by the comment about Sefton Delmer, I’ve just spent a happy and amusing half hour surfing around psywar.org – a website that claims to be…
the premiere website for the study of psychological warfare, psychological operations (PSYOPS), aerial propaganda leaflets and black propaganda!!!
Hmmm, sounds good. I particularly enjoyed its collection of information leaflets from the current conflict in Iraq.
My favourite caption in their leaflet collection was ‘The patriotism of one Iraqi man won him 30 million US dollars!!!’ but the leaflet itself is lacking in visceral impact.
And, at first sight, a couple of the leaflets appeared to be offering a confusing or counter-intuitive message until I remembered I was supposed to be reading them right to left, not left to right…
der, silly me
Anyway, a couple more favourites, such as this one which explains to Iraqi children the correct way to greet a passing Humvee…
Text translation - Throwing rocks at coalition forces may seem like fun but it is also dangerous
...as is shining laser pointers at them
One thought that did strike my mind whilst browsing the leaflets was 'If Muslims are so keen on the idea of dying in a glorious jihad waged against the infidel doesn't a leaflet like this look more like a training manual than a warning...'
Er, that’s enough psywar and 'important safety information' for now - until the six o’clock news anyway
Whilst browsing through reader’s comments left at the end of a Daily Mail article about the Jean Charles de Menezes shooting, I just spotted this incisive observation made by someone calling himself ‘Norman, Swansea’
If he hadn’t run, he would still be alive. He must have been guilty of something
Being confronted with raw, unadultered stupidity of this sheer quality leaves me doubting my lifelong opposition to eugenics and forced sterilisation. It also hardly represents a glowing endorsement for the concept of democracy.
So, the leaked news is that 11 months after the fatal shooting absolutely no-one will be held accountable for JCdM’s death.
As someone less intellectually challenged than Norman commented
No surprise then
Quite.
Maybe I’ve missed something here. I’ve read the coverage. I’ve listened to the accounts but, for the life of me, I still haven’t heard a credible explanation as to why the police actually shot JCdM. Even if you swallow yet another use of the tragicfailureofintelligencepoorcommunication card surely you’ve got to ask yourself why the people who executed JCdM thought he was carrying his bomb. He had no bag and he was dressed for summer with a thin denim jacket. Quite simply, why would anyone looking at him think he was armed in any way and needed killing on the spot?
Do the majority of concerned people out there really think this question has been answered?
Or maybe we’re all a little bit Norman.
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Update
Eager to feed everyone's Inner Norman, the News of the World today has printed the story that JCdM was off his face on coke at the time he was shot...
The cocaine discovered in de Menezes' blood by forensic scientists was "recent" abuse they concluded. He had been observed as "very, very jumpy", fuelling belief that he was acting suspiciously.
Well, that's alright then. Panic over
'If he runs he's VC. If he stands still he's well disciplined VC'
\ chucks coffee percolator into bin
\ puts camomile tea on shopping list
‘A tragic failure in intelligence, arising from the police apparently failing to distinguish between a terrorist house and a terraced house’
The ballsed-up raid at Forest Gate is already slipping into history but there are a few lessons to be learned for the future that will still hold true the next time
And there will most certainly be a next time.
The first lesson is that there can be no doubt that there are people within the Metropolitan Police/ Home Office whose job it is to routinely smear innocent members of the public.
When Jean Charles de Menezes was shot last year, the newspapers started filling up with stories that implied he was fleeing the police because he was either here illegally or was a wanted rapist.
And, sure enough, immediately after the police raid last week the papers reported that one of the suspects had shot the other in a struggle with the police, plus various other snippets of doo-doo that basically implied that even if they weren’t terrorists they still merited a good kicking from the forces of law and order.
This is no small issue. It’s unlikely that the newspapers made up these stories out of thin air. They cited ‘off the record’ sources within the Police and Home Office. The conclusion has to be that the security services we are supposed to trust in these trying times lie through their fucking teeth.
So, how are we supposed to know when they’re telling the truth?
On top of that, the newspapers don’t seem to care that they have been lied to and haven’t publicly said or done anything about it.
The second lesson therefore is that the press is compliant with the people within the Police and Home Office who lie through their fucking teeth.
Well, that’s a mighty kick in the chops for all those conspiracy theorists out there who believe that our government and media are basically controlled by the same people.
The third lesson is that every time the domestic War on Terror narrative starts to slip you can bet your last pound that a couple of extremists will come along to remind us of the reality of the Enemy Within.
Actually, it’s usually the same couple of extremists…
Enter stage left Simon Sulayman Keeler; formerly of the extremist Al-Muhajiroun group and now a lead figure in Ahl ul-Sunnah Wa al-Jamma.
He’s the White, ginger-bearded, convert to Islam who keeps turning up at all those tiny demos that the media go to great lengths to portray as being much bigger than they are
Enter stage right, Yvonne Ridley; former Sunday Express journalist, sacked by Al Jazeera for being too inflammatory and now a leading activist in the Respect Coalition.
She’s the White convert to Islam who keeps saying things like…
Muslims should boycott the police and refuse to co-operate with them in any way, shape or form.
…that the media go to great lengths to portray as being much more indicative of British Muslim sentiment than they really are
As well as talking divisive shit that only serves globalist ends, Ms Ridley is also the kind of firebrand radical Left Winger who sends her daughter to £17,000 a year private schools by Lake Windemere. At least that’s what I read here.
Yeah, right on sister! Viva La Revolucion!
Which puts her in the same category of hypocrite as all those other good socialists who have contributed to the buggering up of state education, whilst sending their own kids to private and selective schools; Tony Blair MP, Harriet Harman MP, Diane Abbott MP, and I’m guessing everyone with kids who writes for the Guardian, douche bags like that.
So, back to Forest Gate. What I see is…
getting as much airtime as…
And most of those lifelong Muslims that are getting on television are being selected on the basis that they’re the ones who love kissing New Labour arse.
If I were a British born Muslim I wouldn’t trust any of these fuckers as far as I could throw them. Actually, I’m a British born non Muslim and I don’t trust any of these fuckers as far as I could throw them.
And let’s not leave Gorgeous George Galloway out of the roll call of suspicious fuckers. Personally, I appreciated many of the things he has said about the War in Iraq and what our government is up to. On the other hand, he has also said and done some things that distract serious debate about the issues he has raised. On BBC’s Question Time last week I was sickened by the spectacle of New Labour vapid droid wanker David Lammy being able to harp on about Galloway’s appearance on Big Brother instead of addressing substantive questions about the War in Iraq raised by Galloway.
Galloway’s no fool so he must have realised the negative consequences of some of his recent comments and activities.
So what’s he playing at by mixing serious issues with rat poison?
The Respect Coalition started off as an organisation that offered the prospect of some genuine opposition to our government’s policies, some much needed balance and a genuinely alternative voice. Now it just reeks of the Loony Left and spook infiltration – which are often the same thing anyway.
And as the Antogonist said by way of comment in another blog – all this manipulation of the press and the infiltration of activist groups is only subliminal if you don’t notice it.
Well, I’ve fucking noticed
The c^nts
Operation Stef Seeks Positive Inspiration in South London saw its second airing of the week today.
It was sunny. I had cleared my hectic business and social calendar for the day and off I trotted out into sun-drenched South London in search of that feel good zeitgeist.
And things started well. One of the first semi-interesting things I saw was a ‘Metropolitan Police Catering Support Unit’ (a van) labelled with the call sign ‘Teapot 1’.
‘Yes, very good’, I thought, ‘even when they stage armed raids large enough to merit their own catering support, our police retain a sense of humour.’
I smiled.
And then, about two minutes later, I encountered my first police cordon of the day. It was quite large and encompassed a fair sized chunk of Lambeth.
A teenager has been stabbed to death during a fight between a group of youths in south London.
The 15-year-old was with friends when they were surrounded by another group in Black Prince Road, Lambeth, on Thursday night, police said.
A row erupted between the two groups and the boy suffered a single stab wound to the left side of his chest.
Det Supt Richard Heselden said after the verbal altercation between the two groups, the larger group left the scene and returned armed with various weapons, including baseball bats and hockey sticks.
I was slightly unsettled by the thought that I had walked down the Black Prince Rd, a not particularly busy thoroughfare, with the other half on the way to the Fish and Chip shop an hour or two before the stabbing.
The other thought that crossed my mind is that I had taken a friend for a drink to nearby Cleaver Square to laugh at posh people only a few nights before. Cleaver Square has its own little middle class microenvironment; inhabited by well to do people playing boules and drinking chilled rose al fresco. Meanwhile, not much more than a particularly energetic boule throw away, emaciated crackheads are throttling each other for the sake of their next fix.
One of the single most bizarre aspects of life in London is just how close the very well off and the far from well off often live next to each other. In some places I could paint a line on the street separating the haves and have nots. It really does my head in sometimes, even though I grew up with it. And that polarisation is becoming more pronounced all the time.
The area around Black Prince Road was absolutely teeming with news crews today. Not because a Black kid being killed in South London is particularly unusual but because a knife was involved. For some reason, the mainstream media has decided that, all of a sudden, knife crime is going through the roof and it is covering every knife murder it can. If the kid had been killed a couple of months ago maybe one news crew would have covered the story.
Politicians have already jumped on the bandwagon and are calling for tougher penalties for people caught carrying knives.
I can’t help being reminded of the total ban on handguns back in 1997 and the sharp escalation in gun crime after that.
Off the top of my head I can think of at least a dozen reasons why violent crime is on the increase and, ban or no ban, if people are set on doing each other in they will find a way.
Still, drafting bollocks legislation gives our politicians something to do with their time and it does keep them off the streets.
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OK, the Black Prince Road thing was a little depressing, so I punted off to Brixton Market to check out and photograph some of that sunlit vibrancy going on there.
After about ten minutes in Brixton, and five minutes with my little compact camera out, I was standing on Electric Avenue, snapping away when one of the stall holders, a Turkish looking bloke, called me over in a not unfriendly way…
Stallholder: ‘Hey guvnor’
Me: ‘Yes’
Stallholder: ‘Look out for yourself taking pictures here’
Me: ‘Thank you but there’s no worry. I grew up around here. I understand’
Stallholder: ‘I don’t know if you grew up around here but you should know better. Look out for yourself. Look over your back. We don’t want people getting into trouble here’
Me: ‘Uh… thanks’
I think what upset me the most was the fact that the bloke didn’t recognise me for the street-smart social chameleon that I am; clearly mistaking me for some daft white bloke stupid enough to wave a shiny silver camera around in a dodgy area, legendary for its street crime.
I moved on.
And five minutes later another fucking stallholder warned me, in a not unfriendly way, to look over my back.
It was three o’clock in the afternoon and I could see a pair of policemen and three market wardens no more than 50ft away.
I gave up and went home.
Operation Stef Seeks Positive Inspiration in South London is now officially suspended indefinitely - until one of the major camera manufacturers brings out a camera that looks like a can of Special Brew or I can figure out how to make one myself.
William Blake fans will recall that Peckham Common is where the young Blake famously had his ‘tree filled with angels’ vision.
So, as thousands have done before me, I hunkered down in front of a suitable looking tree in the Common and started squinting.
Nothing doing.
I tried photographing it in infra-red to see if angels generate a tell tale heat signature
Nada
Eventually, I gave up on my search for inspiration and trotted back off to Peckham proper in search of less divine subjects.
Much easier…
A sight Blake would have recognized, but he did also occasionally see angels which would have lightened his emotional load considerably.
Unlike Blake, I do however have access to Photoshop. So when I returned home I synthesized my own inspiration and posted it up onto Flickr
Someone commented underneath the photo a little later on…
The most cheerful conversation I ever had in Peckham Common was with a man who was sitting on a bench.
I approached him and said "You look great, I wish I had my camera with me,"
I sat with him for a while and he told me how you saw things differently once you had only five weeks left to live.
So yeah, feeling a bit down with London? Off to Peckham Common. A wise move.
