What our pols read on their hols
This summer it was hard to avoid laudatory pieces about or extracts from the Drew Weston’s book The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation.(1) Here, it was said, was the explanation of how George Bush beat the Democrats and – by implication – how British politicians would compete for office in the future. Weston’s book, we were told, was being read by the Brown team during the parliamentary recess. Except Bush didn’t beat the Democrats: the Republicans stole both elections; and the fascination this book has apparently roused is just an example of the inability of Labour and Democratic politicians to look reality in the face.
Tunes and pipers
Phil Chamberlain alerted me the reference in the blog of BBC Chief Political Correspondent Nick Robinson to Gordon Brown reading Frances Stonor Saunders’ Who Paid The Piper?, her long account of the CIA’s ‘cultural war’ in the 1950s and 60s against the Left. This was then picked up/also reported by Spectator editor Matthew d’Ancona who reported that ‘he [Brown] has recently been inspired’ by reading it.(2) Not inspired to avoid that kind of covert operation, but apparently inspired to emulate it in the struggle with the Jihadists. And there are still people in the Labour Party who think Brown is a lefty!
Guff central
During his last appearance at the House of Commons liaison committee on June 18, Tony Blair declared that democracy and freedom are ‘universal values of the human spirit and always will be.’ Even if I knew what ‘the human spirit’ meant, this is manifestly falsified by the slaughter-strewn history of the 20th century.
A spook by an other name
In the New Statesman of 27 September (3) there was a very interesting account by Observer journalist David Rose of his becoming an asset of the British and American secret states in 1992, wined and dined and given unattributible leads and information. It began with ‘C’, Sir Colin McColl, lunching with then Observer editor Donald Trelford, who suggested Rose for the role as their contact at The Observer. (Question: who was Rose’s immediate predecessor in the role?) Inter alia Rose wrote of:
‘boozy dinners at headquarters with C or MI5’s director general, flanked by their brightest and best; briefings not just from the deniable PR man but officials involved with operations; and, most useful of all, a mobile phone number in case of urgent need at evenings and weekends.’
This relationship climaxed with Rose – to his ‘everlasting regret’ – putting his name to the key disinformation about the Iraqi regime’s links to Al Qaeda and the existence of WMDs. Why did he believe claims which a large chunk of his colleagues and most of the world’s intelligence services didn’t, and which could be seen to be false by asking that nice Mr Google?
‘I took these stories seriously because they were corroborated by off-the-record intelligence sources on both sides of the Atlantic.’
So: after a decade of being given such ‘off-the-record’ briefings, he believed another, whose content he then had corroborated by other clandestine sources. But rather than admit to himself that he was just conned, that here was the spooks’ pay-day for all the career-building info’ they had slipped him in the previous decade, he writes:
‘I am certain that those to whom I spoke at MI6 acted then in good faith. I remember one particular conversation I had with an official in the early summer of 2003, not long before Andrew Gilligan’s BBC broadcast about the government having “sexed up” its dossier on Iraqi WMDs in September 2002. Already it was becoming apparent that the threat had probably been a chimera. “Don’t worry,” my source said soothingly. “We’ll find them. We’re certain they’re there. It’s just taking longer than we expected. Keep your nerve.”’
We now know enough to say that Rose’s MI6 contact was conning him. So unsure was the pro-war lobby in Whitehall, so thin was the evidence of WMDs, they had to exclude the Defence Intelligence Staff – the people with the expertise – from the policy-making discussions. In retaliation for which the DIS began leaking and briefing against the war lobby.(4)
You might think that having met a good many intelligence officers in his career as their asset, Rose would know the absurdity of talking about their good faith. You want good faith? They’ll give you good faith. Whatever it takes.….
But now Rose sees the error of his ways and wants the spooks to establish a press office and do things openly. No, really; he means it.
Energy wars
Everyone knows what the end game is going to be: the US wants to get its hands on Russian oil and gas. Since the fall of the Soviet Union it has successfully got itself into most of the former Soviet republics: but not Russia. Its methods are also known to all: under the banner of ‘freedom and democracy’, and using cut-outs or fronts, it will seek to promote pro-American forces within Russia. These techniques have proved successful so far in Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgystan – the so-called ‘colour coups’.(5) Knowing what the game is, the Russian state is taking steps to counter it. Hence, in part, the formation of the state-sponsored youth group Nashi (Russian for ‘Our’).(6)
Similar activities are taking place in Iran. Hence the arrest, earlier this year, of Iranian academics with links to American-funded organisations.(7)Similar techniques are being used in South America.(8)Little of this is secret: the funding bodies have websites. For example, the National Endowment for Democracy, the major funnel of US tax dollars into the fronts, lists it various programs on its website, <www.ned.org/>, while maintaining the fiction that it is a ‘private organisation’ despite receiving an ‘annual congressional appropriation’ – its chosen euphemism for US tax dollars.
The death of diplomacy
Vladimir Putin is now making a habit of speaking bluntly to the West. He did so in spectacular fashion in at the 43rd Munich Conference on Security Policy in February 2007, a speech which got little attention in this country other than the use of fragments to cast Putin as restarting the Cold War.
In his diaries Alastair Campbell describes an encounter between Putin and Blair in 2003 at which, in the presence, of David Manning, Blair’s then foreign policy advisor, and Campbell, Putin told some home truths.(9)
‘He said the US had created the situation [in Iraq]. In ignoring the UN they had created danger. They were saying there may be rules but not for us. Time and again he made comparisons with the situation he faced in Georgia, used as a base for terrorists against Russia. “What would you say if we took out Georgia or sent B-52s to wipe out the terror camps?” And what are they planning next – is it Syria, Iran or Korea? “ I bet they haven’t told you.”’
And, of course, they hadn’t, any more than they bothered to tell the British in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq that the State Department’s plans for the post-invasion period were ditched two months before the event and control of the post-invasion events had been given to, or was seized by, the yahoos at the Pentagon.(10)
Campbell’s account of the meeting concludes with Putin telling Blair:
‘….the whole post-September 11 response was designed to show off American greatness. They don’t care what anyone else thinks. TB was about to respond but he [Putin] didn’t let him. “Don’t answer – there is no answer. That is the truth, Tony. You have to know it. There are bad people in the administration and you know it.”…….
David [Manning] said as we left, “Fascinating, absolutely fascinating.” I said that was the death of diplomacy. It certainly was, he said.’
So it turns out that the old gag about diplomats being people who tell lies abroad for their countries is true. Putin tells the truth and it becomes ‘the death of diplomacy’.
Pennies dropping
There is a standard pattern where stories of bad news about something important to the status quo are concerned: allegations are made; they get ignored; eventually they produce official denials and sometimes ridicule for those making the allegations; and then, years later – in the case of fluoride, five decades later – the scientific community discovers that the ‘nutters’ were correct. Thus Sarah Boseley, in ‘Senior doctors allege lack of evidence on fluoride safety’ (The Guardian 5 October 2007), reported a story in the British Medical Journal of a study into the alleged benefits of fluoride which included this:
‘Given the certainty with which water fluoridation had been promoted and opposed……the reviewers [of the evidence] were surprised by the poor quality of the evidence and the uncertainty surrounding the beneficial and adverse effects.’
Take depleted uranium. The Ministry of Defence’s view is that there is no ‘reliable scientific evidence’ of DU harming people.(12)In ‘Lethal legacy of tank-busting uranium dust’, Ian Sample in The Guardian 27 June 2007, began his report of a new study of depleted uranium:
‘Toxic, radioactive dust released from armour-piercing depleted uranium shells lingers for decades in the environment and contaminates land far from where it is used, according to British scientists.’
Googling ‘depleted uranium + cancer’ I got 578,000 hits and there been have dozens, maybe hundreds of serious reports from Iraq, since the US-UK invasion, of genetic defects in areas where depleted uranium has been used.(13)
The biggest item in play at present is the safety or otherwise of the weak electromagnetic fields produced by electrical devices and mobile phones and computers in particular. Almost every month now there are ‘panic’ and ‘don’t panic’ stories, most recently about the alleged ill-effects of Wi-fi networks.(14) Previous experience suggests that those mongering scares are generally correct; but what will it take to persuade us not to use mobile phones?
Notes
- See, for example, The Guardian August 8, 2007 and <www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19461257/site/newsweek/page/0/>
- <www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2139729,00.html>
- <www.newstatesman.com/200709270026>
- This is discussed in Alastair Campbell’s diaries which are reviewed on p. 8.
- On which see <http://english.pravda.ru/world/americas/16-04-2007/89827-revolution-0>
- See for example Adrian Blomfield, ‘Summer at camp Putin is show of patriotism’, Daily Telegraph, 25 July 2007.
- See Robert Tait, ‘Iranian-Americans held for plotting revolution in Tehran’, The Guardian 18 June 2007 and Robert Tait, ‘US academics admit aiding Iran democracy drive’, The Guardian 19 June 2007.
- See, for example, ‘USAID in Bolivia and Venezuela: the quiet subversion’ at <www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=2133>
- Alastair Campbell, The Blair Years: extracts from the Alastair Campbell Diaries (London: Hutchinson, 2007) pp. 693/4. This is discussed on p. 8.
- A devastating early account of the chaos in Iraq, published in October 2003 by Newsweek, at <www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3087064> included a paragraph with a jaw-dropping last sentence:
‘Last February, retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner was trying to put together a team of experts to rebuild Iraq after the war was over……. The vetting process “got so bad that even doctors sent to restore medical services had to be anti-abortion,” recalled one of Garner’s team.’ (emphasis added)
- An editorial in the British Medical Journal on the subject is at <www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/321/7265/904/a>
- <www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/AboutDefence/WhatWeDo/HealthandSafety/Depleted+Uranium/DepletedUraniumAndHealth.htm>
- I got more than 800,000 hits for ‘depleted uranium + Iraq’
- See for example James Randerson, ‘Scientists reject Panorama’s claims on Wi-Fi radiation risks’, The Guardian, 21 May 2007 and ‘Cancer doubt remains over mobiles’ at <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6990958.stm>