D NOTICE ISSUED REGARDING PRISM PLEASE RESHARE

Via Guido

Private and Confidential: Not for publication, broadcast or use on social media.
Defence Advisory Notice
There have been a number of articles recently in connection with some of the ways in which the UK Intelligence Services obtain information from foreign sources.
Although none of these recent articles has contravened any of the guidelines contained within the Defence Advisory Notice System, the intelligence services are concerned that further developments of this same theme may begin to jeopardize both national security and possibly UK personnel…

Once upon a time in Bexley.....

Fellow blogger and member of the awkward squad, Olly C, has as I'm sure many of you already know, been slapped with a custodial sentence as a result of calling a Bexley councillor a "cunt" on twitter. There's a lot of history here and I've already seen some lightweights casually dismissing it because they believe the council's line that he was "harrassing" them.  For a short readable version, pop by Max's place. For a lengthier treatment, go to Spiderplant - which gives a fairly detailed and dispassionate breakdown. If you're unfamiliar with this case, Olly or Bexley council, then you really owe it to yourself to dig deep into this and as such just have a quick browse through Bexley is Bonkers for examples of mendacity from the council that are legion. The blogs just for April will give you enough of a taste. Rather than add my own summary of the situation, I'd rather highlight some particularly striking points from the 'Bexley is Bonkers' site.

First, however I would like to speculate on something. And I'd ask people to please share this speculation far and wide. Remember though, given how easily speech - especially online - is criminalised in this country, it is only a speculation.It goes as follows: Olly is due to be sentenced at Bromley magistrates court on May 9th. WOULDN'T IT BE AWFUL if Bexley council, and certain councillors in particular, were on the receiving end of a "mass cunting" on that day. That is to say - that they were inundated with emails, tweets and phone calls indicating that many of the general public considered them - well - "cunts". Spread the word about this speculation......I'd be interested to see if it comes true.

Secondly I wanted to highlight that the story is now being picked up by as diverse sources as Reddit, Stephen Fry and Sunny Hundal. That's good. These censorious attacks - especially in online media - have got to the point where they are simply beyond belief. I certainly wouldn't have believed you if you'd told me 10 years ago that this would happen. So a cross-partisan left-right shitstorm in response is exactly what we need, as we've had on (too few) occasions in the past such as when left and right blogs joined forces to support Craig Murray against Schillings.

Now - those two points I wanted to highlight, lifted verbatim from the 'Bexley is Bonkers' April 2012 blogs:

"When Eric Pickles’ department wrote to all councils in February 2011 telling them “citizen journalists” should be allowed to Tweet and film in council meetings even the most hard line of secretive Conservative councils like Barnet and Westminster caved in. Bexley however changed its Constitution to exclude all forms of recording at meetings. All their Agendas repeat the prohibition and when questioned they say it is to protect members of the public from appearing on tape. They sheepishly offer the excuse that permission may be granted on request but not a single request has been approved, not even for an audio only recording at a meeting where the public is not allowed to speak."

And as to why / how the judge on friday effectively threw the book at Olly:

"the charges were those prepared from the original false allegations that included flaming torches, pitchforks, petrol bombs and Olly writing on Bonkers. All of that was untrue; made up and distorted stories by Bexley council aimed at getting both Olly and me in trouble. The prosecution could find no evidence for any of those allegations which is what you might expect since they were all false and Olly was found not guilty last December. All the nonsense invented by Bexley council was put before the new Judge as fact. Worrying."

Did I mention that the judgement against Olly was made at a court in Bexley?

Time to consider this a war footing I think.

And my personal message to Bexley council is:

Laying the ground for an assault on Freedom of Information

Reading the opinions of "civil servants" in the RearGuardian today, I see the ground is clearly being laid for an attack on the current status quo on the Freedom of Information legislation. Moreover, the complaints being made are coming from those with a direct conflict of interest (remember they were said to be "shit scared" at this proposed development previously).

It should be noted that a full on assault on FOI is in progress in Scotland (which has its own FOI commissioner).

Their claims deserve nothing less than a complete fisking:

"The Freedom of Information Act has failed to increase understanding of government"

- Utter crap. The majority of journalists and researchers may have failed to have used it, but the minority who have managed to use it to great effect and have pulled the curtain back on all sorts of issues. I think what the "civil servants" mean here is that it 'failed to increase a general appreciation of *their* understanding of government.'

"may have reduced trust"

- Well yes. Because it has served the essential role of exposing you - exactly as it was intended to do.

" and has done little to improve decision-making in Westminster"

- This at least may be true. Our Parliamentary Muppets certainly act as if they don't fear the outcome of a FOI request - I recently had one returned from the Cabinet Office that confirmed there was no 'draft treaty' for the Boy Cameron to have vetoed. It hasn't stopped the Tories repeating the lie continually. However, this is an issue of exposure as much as anything. They most certainly do fear exposure on Guido's site for example and there's no reason FOI responses could not contribute to some of his exposes.



"Civil servants are also calling for the introduction of higher fees for users of the act. The ministry suggests that the costs do "not adequately reflect the total amount of time spent in practice in compiling the information".

- OK so now you're trying to close this valuable tool down by pricing people out. If you kept better records it wouldn't be so onerous would it. Why do you keep such bad records? Because you know you're unlikely to be held to account for them. Oh.

"Research commissioned by the Ministry of Justice also found civil servants believed freedom of information was not being used to increase accountability, but instead by journalists fishing for a story."

- Fishing for a story? Really? For god's sake. Why is this considered illegitimate? It's not as if the journalists who submit FOI requests are the paparazzi.

"The report found: "It was well recognised by most that journalists have started to use other email accounts in requesting information as a way of masking the origin of the request."

- Diddums. I failed to read the part of the FOIA legislation that stated those making requests were obliged to identify themselves and their interests. You guys have got that Public servant <--> Public relationship the wrong way around again haven't you? Mendacious idiots.

"The chairman of the justice select committee, Alan Beith, said he was a supporter of the act, but added that he was aware some ministers and civil servants wanted to rein in what they regarded as a costly burden on the government."

- It's that relationship confusion again here isn't it? You're already a frighteningly bloated bureaucracy (not to mention increasingly redundant as the EU continues to encroach further). It is frankly offensive that being expected to be transparent and accountable is seen as a "costly burden".



"The report says: "Most officials agreed that the same issues would have been discussed and the same decisions reached had the FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] not been in place."

- Indeed. Because you don't actually care what we think. You'll go ahead anyway with your own plans. The way you administer (not to mention completely fail to publicise) "consultations" as pathetic exercises in  confirming what you were going to do anyway, is regular proof of that. At least with the FOIA us Proles get to see some of the inner workings you would rather not were exposed to sunlight.

"The memorandum finds a "very small proportion of the public requests information, whilst media coverage of FOI requests is rarely on policy-decision topics (ie it is far more likely to cover a topic like expenses, crime statistics and so on)".

- Given that you have already admitted you can't always identify journalists amongst the requests, how on earth do you provide this estimate? And yet again you cry like spoiled brats that the media narratives don't necessarily go your way. "Policy-decision topics"? Piss off!

"Overall, the ministry claims, there "is little evidence to suggest the FOIA has increased public participation in government. The number of individuals making requests is insignificant in terms of the UK population. Those who make requests are normally already engaged with government: campaigners, journalists and politicians for instance."

- Again. How in hell do you measure this? It has certainly increased my participation - and the participation of many people I know. And if the number of requests is "insignificant" relative to the population then STFU about how "onerous" it is. And the fact that most requesters are likely to be "already engaged with government" is not only redundant but also no surprise.

"The survey also revealed a frustration at the way in which "serial or vexatious requesters waste time and money by pushing their request through the internal review process and up to the information commissioner". Some believed that such cases should incur a higher fee at a lower threshold of civil service time."

- They just don't let up do they? Poor them, eh? The review process was in place to serve people who want the information, not those who have to provide it. And of course they generally only become vexatious if you stonewall them in the first place.

"The memorandum also suggests the cost of censoring documents for public consumption is so costly that more documents should simply be deemed to be too expensive to publish."

- What? You folks do have the use of computers, right? And aside from personal contact details, perhaps you should just censor *less* in the first place. It's not as if you have anything to hide. Is it?

"The report also cites evidence that some charities and non-profit service providers are holding back from using FOI requests out of fear that it will antagonise the public authorities they rely on for funding."

- Oh really? Is it ANY surprise at all given all the whining already cited above? I've actually wondered the same thing myself when submitting more than one FOI request to the same entity, despite the fact that I am fully within my rights to do so regardless of all other factors.


"Civil servants also claimed their internal discussions were being hampered by the act, saying "some people were recording less information and … internal communications had become less detailed and informative" than before freedom of information."

- Uh huh. And WHY would you want to avoid taking note of certain details?

"Ministry of Justice statistics show that central government departments currently receive a total of about 2,000-2,500 FOI requests a year,"

- W-what? 2-2.5 thousand? That's it?

"Nearly 700,000 requests had been made to local authorities between 2005 and 2010, with the number now reaching 200,000 a year."

- Ah. That's more like it. Quelle surprise - requesters are more interested in their local government. I suspect part of the reason is that Council Tax provides one of the government's few weakspots for collecting revenue (which is why their powers to claim it are so draconian). People might - just might - think they have legitimate reasons for with-holding payment given the multiple spending clusterfucks that Local government is famous for. This is something Richard North has been heroically chronicling for some time. They also - probably rightly - perceive that their local representatives are potentially more accountable and accessible unlike those in the Westminster bubble (and let's not mention the even more distant Brussells bubble, eh?)

After that torrent of Bilge, the top rated comment by davidabsalom at the RearGuardian does at least summarise it best:

"Well they would say that, wouldn't they."

A CALL TO ARMS: London Atheist & Secularist student societies under attack

I know on occasions in the past I've asked you, dear readers and fellow bloggers to share something widely that needed wider exposure. Well this situation desperately requires that wider exposure and all the help we can provide, especially as the mass media are notably silent on the issue - very likely because of a self-censoring trend itself inspired by fear of what has befallen others.

As far as I'm concerned, a Rubicon has been passed here in British civil society. Our rule of law and civility has been tested on the litmus of Islamists getting their way through threats and censorship backed by threats and has been found wanting. And it has been found wanting where one of our supposedly safe and hallowed institutions is concerned - the free-thinking (or so we are told) university campuses of Higher Education. This has to be nipped in the bud, now.

You could be forgiven entirely for not having a clue what I'm talking about. So far the most prominent coverage has been in two Sunday comment pieces here and here.

Three separate University Atheist / Secularist student societies have come under attack from islamists. The two milder cases are those at UCL and the LSE.

Alex Gabriel summarises events well so far:

"What’s happened since the Jesus and Mo business started? Well: I’ve been told I’ll be beheaded. Rhys Morgan’s been told in more detail that he’ll be killed. Atheists at UCL have worried their parents will be attacked. Atheists at Queen Mary were told they’d be hunted down if they insulted Mohammad, including their president Jen Hardy who’s feared for her life in the last few days. Maryam Namazie made it sound like this wasn’t unusual in her line of work. All this, and LSESU have the cojones to say it’s Muslims they’re concerned about? If anybody currently requires a safe space, it’s us."

That's right. The worst event so far as been at Queen Mary two weeks ago - students had organised a talk on 'Sharia Law and Human Rights'. An Islamist thug turned up (with help apparently), filmed members of the audience and threatened violence against them if he heard of any "insult to the prophet".

Having now spent some time with the Queen Mary students to find out first hand what happened I can tell you that these kids are feeling not only scared, but also very isolated. Not only do the various students unions involved in these debacles appear to be uncritcially taking the Islamist side against all reason, demanding that the Atheist, Secularist and Humanist societies censor themselves or - in the case of LSE - face expulsion from the Union, but I've heard a number of them asking 'where is the left'?

The police have apparently told them that the worst that will happen is that the individual in question (never mind his mates waiting outside, or those who opened the fire doors in the hall so their pals could get in, or the two who were shouting, demanding to know "who drew the cartoons") is that he'll get an £80 fine. Apparently they can't take it any more seriously because the threat was prefaced with an "if" - i.e. 'if I hear the prophet has been insulted'. What complete and utter arseclownery from our Police Farce. No wonder things are continuing to race downhill at rapid speed in Tower Hamlets. I mean - why on earth would the students be scared, it's not as if there are recent precedents eh? (And with regard to Tower Hamlets itself - let's not forget this litany of shit)

Worse, one of the students discovered a forum where the "brothers" were discussing this intimidation. Whilst there are some calls for restraint, there are plenty of posts on there to send a chill up your spine - "who gave these kuffar the right to speak?" - anyone? To preserve people's anonymity and to also preserve this fuckwittery for posterity and hopefully future police investigation with a police force worth the name not compromised by politically correct Fabianism I have created a resource page with archived pages so there is no need to visit the forum itself (please avoid clicking on the links within the archived pages themselves as you'll end up at the Muppets' forum).

Well - it will come as absolutely no surprise to many readers of this blog  - it seems "the left" is either taking its default position of head in the sand, or worse - in several cases, siding with the Islamists against the students. One of the few noble exceptions to this is Harry's Place - who have kept a careful and critical eye on the ever worsening Islamist problem in the UK and in London (Tower Hamlets) in particular. What's more they attack this issue from the left and represent to me all the good things I thought the left were supposed to represent when I first took an interest in politics at the tender age of 18 many years ago - the same age a lot of these students are who are on the receiving end of this bullshit.

So - I want to appeal to my fellow bloggers - please spread the word on these incidents as these kids are being let down by ALL of the institutions that are supposed to protect them and help them - the police, the media, even their own student unions. And also, PLEASE help to publicise the rally next week in support of these students and anyone else who wants to maintain the right to free expression and NOT be violently threatened as a result.

OPERATION BLACKOUT - STOP SOPA / PIPA

This post is in support of the anti-SOPA / PIPA actions that are about to start in the U.S.  Details of the "internet strike" are here. This blog, and the handful of sites I administer will also be joining the strike, which now includes big hitters such as Google, Wikipedia and Reddit.

Whilst SOPA has (for now) been put on ice, its sister bill, PIPA is still alive in the Senate. SOPA could quite easily return as it is on hold. Both need to be chopped up and burned, never to see the light of day again. Just like the Digital Economy Act here in the UK before it, though a much more far reaching version, it hands far too much power to copyright holders and will likely be used to censor huge swathes of the net. I say this as someone who supports IP / copyright in some form, though one who is still undecided on what the solutions might be - many aspects of the issue are intractable. What I do know is that concentrating power in the hands of copyright holders, who - in the case of SOPA / PIPA supporters - represent the old school mass media interests who really should realise that their time to die is long past and are desperately clinging on, is a terrifying and deeply wrong turn of events.

This video explains the mortal danger SOPA / PIPA poses to all of us, not just citizens of the U.S.

And if you think it doesn't directly affect Britons, just consider the fate of Richard O'Dwyer - if SOPA or PIPA pass, expect to see dozens if not hundreds more cases like his, and for a much milder "crime". It will surely include many of us in the blogosphere.

In solidarity with the sites that will be going into "blackout", all of my other posts will revert to 'draft' and be inaccessible for the duration of the draft - disappearing suddenly into the ether in exactly the same way that many sites will if SOPA / PIPA pass.

Join the strike! If you have no sites to 'black out' then help to raise awareness if you can.

And one last thing that has been lost in the drama of SOPA / PIPA is that the DEA has now officially been ruled compatible with EU law. Expect a fight on our hands very shortly on our own shores as it is enforced.....

It's mob rule at the Guardian....

(This blogpost should perhaps also be titled - 'What I did/didn't/did say at the Guardian today....')

There's nothing quite like rank hypocrisy to boil my piss. However, to ensure it is fully evaporated in anger, combine rank hypocrisy with crass stupidity, naked opportunism, complete resistance to facts or reason and censorship.

For that was the bread and butter of Leo "bless 'im" Hickman's disgraceful piece of yellow bellied journalism at the Guardian today.

Hickman decided it was time to form a posse comitatus to try tracking down the source of the climategate emails, laughably using the README textfile included in the latest tranche of releases as the primary source of evidence.

This was one of those pieces - especially as it was in the comment is free if you agree section - that really reveals the Guardian's true colours. Numerous commentators including me (prior to the first round of censorship - sorry - 'comment adjustment') attempted to point out the Guardian's and Hickman's rank hypocrisy on this issue. The most striking and obvious example having been the paper's massive support for Wikileaks, however there were many other examples, including the anonymous Enron whistleblower, as another commenter pointed out. As was repeated again and again, it appeared that all leakers were equal but some were more equal than others in the Guardian's eyes.

This was of course brushed off by Hickman and his part-time principle party of followers in the comments section.

Next I pointed out (prior to 'comment adjustment') that claiming it was the work of a hacker was still just an assumption. Hickman replied to me directly on that and similarly brushed it off. He claimed it was irrelevant. The poor dear didn't seem to realise that if he assumed it was the work of a hacker and in fact it was a leaker then his "investigation" would lead him down to all sorts of blind alleys, not least because the MO and levels of access would be completely different (not to mention the trail of evidence left behind).

There were a plethora of delightfully dense comments in support of Hickman et al and stunning leaps of reasoning. These people were also apparently immune to criticism because they "knew" what they were claiming was true, especially regarding the "hacker" claim. Many pronounced completely ill-informed statements about this showing that i) they knew nothing about IT security and ii) that they couldn't even be bothered to use google to check details. After all, The difference between an internal security breach and a carefully coordinated external breach is vast. Pointman gave an excellent overview after the first climategate - here. Moreover they absolutely did not care about their ignorance. What a familiar pattern, eh? No wonder they were immediately supportive of the "scientists" at the heart of the climategate storm - they're just like them!

There were some absolute crackers amongst the received wisdom of this bunch of easily led zealots and I highly recommend you read through the comments - well those that are left - as it is a laugh a minute.

Komment Macht Frei

Speaking of the comments - when the piece first appeared this morning, it was absolute devastation from the moderator. ALL of my comments bar the first one were censored, as were numerous other comments by others. I had no clue why they'd been removed beyond the fact that we all seemed to disagree intensely with Hickman.

Now I should point out something important here for Guardian watchers - they have two types of post moderation. There is the one we're all familiar with - where the boilerplate 'this comment was moderated because it breached our community (puke) standards' but there's also a much more insidious type and I only noticed it because I've been paying a lot of attention to their censorship pattern over the last couple of years - its what I call "nuking". In this case they remove all evidence that the comment was ever there. It's particularly chilling for freedom of speech because aside from the fact that by looking at the comments one can't actually assess the general level of censorship, if it's *your* comment that disappears in this way it's only your word that it was ever there in the first place....

Now bizaarely, after the comments spilled over onto two pages I happened to click back to the first page to see what else had been censored and was surprised to see that most of my previously "moderated" comments had reappeared (except for the "nuked" ones). I don't know if this is a bug in their software or a disagreement between moderators but it adds even more to the general sense of confusion and latent fear of arbitrary censorship that completely fucks any meaningful contribution over there.

Another important point to be aware of is this: One way to guarantee being censored on the Guardian is if you make a reference to your, or someone else's having been censored you will immediately be censored and they often use the "nuke" option too.

The Guardian is  - as a media institution - utterly reprehensible. Most other media outlets are of course too, across the political spectrum. But none outside the BBC attempt to present themselves so often as the default "good guys", nor do their followers similarly regard it as received wisdom...

The climategate 'gait' or the 'out of context paradox'

There's a regular pattern that occurs in any discussion of climategate (1 or 2). It is inconsistent but also entirely consistent with the unthinking nature of many of those who promulgate it:
i) They assert that the emails were "taken out of context"
ii) Responder says that they are not.
iii) A request is then made for evidence.
iv) Responder invites them to read the emails - there are numerous complete email chains, supporting claims against the "scientists" that ONLY MAKE SENSE IN CONTEXT. But the trick is you have to actually read the emails....

A modern day climate "scientist"

Now given how unambiguous some of the exchanges are (in particular those that involve purposefully frustrating FOI inquiries and deleting emails....) one is then prompted to ask exactly what standard of evidence is required. For the evidence before us, if for example we stick with complete email chains rather than individual comments, is a magnitude higher than the typical standard accepted in the vast majority of journalism that we ever read or see. It means that - to be consistent - if one were to completely reject these email chains as sufficient evidence, one would have to throw out almost every received opinion on any quoted person in the press one has ever encountered. Will the zealots do that...no of course they won't. But of course consistency is in the same disused box in their basement as a regard for truth....

One final delicious irony of this of course is that 'The Team' will surely be scratching their heads now, trying to remember what on earth what was said to who. But because they very likely deleted these emails after they had been copied from the mailserver then they have only one place to go to check.....

Remember, remember...

...its time again for the annual November 5th walk with Old Holborn and the rest of us assorted libertarian ne'er do wells. As Witterings from Witney says - it falls on a Saturday this time, so no excuses - be there!

Its always good fun and brings out quite a few interesting people you might want to meet!

Hopefully we won't get section 44ed like we did the first time....

The first world infowar has started

"The word was spread that bold Assange and his 300 Anonymous, so far from their websites, laid down their rigs and lives; not just for Wikileaks, but for all of the Internet and the promise it holds."

"Now here on this ragged patch of internet called 4chan, let the DDOS hordes face obliteration! Just there the corrupt government barbarians huddle, sheer terror gripping tight their hearts with icy fingers - knowing full well what merciless horrors they suffered at the LOICs and botnets of 300 Anonymous. Yet they stare now across the gateways at 10,000 commanding 30,000"

Details of wikileaks 'cablegate' emerging

Several publications have just this half hour coordinated publication of initial details regarding the wikileaks material.

Here is the Guardian and the NY Times to get started. Oh my life - it really does look like this contains some very serious material indeed.

An Ode to Anna Raccoon

This week we lost one of the best bloggers and Libertarian activists not just in Britain, but in the world.

Anna Raccoon was a phenomenon. Possessed of tremendous skill, experience, kindness and persistence, all in equal measure, she was one of the true warriors of both the blogosphere and the Libertarian tradition.

She was silenced by a continual, unabating campaign of threats and intimidation. Read the sorry, sickening details here, at Grumpy's place, where she leaves her last words. For those of you who never read her material or followed her various campaigns (which helped real people in the real world, acting as an serendipitous angel to their often unknown plights), the Devil has her very last blog post copied here. This post shows her at her best, detailing one of her many interventions to help those vulnerable people on the receiving end of the most banally evil dead hand of the state and its mendacious agents, and its also an inspiring summary of just how and why we can make a difference.

I'm going to miss her presence so much. However, she was an absolute inspiration. As Oldrightie comments on her goodbye note - "Life is for living first, fighting oppression second." Quite. Where you led the way Anna, the rest of us will take up the charge into the breach and beat back the enemy.

Gildas wrote an eulogy for Anna here and I certainly couldn't better it. So my ode to Anna, and to those of us now duty bound to take up the slack and fight in her place, and in her honour is by means of this song:

(Small) bonfire of the Quangos

For anyone who hasn't heard yet, the government has announced the list of quangos that it intends to abolish. See here in the Independent.

One of those quangos is Ufi - the parent company for Learndirect and the disastrous UK Online. It was with the latter (UK Online) that we first learned about the government's actual attitude to talking to it's citizens online - - censor them if they don't agree with you.

Now if you were to look at the sites listed above it would look like Ufi/learndirect actually did some worthwhile work. It did in it's first year or two, very successfully in fact. But then the targets bullshit culture took over and it morphed rapidly into a horrific tax eating monster filled to the brim with completely pointless jobs and ever changing "targets" and "priorities". It sucked in taxpayer money from one end and out the other produced - literally - tonnes of patronising acronym-filled meaningless bullshit.

Also, most of the actual teaching took place in independent learning centres, previously private businesses that then became effectively Ufi franchises. This would have been OK if the said businesses hadn't been jerked around constantly by changing targets and funding models that would alter sometimes within months of the last regime being imposed. As a result lots of previously good learning centres went to the wall or became completely ineffectual.

I came to despise the organisation with a passion after working there for two years and as it seems to be receiving it's long overdue and richly deserved destruction I thought it was the perfect time to share my resignation letter from five years ago, which I sent to the entire company.

Read it here

What happened to David Shayler?

In 1997, David Shayler, a former member of MI5 (the UK's internal "intelligence" "service"), became a whistleblower, claiming to the Mail on Sunday that British "intelligence" "services" had, in 1996, paid money to assassinate Libyan leader, Colonel Gaddafi.

Thanks to our government's fantastic media-gagging powers, us lowly British proles had to hear about this from other countries' media. The British media was not even able to report that it had been gagged.

Because of the gagging of the British press, Shayler was not able to make a public interest argument, nor have his case heard in full publicly. Interestingly, it was our old authoritarian pals, David Blunkett and Jack Straw who signed the 'Public Interest Immunity certificates'. This is interesting because Straw, and other now senior Labour figures, had almost certainly been on the receiving end of domestic intelligence attention during their supposedly radical past. This kind of targetting of left wing individuals and groups has been comprehensively documented by Robin Ramsay over the years in his excellent journal, 'Lobster'. Straw was also the person to whom Shayler originally sent his dossier of evidence behind the allegations.

Because of cases like that of Katherine Gunn, many people seem to suppose that our "intelligence" agents have whistleblowing rights. They don't.

And if the following piece of reporting from the Australian paper, 'The Age' doesn't send a shudder up your spine, I don't know what will:

The British media widely reported on Monday that lawyers acting for Mr Shayler had accused the government of trying to "intimidate" Justice Moses. But on Tuesday the newspapers - many of which had mounted their own legal case against the application of the certificates - reported simply that the court had heard legal arguments relating to Mr Shayler's trial. "The judge ruled that they (the legal arguments) cannot be reported," The Guardian reported.
....
After the judge's ruling on Monday, several articles detailing Mr Shayler's anticipated evidence - and the government's efforts to keep it secret - were withdrawn from newspaper websites across the country.

Right from Shayler's original breaking of the story, through his flight to France, the attempted extradition and through to 2000 with his trial and conviction, one had the distinct impression that he was seen as a credible whistleblower. Even by the BBC (though, admittedly this was at the time the Tories were just passing the baton to ZanuLab, before it became such an obvious state propaganda machine).

Then something odd occurred.

Shayler got involved in the 9/11 Truth Movement. Now this covers a great many people, many of whom hold divergent and varying views, with equally varying scholarly or investigatory credentials. He didn't join the 'moderate' end of the group however, perhaps investigating the money trail, or supposed intelligence failures. Instead he dived straight into the 'No Plane' and 'Hologram' theories. He not only became an instant write off for whistleblower-watchers; he was also accused by others in the 9/11 Truth Movement of being a state agitator, who's modus operandi was to discredit the moderate 9/11 Truth elements. Given his background it doesn't seem an unreasonable accusation.

Yet the entire episode seems completely bizaare.

In early interviews Shayler came across as calm, articulate and critical. The treatment he received by the government and level of access he was given by the media meant he could have remained a staunch and credible critic of the government even once he begun moving beyond his particular areas of knowledge or expertise. This is the path other whistleblowers such as Craig Murray have taken.

Yet he chose to align himself with an incredibly derided group, derided even by other people who are furiously anti-government and critical of state and media. When you see the early Shayler, you don't see someone who in a few years, is likely to be promulgating the idea that no planes hit the WTC, only holograms.

Yet it gets worse. Much more recently, he has taken an even more bizaare turn. A few years after joining the Truthers, he then announces, in a very Ickean fashion, that he is the Son of God.

Sidenote on Icke: I met Icke a few years back, shortly after he returned from his U.S. adventures. He began promulgating the lizards idea shortly after this trip, seemingly having picked the idea up from some odd Americans. This, it turns out, is Icke's perpetual pattern. I happen to know three people he has received information and evidence from over the years (all three also have very different perspectives and backgrounds). What was striking is that he repeated almost verbatim, in his books and talks, whatever the person, or people he was spending time with at that moment were telling him. This explains the various phases he has had - flip flopping for example between anti-semitism and repudiation of anti-semitism; it was a reflection of the people who surrounded him at the time.

He came across as someone who was dangerously gullible, who also was able to present these ideas with a tremendous air of authority because of his feeling that he had 'inside connections'.

Here's the problem: Some of the things Icke has said and published are true. (N.B. I'm NOT talking about the lizards here....). I can vouch for three of his sources, though their contributions only cover quite a modest part of his various claims and theories. Yet its easy to discredit the lot in one go and even be wary of being associated with his more plausible claims - I was wary myself of writing the last three paragraphs because of this automatic association.

So it's here I find the comparisons with Shayler quite disturbing. Whilst Icke has been like a kite, bouncing around in whatever direction the prevailing winds took him, Shayler was more like a tree, rooted solidly at first, then suddenly caught by a hurricane, roots ripped out, and tossed into a stinking swamp. I can't help but ask what happened to either, or both men. The messianic turn in particular makes my head hurt. It was like Shayler had his bolt of truth right at the start, shot his load, then came up empty. Icke, not being a whistleblower, was like an empty vessel just waiting to be filled.

Whistleblowers like Murray and Edmonds have certainly been through some seriously tough times. Edmonds was more or less ignored by the MSM whilst her government engaged in an unprecedented level of censorship whilst Murray was purposefully driven out of his job and painted as mentally ill by his previous employers and colleagues. Both have been 'through the wars', and yet managed to come out the other side as prominent, and critically minded thorns in their respective governments' sides. What went wrong with Shayler? What prompted Icke to have a funny turn and suddenly become some kind of "conspiracy prophet"? There's no doubt that life is very difficult for whistleblowers or high profile dissidents after taking their stand, especially in employment terms. Yet as the likes of Murray and Edmonds have shown, its still entirely possible to get one's life together again.

And let's not forget the Panorama episode that almost wasn't from way back in 1998.

The British government has since expanded its powers of censorship - one can only wonder what else has escaped attention in the last, trying, decade. And that's only counting actual cases of 'hard stops' by the government - how much more of a chilling effect has this had more generally? I know I regularly excoriate the media for being useless self-censoring clowns, but when dangerous criminals such as Peter and Paul Griffin can win libel cases against the Guardian and the BBC, despite British Customs holding damning, smoking gun, evidence and the U.S. slapping sanctions on them, I can at least see mitigating factors (that's not an excuse by the way if any of you yellow bellies are reading - do your f**king job already instead of leaving it to us bloggers FFS....)

Airstrip One, Uzbekistan and Schillings - "the rich man's libel"

Craig Murray, our man from Uzbekistan, is in the news again, although it's a scant amount of coverage. Murray was the UK diplomat for the FCO in Uzbekistan, harassed and forced out of his job for highlighting the fact that the Uzbeks were gaining "intelligence" for the "war on terror" through using torture and doing such delightful things as boiling the families of their political opponents alive. Murray considered this rank hypocrisy on behalf of Her Majesty's Government - especially given the official line on supporting democracy, opposing terrorism and corrupt regimes and "officially" not accepting evidence from terrorism.

Murray was right.

The government tried hard to destroy him, and almost succeeded. But he persevered and effectively won his case against the FCO in 2004. Since then he has been an outspoken critic of UK policy and has gradually been revealing more about his experiences in UK "diplomacy" and espionage.

One of the characteristics that makes Murray such an appealing, and credible, dissenter is his ability to reveal his own faults and foibles. You'll find this in his personal accounts of experiences with the FCO and in Uzbekistan. It's a shrewd move too. Whistleblowers get precious little attention as it is from our biased and corporatist media, so the most innocuous ad hominem can be used to write them off. None of us are super-angels, regardless of how earnestly we may desire to be. This is crucial to consider in any "official" or media responses to people like Murray, especially if they are ex-"insiders", for they are certainly feared most by the establishment.

One of Murray's weaknesses, as he himself puts it in his memoirs, is that he has always had an eye for the ladies. I have to confess to having exactly the same fault - and Murray noticed this in me himself in August this year. While in Edinburgh I had the opportunity to see his ex-bellydancer wife, Nadira, tell her story of life in Uzbekistan at the Gilded Balloon. I was sat right at the front, in a vest top, lounging back against the chair with my legs spread out in front of me. A quick look around revealed a very middle-class, middle-aged looking audience. There was also a lot of uncomfortable guffawing, coughing and shifting in response to Nadira's story - it included plenty that was of an explicitly sexual, and sometimes violent, nature. This audience clearly wasn't used to having such things presented to them so graphically and personally.

And there was me, sat there looking pretty if I do say so myself. I already found Nadira attractive. And I was very moved by her story. She interspersed some of it however with some belly dancing. I felt my mouth go dry and my loins stir. I also felt someone's gaze on me. Not Nadira's. She was too expert at dealing with a crowd, although when her eyes did rest on me several times for a few seconds I felt my pulse quicken. No it wasn't her. It was out of my immediate line of sight. I looked up and to my right to see Craig Murray on the balcony watching me watching his wife. If there was anyone in that audience capable of charming his wife from him it was me. He knew it. I knew it.

A moment of recognition passed.

We held eachother's gaze for a few seconds and I looked away. I wanted to put him at ease; and it had to be in true primate fashion - I had to communicate that I was not after his dinner or his woman. I rubbed my head and looked pained, then looked back up at him, mustering the most friendly smile I could. He returned it. We both relaxed and both got on with both watching Nadira perform.

This was very important. And I hope at least some of you reading this will be able to understand why. A man who's weakness is women is a man I can understand and relate to very well. And it's a very particular kind of weakness too. After this experience, and following hearing Nadira's story from her own lips, I found I understood Murray very well.

Not only understood him, but related to him also as a kindred spirit. A man who can be moved by money or bullshit is not a man I trust. A man moved by women however is someone I can trust very quickly and deeply; it is as I said though a very particular kind of influence I'm referring to here; and it works on me like it works on Murray:

It's not about sex or sexual desire per se, though that is surely a component (nature's and evolution's course compels us to f**k). It's about the connection and about being rooted to the earth. Nadira's and Craig Murray's experiences in Uzbekistan, and their treatment by the establishment of Old Blighty would leave anyone weeping and with emotional scars for life. It's about the fact that in amongst all of that emotion, amongst the terror, amongst the violence, amongst the ideals that you know will compromise you and the government that will sell you out in a second, amongst all of that you find home in the eyes of another.

Solace. Peace. Earthy reunion. Connection. Trust. Home.

I now regret not having had the opportunity to meet him properly in person when he gave a one off talk at Edinburgh's book festival. In amongst all of the politics, this is something I'd like to verbalise with him. I'm quite sure the communication we had through body language was enough, and we both understood at a pre-conscious level. He might not even remember. Still. It's important because this kind of thing is used to try breaking us - those misshapers of man don't understand though. See this character assassination hit piece on Murray in the (Murdoch owned) Times - "antiquated views of women and an old-fashioned sense of honour". Damn that old fashioned sense of honour! It's such testament to the Newspeak of our time that the Times can say such things without irony. Because not getting behind torture is antiquated, apparently.

Dubya invades and occupies two countries, condemning hundreds of thousands of people to death and misery, yet remains in office, sitting pretty.

Clinton is almost taken out by a blow job.

A substantial part of the trumped up charges made by the FCO against Murray concerned carousing and womanising. Prudish pedantry is an afflication also of both "left" and "right". We're all familiar with the "moral conservatives" of the "right" I'm sure. What of the "left" though? Oh they make a fine show of being open minded and liberated, yes. F**k who you want, in (almost) whatever way you wish - as long as it's just consenting adults it's all good. Or is it? God forbid you join a radical left wing group and have an eye for the ladies......oh gods, anything but that.

The women in my life keep me sane. They bring me back to earth. In amongst the constant torrent of BS and pain and insecurity heaped upon us by the convention of genetic defectives, also known as the government and the corporatist elites. I sometimes despair that I don't meet more women obsessed with politics and philosophy in the way I am. I sometimes become easily aggravated when all I seem to hear women wittering about when they pass me by in the street, at the nightclubs, in the gym, seems so fickle and pointless. Yet this is to miss the point - it's not so much what they say to one another that is important; it's the fact that they are talking at all. It's constant bonding. And as Carol Gilligan notes so well in A Different Voice, it's something most of us men lack, most of the time. Remember those adverts with Stephen Hawking, for British Thief (BT)? It's all going to be ok if we just keep talking.....(about how we feel).

This is why someone like Tania Derveaux is able to come from Leftfield and outflank the enemy. The new wave of activism she, and her friends, represent is such a beautiful breath of fresh air. They're assaulting the fort on so many subtle levels I have to take my hat off to them and hope they keep on keeping on. Never mind strangling the last king with the guts of the last priest. It's when the last corrupt legislator is killed by apoplexy at the sight of the last hypocritical puritan's hairybobbing man-arse that we might have a fucking chance of growing up as a species. We might even end schizophrenia.

So, back to Murray. He's back in the news because his old pals, Schillings, those purveyors of the rich man's libel case, are at his throat again. This time it's about experiences he wishes to relate in his forthcoming book, The Catholic Orangemen of Togo and Other Conflicts I Have Known. One of the subjects of the book is the activities of a British mercenary, one Tim Spicer (yep, the one of Mark Thatcher (Maggie's son) fame). According to the Evening Standard, Spicer "would be caused "profound distress and anxiety" by excerpts about him in the book".

Diddums.

The Guardian article above refers to Spicer as "Britain's most notorious mercenary". And it puts me in mind of something Bill Hicks said once - "Ain't y'all nothing but a bunch of hired f**kin' killers!?". It's bad enough what our own soldiers are asked to do by government. What do you think the mercenary companies might be able to get away with? Compared to the British soldiers, they are grossly overpaid and fundamentally unaccountable. "But wait", you might say, "you have right-libertarian leanings, doesn't this mean you're in support of mercenary armies?". Indeed, my political ideology commits me to this route, with one very important proviso: Right-libertarian philosophy is pretty f**king clear about where and how and when the initiation of force is acceptable. I can guarantee that almost all of the activities that Spicer and co take part in fundamentally violate these maxims. If you want a more thorough and academic treatment of this subject, try Rothbard's War, Peace and the State.

Note also, how the Standard refers to Murray's claims as "off-message remarks". It makes the most serious allegations against government sound like a minor gaffe at a tea party ("oh ever so sorry old chap, I just broke wind"). Glad I never pursued the possibility of entering the FCO myself. I would have had plenty of choice "off-message remarks" to make, preceded by the word "f**k" and followed by a few punches into the fat faces of those corrupt bureaucrats / warlords / terrorists / handmaidens. Never mind "don't shoot the messenger", it would have been " careful you're not beaten silly by the messenger".

Unfortunately, English Libel law, and Schillings, is very good at shutting down legitimate accusations. Murray says it best himself:

"...under this country's crazy libel laws you cannot even retell things you did yourself unless you have other objective evidence that you did it. And you may not express opinions that are not mainstream, or which may upset the government or the rich and powerful."

The long and short of which is that Murray is being forced to edit out sections of his book.

"The problem is fear of the cost of defending a threatened legal action by Tim Spicer, who has made many millions from taxpayers for running mercenary operations in Iraq and can afford the rich man's suppression of free speech through libel law."

Murray was previously threatened by Schillings last year by Uzbek billionaire Alisher Usmanov. This resulted in the server hosting Murray's website being taken down. It just so happened that, now London Mayor, Boris Johnson's website was also on the same
server, resulting in an almost comical backlash from the SchoolBoy ("It's bloody ridiculous!") politician as he was unwittingly drawn into the fray.

So what can we do?

With regard to the current round of censorship, Murray is defiant. He has published the edited sections on his website and has asked specifically that "other bloggers will mirror or re-publish to help get the truth out there." So there you have it. Here's one situation where you can help. I've copied the relevant passages to my hard drive and am repeating them here, here, here and here. Shove it you censoring fucks.

Here are the nuggets that Murray picked out from the edits:

- I must refer to Sandline as a "Private Military Company" and portray their activities in Africa as supporting legitimate government against rebels
- I must portray Western action in Iraq as "peace-keeping"
- I must say Shell were involved in corruption in Nigeria "inadvertently"

I have uploaded word copies of the passages that you can download here and here (or - while his site is still up you can find them on Murray's site here (Murray's essential summation of the "libel" content that he has just posted today) and here (complete list of edits)).

Please help. Pass on Murray's passages. Save them to your hard drive. Write them on the wall. Repeat them on your websites, in your emails, on the phone.

They can't shut all of us up.

Yet.