Unite Around Fascism vs UKIP

So, regarding Unite Around Fascism's supreme arseclownery at the UKIP London rally last night -

Everyone going in to the venue was given abuse, told that they were racist bigots blah blah blah. Socialist Worker were actually trying to give leaflets out to attendees telling them they were racist. A black fella stood in the queue next to me started quietly singing 'get some soap, get some soap, get some soap'. I counted three brown faces amongst the UAF mob. There were dozens of ethnic minority attendees in the UKIP contingent. 

Inside, UAF had a string of people inside who attempted heckling (there's an art to this chaps, you really could have made a better effort).

The UAF hecklers were, frankly, amazing though in their own way.

Every single one of them was white.

Almost all of the heckles were aimed at ethnic minority speakers (including calling them "racist").
Extra points go to the very first hecklers who actually looked like skinheads, chanting at mixed race Steven Woolfe that he was a "fake" (wtf?).

Methinks UAF and pals need to immediately go back to the marketing department for a new plan....

I'm pretty sure at one point they tried storming the venue and must have been aggressively moved on by the police. We couldn't hear them at all once inside the venue, except briefly for a moment when all of the security staff rushed for the exit and we heard the clown crew roaring getting louder. By the time we left the venue there was not a single sign they had been there - not one straggler, not even a stupid sign left on the ground and even the barriers had been put away on a truck.

However, if you read the UAF facebook page, they claim to have won some incredible victory and "fought off" numerous "EDL thugs". I'm getting a bit worried about their mental health now. There wasn't a single sign of any such people at the rally, inside or out. Everyone in the queue maintained a dignified calm. The desperate blow hards are now having to make any old shit up.

I'm also still pondering what the white middle class student craptivists were actually trying to communicate in calling ethnic minority UKIP speakers "racist", or "fake". Suffice to say I haven't been coming to any flattering conclusions.

I'll be rolling this story out for years now to anyone who talks to me about UAF and endorses their concentrated fuckwittery.  Remind me again who the real "fascists" are?

The Climate Alarmism Dictionary

This really made me chuckle. Probably one of the funniest summaries of the current state of play in the climate debate that I've seen.

Repeated verbatim from Ron McCarley's post at WUWT:

"A Climate Alarmism Dictionary:

* Accelerated Sea Level Rise – places sinking into the ocean faster than the water’s rising.

* Accurate Temperature Measurement – what the thermometer showed after being placed beside the BBQ grill.

* Climate Alarmist – insists others don’t know what they’re talking about, but knows even less.

* Environmentalist – Leads a carbon intensive lifestyle, well beyond the means of the average public. Visits pristine areas often but doesn’t want anyone else to go there.

* Global Warming – not the run-of-the-mill average warming, but disastrous, nasty warming like wearing thermal underwear in Death Valley. Eskimos will be wearing Speedo’s if we don’t do something by the next election cycle.

* Movie Star – arrives at a movie premiere in a Prius, after flying there in their private jet from one of their huge mansions. Loves to preach sacrifice to others who live from paycheck to paycheck.
Advocates all kinds of burdensome carbon taxes because the government can’t tax their fortune more than once.

* Ocean Acidification – Hell will freeze over before carbon dioxide turns the oceans acidic, but it’s the best scare tactic that we’ve got.

* Overpopulation – Anyone else daring to have children.

* Sacrifice for Your Children and Grandchilden – we don’t even care about the people alive today, but it’s a great sales technique to persuade the public to choke down policies that will hurt everybody.

* Statesman – worries about the effects of DDT and golden rice on a wealthy nation, but ignores the countless deaths and child blindness of others in poor countries who could be saved by their use.

* TV Climate Special – scary pictures at a 3rd grade level, suitable for chimpanzees.

* Unprecedented Warming – actually occurred many times before, but lying to the public might work."

"If I wanted Britain to fail"

A new video has just started doing the rounds - "If I wanted America to fail". Now if only this video went viral like the "KONY 2012" meme. Unlike the Kony video this one, whilst following the surefire emotional porn philosophy, is packed full of verifiable and tear-jerking observations.

Everything in this video applies double to the UK and I'm sure a UK version is in the offing....

Please share widely.

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.....

About that global warming......

....the catastrophic prophecies of climate disaster require an essential ingredient that all too often is completely missing in debates on the subject: positive water vapour feedback. Without increasing amounts of water vapour in the atmosphere (being a much more powerful GHG than CO2), allegedly as a result of human contributed CO2 (in reality, something that could be caused by any heating mechanism), then any catastrophic predictions are bunk. Period.

(Click for larger version)

Over 50 years of data with no sign of the fabled feedback.

And yet we continue to do this to ourselves.

When enough people forced into penury and suffering realise the source of their misery, email death threats are going to be the last thing the catastrophist "scientists" will have to worry about.

Gaddafi Duck

I make no apologies for the language. It had to be done:

The Mystic Met Office - the 'forecasts that are not forecasts'

Autonomous Mind has just published further information on the Met Office story, showing that in internal discussions, the Met Office's 'forecasts that were not forecasts' were nethertheless referred to numerous times as forecasts. As AM puts it, "The Met Office logic is that although it quacks like a duck and walks like a duck it is actually a horse."

There's lots of spin going on here, however there is no avoiding the fact that the 'forecast that was not a forecast' was used by the National Grid to determine their winter preparedness report, as I pointed out on Friday. They apparently didn't even have access to the now notorious "secret" report (the "secret" adjective originating from the BBC's Roger Harrabin).

The Mystic Met Office has now responded to the Register's inquiries on this issue, stating that it "has never suggested that we warned cabinet office of an 'exceptionally cold early winter'." - thus throwing Harrabin immediately under the bus.

Harrabin's response? Now that is another interesting story in and of itself. He claims: "This doesn't match a more conclusive forecast I gleaned from a Met Office contact in December" .

So what is this "more conclusive forecast" and who gave it to you Roger?

I note that he is also not paying attention when he says: 'I note a blog report (which I cannot yet verify) saying that a civil servant commented: "The Met Office seasonal outlook for the period November to January is showing no clear signals for the winter."'

Roger, that "comment" is clearly visible in the FOIA material I received, amongst the email traffic. It's more than just a "comment", it is the government outlining its official position, with which the Met Office appears to agree in its return email.

On that particular point Roger, it leaves a striking odd one out. You.

There's also another deception in play here. Harrabin goes on:

'A spokesman for the Cabinet Office told me they had passed the forecast to key stakeholders ("Government departments, local council as appropriate - we don't have a list").' [My emphasis]

Are we really to believe that the "key stakeholders" didn't include the National Grid? (Not that it would have helped much anyway).

You may be wondering why I highlighted that word. Here's another clue:

Both Autonomous Mind and the Register articles highlight a claim found in the Mail:

"Last night the Met Office confirmed it had passed on the advice, but a spokesman denied that withholding it from the public was motivated by embarrassment.

‘We did brief the Cabinet Office in October on what we believed would be an
exceptionally cold and long winter,’ she said."

Whilst Roger Harrabin is definitely not off the hook - and neither, if the veracity of the Mail's source is to be believed - is the Mystic Met Office, there is another underlying cultural problem:

The use of 'spokespeople'. These are used so often that it now drifts into the background consciousness for most of us, most of the time. Yet it is an extremely insidious propagandistic technique. The use of an anonymous spokesperson gets the organisation, or person, they are representing off the hook. There is no chain of accountability and any statements they make can easily be dismissed in the future.

The fact that both the Met Office and the Cabinet office are deploying spokespeople on this issue concerns me. It means we're not going to get to the actual truth without some serious hard work and implies that someone definitely does have something to hide, even if it is just their own bumbling incompetence.

Whenever this occurs journalists should immediately insist on knowing the identity of the person providing the information. Of course they don't, because they want easy copy, and access to the source of that copy. So it's up to the rest of us to apply the pressure and ask, every single time, who? The reasons why this is such a pressing issue are described eloquently by Heather Brooke in her excellent new book, 'The Silent State':

"Official spokespeople are powerful because they speak for the powerful; anonymity means they can exercise that power without being held individually accountable for it....When a 'spokesman' makes an accusation or spreads a smear, what recourse is there for the target? Anonymising spokespeople suits some journalists because if every source is simply a 'spokesman' or 'official', then it's easy to make up any old quote to suit your story.....As long as secrecy and anonymity reign, public sector bureaucracies will bethe hiding places for the incompetent, lazy and corrupt"

And if that doesn't hammer the point home enough, try this summation from Brooke:

"...we cannot be an informed electorate without access to information and a right to hold officials to account. And if we're not an informed electorate then we cannot call ourselves a democracy." [Emphasis mine]

This use of selective anonymity also has the potential to inflict very real damage beyond just the nature of our democracy:

"...special advisers and spin doctors operate a principle of never admitting a fault. can't we be treated by our leaders as grown-ups? Spin is costly for taxpayers because small problems aren't acknowledged, they are spun into successes or stifled until they reach a magnitude of catastrophic proportion."

And we've just seen this principle in action with regard to the Met Office, the government and the BBC:

Due to yet another year of officially sanctioned lack of preparedness, chaos, suffering and likely unecessary deaths, have occurred. The game of pass the blame parcel will be no comfort to those identified by Anna Raccoon as on the receiving end - "Those pensioners found frozen solid in their front garden, the scenes of half starved refugees huddled against the cold at Heathrow airport, the two kilometre long lines of frozen travellers queuing round the block at St Pancreas Station, the double dip recession caused by the ‘extreme weather’"

All of which no one is willing to take responsibility for as the parties at risk of having to take it are hiding behind 'spokespeople' already. This looks like a tough battle ahead to pin down who is responsible, who is telling us the truth and who is lying.

And its a battle - yet another - only being fought in earnest by the 'fifth estate' of the blogosphere, with little assistance from the 'fourth estate' as they languish in the doldrums of increasing irrelevancy and distant relationship to the truth.

But fight it we will.

The Revealed Mystery of the Mystic Met Office

I have just received the Met Office's "secret report" and email correspondence with the Cabinet Office from a FOI request I made three weeks ago. The information they contain is quite significant and I hope others who have been working hard highlighting this issue such as Autonomous Mind and James Delingpole will find the following addition useful. God knows this is an extremely serious issue and the only people who appear to have been digging into it have been the bloggers (AM's investigation and analysis can be found here, here and here).

At the turn of the year we heard the revelation that, following an absolutely brutal start to the UK winter, the Met Office had allegedly warned the government in a "secret report" to expect such.

The Met Office also claimed that, in part because of the ridicule it had suffered for completely out of sync seasonal forecasts previously, it did not share this information with the public. It attempted to throw the government under the bus by claiming that the Cabinet Office had been informed, implying that it was central government's fault that the country was so unprepared and nothing to do with the Mystic Met Office's computer models with built in warmist bias that is perpetually out of touch with reality as a result.

It was Roger Harrabin, one of the BBC's chief climate alarmists, who originally claimed that the Met Office had issued this "secret warning". He said: "The truth is it [The Met Office] did suspect we were in for an exceptionally cold early winter, and told the Cabinet Office so in October. But we weren’t let in on the secret. The reason? The Met Office no longer publishes its seasonal forecasts because of the ridicule it suffered for predicting a barbecue summer in 2009 – the summer that campers floated around in their tents.”

I find it utterly pathetic that such an allegedly august institution can hide behind the excuse of fear of ridicule. It would be funny, self-satirising material were it not for the fact that, as a result of their influence, many people have died and suffered. That's not to mention the hole made in our economy and damage to tourism and international standing. Visitors, and those observing from abroad, perceived the lack of preparedness, especially at the airports, as akin to third world levels of disorganisation. They were right.

This is an extremely serious issue and so far no one appears to have been held culpable, not least in part to the (as per usual) relative silence of the mass media.

I immediately sent Freedom of Information requests to both the Cabinet Office and the Met Office, asking for copies of this "secret report" and any related correspondence after initially reading the story.

The essence of the Met's "secret report" has already been revealed by Bishop Hill who was able to obtain a copy before me; revealing it in all its simplistic glory (and showing clearly that the Met Office has been completely dishonest on this issue). It was reported over at Watts Up With That, and was quickly neatly eviscerated by the commentators.

They have also been claiming that paying customers receive more extensive information than the public. The "public" information mostly consisted in this probability map, which claimed, to quote AM, an "80% probability of warmer than average temperatures for November, December and January for Scotland and a 60-80% probability of the same for Northern Ireland, Wales and most of England."

As you will see from the link below, the special information released to paying customers, which apparently constituted their "secret warning" of a harsh winter is a complete joke and comes across like something written by a child.

You can see for yourself that the Met Office actually predicts a slighty higher chance of a "cold" winter, rather than a "near average" or "mild" winter. This is based on a series of probabities out of 10. It boggles the mind that aside from the tiny amount of actual prediction in the report that this is the output of their energy-guzzling, multi-million pound supercomputer.

On the next page they quantify what these terms might mean, but even here they are completely out of sync with what we actually experienced - for "cold" it meant "typical lower and upper limits" of temperature ranging from -1.5 to 0.4 degrees Celsius.

Further, the email correspondence is enlightening between the Met Office and the government:

Someone at the Cabinet Office wrote to the Met Office to tell them what the official position would be: "The Met Office seasonal outlook for the period November to January is showing no clear signals for the winter". The Met Office writes back - "That is fine." - also note the first mail sent my the Met Office, these are their "initial thoughts" (!)

So, as if the "secret" prediction wasn't awful enough, any claim that the Met Office actually warned the government of an impending harsh winter, and by implication that the government therefore did not act responsibly is a 100% complete and utter lie.

However there is more to this story that really needs to be aired. Not only have local councils been complaining of the complete failure of the Met Office to warn them, but even more seriously, the National Grid of all organisations, was flying completely blind too. See the National Grid's Winter Outlook document. Skip to page 7. The Grid obviously never received the "secret report" (not that it would have been much use anyway). They had to get their information from - the website! The same website that promised the 60-80% likelihood of a warm winter and which the Met Office has told us plebs we should ignore.

Largely as a result of this, the predictions for maximum demand were out by nearly 1 GW on the closest match to a horrifying 4.7 Gigawatts on the worst (information from NETA):



Had we not been able to buy approximately 2GW of power from France across the channel interconnector and ramp up the domestic production there could have been a serious outage. In a few years, thanks to complete government intransigience on our future power supply, we won't be able to repeat the feat and of course there are no guarantees that the French will always be able to sell us that much energy when we need it. When the total demand goes up to close to 60GW, in still winter conditions, the 3000+ wind turbines installed provide an incredible 0.1% of our power needs. That lunatic Huhne seems to think our power issues will be solved by the costly build of another 10,000 turbines. So in similar conditions that "capacity" will provide approximately 0.4% of the power supply, just when we need it most. Outstanding, no?

By the way, Browned Off's comment to me is well worth a read. He corrected me on the relative positions of the government, EU and energy industry on this. It certainly seems plausible - the government is happy for the EU to take most of the blame for something that - at root - is its own fault. It fits perfectly into the singular principle that defines modern British politics - expediency.

Unfortunately the combination of this political expediency - at the expense of our national power supply - and the religious convictions of the warmist-infested Mystic Met office are going to result in many more deaths and suffering. There have already been needless deaths and suffering thanks to both.

These people have gone from being an annoyance to an active menace, and no one appears to be holding them to account.

Anyway, here are the files, including the email correspondence and the "report".

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.

Alastair Campbell and the Shame of Sheffield

I found out at the last minute this Thursday just passed that Alastair Campbell had a speaking engagement at Sheffield University. Interestingly the student group, 'The Exchange', who normally inform everyone on their mailing list of upcoming political speakers kept quiet on this one.

I managed to get hold of a ticket in the nick of time and attend.

I've never been so ashamed of Sheffield in my life.

There is simply no way the BNP, for example, would ever be able to have a speaker attend Sheffield University. Even if there were no 'no platform' policy, UAF and every other student group would be mobilised to stop it, and if they failed, protest outside in their hundreds and likely attempt to intimidate everyone going in.

How then is it possible that this serial distorter and murderer of the truth, who was amongst other things the chief architect for the fabric of lies that led the U.K. into that obscenity known as the Iraq War, was to be welcomed with open arms, his every quip received with warm chortles? This man has the blood of thousands on his hands through murder, injury and torture.

The host of the event, which was set up in an entertainment chat-show format, asked him expectedly softball questions. This was an irritant, but expected. It was the audience however who absolutely stunned me with their almost sychophantic acceptance of all of his talking points (such as the idea that anyone bringing up the deficit had some kind of pathological 'deficit fetish') and - most importantly - when they had their chance to question him themselves they went for the most mind blowingly anodyne and saccharin questions one could imagine.

Examples included 'what do you do in your shed?' and 'do you get free tickets for Wimbledon?' I spent most of the event shaking my head in absolute abject despair at the level of political dialogue. I continually put my hand up but did not get picked by the presenter. I'm not surprised, my body language must have looked very angry and aggressive and I spent the whole time staring at him, not clapping or laughing along with the ship of fools that was the Sheffield audience.

One of my friends wrote the idiocy off as just students being generally uninformed after I related this to her. I was sorry to tell her that the vast majority of the audience, which packed out the entire Octagon centre (1250 capacity auditorium) at the University, were not students and the average age was between 40-50. So these people have been fully cognizant of our wonderful 13 year journey with the Labour debt - and people - bombers.

Towards the end, the presenter allowed a 'quick fire round', where people could shout out brief questions that Campbell would then try to answer. It was at this point that he received his only difficult question of the night - one young chap shouted out "how right was Andrew Gilligan?"

When Campbell finally got around to answering this, his response was simply "Andrew Gilligan? Completely wrong on everything". That was it. I blew a gasket and started heckling. I'd purposefully sat in a prominent location, in a raised seating area at the back that gave me direct eye contact between the row separating the seating areas in front of me. "Andrew Gilligan was VINDICATED" I boomed down the aisle. The entire emasculated audience appeared absolutely shocked at my audacity.

Campbell repeated his line again at which point it degenerated into a mouth off between him and me. He said something outrageously idiotic which I can't remember, however it set me off into a long belly laugh which irritated him, and he said something like 'whatever facts the gentleman is privy to do not worry me'.

At which point I completely lost it and fully sounded off in a rant at him, telling him that I know he wouldn't be worried by facts, by his fake affectation to be down with the common man, (one of the questioners had previously asked him what it was he brought to the table for Tony Blair - his response was to claim that when he went to football matches he didn't sit in the VIP area, but deigned to mix with the 'common man' and therefore he understood the 'common man'),because he was a member of the political class, in the Westminster bubble.

He got shirty for a bit then remembered his snake-oil training and chose very carefully neutral words simply restating his position. I was shaking with rage and only began to calm down at the end when a nice chap and his girlfriend approached me and thanked me for standing up to him and said I was "very brave".

On the whole the evening really reminded me of why I'm glad to be leaving Sheffield. It is being dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century, having failed completely to start evolving into a more cosmopolitan and forward thinking place unlike most of the other core cities, and is packed - still - with people in complete denial regarding the economy, who expect state handouts for everything, who think there is an endless source of money for everything and everyone. I frankly have no sympathy at all. Sheffield is going to deserve whatever bad things come its way - the audience in the room were certainly representative of the City's more influential and better informed people.

For shame Sheffield, for shame.

God help this city.

Our audit of the IPCC: Torpedoed again.

With what is now becoming a horribly frustrating irony, the denial that anything is remotely wrong in alarmist circles is now nothing short of astonishing, not to mention frightening.

This week, Canadian sceptic, Donna Laframboise of noconsensus.org released our Audit, for which I was one of the auditors, of the IPCC's supposed gold standard peer review references in their 2007 report.

If you're short on time, the press release is here, which gives the main points. 21 of the chapters provide less than 60% peer-reviewed references, despite the continual claims by Rajenda Pachuri that their work uses only peer reviewed work.

The work we did got front-paged on climate depot and Watts Up With That but - unsurprisingly - didn't make it much further beyond the sceptical blogosphere. It is however further hard evidence of the IPCC's, and in particular its chairman's mendacity and yes you can check the raw data for yourself and see the methods used to gather it.

Back to the future

In the course of this investigation, one of the auditors noticed something remarkable that really deserves much wider acknowledgement: "While doing the Audits assigned to me (and skimming each of the above 44 documents while standardizing the formatting), a number of questions and quite a few anomalies jumped out at me – not the least of which were several references to articles and other material with a publication date of “2007“. I thought this rather odd, in view of the fact that the publication deadline for inclusion of material in the 4th Assessment Report was December, 2005 (or sometime in February 2006 at the very latest.)"

Just a few typos right? Wrong:



"Together, team IPCC succeeded in taking a combined total of 354 leaps back to the future.
This astounding number raises far more questions than it answers."

The most obvious conclusion is that the IPCC included 354 references outside the review process, and presumably in the final editorial stage of the document.

Meanwhile....

Incredibly, now their manifesto has been released it appears that the Greens have managed to piss off even Sunny Hundal and his merry band with their "anti-science" (their words) approach: "In short, while The Greens mean well, we found that their science policies in many areas were a disaster" - yes you read that right. Furthermore: "The truth isn’t democratic, and the whole structure of the party works against the idea of evidence-based policy." - welcome to the world of Post Normal Science guys - it is has become the Green's forte.

The fact that this is on Liberal Conspiracy of all places, is off the scale. Sadly, reading through to the linked Guardian article, it is clear that they i) haven't considered the possibility that if the Greens have such a shoddy understanding of science generally whether this might also apply to Climate Science and ii) still present climate scepticism ("denialism" - oh yea gods, the irony!) as fundamentally irrational without having yet - to my knowledge - debunked any of the massive holes ripped in the Alarmist case.

It is, in fact, now so laughably straightforward to debunk that I challenge any alarmist out there to make their case to me. The brain of the enormous Tyrannasaurus is dead yet the body still stomps around causing untold damage.....

.....speaking of which - despite all of the alarmist hysteria, it appears a single volcano has single handedly done more damage to the U.K. in a few days than what we are told "global warming" will do to the country over the course of the next century.

The next step for climate sceptics....CONTINUE FIRING!!

The back of the IPCC and with it the alarmist case for "global warming" has been broken.

This has yet to filter out into general awareness, however it seems the MSM (MainStream Media) is finally starting to swing behind the sceptic cases (for there are many, many issues with the "consensus", not all of which sceptics agree on - and indeed, as it should be). Currently the Daily Mail, The Express, The Telegraph and The Times are all sticking the boot in. Good. Its long overdue and thanks to climategate and the resulting flurry of activity from sceptics acting as good citizen-journalists and citizen-scientists the true extent of the IPCC, and their quisling supporters', deceit is being laid bare.

We barely missed what could possibly have been history's most colossal fraud perpetrated on the people of the planet, with attendant devastating consequences for freedom and prosperity. Yet the wounds already inflicted are grave. Most of what was good, remaining in the left, has been filleted and hollowed out by so many left wing groups jumping on the bandwagon and giving it up wholesale; I don't think they'll ever really be able to recover from this. Neither will all of the genuine environmentalists, whose very legitimate concerns about human impacts on the environment will now never be addressed or taken nearly as seriously as they should. Everyone will just remember the incredible Big Lie that almost was CO2 based anthropogenic global warming. Its a shame it morphed into a big left-right battle, but that was because, despite a mere handful of noble exceptions (Counterpunch, Spiked, for example), the left wing groups wanted it that way.

The list of consequences already endured could go on and on (the likelihood that the lights will start going out in Old Blighty by perhaps 2015 not the least among them....). But that wasn't the point of this post (though it will be of a later one).

Instead, I wanted to dedicate my very first effort at video editing to all the brave and noble people who have dared to challenge the "consensus" over the last few years - particularly those who began asking questions many years before I did.

I have found increasingly recently that scenes from an old sci-fi series, Babylon 5, have increasingly resonated with me in response to current events, and think I will be making some carefully edited videos later from the series to represent what is happening to us now.

So I cut a clip below that indicates what the climate sceptics should do next. The warship, and the crew aboard, in the clip represent the climate sceptics who were responsible for breaking through the enemy lines. They're going to continue taking hits from all angles while the beast dies (in the clip - significantly - these hits are coming from the Earth's "defence grid" which has been turned, by a thoroughly corrupt and authoritarian World government, on the population of the Earth itself). The captain (Sheridan) in charge of the warship states clearly what needs to be done next, despite continuing to soak up massive hits:

"CONTINUE FIRING!!!"

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....)

Libya - the hidden hand of the Griffin family

After returning from a two week holiday where I kept myself in a blissfully news free vacuum, I was delighted to read the Sunday Telegraph's report on Mandelson vis-a-vis Libya. Whilst it was great to see Mandy's mendacity once again cast into the public light, there was a missing piece to the Libyan puzzle not mentioned by the Telegraph:

Whilst I'll leave others to debate the other backroom interests (and there are plenty in Anglo-Libyan relations) behind the decision to release Megrahi (and the reasons for Mandy, Brown et al for lying regarding any behind the scenes negotiations), there is one particular cluster of reasons to wonder at Libya's hidden hand over the British government - that is the tail end of the A.Q. Khan nuclear proliferation network.

In previous posts, and a published article, I have highlighted the British end of the Khan network, a story that forms part of a web of interconnected conspiracies and scandals linking together elements in the governments of the U.S., U.K., Israel, Pakistan, Turkey, Syria, North Korea and even Iran. These 'elements' have been involved at a very deep level with international conspiracies involving nuclear technologies, drugs and money laundering. It is regarding these networks of interests that Sibel Edmonds has recently been able to testify - where they linked to a certain Congresswoman, Jean Schmidt.


Nowhere was the British part of the Khan network more closely connected than with its interests in Libya. And it was Libya's apparent betrayal of the network that led to it being welcomed back to the Western fold. This is an extremely important point that is NOT being discussed in the MSM on the current Libyan/Lockerbie issue. It was the father and son team, Peter and Paul Griffin, through various front companies such as Weargate Ltd, who provided the business end of the UK part of the network to Libya. British Custom's own investigation into the Griffins revealed not only the extent to which Peter Griffin was directly involved in the Khan network, but also specifics, right down to the plans for component workshops, being traded with Libya.

Back in 2003 when Libya 'came in from the cold', it was announced across the MSM that the Anglo-American intelligence effort supposedly monitoring the network had carried out a crippling strike when it raided the BBC China, with components for nuclear weapons manufacture intended for Libya. This was a lie. It was in fact the Libyans who 'blew up' the network, forcing the hand of the Anglo-American services to act; the instigator of the raid was the Libyan regime, not the Anglo-American operation that had supposedly been working against the network (in fact, just monitoring it without interference right back to the 70s (!!!)). Part of the deal was that this would be played to give the West a much needed, and overdue, "victory" in "The War Against Terror" (TWAT) and a reprieve for their apparently underperforming intelligence agencies.


Out of the various links and beneficiaries in the Khan network, Libya had the closest relations with the British side. As such, given that most of the evidence linking parts of the British establishment to the Khan network (Customs, MI5, MI6), was in Libya, this issue had to be dealt with very carefully. With new British businesses, investment and travellers pouring into Libya, there was a substantial liklihood that someone could stumble on evidence regarding one of the Griffin's front companies. Any third party going public with this evidence would lead to a lot of British Officials with a lot of explaining to do. It will be no surprise to readers then to learn that British Intelligence services had already been in negotiations with Libya prior to their "renouncement" of pursuing WMD programmes.

The long and the short of this is that the Libyan regime still has the British government over the barrel of the Khan network. At an instant, the Libyans could reveal the role that British front companies (with the knowledge of Customs and "Intelligence") played in providing Libya with components and know-how for building nuclear weapons. They no doubt seek to maximise this advantage for as long as possible.

Custom's own confidential 2005 report stated:

‘From material available, Peter Griffin appears to be a member of the A. Q. Khan network working closely with B. S. A. Tahir and others. He has a long history of personal and business dealings with Dr. A. Q. Khan and there is evidence to show that for many years, Peter Griffin has been engaged in the proliferation of technology and equipment to Pakistan’s WMD programme...[Griffin] played a hugely significant role in assisting the Libyans in their quest to develop a nuclear weapon.’

Whilst this may not have played a direct role regarding the decision to release Megrahi you can bet that it was very prominently in the minds of the British officials who are in the know about the Khan network and Britain's position within it. Indeed, one of the things I hope to help discover over the coming months and years is exactly who knew (knows) what. I suspect Mandelsnake, with high profile connections that also place him squarely within the drugs and laundering triangle along with the nuclear network (and I suspect, if I can research back far enough, with BCCI), knows a great deal indeed.

It should also be noted, in the context of Anglo-American relations, that the Griffins are now on the U.S. wanted list. They are still at large, and unharrassed in the U.K. (Paul) and France (Peter), and continuing to operate their businesses.

Why?

Background reading: 'Britain Spinning in the Sibel Edmonds Web'

Sibel Edmonds breaks her gag order - and you WON'T hear about this on the BBC

UPDATE (25/08/09): Sibel Edmonds' deposition now available online - get it while you can.

Well the silence from the MSM on both sides of the Atlantic is deafening. You WILL NOT see this on the BBC or any other mainstream outlet, and this is despite the media being explicitly invited.

Sibel Edmonds, the ex-FBI translator, turned whistleblower, is currently giving evidence in a case for the Ohio elections commission, where incubent Congresswoman Jean Schmidt is involved in a libel case against her challenger, David Krikorian. Krikorian alleged that Schmidt had been corrupted by 'Blood money' from Turkish interests.

Edmonds own case has been ongoing throughout the last few years. And despite a few notable exceptions, the MSM has had its head in the sand on her case. She alleged that parts of the U.S. government had been compromised by Turkish, Pakistani and Israeli interests which had also assisted directly in the A.Q.Khan nuclear proliferation network, which provided parts and know-how to North Korea, Iran, Libya and Pakistan.

She was hit with the draconian 'state-secrets privilege' and all of her testimony to U.S. officials was retroactively classified. She's been in a legal limbo since, desperately trying to find ways around the gag order. This is despite several people in the know confirming that she was credible, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) for example, said "Absolutely, she's credible...And the reason I feel she's very credible is because people within the FBI have corroborated a lot of her story."

However, unexpectedly for the FBI and the Department of Justice, Edmonds has been subpoenaed to testify in the Schmidt / Krikorian case, which is ongoing as I write this, with regular updates from Brad Blog. Despite the FBI attempting to stop her testifying, and failing, it seems - according to the citizen journalists present (because no "real" journalists could be bothered) - she is delivering evidence that she has previously witheld as a result of the gag order. Unfortunately she is only able to provide answers to questions she is asked rather than a broad delivery of what she knows, but just what she has said so far has been explosive, naming many currently serving members of the U.S. government and implicating them directly in bribery and espionage on behalf of Turkey.

Sibel is - in effect - able to legally break the gag order on this one, and hopefully this could open the floodgates.

The British angle

British officials and organisations have also taken part in the A.Q. Khan network (and the - related - drugs network also linked to Turkey, but that's yet another long blog post or article....). The British side includes Customs and Excise, MI5, MI6 and from the research I've done it looks like some of the key individuals go back to our old friends, the BCCI.

I wrote an article, published in 'Lobster', no. 56 last year that detailed the British interests involved in the network that Edmonds was describing. You can download the article HERE. I was motivated to take an intense interest in the British angle to Edmonds' case after bitterly noting the complete failure of the British MSM to take the Sunday Times' lead. The Times published an article in January 2008 outlining the main aspects of Sibel's allegations. They put it on the front page and also produced three follow up articles. The remainder of the British MSM, as usual, was about as useful as a one legged man in an arse-kicking contest.

Recently, two of the British nationals named directly as collaborators in the Khan network were father and son team Peter and Paul Griffin, were classified as wanted terrorists by the U.S. They won libel cases several years ago against the BBC and the Guardian, who both alleged that they had links to the network. How they won these cases still boggles my mind as the confidential 2005 customs report into Peter Griffin's activities left no doubt at all that he was hip deep in the network (and had been since the 70s!!!!)

Its a shame the Edmonds case has exploded again right now as I'm about to depart for a holiday in Edinburgh, so apologies for the rough nature of this blog entry (I'll add more links as soon as I have time, right now I'm packing to leave tomorrow though).

As the Griffins are now on the U.S. wanted list, and nothing appears to have been done by the UK authorities, I intend to track them down myself, and logistics allowing, attempt to carry out citizens arrests on them on camera. I want to force the issue, and whilst I'm in Edinburgh I plan to catch up with Mark Thomas who is doing a show for the Fringe, asking the audience to vote on things they want him to try to change. I'm going to ask for his help in tracking down the Griffins.

I'll update this blog post sporadically with updates on Edmonds, as this story develops over the next few days in between trying to relax on holiday.

I'll also be providing all the information I have on the British side of the network and my own research online once I'm back from holiday. Stay tuned!