Monday 26 July 2010

For those who want an insight into what our masters are thinking, they need go no further than this 218-page document produced by the OECD.

Although it is now nine years old, writ large here is the tranzi agenda, in plain sight, for anyone who wants to see it. There are no secrets. It is a "conspiracy in plain sight".

Three main messages emerge, we are told. Firstly, "old forms of governance in both the public and private sectors are becoming increasingly ineffective." Secondly, "the new forms of governance that are likely to be needed over the next few decades will involve a much broader range of active players." Thirdly, key attributes of today's governance systems "look set to undergo fundamental changes."

This is a silent revolution in the making. We know nothing – or little – about it, but largely because the majority of people are not interested. From the very top to the bottom of this land, there are very few people who are in the least bit concerned about 
how we are governed.

So it is that those who are interested, mainly because they are paid to be or because they stand to benefit hugely from the changes, have the field to themselves, writing arcane 218-page reports that only a handful of people will ever read cover to cover.

But when the revolution comes, they can quite honestly say that they warned us, that their discussions were out in the open, accessible to all who wanted to participate. By the same token, however, we can also say, when the mobs rule the streets, that we too warned them. But no more do they read our stuff than we read theirs. So, as always, events will take their course.

COMMENT THREAD


Big news of the day is how "a huge cache of secret US military files" provides a "devastating portrait of the failing war in Afghanistan". They have been obtained by the "whistleblowers' website" Wikileaks in what is described as "one of the biggest leaks in US military history." 

The files have been made available to The GuardianThe New York Times and the German weekly Der Spiegel, with The Guardian in particular, pushing the boat out, running multiple stories and linking to the files.

But do we see here, or in The Independent, or even in The Daily Telegraph - which also features the files – any suggestion that they are stolen?

Largely, is seems they have been "revealed" or "leaked" and the contents "disclosed". But nowhere do I see the word "stolen" – so far. How so very different this is, then, from the treatment of the "Climategate" files, which had the media, and especially the left wing press, spluttering in its muesli.

We even had The Times report that: "UN officials have likened the theft of e-mails from university climate researchers to the Watergate scandal, " and that was after them claiming that "computer hackers were probably paid by people intent on undermining the Copenhagen summit."

Thus, whatever the merits or otherwise of "release" of the "war logs", as The Guardian is calling them, the difference in treatment is quite remarkable. Some might even call it hypocrisy.

COMMENT THREAD


To all those happy, gullible little bunnies who were so convinced that "Call me Dave" was a eurosceptic, and just needed to be given a chance, there is only one word – schmuck. We could use other words, but that conveys the sentiment.

Our Dave never was a eurosceptic, is not now and never will be. A typical Tory, he runs with the hare and the hounds but, in the end, goes with the "colleagues" for an easy life. Voting Tory was never going to make the slightest bit of difference.

As so its turns out to be. In 
The Daily Mail today, we get the headline: "European police to spy on Britons: Now ministers hand over Big Brother powers to foreign officers."

Sadly, what the paper says (this time) is true – or close enough to the truth as to make no difference. Ministers are ready to hand sweeping Big Brother powers to EU states so they can spy on British citizens. Foreign police will be able to travel to the UK and take part in the arrest of Britons.

They will, says 
The Mail, be able to place them under surveillance, bug telephone conversations, monitor bank accounts and demand fingerprints, DNA or blood samples. Anyone who refuses to comply with a formal request for co-operation by a foreign-based force is likely to be arrested by UK officers. 

The move, we are told, will spark a damaging row with backbench Tory MPs opposed to giving such draconian powers to Brussels. And, for the "money quote", the Tories were opposed to the directive in opposition, saying it showed a "relish for surveillance and disdain for civil liberties." But hey! Now they are in what is laughingly called "in power", ministers have made a dramatic U-turn and are agreeing this latest move from Brussels.

Perversely, this is all about the "
Hague Programme" – which is rather appropriate, given the dismal excuse we have for a foreign secretary. We used to warn about this quite frequently, until we gave up because no one took a blind bit of notice. But now we have the Tories back again, we can look forward to another leap forward in European integration, just as we do every time we have a Tory government.

There is, I spose, one small comfort. We will hear less from those brain-dead retards who were telling us that The Boy was a eurosceptic. But it is a very small comfort.

COMMENT THREAD


Seventy years ago, it is a Thursday not a Sunday. And the weather, instead of being gloomy and overcast, is fine. It is still cool for the time of year but winds are expected to be light. Heavier cloud is expected by evening with the possibility of rainy periods.

German Stukas are out early, attacking the 21-ship convoy CW8 working its way through the Dover Straits. But this time, the attacks are augmented by E-boat forays. To add to their misery, the ships are pounded by newly installed heavy guns from the French mainland. Five ships are sunk and five more damaged, with more to follow in the early hours, as the action continues into the next day.

Read more on DAYS OF GLORY

If I stood up, in all seriousness, and said that the moon was made of green cheese, my readers – I hope – might look a little bit askance at me, and conclude, as many already have, that I have finally lost it. 

Yet, when we get ministers making assertions of the same order of impossibility, it now seems that the role of the media is diligently to record such exudations, affording inane jabbering more respect and credibility than it could possibly deserve.

Such was the case in June last yearwhen Labour minister Lord Hunt got up on his hind feet (an impressive achievement for him), to pour out a stream of drivel, only to have the media uncritically to record his nonsense, as if it had any more value than the stuff you scrape off the sole of your shoe.

Yet, just over a year later, we have The Sunday Telegraph at it again – different minister, same drivel.

This time, it is that slime Huhne, a detestable example of a human being if ever there was one, a man who can actually state that offshore wind turbines are "incredibly competitive" in producing electricity, and have a newspaper print it, without the equivalent of a snort of derision.

The story is actually on the front page, but if you had journalists and editors worthy of their name (and pay), their front-page headline would be: "Minister claims offshore wind 'incredibly competitive'", with a list of worthies saying it isn't, the thrust of the story being that any energy minister who came out with such tosh is not fit for office.

And that really is the story. In such a vital issue as the national electricity supply, we really do have an energy minister who is not fit for office, backed by a man masquerading as prime minister whose only qualification is that he is similarly unfit.

Yet, far from a newspaper actually saying so, we get this unmitigated tripe regurgitated from the mouth of Huhne: "We have a tremendous natural resource in the Dogger Bank, which is an enormous shallow area of the North Sea, the same size as Wales ... It's relatively cheap to put wind turbines in that shallow area. It's beautifully windy so it does actually produce a lot of electricity – that is a really important natural resource for us."

This really, really is garbage, and we've said so many times. Offshore is hideously expensive and, while the North Sea may be shallow, the winter storms there are amongst the most vicious and cruel on the planet ... in part because of the shallowness of the water.

That alone makes for huge expense, and raises enormous questions about maintenance and durability, none of which have been addressed, much less answered. Yet, to base your energy policy on wind machines in these waters – in preference to nuclear, as Huhne is doing – is madness. No, it is beyond madness. It is insane, and it is about time the media started saying it, loud and clear.

But what do we get from The Sunday Drivel? Er ... an editorial telling us that "nuclear power must not be the poor relation", and offering the view that "the exploitation of renewable sources such as wind, wave and solar power is undoubtedly sensible."

For "sensible" read "suicidal", and you are close. But in those two words, you also see the progression of the media from what it once was to what it has become. That is the march of progress. The only difference now between newspapers and ministers is that you can burn newspapers to keep warm.

And this must be part of the reason why, these days, the media has nothing to say to us. These days I look at the newspapers more with amazement than interest, marvelling at how they are able to fill so much space with material of such little consequence. But, as a source of information, increasingly one is forced to look elsewhere.