My regular readers will know that for several years, since this blog was first created after the events of 77 in July 2005, I have been warning of the erosion of liberties and the creation of police states on both sides of the Atlantic.
The fact that this is happening as a transatlantic phenomenon is no accident. Bush's fascists first performed a coup on the US electorate by stealing the presidential election in 2000. We know now that by rights the Democratic candidate, Al Gore, was the rightful winner. But there was no challenge. Bush and his band of rogues were allowed to take over the White House. And it happened again in 2004 with 'faulty' electronic voting machines! Again, the criminals were allowed to get away with it. What now in 2008?
It was clear to many of us that the events of 911 were indeed a conspiracy involving some very powerful forces in north America and elsewhere. The purpose was to so traumatize the public that there would be no struggle when a premeditated, systematic erosion of constitutional and civil liberties followed --not only in the USA but in the UK as well as in other English-speaking countries. The wholly spurious 'War on Terror' was the ideological weapon used with which to bludgeon the opposition into submission.
On the international level we were told to prepare ourselves for 'Endless War' the description used by the Bush/Blair/Brown neocons for ongoing imperialist aggression by the US/UK/Israel in what might otherwise be called Resource Wars --wars staged in order that the West might secure strategic resources such as Oil, Gas, Water and other Mineral Resources needed to keep its system turning over.
The police states created through the fake 'War on Terror' are but one side of the coin. On the other is the prospect of Endless War. Taken together, we see the nightmare prospect of an Orwellian apocalypse. It started in earnest with the mass-murders of 911 and 77. It continues with the inexorable march of the police state. Many eyes are opening to what is going on. Many more need still to be opened. Please help that process by passing this link and text to as many people as possible. There isn't a moment to lose.
Rory Winter, CHIMES OF FREEDOM.
NUJ Film shows Police obstruction of Journalists
NUJ, 9 September 2008
The National Union of Journalists has released a short film highlighting some of the problems faced by journalists covering public demonstrations.
The video was released the day after the TUC in Brighton condemned the erosion of civil liberties and media freedoms in Britain. TUC unions unanimously backed a motion, proposed by the National Union of Journalists, which called for a rethink of government policies that put journalists at risk of imprisonment just for doing their job.
Speaking after the TUC vote, NUJ General Secretary Jeremy Dear said: “Journalism is facing grave threats in an age of intolerance. Whilst on the streets dissent is being criminalized, independent journalism is being increasingly caught in the civil liberties clampdown.”
The nine-minute video, called Press Freedom: Collateral Damage, includes examples of the police obstructing journalists in their work.
Release of the film follows numerous complaints from media workers who have experiences of the police going beyond their powers in attempting to restrict the ability of journalists to do their work. The NUJ’s motion to the TUC was part of a wider campaign for a greater recognition of press freedom by the UK government.
The motion also highlights cases of journalists, such as Robin Ackroyd and Shiv Malik, who have faced the threat of jail because of legal demands to reveal confidential source information.
In his speech to Congress, Jeremy Dear drew attention to the case of Sally Murrer, who is facing criminal prosecution for receiving information from a police source, and highlighted the problems faced by journalists attempting to cover the recent Climate Camp in Kent.
Jeremy said: “The terrorising of journalists isn’t just done by shadowy men in balaclavas, but also by governments and organisations who use the apparatus of the law or state authorities to suppress and distort the information they do not want the public to know and to terrorise the journalists involved through injunctions, threats to imprisonment and financial ruin.
“The use of the Terrorism Act and SOCPA increasingly criminalize not just those who protest but those deemed to be giving the oxygen of publicity to such dissent. Journalists’ material and their sources are increasingly targeted by those who wish to pull a cloak of secrecy over their actions.”
The speech concluded: “This isn’t over-zealous policing this is a co-ordinated and systematic abuse of media freedom – and we must expose it, challenge it and act against those who undermine the rights of photographers, journalists and media workers.
“And we must do so because if whistleblowers and sources fear speaking out, if photographers and journalists cannot probe the dark corners of business, politics or human rights, the ability of the media – already under threat from concentration of ownership and cost-cutting – to hold power to account, to expose wrongdoing, to provide the information on which citizens can make informed decisions about their lives will be seriously compromised.
“The Terrorism Act and SOCPA are not sophisticated security policies – they are the blunt instruments of an intolerant government.
“As if in some Orwellian nightmare the Ministry of Freedom tells us that the price we must pay for peace and liberty at home is not just a war in Iraq – not just the billions spent on war – but, in the wake of the London bombings, is the fingerprinting of council workers and the covert surveillance of M&S workers. It is ID cards and 42-day detention. It is curbs on the right to protest, the civil contingencies act and it is the extension of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, a snoopers’ charter giving access to personal texts, emails and internet use.
“The price is too high. Less liberty does not imply greater security. It never has.
“Our movement has been at the forefront of the great struggles for human and civil rights over the past century. In this age of intolerance new struggles must be waged and we must lead that fight.”
Propaganda
Craig Murray's blog
September 10, 2008
I have been worrying about the serious deterioration of civil liberties in the UK for five years now, but a small incident last night convinced me we are living in a country that must be classified as "Not free". I was travelling to the theatre on the tube, and the large majority of passengers were shrouded by copies of either London Lite or the London Paper. Some thirty copies of each banner headline screamed shrilly its message of fear through the train: "Five Suicide Bombers on the Loose in London!" "Jet Terror Plot!" "Terror Jury Holiday Farce Resulted in Acquittals!"
The propaganda, which reflected uncritically the briefing the Security Services and Home Office have been manically pumping out since the non-existence of the "Bigger than 9/11" jet plot was confirmed, was so stark and so divorced from any connection to the truth, that I am convinced we are already in effect living in a totalitarian state where the government controls the population through fear with brutal efficiency and with absolutely no regard to the truth. The government had contrived to turn a major blow for its "War on Terror" scaremongering into a vehicle to ramp up that scaremongering.
The Lite told of there still being bombers around from the "Jet Terror Plot" and gave no indication whatsoever that the jury had decided the jet plot did not exist. Indeed it claimed shamelessly that the three terrorists convicted of conspiracy to murder had been planning to bring down planes - a direct lie.
The London Paper was still more worrying, because it put detail into the line the odious security service spokesman Frank "Goebbels" Gardner has been pumping out on the BBC: juries are unreliable. It said that the failure to convict in the trial was due to interruptions for a holiday for the jurors and because of an injury to a juror in a golf accident. The clear trend of the briefing coming from the government is towards the abolition of jury trials in terrorist cases: Diplock courts.
Meantime in London two men are on trial for "terrorism" because they attended a demonstration at the Uzbek Embassy against the hideous Uzbek regime, at which red paint was thrown at the Embassy to symbolise the blood of Karimov's many thousands of victims. Such protest as paint-throwing should, I think, be illegal, but given events like the Andijan massacre of many hundreds of peaceful demonstrators, I have huge sympathy for those who undertake civil disobedience in the Uzbek case. It has nothing to do with terrorism, but under the notorious Section 58 of the Terrorism Act there is real danger of conviction and heavy sentences.
These are critical times: all good men and women must fight hard against the closing in of the system upon us.
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