LATEST NEWS OF THE WEEK : END JULY - EARLY AUGUST

So Silvio Berlusconi, former Italian Prime Minister for what seems so many years, otherwise known as Mister Smiley and easily the country’s richest man owning most of its television and newspapers, has had his recent conviction for tax evasion and fraud upheld by the Italian Supreme Court. Poor Silvio, your heart goes out to the man! He’s just made a video showing how upset and highly aggrieved he is. Claiming his convictions in recent years for all manner of things, particularly being found guilty of having sex with underage prostitutes and models is all part of a political conspiracy against him. Yes, how our hearts are all bleeding! He says he’s a victim, but then think of all the fun he’s been having at those very naughty private parties of his while under his management the Italian economy’s gone down a financial drain with the country’s bonds and securities not worth a monkey’s.

While in power he was supported by Italy’s fascist inspired Northern League and smiled his way in and out of trouble year after year with the rest of the world looking on. He was a friend to many top politicians, both in Europe and the United States and it couldn’t have been his wife’s spaghetti doing the trick! She dumped him years back. Never mind, all through these ‘torrid’ times of his many Italian people still loved him and his political party. In fact even today his Party is still an important part of the governing coalition so it’s still not so bad for him. Even so he still feels mighty aggrieved. He’s likely to spend any prison time due under house arrest because it’s thought that at 76 he’s too old to spend time in jail. That’s the worst part of it all really. People thinking he’s too old to have fun anymore but knowing the ever-smiling Silvio he’s not finished yet and bound to be looking for more, Italian style of course! He may not get back to being Prime Minister again but you can bet they’ll be plenty of other tasty diversions.

There was always something special about Silvio Berlusconi. A certain charm, a certain braggadocio. He was and still is a man who knows how to put on a face. Up against all the worst kind of adversity he can still put on the make-up and smile. In that he has a fair understanding of what the Italian people like. They’ve been around for thousands of years after all. They once had a pretty large Empire which went down the drain but they’re still around all the same, so why be serious all the time? No, Italians like to be happy. They’re at their best when they’re painting, playing football, smiling and having a laugh, and they definitely don’t like fighting! So when Silvio says he’s innocent all the time and smiles, many smile along with him. They think of him as a friend.

And speaking of friends a brief word about one of his best. Yes it’s Tony Blair and his family. Good old pals and best of mates when Tony and Silvio were both Prime Ministers together early in the twenty-first century. You surely remember all those invitations? How the Blair’s used to spend their summer holidays as guests at his Holiday Villa, never mind all those nasty whispers going on at the time about their host. It was quite okay. Free summer holidays in the Italian countryside being entertained by the country’s ever smiling, ever generous Prime Minister and now look what the country’s judiciary, politicians, journalists and women campaigners have done to their friend. Still we hope you’ll remember what a kind and generous man he was to you and the kids, Tony and Cherie, and say a word to support him now at the height of his troubles! He was, after all, one of Britain’s key partners in Europe at the time and worth his weight in political gold, even though you were New Labour and he was backed by Italy’s Northern League fascist based party with its Mussolini connections. But then why should such as nasty thing like that matter when you’re having a good time on holiday together?

Still as I say, a good word for your old friend wouldn’t come amiss now during these terrible times that he’s having.

Another interesting news item of the week are the trial in America of Bradley Manning, a young man of 27 and formerly an American soldier with access to secret information along with the release from a no man’s land suite at a Moscow Airport of Edward Snowden, a young American security expert formerly employed by the United States Government who blew the whistle about his country’s spying practices on European and other supposedly friendly governments to Wikileaks and the rest of the world’s media.

Edward Snowden, who the Americans badly want to get hold of, so badly in fact that they’ve put serious pressure on the Russians to hand him over into their custody for trial, has now been offered temporary asylum there despite the increasingly hostile noises coming from the Obama administration. So what information does the young security analyst have about his country’s official spying practices, and ‘official’ is a key word here, to make them want him in their custody so badly which of course means shutting him up. It begs the question, what has the security apparatus of the American government been doing that it needs to hide for it to be willing to risk damaging its diplomatic relations with Russia and other countries it regards as friendly?      

The question indeed is serious because it not only concerns issues of spying on friends WITHOUT THEIR KNOWLEDGE but in the case of Britain at least, liaising with this country’s official spying apparatus at GCHQ and together using it to spy on other governments such as those in Europe WITHOUT THEIR KNOWLEDGE. Little wonder then that the governments of France and Germany have appeared seriously aggrieved in recent weeks along with the Parliament of the European Commission. In fact Germany has just pulled out of a long standing Treaty on security issues it had with Britain and the United States while the German people themselves are reported to be furious about this betrayal of trust.

To the Americans the prospect of Edward Snowden releasing more information through Wikileaks to the world is simply frightful. The key word here is TRUST. If governments around the world believe their diplomatic-security arrangements with the United States to be one thing, when in reality they are being spied upon, then it is in actuality another and not what they believed it to be. To put it bluntly, such a thing completely undermines the key premise on which international relations are based. No trust, no confidence. Or likewise, no confidence no trust, so the weight of what Edward Snowden may yet have to reveal is pretty deadly.

An equally serious question is WHY have the Americans done such a thing? If you can’t trust your friends it’s serious. If you can’t trust anyone at all it stinks. There are those who might call it paranoia. Others might say it was sad. Those working in Government security organizations however are much more likely to consider it as plain common sense reality because, in truth, it’s what international political relations are all about i.e. PLAIN POLITICAL POWER which quite frankly means TRUSTING NO-ONE. In short, if you want your country to stay ahead of the game in terms of world politics you trust no-one. That is precisely what it means to be the world Superpower. You are out there ahead, controlling international relations because of your secret knowledge and because you trust no-one. It’s really not that difficult to understand so why should everyone be so astonished? Oh how horrid! The Americans are spying on us!

Of course they’re spying on you! Only a fool might think that they weren’t! Much more interesting is this. Think about American society please and ask yourself what kind of place it is! A society where no one cares about anyone else, where people who are ill have to pay a fortune for medical treatment, a place where almost anyone can buy a gun and kill whoever they like… This is the society that is leading the world yet is spying on everyone! AND THEY THINK THAT EDWARD SNOWDEN HAS ANY REAL SECRETS TO TELL THE WORLD… Why if you think about it hard enough you might actually guess the whole lot!

That said, why should Obama’s administration be so fearful? Are you afraid that the people of the world might think you are any the less such a lovely bunch of people? That we may think any the less of you and how delightful you all are just because a disillusioned  young man turns colors and decides to reveal a few truths? But really, we’re so surprised! Don’t you know that anyone with a thinking brain knows all this stuff already and that Edward Snowden is just pissing into the wind? If you keep on making all that fuss about him then people might start thinking that he really does have something to say when he actually doesn’t because we know it already. America doing this or that? Well of course it is, just like everyone else. What do think we all are? Virgins?

And it’s the same with Bradley Manning. Another young American about to be locked away for breaching trust but NOT FOR REVEALING SECRETS TO THE ENEMY. For this charge against him he was found innocent. Please think about it for a moment. Charged with revealing secrets to the enemy. Okay, so what enemy were they talking about? For the legal administration of his country to put such a charge automatically assumes that it sees itself as having an enemy. Maybe even more than one… so who are those enemies? It’s a pretty strong word. They’re guys you really don’t like. Think they’re out to get you. Like the Chinese or the Russians but even so you do business with them! Even though they’re trying to steal your secrets, undermine your economy and oppose you politically on the world stage, you still do business with them! In the case of China, especially, they’re a serious financial threat! So what does it take to be an ACTUAL enemy and who are they? How do you define one? And when are they on or off the list?

Bradley Manning has been found not guilty of revealing any secrets to enemies but it’s still almost certain that he’s going to jail. He became sick and fed up with living in a world of secrets and spoke out to keep himself sane. Somehow along the way he just couldn’t take anymore. To the State security apparatus he served it was a betrayal but in pure human terms it’s actually a triumph of the human spirit. That human beings find that they still have something deep down inside them that gives them the courage to stand up and tell others the truth.

This week there’s been a big fuss In Britain about fracking, a process of drilling for oil or gas involving the fracturing of rock and pumping water under pressure into holes to release these potentially important sources of fuel. It is believed that this country has large deposits such fuel which could be cheaply extracted by this new rock fracturing technique so providing Britain with an economic bonanza equivalent at least to North Sea Oil in the 60’s and 70’s. Such exploitation however comes with a number of problems. Firstly fears about the technology itself. That rock fracturing might produce serious seismic disturbance. Secondly that of water pollution. Then there is the strange coincidence that all this lovely economic wealth seems to lie in areas deemed to be of outstanding natural beauty.

The consequences of utilizing the new rock drilling technology are as yet unknown which is why any exploratory drilling to date has produced such a wave of fury and protest in what may best be described as the professional protest movement, a well organised revolving collection of regulars with tents, camping gear, handcuffs, cutting equipment and banner making facilities who appear whenever and wherever necessary to protest and complain of anything that smells of technological modernity. They want the natural world to stay as it is and regard themselves as the nation’s unappreciated instrument of sanity.

Well good for them I say yet I am genuinely worried about a deeper, unseen hidden motive in all of this. Not in their warm kindhearted intentions on our behalf let me hasten to say, but about all these intentions being deluded in ways they are unaware of as yet! Suddenly it’s all such a hot topic. Rock drilling in the heart of rural Sussex! All those well-heeled gentle country folk joined by the kind of people they’ve ever only seen on the television, protesters with beards and boots, badges and flags, staying with them in their country cottages and all talking about the same thing… the ruination of their little bit of rural paradise with oil wells and ‘nodding donkeys’! Can you imagine it? Rivers and ponds full of oil and slime dams just about everywhere! And who is the enemy, it’s some wretched company that no-one’s ever heard of before called Cuadrilla. Like something hot and Mexican that goes in a tortilla wrap. The name seems to be all over the place like there’s oil and gas under every blade of grass all over England.

Yes it’s given the protest movement a new lease of life. A chance to unite with the rural folk of England all over again. Not so long ago it was Airport Runways, Nuclear Power Stations, climbing fences, using chains, police arrests, intimidation and all. Now it’s fracking for what could mainly be gas with everyone in the village now talking. Can you just imagine The Archers? The little tune and all that talk in the pub. It’s not farmers anymore Dan but all those men and their drill! And all those nice policemen with numbers on their uniforms putting all those posh protesters from the upper part of the village in the their vans along with them their hippies!

Well come to think of it, had anyone heard of a company called Cuadrilla until recently. It seems to have suddenly appeared out of nowhere to do all this experimental drilling and apply for its licensing. Strange that! One would have thought it might have been any of the giant energy exploration and refining organizations such as Shell or BP, Exxon or Mobile, with their vast financial resources that might have been interested in any on the spot great new energy bonanza but nothing so far from those with a natural interest in such a project. Instead it’s been left to a company that’s only recently been in the news. It seems peculiar at least until you consider the matter more deeply. Why this small unknown outfit and where did it come from?  

I have my own thoughts on the subject. Far-fetched they may be. Unlikely to many, all those journalists and so called financial experts paraded in the media for being ‘in the know’. You know, the kind of people who foresaw the whole financial crisis coming and forgot to tell anyone, and maybe even made a mint out of it themselves! And especially unlikely to all the anti-fracking demo mob out there, those friends of the Earth who dismiss anyone else’s opinion as rubbish. However I’ll put the view nonetheless. Cuadrilla is in effect a brilliant political wheeze. Thought up secretively by a highly specialized team within one of the departments of government of which the public is quite unaware. Maybe Ministers themselves have no knowledge of it but its existence as a political project surely goes all the way to the top.

The outfit is indeed a masterly political piece of ingenuity. The reasoning behind it as follows. In recent years there have clearly been too many causes for people without any real political affiliation to demonstrate about. Young people in particular along with the soft left middle class have been up angry about one thing or another and demonstrating about this and that all over the place, encouraged by the complacency of the official political parties who all seem to stand for the same thing. It’s all so simple really. With the great economic and financial crisis upon us, causing a diminution of the standard of living for so many, particularly young people, students and the middle classes, people who wish to protest have nowhere to go so they demonstrate. It’s been a major feature of life here in Britain over the last 5 years. The REAL trick is to give them something to demonstrate about! Something that will focus their attention like never before.

Okay thanks to the Green, Friends of the Earth, Save the Planet, Environmental Cartel, everyone knows all about spoiling and damaging the environment through mining and energy resource exploration and drilling but the idea of fracking is something quite new. It’s come out of the blue as it were. Appeared out of nowhere, or has it?

Suddenly it’s the talk of countless campaigners. Demonstrations, sit ins and protests planned for just about everywhere! It’s become the focal point of day for environmental good cause. Nuclear power stations… brown site development… genetically modified crops… This and all the other stuff has simply fallen away! The magic new word and technology has taken over the lot. It’s become the new focal point for protest, as those who created the idea hoped it might be. YES, LET’S GIVE THEM ALL SOMETHING ELSE TO FOCUS THEIR MINDS ON! A brilliantly phony good cause that’ll keep them all occupied! And concentrated around a few dozen out of the way rural sites that will make them all less of a pain in the arse than if it was happening in urban areas. All less connected with large population centres and much easier for the police to deal with if necessary.

Fracking! What a very clever idea! Focus all the minds of the demo mob. Let them make a racket that has no useful effect for something that doesn’t exist anyway. But above all else, don’t let them know. They can all have their fun protesting about some fucking illusion while guys like us are laughing our heads off buried deep and well out of it all behind the scenes. As I said, simple! A new kind of specialisation in dirty tricks. Give them something big to get all excited about! With their eggs all in one basket making the noise our friends at the top will be able to push through anything political they like.

The idea of fracking then is phony. A total political put up job. And furthermore, just wait and see how it’s all going to get bigger. More and more demonstrations and police activity and news media coverage. If I wasn’t in the know I’d say it was gorgeous! All those demonstrators being taken for the ride of a lifetime!

A final word about the news this week of the police increasingly arresting those they say are posting offensive messages on media sites such as Twitter and Facebook. I want you to seriously consider this recent happening. The British police arresting people for making what they call offensive communications! Firstly, the most horrific thing in all this is that it isn’t some kind of joke. It’s true, they’re actually doing it! Making moral and ethical judgements about what people say… and making value judgements on its character!

Secondly, they are actually taking action on their judgements and depriving people of their liberty as a result!

The first reaction of most intelligent people ought to be this. The police themselves, nearly all the way through their occupational structure are definitely not noted for being clever, particularly literate or highly intelligent. Many have basic problems with literacy, grammar and spelling. Their educational standards are low, many falling within a basic GCSE framework, a percentage of others of GCE ‘A’ level standard. Few have university degrees. So who are those, one wonders, who are supposedly competent in making serious intellectual ethical judgements on the stated opinions of others? How is it, and because of what knee-jerk political reaction has society allowed the mainly semi-literate State force of law and order to act as if they’d suddenly elevated to the status of moral philosophers.?

Now you might think that this is a joke but actually it’s not because as I’ve said, such people with only a basic level of literacy can actually detain you in custody for saying things THAT THEY regard as offensive. Therefore, one should ask, from what kind of standard are they permitted to make such judgements?

The ability of the police to make objective judgements is a matter of particular concern to the many people who are members of ethnic and religious minorities. In recent times the Metropolitan Police have been described by a judge as institutionally racist. Furthermore, many people who have had contact with the police have experienced the fact that they are not singularly intelligent. This is by no means a crime and would not at all harm their professional training. Besides, many learn fast and brighten up on the job which itself is tough, often unappreciated and not at all well paid. I’m not really talking here about problems of basic intelligence but them having the ability to make complex intellectual judgements and upon these deprive people of their liberty.

There is something wrong here. The police aren’t supposed to be judges. Their function is to maintain the peace and uphold the law. Often hard enough in itself. But to give them an additional highly intellectual burden, very serious in itself, is ludicrous. Most simply don’t have the capacity to judge what is offensive and many are, in the experience of the public, often highly offensive themselves, the generalised complaint being that they just don’t know how to talk to people.

Quite frankly, putting a policeman through a University degree course won’t make him Aristotle and most wouldn’t want to go anyway. It’s a tough people centered profession where skills are often acquired the hard way so why make it harder for them by giving them tasks they’re just not equipped for?

In that case who else is to make judgements about the offensive nature or otherwise in electronic communication? Physical threat against the person is relatively simple to judge. Judgement incorporating moral evaluation is altogether more difficult, particularly when separating opinion from such evaluation. Both may be factually wrong, but nonetheless should not necessarily detract from the wisdom of any statement. Trouble is, when you put a policeman in any such minefield you’re going to have problems.

The Home Secretary kindly take note!

My next post, for your enjoyment, will be all about the Churchill Dog!

 

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