I quote Britain’s SUNDAY NEWSPAPER OF THE YEAR of 29th December 2024.
The Sunday Times.
We live in Quare Times indeed.
In the West regimes show their strength by jailing journalists or plotting their murder.
It’s a practice over a century old. In 1915 the knighted former diplomat Roger Casement
was exposing the criminality of the British Government’s long plotted war on Germany
was publishing comment for American papers from Germany (the Americans being
criminally Neutral in British eyes?) and the British Minister in Oslo was trying to have
him knocked on the head. Today the former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig
Murray plays the role once played by Casement and the UK Government plays the
villainous role it has played for half a Millennium.
The incarceration for years of the journalist Julian Assange in Britain’s escape-proof Belmarsh Prison, the result of a corrupt deal by American Swedish and
British Governments is villainy enough, but the unspeakable Hillary Clinton, when US Secretry of State wanted to murder him with a drone.
Iran’s autocratic regime would not exist but for the criminal, murderous coup
plotted by Britain’s MI6 during Clement Attlee’s heyday together with its pupil
the CIA to crush the democratic government of Dr Mohammad Mossadegh
and to continue the theft of Iranian oil. Though the coup was planned in the
days of Atttlee and Truman it was carriedout under Churchill and Eisenhower.
Here, as is my habit I digress.
I have survived 83 years and only been in prison twice for my sins.
Once in Belmarsh, on invitation of a friend, to visit a prisoner convicted of murder
and serving a life sentence, Frank Johnson.
Frank was the victim of a stunt by Scotland Yard which burnt his employer and
friend to death. If Frank had confesed to a crime of which he was innocent he
would have been released before I saw him. But he served 26 years before the
Court of Appeal quashed the conviction.
My friend and the solicitor with him were modestly but smartly dressed. Most of
the females visiting the prison were in furs, diamonds and gold. Mae West said
of her Diamonds that Goodness had Nothing to do with It. And the East End
floozies visiting their Gangster Beaus has me still admiring Mae’s witticism.
The other prison that I briefly visied was Kilmainham in Dublin
restored as a memorial to the patriots imprisoned or executed
there. The restoration was an unpaid labour of love by citizens
whose work was its own reward, unburdened by academic
roles in Britain’s Royal United Services Institute, West Point
Military Academy, nor indeed in Irish Academic , Diplomatic,
or Religous circles. Nor medals. Men and women a credit
to our human species.
Within 24 Hours of my reading the Sunday Times every TV News
Bulletin I could access was monopolised by an identical Press
Conference in New Orleans featuring the Mayor of that City,
the Governor of that Louisiana, a US Senator and various
municipal, state and federal police and law agencies. The
atrocity was indeed appalling, particularly for the New Year
festivities. But it seemed to me that the Deportment, Clothing,
speech of citizens of the most powerful nation on earth was
shoddy, shabby, when much poorer nations on ordinary
workdays, doing “servile” work put on a more jubilant demonstration
It was 24 hours later that British TV reprted on the even more murderous
visitation of Israeli targeted precision bombing of infants in Gaza that
same New Year’s Day.
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