Newell News-round up, week 11 -1984 Special

Week 11, the week when the lid on Orwellian society blew up in the states face. If you did not think it before you will now, we are living in Orwell's 1984 but don't worry, you have nothing to fear.

Human Rights: PRISM - EDWARD SNOWDEN and Bradley Manning

The Guardian and the Washington Post blew open the sensational news that the UK and US governments have been colluding to spy on civilian data using the US National Security Agency ((NSA) program Prism. The man responsible is Edward Snowden, a former employee of the CIA, and he has fled to Hong Kong boasting of their history for supporting freedom of speech and expression. Quite amusing considering he is from the supposed land of the free. Today however the mainstream media have been climbing over themselves to inform us that Snowden's belief he will not be extradited from Hong Kong may be short sighted and wrong. The US are said to have gathered the data of millions if not billions of calls and interactions with the GCHQ perhaps piggy backing this to circumvent laws that prevent the UK currently from eaves dropping on people here. William Hague has come out in defence of the scandal and said that if you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear. It is just a shame that ethos does not stretch as far as the closed Bilderberg meeting that took place this week in Watford. How long though is it before the person who has nothing to fear becomes a dissident, or an unruly activist unhappy with the fascist regime  at the say so of the state and then they too fall under this umbrella of 'extremism'. Some will say we sit on the precipice of the slippery slop of no return but I would say we have already crossed that point, with the three year detention of Bradley Manning, who went on trial this week for leaking documents to Wikileaks, for exposing grotesque abuses and war crimes by American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. The state does not appreciate the torch being shone upon the darkest recesses of their closets it seems.
Edward Snowden said he could not work and live in a world where surveillance of everyday people was being conducted in the way it was.
It is a mad world that we live in. When two men who have exposed corruption, war crimes, human rights atrocities and breaches of a fundamental human right, the right to a private life, in the supposed pursuit of our safety in the face of terrorism, are deemed enemies of the state; yet war criminals such as George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Tony Blair and David Cameron are continually allowed to encroach on our freedoms and liberties and export death, destruction and cancer (via depleted uranium) in countries where brown people reside.

The very fact that people like darling David Cameron and William Hague are trying to convince that everything is OK should be enough to set warning bells off in people. Barack Obama openly came out and lied by saying that no one was listening to people's phone calls, he then went on to say: "We cannot expect 100% security and 100% privacy and zero inconvenience and that we'll have to make some choices as a society.". This lot are the least noble and honest amongst and we should all be concerned about where all this is heading. At the time of writing this, William Hague was facing questions in the Houses of Parliament by MP's, all twenty of them.

Union workers have apparently been black listed with workers in the building trade still being checked off against a list that goes back twenty years. Actor Ricky Tomlinson is currently involved in a dispute with the government over the Shewsbury Pickets and explained how he too was on a list held by the government.

Politics

The PM has announced his intentions to crusade against lobbying, shamelessly using it as an opportunity to attack trade unions and the labour party. The lobbying scandal which has been dominating the news is amusing in as much as the idea that unions benefit from supporting the Labour Party in any way shape or form is ludicrous. The biggest backers of political parties are the corporations and I seem to recall Rupert Murdoch media being the biggest back of Labour last time they were i power pushing his war agenda.

The lobbying scandal comes at the same time as the Bilderberg descended upon sunny Hertfordshire. No mention of course about the great political lobbying scandal going on at the Bilderberg meeting held in Watford this year, not that these liars, thieves, cheats and scoundrels need to meet up once a year in a 'secret' venue to rule the world when they all socialise in the same circles. Both Cameron and George Osborne have previously stated their intention to drive a wrecking ball of transparency through the political system but have yet to start this process such is the murky world in which they operate. Ken Clarke has today been trying to persuade MP's that there is nothing going on at Bilderberg but when We Are Change interviewed Tony Blair recently we got perhaps the most honest two minutes of his life.

Race hatred... This week a Muslim boarding school was set on fire in the middle of the night as  tensions in the UK continue following the death of Lee Rigby and is the second such incident involving arson in the past two weeks. Police are investigating as it appears the scene had been branded by an EDL sign. Not content with soldiers physically abusing Muslim children in Afghanistan the EDL seem intent on burning them in their sleep.

Economics 

Whilst the rest of us are ground down to our knees with ideological austerity measures Thames Water have joined the rest of the super corporation tax avoidance billionaires by failing to pay no corporation tax despite making £145m in pre-tax profit. More fool us for allowing an essential human need to be privatised and put in the hands of criminals. This comes hot on the heels of another Vodaphone tax dodging effort after they failed to pay any for a second consecutive year.

Health/Education and Welfare

Labour this week proved themselves the other side of the mask shared by the Tories with Miliband's speech on welfare. He repeated right wing rhetoric of society viewing the system as being "given something for nothing" and served only to demonise people who struggle. What is the alternative to ideological austerity? There is none if you are looking at the two party state we live within.

Having sent them out to do their dirty work for the past ten years in Afghanistan and Iraq, the government has now decided to put our troops to use in schools by fast tracking to become teachers when they return. Some schools students will feel right at home with a militarised way of being educated as they have embarked on making their students pledge everyday first thing in the morning.

World

Treyvon Martin, remember him? This week the jury is being selected for the Zimmerman trial. This murder divided opinion across both sides of the Atlantic and we will see whether there is justice or whether it is just-us.

Turkey has been embroiled in a running battle with its government and the situation has failed to improve with the police firing tear gas and pepper spray on 'extremists'.

Extremist gets her just deserts

Meanwhile in Libya the chief of staff has resigned following deadly clashes between militia and protesters, going to show our support of unknown rebels does not always guarantee peace for the people once we leave them to it. As if we needed reminding but with the powers that be looking to arm Syrian rebels it looks as though the mistakes of our past are destined to be repeated.

In Australia the DJ who made a prank phone call to the hospital Kate was staying has won an award and it has been branded as "bad taste." Ironic considering we have a serving President who won a Nobel Peace Prize for saying stuff he did not mean and then proliferated the drone wars which we are seeing escalate on an almost weekly basis. Is that not bad taste?


Entertainment

The UK entertainment industry has been a cesspool and hive of sexual debauchery in recent months with the latest celebrity to be linked to child sex offences being Ken Roach, better known as Ken Barlow on Coronation Street, to most of you.

Sport

A marshal died at this weeks Canadian Grand Prix, run over by a recovery vehicle and an investigation is underway.

We must not let seeds of hate divide us

This week a soldier was run over and attacked with machetes in a savage attack in Woolwich, London. The man, 25 year old, Lee Rigby leaves behind a son aged 2.

We have seen much of the events as they unfolded yesterday, images of a man holding blades covered in blood telling us that our "governments do not care about us" and that scenes like this occur everyday in their countries. BBC Political correspondent Nick Robinson described the assailants as "Muslim in appearance" causing outrage amongst sections of the community and also explained how his initial thoughts were of a terrorist act being carried out.

What we have witnessed since this senseless murder is the framing of events by the media and the establishment. Time and again over the past 24hrs the media have stated intelligence agencies have been concerned for some time that this was the type of attack they feared most, but were unable or unprepared to deal with and so prompting the push for a further curtailing of our liberties with renewed vigour for the Data and Communications Bill.

This attack has led to further framing of agenda by the media.

What makes this attack one of terrorism and the ones of say the woman who was beheaded in Spain, or the Muslim grandfather Mohammed Saleem who was stabbed to death on his door step not terrorism? Why is it that one is of terrorism and the others are either plain murder or racially motivated? The dictionary definition describes terrorism as the pursuit of political gain through the unauthorised use of violence and intimidation. In London since 2005 there have apparently been over 100 teenagers killed at the hands of a blade, going to prove that there is a culture of fear and terror on the streets but it is not necessarily the one the media is fixing for you now.

The narrative being used to reinforce and remind us that Muslim's are terrorists is strong and has been since 9/11, but this was not always the case.

For twenty five years or more the Irish were the symbol for terrorism and terrorists in the UK, a fact that winds up many a passenger at transport hubs such as airports when they complain during random stop and searches. A favourite quip would be "Do I look like a terrorist?" 

Yesterday's events took a terrible toll on all involved and the consequences of the actions of those two individuals could have far reaching affects for this country as a whole if we let it. Those who witnessed it first hand will have had their worlds turned upside down for what could be years. A comment from one of the attackers was that violence such as that occurs on their streets every day. In Afghanistan and Iraq that is true and it is hard time for us all to sit and take stock of what acts of terrorism we have been complicit in as a country.

In December 2011 a British soldier was jailed for stabbing a 10 year old Afghanistan child with a bayonet. Wikileaks and the Guardian published news of further atrocities conducted by the British armed forces whilst serving in the wars and just this evening Barack Obama concluded that sometimes civilians get killed in the drone wars and called it a "hard fact." In fact at a Senate hearing a Senator stated that there had been several thousand people killed during these unmanned bombing raids that are coming to be known as The Drone Wars. The blog Scriptonite Daily has some startling statistics on the drone wars and the number of civilians killed by the Nobel Peace Prize winning President Barack Obama.

The people in these countries have no voice. They have no media run states framing the agenda to play out their heartache for us to see or hear. There has been a river of tears shed in the Afghanistan and Iraq over the lies fed to us by Tony Blair and George W. Bush.
Martin Luther King Jnr once said that the greatest purveyors of violence were his own government (of the Vietnam war) and so the sins of the past return to haunt us, as the same is true of our actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. To think we are innocent of the bloodshed is to be naive and live in denial. Bush, Blair, Cameron and Obama have as much blood on their hands as the man who addressed the stunned onlookers in Woolwich this week.

So long as our governments keep exporting fear and terror through the barrel of a gun or a drone we will not be able to claim peace. Has anything they have done in the 'war against terror' done anything to make the world feel like a safer place? If anything it has become a war of terror.

This terror is fed on fear and we have plenty of that going around at the moment. The EDL descended on Woolwich intent on having a riot and claiming that this attack was an example of the reason they existed. They fought with police, the leader, Stephen Lennon has a record for it too and they have a lot to say about Muslim grooming gangs, but nothing of the celebrity sex scandal engulfing television with Rolf Harris, Jimmy Saville and Co being outed every week. They prey on people and this time is the turn of the already traumatised people of Woolwich with a brand of patriotism that has previously been discredited by Sandra Oh from Grey's Anatomy, reading Emma Goldman's speech.

The fear being induced by the media, security services and our governments insistence in exporting war, is compounded by a lack of understanding. Facebook and Twitter have been awash with people Muslim bashing, black bashing and calling for a wide range of barbaric tortures themselves to punish those responsible for the soldiers death. Is this really the world they want for their children? Violence begets violence and Martin Luther King said that darkness cannot drive out darkness and that only light can do that. Even on my own social media feeds I have had to field some of the worst, fascist rhetoric regarding what has happened as people's emotions have run high.

Things doing the rounds on the social media sites include some of the following;

Questions have been posed as to the human rights of those that took part in the attack. Fortunately for us all human rights are there for the needs of the many and the actions of a few should not lead to the acts that serve and protect us being torn up for something lesser.

On the question of 7/7 and the lack of compensation for the victims going about their day job that are flying around the social media sites, who's fault is that? The governments, not Muslims.

The solider was apparently wearing a Help for Heroes T-Shirt and now every one is being encouraged to buy and support them. Why do we have a Help for Heroes Charity in the first place? Because the government does not provide for the men and women it sends out there to get blown up fighting illegal wars. Who's fault? The government.



Before condemning an entire religion we must look to take everything that happens in some kind of context and for all those labelling all Muslim's as extremists, attacking Mosques and calling for action remember this, just as not every Muslim is an extremist, neither were all Catholics, nor did all Christians want to gas Jews or wear white hoods and drag black people along the tarmac behind their trucks but some people from all of these religions have done just these very things. It does not make the religions evil, if there is such a thing, it means that a minority of individuals should not be responsible for the condemnation of an entire group. For anyone calling for those hangings, beheadings and mob justice should take a moment to look in the mirror and ask yourself if what you are asking for will do anything to make the world a better, safer place for you and your children?

No problems but human problems - one species

The only way for us to break free of these cycles of hatred is to first stop participating in them.

We must start to view ourselves as one species, the human species with common problems and not separate races. We must learn to understand the truth behind the language we use and realise we are masters of it and not slaves to it and begin to create our own reality, one that is crafted from love and not fear and hate, free from all forms of terror.

What cannot be taken away from what has happened this week and what overrides the entirety of the wider debate is the future of the young boy left behind without a father and the prospect of growing up in a world escalating ever more in hatred, mistrust and fear, a world that we have a duty to change for the better for us all.