By Craig Murray
September 30, 2019 "Information
Clearing House" -
Trump and Johnson’s populism
have shaken the old Establishment, and raised some
very interesting questions about who is and who is
not nowadays inside the Establishment and a
beneficiary of the protection of the liberal elite.
Yesterday two startling examples in the news
coverage cast a very lurid light on this question,
and I ask you to consider the curious cases of
Hunter Biden and Brendan Cox, two of the most
undeserving and unpleasant people that can be
imagined.
The BBC news bulletins led on the move to impeach
Donald Trump for, as they put it, his efforts to get
the President of Ukraine to undermine a political
opponent. To be plain, I think Trump was quite wrong
to get personally involved in this, but please park
the entire subject of Donald Trump to one side for
the next ten minutes.
What I find deeply reprehensible in all the BBC
coverage is their failure to report the facts of the
case, and their utter lack of curiosity about why
Joe Biden’s son Hunter was paid $60,000 a month by
Burisma, Ukraine’s largest natural gas producer, as
an entirely absent non-executive director, when he
had no relevant experience in Ukraine or gas, and
very little business experience, having just been
dishonorably discharged from the Navy Reserve
for use of crack cocaine? Is that question not just
little bit interesting? That may be the thin end of
it – in 2014-15 Hunter Biden
received US $850,000 from the intermediary
company channeling the payments. In reporting on
Trump being potentially impeached for asking about
it, might you not expect some analysis – or at least
mention – of what he was asking about?
As far as I am aware, the BBC have not reported
at all the other thing Trump was asking Zelensky
about – Crowdstrike. Regular readers will recall
that Crowdstrike are the Clinton linked
“cyber-security” company which provided the
“forensic data” to the FBI on the alleged Russian
hack of the DNC servers – data which has been
analysed by my friend Bill Binney, former Technical
Director of the NSA, who characterises it as showing
speeds of transfer
impossible by internet and indicating a download
to an attached drive. The FBI were never allowed
access to the actual DNC server – and never tried,
taking the DNC’s consultants word for the contents,
which itself is sufficient proof of the bias of the
“investigation”.
Crowdstrike also made the claim that the same
Russia hackers – “Fancy Bear” – who hacked the DNC,
hacked Ukrainian artillery software causing
devastating losses of Ukrainian artillery. This made
large headlines at the time. What did not make any
MSM headlines was the subsequent discovery that all
of this never happened and the artillery losses were
entirely fictitious. As Crowdstrike had claimed
that it was the use of the same coding in the DNC
hack as in the preceding (non-existent) Ukraine
artillery hack, that proved Russia hacked the DNC,
this is pretty significant. Trump was questioning
Zelensky about rumours the “hacked” DNC server was
hidden in the Ukraine by Crowdstrike. The media has
no interest in reporting any of that at all.
It is plain in that case that Trump is the
media’s villain and the Bidens, father and son, are
therefore heroes being protected by the
Establishment media. Now let us look at the case of
Brendan Cox.
Boris Johnson’s behaviour in the Commons two
nights ago was reprehensible. Watching the
unrepentant and aggressive braying of the Tory MPs,
I was genuinely concerned about the consequences for
democracy should these empowered right wingers ever
get a majority. Johnson has removed the social
restraint which used to cloak their atavistic
instincts.
This Tory display also very much reinforced what
I have been saying for years, that we will not gain
Scottish Independence through a repeat of 2014. We
were allowed a referendum with only moderate
cheating by the British state purely because they
believed there was no chance we could win. They have
been disabused. There will never be a Section 30
order an an agreed referendum again. We will have to
seize Independence by means which the British state
will deem unlawful. Anybody not prepared to do that
is not serious about Independence.
Are You Tired Of
The Lies And
Non-Stop Propaganda?
|
I digress. Johnson’s behaviour is
appalling and he is at an interesting
stage where the Establishment and its
media is unsure whether to embrace or
repudiate him, the calculation depending
on whether they think he will win, and
on the impact of Brexit on their
personal financial interests. But as
with Trump, I ask you to set aside your
judgement on Johnson and not think of
him for a moment.
Yesterday BBC news programmes brought us repeated
appearances of Brendan Cox to comment on Boris
Johnson and other MP’s parliamentary behaviour.
This Brendan Cox:
One such allegation was that Cox pinned a
co-worker to a wall by her throat while telling
her ‘I want to fuck you’. Cox left the
organisation before being subjected to scrutiny
on this and other allegations. However, another
woman, a senior US official who met him at a
Harvard University event, made similar
allegations against him, ‘of grabbing her by the
hips, pulling her hair, and forcing his thumb
into her mouth’ ‘in a sexual way’. In contrast
to Assange’s treatment, and despite a
social-media furore, for nearly three years
there was largely a media blackout on the story.
At last, in February 2018, a right-wing tabloid
broke the embargo and reported the allegations,
and other news organisations had to follow suit.
Finally, ‘Cox apologised for the “hurt and
offence” caused by his past behaviour’ and
announced he was withdrawing from public life.
I strongly recommend you to read that last linked
article. Cox is very much on the wavelength of the
Establishment media, a full member of the New Labour
neo-liberal elite who shuttled between jobs in the
Labour Party and in
high paying neo-liberal propaganda organisation
Save the Children. Cox was personally pocketing
£106,000 a year plus expenses from donations to the
“charity”. A serial unfaithful sexual aggressor, his
wife’s murder sees him recast by the media as the
grieving survivor of a perfect marriage. Precisely
his strongest political supporters – Jess Phillips,
Stella Creasy etc – are Julian Assange’s bitterest
opponents due to far flimsier, hotly denied and less
attested sexual allegations than those against Cox.
But neo-liberals get a free pass from the modern
feminist movement (cf Bill Clinton).
Boris Johnson’s behaviour was a dsgrace. But that
is no reason for the BBC rehabilitation of the
“retired from public life” sexual predator.
The fascinating thing is the binary, good versus
evil, narrative which is being pursued in the
liberal media. Trump and Johnson are bad. Therefore
Hunter Biden and Brendan Cox must be good. The
truth, of course, is much more complex than that. I
am afraid to say that if you want an excessive
simplification, a more accurate one would be that
the entire political elite on all sides are
self-serving and venal.
There is a more interesting story inside that,
where significant portions of the public have lost
respect for the Establishment, due in large part to
the vast and increasing wealth gap in society, but
this disillusion has been battened on by populist
charlatans, and particularly directed against
immigrants. This feels like an extremely unstable
phase in society and politics. But instability
brings the possibility of radical change, which is
indeed much needed. We must all work for good from
it.
Craig Murray is an author, broadcaster and human
rights activist. He was British Ambassador to
Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004 and
Rector of the University of Dundee from 2007 to
2010.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk
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