Taunted by Jack Straw of the British Labour Party over the Liberal Democrat’s role in supporting a Tory-dominated Coalition British Government, Nick Clegg struck back today with a counter-jibe that stunned both sides of the House of Commons.

Addressing the former Labour Foreign Minister, Clegg said: “may he one day can – perhaps we’ll have to wait for his memoirs – could account for his role in the most disastrous decision of all, which is the illegal invasion of Iraq.

Clegg’s comment is being described as a ‘gaffe’ and his office has since ‘clarified’ that the Deputy Prime Minister was expressing a personal opinion – as opposed to the Government position. Even so, the import of his words is significant.

The Guardian reports the opinion of Philippe Sands, a law professor at University College London, who commented “a public statement by a government minister in parliament as to the legal situation would be a statement that an international court would be interested in, in forming a view as to whether or not the war was lawful.”

It would be satisfying indeed if Nick Clegg’s remarks are used in testimony against Tony Blair, Jack Straw and the rest of the Nu Labour war criminals at trial. But even hearing those words of honesty about Iraq expressed from the government benches is a reminder of how appallingly low the British Labour Party sank under its opportunistic Zionist-stooge leadership.

I don’t know Craig Murray, but I do have considerable respect for the Briton who resigned from the UK Diplomatic Service during  the Blair Government’s reign of terror, in protest at its worse-than-dubious behaviour.

Craig runs a popular blog and covers hot political topics with insight. He also had the guts to run for the British Parliament last year as an Independent. This is not a silly man.

I visit Craig Murray’s blog occasionally and post comments less frequently. Some have been approved for publication; others not. That’s fine. I know from my own experience of running a blog how hard it can be  to make calls on controversial posts.

Today I noticed a recent article withe the engaging title ‘The Ethics of Banning Trolls‘. In it, Mr Murray explains why he’s banned a particular commentator who goes by the name of ‘Larry from St Louis’. After mentioning Larry’s latest annoyance, Murray writes (emphasis added):

It is rather indicative of a very deliberate technique he has used scores of times, that of claiming I hold an opinion which he believes will devalue my other arguments in the mind of other readers, when I do not in fact hold that opinion.

He most often – indeed daily – does this with reference to 9/11. He tries to divert almost every thread on to the topic of 9/11 and to insinuate that I am among those who believe that 9/11 was “an inside job”. In fact, I am not of that opinion and never have been.

Every now and again, they throw us a bone.

A nice cute story to take our minds off the gloom of economic recession, the doom of ecological catastrophe, the anguish of false-flag terror and the misery of war without end.

Anna Chapman nabbed! Britain's annual expenditure on 'counter-terrorism and intelligence' is over £3 billion - but whoever said it's a waste of money?

The story of the ‘Russian spies’ busted in the USA and Britain is one such tale.

For all I know it may actually be true – but really, are we expected to take this stuff seriously?

Hoping to get a moderately rational take on the drama, I turned to The Guardian, that venerable leftish British newspaper with a reputation (occasionally deserved) for serious journalism.

Here are some extracts from what Richard Norton-Taylor and two other hot-shot  journalists report about the most notorious of the Russian spies’, Anna Chapman aka Anya Kushchenko.

in 2005, she was, he said, “a ‘green, wet behind the ears’ type of girl“.

…less than two years later, Chapman was being wined and dined at Annabel’s and Cipriani in the company of Vincent Tchenguiz, a private equity billionaire.

“When I met her, she didn’t know which way was up,” said her husband, then a 21-year-old British student

But then, Alex Chapman said, his wife began to change.

In 2005, he said, she began having meetings with people she referred to as “Russian friends”.

Apparently British Prime Minister David Cameron thinks Afghanistan is the leading center for cutting-edge nanotechnologyR&D.

In the audio tape below, Cameron says: “on 9-11 when the twin towers were Blown up”

A slip of the tongue, no doubt.

Nothing to see here… move along.

Here’s the quote in full:

“This is not a war of choice, it is a war of necessity. This is not a war of occupation, it’s a war of obligation. On 9-11 when the twin towers were blown up and so many British people died as well as Americans, almost every single person that took part in that attack was trained here in Afghanistan by Al Qaeda. That’s why we came here. That’s why we cleared away those training camps. If we left tomorrow, those training camps could come back tomorrow, because the Afghans aren’t ready to look after their own security. As soon as they are ready, we can go home.”

Kipling put it succintly, nearly a century ago:

“If any question why we died
Tell them, because our fathers lied…”

Who said:

“The efficiency of our security services can only be impaired if their organisations and techniques are discussed in public.”

Was it the flashy trickster and war criminal Tony Blair perhaps? Or, Gordon Brown, mumbling stooge of the cryptocracy, who followed him into No 10 Downing St? The words do have a sinister Nu Labour ring…

Then again, could it have been Margaret Thatcher in militant ‘anti-terrorist’ mode? Or were these words spoken by a hard line American politician? Or even an Australian, such as Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd?

After all, only last week Rudd told reporters:

“There is a long-standing convention in Australian politics: because of significant national security reasons neither side of politics speculates on, comments on, the operation of our intelligence agencies”

While all these answers are possible, none of them are correct.

“The efficiency of our security services can only be impaired if their organisations and techniques are discussed in public“ are the words of none other than KIM PHILBY, once a high-ranking British ‘Intelligence Officer’, who defected from Britain to the USSR in the early 1960s where he was honoured by the KGB for services rendered.

In 1951, Guy Burgess and Donald MacLean, close colleagues of Philby’s in the British ‘Intelligence Services’, caused a major scandal when they made good their escape to Moscow as Soviet spies. Philby also came under suspicion at the time, but was never inconvenienced with an arrest or put on trial in Britain.

In early August I blogged The Ingenuity of the Markets – featuring a skit by the brilliant British satirists John Bird and John Fortune.

This is in similar vein about the famous South Sea Bubble (circa 1720).

It was not the Bubble to End All Bubbles as advertised. They never are…

If you haven’t heard the Corrigan Brothers‘ excellent ‘No-one as Irish as Barak Obama‘ by now, you may be deaf or live in a Trappist monastery.

The Corrigan Brothers: three cheeky black boys from North Tipperary

Now the incorrigible Corrigans have come up with a gem about the British MPs expenses rorts scandal.

Outrageous revelations of absurd expenses claims have been crashing, like a giant steel wrecking-ball through the collective credibility of Britain’s political establishment for several months.

There’s more to the MPs’ expenses  scandal than meets the eye. Lots more.

The ‘rorts’ that scandalized the nation are ridiculous in many cases and perfect fodder for the press. But they amount to chicken-feed compared with the billions spent on Britain’s bloated military expenditure and massive investment in the machinery of an Orwellian police state.

It would be an interesting exercise to scrutinize the expenses claims of 600+ executives in any large modern corporate for comparison. How about the expenses claims of News Corp executives, for example? Can we see them? How about expenses claims by members of the so-called ‘Intelligence Services’? Who’s watching out for rorts there? (Answer: that’s an ‘Official Secret’)

Whistle-blower Craig Murray: His campaign in the forthcoming Norwich North by-election has been invisible to BBC viewers

Of course, people expect higher standards from elected politicians, who are paid taxpayers’ money and expected to act in the public interest. On the same basis, how about a trawl through the BBC’s executives expenses claims? After all, they’re paid taxpayers’ money too – and expected to act in the public interest.

July 2009: record death toll for invading troops in an eight year war... who's counting Afghan casualties?

And the end of the fight is a tombstone white
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear:
“A fool lies here
Who tried to hustle the East”

- Excerpt from ‘Songs from Books‘
Joseph Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

Even though he’s a bumbling, arrogant, ridiculous humbug of a man, steering his political party towards doom and his nation to financial and moral perdition, Gordon Brown remains in power… just.

Brown is politically weak – and he gets by one long week at a time. Amazing really, that the British Labour caucus puts up with it.

Naively, one might think it’s even more amazing Brown isn’t the butt of a sustained mass media campaign to bring him down. Media magnate Rupert Murdoch for one knows very well how to do that. He did it to the Whitlam Government in Australia in the 1970s. In Britain, he vilified Labor in the late 1970s and 1980s – then dumped on the Tories in 1996 (once Labour was back in safe ‘New’ hands).

Gordon Brown: Hanging onto the keys to No 10 for now, courtesy of his puppetmasters

So why hasn’t this chronically unpopular Prime Minister already been run to ground, with the assistance of a media pack smelling blood?

Gordon must be doing something right. Presumably, he’s continuing to sell out British civil liberties and national interests at a faster rate than his opponents could be expected to match?

Tory Leader David Cameron has been groomed to say the right things about Israel and the current spate of Zionist-inspired wars – and most of the right things about civil liberties – so a relief team is waiting in the wings. But there’s nothing quite so useful as a deeply compromised Prime Minister who’s also politically on the nose. In the ‘Westminster system’. they are the easiest PMs of all to manipulate, for obvious reasons.

The Israeli Tourist Board is keen to get more Britons to visit the SLASOUPT (Shitty Little Apartheid State on Usurped Palestinian Territory).

It’s latest advertisement carries the rather modest slogan: “Few countries pack so much variety into such a small space as Israel!”

Fancy bird-watching in the Golan Heights? How about a fishing holiday in Gaza? Don't miss the all-inclusive tours of checkpoints and Palestinian refugee camps!

Users of the London Underground have been treated to these delightful ads in the form of large wall posters (presumably secure beneath the watchful eyes of CCTV cameras, strategically located to discourage paint-bomb attacks?)

But the advertisements may may not be up for long. Britain’s Advertising Standards Authority received a torrent of complaints and has upheld the principal  concern: the ad includes a map which, to put it bluntly, wipes Palestine completely off the map!

The boundaries of Gaza and the West Bank are marked, but with lines so delicate they’re almost invisible.The ad is therefore in breach of the Committee of Advertising Practice Code 7.1 , which comes under the quaintly old-fashioned heading of ‘Truthfulness”: “No marketing communication should mislead, or be likely to mislead, by inaccuracy, ambiguity, exaggeration, omission or otherwise.”

According to the BBC report Advert Implied Gaza in Israel:

Advertising Standards Authority: promotes honour among thieves