Masopher’s Mind

Britons Jailed for Leaking Bush, Blair Memo on Iraq (Update1)

By James Lumley and Megan Murphy

May 10 (Bloomberg) — Two British men received prison
sentences for leaking a secret memo about a 2004 meeting between
U.S. President George Bush and U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair
about the war in Iraq.

David Keogh, 50, a former government communications officer,
was given a six-month prison term today by Justice Richard Aikens
at London’s Central Criminal Court, known as the Old Bailey. Leo
O’Connor, a former political researcher, was sentenced to three
months. The pair must serve half their sentences, the judge said.

Prosecutors claimed the two men put troops’ lives at risk by
attempting to leak the memo, which recorded “highly sensitive”
strategic discussions between Bush, Blair and other officials at
an Aug. 16, 2004, meeting in Washington. Justice Aikens said that
if the memo had been released, it could have endangered “U.K.
citizens, both civilian and military, at home and abroad.”

“You decided you did not like what you saw, and without
consulting anybody you thought it was in the best interests of the
U.K. that this letter should be disclosed,” the judge told Keogh.

As well as serving time in jail, Keogh must pay 5,000 pounds
($9,940) of the prosecution’s 35,000 pound in costs, the judge
said. He also risks losing his civil service pension.

The men were found guilty yesterday of breaching Britain’s
Official Secrets Act after a three-week jury trial. They faced a
maximum of two years in jail.

Private Hearings

Large segments of the trial were conducted in private, to
preserve the confidentiality of the memo.

Keogh admitted intercepting the letter while working alone at
the government’s “Pindar” communications center. Rex Tedd QC,
his lawyer, claimed his client felt its contents were “utterly
wrong” and wanted to cause embarrassment for Bush by pushing it
into the hands of figures such as 2004 Democratic presidential
nominee John Kerry.

Instead, O’Connor slipped the document into the papers of his
boss, former Labour Member of Parliament Anthony Clarke, who
alerted authorities.

Prosecutors said the document was drafted at a crucial
juncture in the Iraqi conflict, just two months before coalition
forces relinquished governing authority in Iraq.

Both men claim that its disclosure wouldn’t have increased
the risks for coalition troops, who were already facing backlash
in Iraq. The Abu Ghraib prison scandal, involving the abuse of
detainees by U.S. military police at a Baghdad correctional
facility, also first broke into the news in April 2004.

I told you before that I won’t read the newspaper. I lied because I do. What newspaper do newspaper writers read? I hope that they read better quality newspapers than the toilet paper we have to assault our eyes with. Let me add quickly that some newspapers are particularly well written and undoubtedly teach a whole lot. The education I glean from a newspaper is not the articles however but writing and logical thinking styles. I also read because as a middle-to-lower class ethnic I cannot, yet, do better. And news media do try to teach the society a lot so they do have their use. However all education is essentially propaganda and hence my contention. Media is inherently a liberal propaganda tool. The British media and most media to lesser degrees do one thing really well. Cause trouble for politicians. No matter who is in power, they will catch a heap from the media. These entertainment types feel great joy in influencing people’s opinion, building up and breaking down powerful people to prove in their smug little minds that they are more powerful than the powerful. Despite the flagrance displayed, the media and theatre is a cowardly set. They hide behind newsprint, press freedoms, masks and the pretext of exaggerated action and word to make a statement and lead the society. Politicians on the other hand need to face the society daily with a mere handful of sycophants to support them. The media by and large create opinion. What ever the editors and their backers want us to believe all they need to do is print it and eventually people will believe it. In media studies it shows that video and radio media toe the line for printed media. I can imagine how smug television film and radio are to think that they are probably the only ones who can read and are able to transcribe the same junk that comes off the printed media onto the screen with some graphic and a Barbie doll or sagacious looking actor to present it.

You pass a newsstand with several newspapers. Spare the time and you could read the same few news stories time and time again with various takes but essentially the same opinion. The world must be truly a small place if every reporter and pundit can find no more news than the amount touted in any one of these newspapers. Surely Britney Spears’ hair-do or an athlete’s contract or relationship cannot be the extent of the eventualities in this diverse and multi-cultured world? This wide dimensional universe? What is the point of having a dozen publications preaching the exact same thing? Perhaps it is to hammer the propaganda drivel and agendas into our poor little working class brains? After you repeat a lie a dozen times with different perspectives one must only assume that the lie is the truth. LET’S NOT FORGET: LARGE PRINT MUST BE MORE RELEVANT TO YOUR LIFE THAN SMALL PRINT. If several people who went to school to spot newsworthy stories and give objective recounts say that this story is worth 10 to 15 minutes of my day, then who am I, a mere reader, to disagree? Baaaaaaa!

With the news it is too easy to stray from the path of my arguments so one must excuse me. While we are distracted by the news from the reality of the world the media often does the opposite and focuses on valid points. My problem is not with the focus but the lack of focus when it suits the media. The current villains; Robert Mugabe, George Bush and Gordon Brown are a quick example. Have these men become villains over night? No. they were pretty rotten apples in the first place. Where was the media when these guys were getting set up? I can tell you where, some celebrities sexuality, sex habits or sexual organ. Or maybe on the previous set of fall guys showing what a crooked set they were and how promising, clean and infallible the next set will be.

Mugabe has been an unopposed dictator for many decades in a broken down post independence country raped by multinationals with puppet governments. Now Mugabe and his cohorts do the raping and fight off the multinationals so that they can get the bigger share of the peoples wealth. Has any country done anything except empty gestures? Not overtly. Covert assassinations have probably been suggested, and more likely than not support has probably been given to both him and his opponents. After all, the world is a better place with niggers killing each other. And that’s a fact. When niggers are busy killing each other there will be fewer of them left to fight in case a race war starts. Niggers buy weapons to kill one another, that’s good for the arms dealers. Niggers fill prisons which would be otherwise empty. Without niggers, the welfare system wouldn’t have anyone to blame for being in a shambles. There would be no underclass to do the shitty jobs. Also Niggers are adept at selling and selling out other niggers. Well that’s what they teach in school by the way. And of course niggers killing niggers sells newspapers, that’s the reason we are here.

If there ever was a more niggardly president it would be George Herbert Walker Bush. Never mind Clinton, if Clinton was considered black, he was an upright bourgeois type, Bush Jr was a nigger. Ignorant, deceitful and great for the economy in all the ways previously stated. If GW was born in the darkest heart of the Congo and raised by the real life equivalent of 50 Cent and Lil Kim he could not be any more of a nigger . But I am not here today to write about that (though it demands more attention). George Bush for all his flaws is above all a scapegoat. Never mind that the American people unanimously wrote him and his masters a blank check and continue to allow him to pervert and controvert hundreds of years of law and society. Never mind that every rational mind outside of the cronies on Pennsylvania Ave, Canberra and Downing Street called for caution. Never mind that nowadays everyone seems to have something bad to say. George Bush is in power because the American people and press allowed him to be. He is the perfect excuse. Relax everyone, I know we messed up, killed millions and threw the world economy out of whack for the rest of this carbon based era but it was Georges fault! Yep….All Georges fault. George Bush didn’t become George Bush overnight. He is the same man he was pretty much before he got elected. The only difference now is….. Americans elected him. “Oh thousands went to war died and we all allowed it to happen because one man”? “The other two arms of government were useless and all the guns, media houses and constitutional methods failed”? Give me a well deserved break. Next they will be telling me that a secretive society manipulated the entire 300 million Americans to follow the will of a man who couldn’t run an oil company in Texas….Oh wait…..

Poor Gordon Brown: The ugly step sister who could have gone to the ball but allowed Cinderella Blair to sweep the Labor party into the longest term ever. Now that Blair has been used and cast off by the labor party, scapegoat-ed for his role in Iraq, Brown is looking even worse. In their gentleman’s agreement all those years ago, Brown and Blair agreed that the former would sip the dregs of the latter’s cup of premiership. What better way to become Prime Minister than to get it off some one else’s hard won effort and charisma? For all of Blair’s great work, the fickle eye of the media has focused on the flaws, and Gordon Brown can expect the same fare. He must be a masochist of the highest degree to want to be the man than lost the labor party run in power and inherited the scandal financial and military debacles that this premiership is known for. After the party and media is through with him I doubt even the clerks at the World Bank (where he may well end up after his stint) will want to sit at his lunch table.

But I’ve spent too much time on these gents. I’ve spent so much time on these media created villains, these disposable puppets that real villains have used the opportunity to give the society the slip once again. Every day that passes and the headlines spew the same bile at us is another day that the people who horde real information get to use that information to make themselves better than us. What we see in the newspaper is old information about stuff that has been planned and executed long before we can do anything about it. News is the scraps that we chew on happily and proudly regurgitate on others to show what intelligent little mongrels we are. We read the words of people who get paid by the same companies they should report on. We read the words of people who like all others have an agenda and enjoy the illusions of control. We read the words of people who are just as lazy, gullible and narrow minded as we are. The only difference is that we believe what they say, even if they don’t believe what they say. An atheist wonders why some believe in a book. But yet they pick up newspapers and watch media with even less credible sources and swallow the junk wholesale. I don’t read the newspaper, I usually head straight for the funnies.