Here’s your daily dose of propaganda, kids: Dangerous and depraved: paedophiles unite with terrorists online. This is one of the worst examples of Rupert Murdoch’s ‘journalism’ I’ve seen - I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Yes, two of the best excuses for the erosion of civil liberties are now apparently colluding online to ‘exchange operational secrets’. It’s now even been discovered (by an unnamed and unbiased ‘anti-terror source’) that terrorists and paedophiles are psychologically similar. They’re both ‘obsessive’, ‘paranoid’ (surely they should be paranoid?) and - this is the best one - they spend a lot of time ‘going to the mosque or going off to internet cafés’. That’s an actual quote, I’m afraid.

Never trust an ‘anti-terror source’ with your psychological well-being.

Not only are the terrorists and paedophiles in league with one another, apparently they’re often one and the same. The article proudly declares that ‘The link might have remained unknown but for the case of a Muslim preacher from the East End of London [Abdul Makim Khalisadar]’. Right. Except that they then admit that Khalisadar was never convicted of anything relating to terrorism or paedophilia. (He was a convicted rapist though, so hey, they’re all the same right?) All through the article ‘terror suspects’ are treated as if equatable with convicted terrorists.

We then get the incredible claim that terrorists actually communicate through child porn. Yes, Al-Qaeda have decided to encode pornographic images of children, possibly the most illegal, graphic and conspicuous medium thinkable, with secret messages as a mode of ‘clandestine communication’. I’m not making this up (although I suspect the Times is).

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Alright, so in the papers this morning - the Home Office fancies granting extra powers and privileges to private security staff and council wardens, including dog wardens, housing wardens, football stewards, traffic wardens, bin men, security staff and shopping center staff.

So, what powers will they get? Speaking generally, they’ll be dealing with ‘anti-social behaviour’ when police involvement could be seen as excessive’.

• Ability to issue fines
• The right to obtain personal details
• The right to confiscate alcohol and cigarrettes from those who are either underage, or drinking / smoking in a public place.

It is perhaps a little telling that ‘The Wright Stuff‘ is covering this story (and most papers, infact) from an angle of cheap policing. i.e. Our government is cutting corners - again! They want us to do all the work - again! Why can’t we just have more policemen?

So what’s wrong with this idea? Saves taxpayer money and cuts crime… it’s a win/win situation. Right?

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Diego Garcia is a tropical island in the Indian Ocean. These days, it is known as a ‘British Overseas Territory’, though before this it was less euphemistically called a colony. The island has been under British control for over 200 years, having being conceded by France at the end of the Napoleonic Wars. French-owned slaves from West Africa first inhabited the island in the 18th century, developing their own idiosyncratic language and culture, and calling themselves the Ilois (‘islanders’).

But, only a few decades ago, the islanders’ way of life came to an end, following a clandestine political agreement which still influences events today.

In the early 1960s, American officials decided they needed a military base (‘communications facility’) in this strategically important area. Originally they had planned on using the uninhabited Aldabra Atoll, but environmental groups successfully lobbied for the protection of the rare tortoises living there. Plan B was Diego Garcia, which they intended to lease from Harold Wilson’s Labour government as part of a joint military venture.

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Yesterday - Friday, August 22nd - a coaliton airstrike took place in the Herat province of Afghanistan. That is what we do know. And then the fun guessing game begins. You see, once again depending on who you ask, something wildly different actually happened.

Afghanistan’s Interior Ministry is claiming that 76 civilians were killed when the airstrike took place yesterday afternoon (19 women, 7 men, 50 children). Conversely, US forces claim that they took out roughly 25-30 terrorists and Taliban members that had been planning to attack US bases. It’s good to see them really going for this pre-emptive strike thing, isn’t it? (Remember when they did that and managed to wipe out everybody at an entire wedding reception?). Yeah, fighting the good fight for freedom. But I digress - the military is also claiming that the strike occurred in the early hours of the morning and that there were no further attacks that day. Oh yeah, and there were no civilian casualties. Reuters must be full of bullshit, right?

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Today I stumbled across several news stories which sound more like science fiction than fact. (Now there’s an interesting subject - why do we keep fulfilling sci-fi prophecies?) Anyway, onwards with the dystopian scaremongering….

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A study of US governmental data, published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association, suggests that even ‘low-level’ arsenic exposure is a high risk factor in Type-2 diabetes. A median arsenic concentration of 7.1 micrograms per litre was found in the urine of 788 American adults. This adds to past evidence that arsenic is a potent carcinogen (as if we needed convincing that arsenic might not be good for you). The current World Health Organisation and EPA safety standard for arsenic concentration in water is 10 ppb (parts per billion), although the current Bush administration originally attempted to delay the EPA regulations from coming into effect.

Why is there arsenic in the water you might ask? Well, it does occur naturally in groundwater, and if not efficiently removed, it’ll stay there. It is however also an industrial waste product of coal burning and copper smelting. So, there’s a point of political activism, eh? Maybe developed nations should be able to have drinking water free from poison?

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Hat tip: JBalzer.

Now there has always been a minority of people who retain suspicion of the BBC and the organisation’s claim to impartiality. Being an institution essentially entirely reliant on the British government, the potential vested interests there were often cited as a reason for establishing commercial television in the 1950s. What a barrel of laughs and shining paragon of virtue that idea turned out to be. But the link between BBC content and governmental influence rarely seems to be explicitly stated. I’ve no doubt that some of you must have heard the general echoes that the BBC is a government propaganda instrument - however, it is often anecdotal. And so here is my modest attempt to connect the dots, a little bit.

So is there more to the concept of the BBC and the security services in collusion with one another? Does the BBC feel a conflict of interests; their duty to the public on one hand, their duty to uphold the image of our country and government on the other?

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Hello readers,

Would you like a way to easily determine your self-worth based on an over-generalised questionnaire with only two possible outcomes? Would you also like some not so subtle pro-intellectual property propaganda in the mix? Well look no further, our ever publicly minded government has disemminated helpful pseudo postmodern ads and even a flashy website.

As an aside, if I was involved in E4’s creative team - I’d be pissed. But hey, maybe they used the same agency.

This story struck me as slightly odd since the first coverage came in. For those who are unfamiliar with it, Todd was found dead in Snowdonia (by a path leading to the summit of Mount Snowdon) on March 11th.

One fact which has received very little media coverage, is that last year Todd ‘led an investigation into charges that Britain cooperated with secret CIA flights to transport terrorism suspects without formal proceedings’, that is ‘extraordinary rendition’. That snippet came from the Associated Press’ first release. Todd’s investigation concluded that there was no evidence to support that claim. However, in February 2008, only a few weeks before Todd’s death, the British and American governments admitted that two extraordinary rendition flights had refuelled on British territory, on the island of Diego Garcia. You might think then, that Todd’s investigation would be topical news, given the timing, at least sufficiently so for a brief mention of it in the news coverage of his death - especially since it was the headline bit of information from the AP newswire.

But no, we get this from the BBC , this from ITV , and so on. The BBC one in particular is interesting in that it gives a detailed chronology of almost the whole of Todd’s career, without mentioning the investigation. All we have are these intriguing paragraphs:

In 2006 he became the vice-chairman of the Association of Chief Police Officers, the politically powerful group of senior officers that help set policy across constabularies.

His interests in the body included counter-terrorism and media policy. Greater Manchester became the first area outside of London to launch a dedicated counter-terrorism unit with Mr Todd calling for close co-operation with MI5.

Counter-terrorism and media policy, with close co-operation with MI5? Well, that’s not relevant to the investigation then, eh?

Now, I’ll leave the CIA/MI5 thing there as clearly I have no idea whatsoever of the facts, and so it’s irresponsible to speculate…

But speculate the media did. The very next day, the BBC reported that his death may have been suicide. To me, this didn’t seem like news, I had countenanced the possibility myself - there’s only so many ways he could have died. Of particular interest was the line:

He is believed to have killed himself and sources said letters addressed to his family have been found.

Now, this isn’t Fox News, this is the BBC we’re talking about here. Is this the state of journalism these days? Sorry but, who believes that? The post-mortem wasn’t even finished at this point; the inquiry hadn’t started. Who are your sources? Where were the letters found? Not wanting to go all conspiratorial here but letters can be faked/planted, can we at least wait until there’s been some sort of judicial procedure before confirming the validity of these supposed suicide notes? Or the ‘worrying texts’ that the BBC claim to have been informed of? The Mirror went further and reported that suicide notes were actually found on Todd’s body. Bear in mind that Greater Manchester police have said no notes to his family have been found anywhere. (see bottom of article)

So, if there’s any of the Mirror’s target demographic reading this… you know… they’re making shit up. And well, I don’t know what to think about the BBC sometimes.

The next big wave of stories were basically defamatory, implying Todd had killed himself because of personal problems. These personal problems included an alleged affair with a co-worker. The Mirror cites unnamed sources who call Todd ‘a bit of a womaniser’ and claims he had a ’string of affairs’. Another unnamed source in the Mirror article claims Todd was ‘reeking of gin’ - not just defamation but wilfully misleading, since Todd was only 25mg over the legal driving limit - he’d had the equivalent of 2 and a half pints of beer.

And as all this is happening bear in mind that Todd is survived by a grieving widow and three children.

So how could the media compensate for all this speaking ill of the dead? Why not romanticise his tragic downfall?! Yeah! Todd was as a ‘family man’, a ‘copper’s copper’, ‘destined for the top’, but then he was found on ’storm-lashed slopes’ / ‘a wind-swept peak’ (actual quotes). It becomes kind of blatant when your tabloid papers actually start speaking in the language of 19th century Romantic poets, replete with imagery of tormented, starcrossed, solitary figures meeting their fate on dark forbidding mountains.

And this comes so soon after a moral panic in the media social networking sites like Bebo are romanticising suicide. But hey I guess its okay to criticise young Welsh people, grieving for their friends on the last free medium.

We need to be holding the media responsible for this sort of thing.

With widespread fear of US troops lashing out at civilians and an increased annual death toll in comparison to Saddam’s rule, it’s easy to see why the president simply has to soldier onwards. The gains they’ve made are very fragile. The terrorists could win at any moment.

George Bush marked the 5th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq by US-led troops with a speech at the Pentagon. As the world is now gearing up for the presidential election this year, it is clear that the republican agenda on Iraq is of sustained occupation. Reuters: Bearing Witness is an excellent commemorative resource which happens to feature an interesting chart documenting how oil revenues have sky-rocketed since the invasion. And there is absolutely no relationship between that and the administration’s foreign policy, obviously.

Aside from that, there is some simply stunning photography which really has the ability to bring home how civilian men, women and children have been ‘neutralised’ in the name of democracy. I would also like to applaud the decision to feature (somewhat muted, but nonetheless present) representations of dead and dying Western forces and journalists. That’s something you can’t get from Fox News. Please, before branding me a terrorist for that statement, you should know two things: firstly, I am Welsh… and secondly, a woman.

In all seriousness I believe the only way for both our countries to wake up to the reality of the ‘war on terror’ is to screen uncomfortable footage like this. To stop shunning soldier’s footage uploaded to YouTube in favour of an interview with the stars of Dancing On Ice. How unfortunate that everybody seems to be looking to O’Reilly and GMTV instead right now.