Wheelbarrow 3

Maeterlinck

"In some strange way we devalue things as soon as we give utterance to them. We believe we have dived tt the uttermost depths of the abyss, and yet when we reurn to the surface the drop of water on our pallid finger-tips no longer resembles the sea from which it came. We think we have discovered a hoard of wonderful treasure-trove, yet when we emerge again into the light of day we see that all we have brought back with us is false stones and chips of glass. But for all this, the treasure goes on glimmering in the darkness, unchanged."

Maeterlinck: the epigraph to Young Torless by Robert Musil

Asymmetry

Amongst the newspaper revelations of the truly vast quantities of personal communications that are hoovered up electronically by the US National Security Agency and by our very own GCHQ at Cheltenham (neighbours of the Ladies' College and no slouch at these things) comes, almost predictably, first the official assurance that our GCHQ "scrupulously" observes the law and secondly the unofficial insider's assurance that the "analysts" are not actually sitting down with a cup of tea and a biscuit to listen in on your two-hour conversation with your granny. No, this monument of electronic data is sifted by computers for tell-tale signs of suspect terrorists or serious criminals who are about to blow up your granny, rob her of her life savings and radicalise her pussycat.

Nevertheless the stuff is there, cosily within the security service's reach and any individual in the future who for any reason became the object of the state's ssupicion or dislike could find themselves hideously exposed.

Elsewhere in the same newspaper is the revelation of the fact that yet another long-term police insider mole, who penetrated an environmental protest group, in this case Greenpeace London, in between fathering a few children in his relationships with female activists, had a major role in writing the pamphlet for which McDonald's spent years and millions in the famous McLibel case prosecuting the two other authors and therby trashing their own reputation.

One remembers other instances where police or perhaps security surveillance has been focussed on apparently harmless individuals (never mind that they were also innocent ones) in the most doggedly persistent and trivialising manner. It would seem that the characteristics of the Stasi are the natural tendency when the state begins to spy on its own citizens. Why should it be any different when it is done with computers rather than hidden microphones and binoculars?

Meanwhile, in this topsy-turvy world, we hear that the arch spy has filed espionage charges against Edward Snowden.

Postscript - information gathering:

Peter Francis, a former undercover police officer turned whistleblower, said his superiors wanted him to find "dirt" that could be used against members of the Lawrence family, in the period shortly after Lawrence's racist murder in April 1993.

He also said senior officers deliberately chose to withhold his role spying on the Lawrence campaign from Sir William Macpherson, who headed a public inquiry to examine the police investigation into the death.

Francis said he had come under "huge and constant pressure" from superiors to "hunt for disinformation" that might be used to undermine those arguing for a better investigation into the murder. He posed as an anti-racist activist in the mid-1990s in his search for intelligence.

"I had to get any information on what was happening in the Stephen Lawrence campaign," Francis said. "They wanted the campaign to stop. It was felt it was going to turn into an elephant.

"Throughout my deployment there was almost constant pressure on me personally to find out anything I could that would discredit these campaigns."

Postscript 2:

Beyond the detail of the operation of the programme, there is a larger, long-term anxiety, clearly expressed by the UK source: "If there was the wrong political change, it could be very dangerous. All you need is to have the wrong government in place. It is capable of abuse because there is no independent scrutiny."

Pro bono publico

"But talking to a wide range of activists from both the poor and rich worlds since ONE published its article last week, I have heard the same complaint again and again: that Bono and others like him have seized the political space which might otherwise have been occupied by the Africans about whom they are talking. Because Bono is seen by world leaders as the representative of the poor, the poor are not invited to speak."

World domination in Watford

What newspaper do participants in the Bilderberg conference favour?

Terrorist, terrorism, terror, security

“The collection is broad in scope, because more narrow collection would limit our ability to protect the nation from terrorist threats to the United States, as it may assist counter terrorism personnel to discover whether known or suspected terrorists have been in contact with other persons who may be engaged in terrorist activities.”

Jame Clapper, United States Director of National Security

The great Shout

Margaret is staying at Shottesbrooke Hall now, in this grey November, when The Wedge has suddenly  come into my possession.

I note that when I first set down my Story, I speculated that there may have been more than one Beginning to it. I suggested indeed Five Beginnings. For I understood then that no life begins only when it begins, but has many additional inceptions, and each of these determines the course of what is to come.

And now I see with equal clarity that a man's life may have more than one Ending. But alas, the endings I may have earned present themselves to me, each and every one, in a sombre light. If there are five, as there were Five Beginnings, then these must surely be they.

An Ending through loneliness...

An Ending through Poverty...

An Ending through Poisoning...

An Ending from Suicide...

An Ending through Meaninglessness. This, I think, is the prospective ending that most dismays me. Despite a most almighty Struggle with God and my Vocation, endeavouring always (as once exhorted by the King) to discover my own Usefullness and Purpose, I arrive very frequently at the suspicion that my life is a trifling thing, ill-lived, full of Misjudgement, Indulgence and Sloth, leading me only deeper and deeper into an abyss of Confusion and Emptiness, in which I no loner recall why I am alive. And a man who has lost this particular recall must surely be destined soon to Ultimate Oblivion.

Today, Margaret is returning to Bidnold.

...

He managed to lift himself up a little. But when he looked up at me his gaze was all bewildered, and then, on a sudden, as I had him sitting up, he gave a great Shout, which sounded almost like a clap of laughter. And there was such a wild and vibrant Echo to the Shout that I seemed to hear it carried out of my window into the air and fly westwards along the river, past the boats crowded at Southwark Steps, past the commerce milling at Black Friars' past the gates of the Temple, and sounding on and on and on above the water, until at Whitehall it faded and was heard no more.

And he was gone in that instant of the Shout. It was his last sound on earth.

I closed his eyes and laid my head next to his, and held him to me and wept. The steam from the boiling Coppers shrouded us and made all the air around us white.

I could ardently have wished that he had not passed away so sprawled as he was upon a heap of dirty Laundry, but there I could do nothing. The World is as it chooses to be and he was one who knew it well.

from Merivel: a Man of his Time by Rose Tremain, chapter 2 and epilogue