Ex Ambassador Craig Murray: Sunday Times Edward Snowden story is a smear
Friday 19th June 2015
BCfm’s weekly Politics Show presented by Tony Gosling
At five – discussing the big stories in Bristol, Britain and around the world
After six – straight talking and investigative reports with Martin Summers
Listen live http://www.bcfmradio.com/player
Apologies – BCfm website ‘listen again’ facility has had faults. Any probs? mp3s should be on alternative links below by about 8:30pm on tx date
First hour: News review: Green councillors in Bristol; Rolls Royce; Filton – lack of infrastructure for new housing; empty office blocks; British manufacturing – trade unions; wealth creators – workers not bankers – Libor court trials; Iceland; Greece leaving Euro; RBS – Rothschilds buying shares; Mayor Ferguson disappointed after councillor Mark Bradshaw speaks out against leasehold sale of Avonmouth docks; Bristol Post slavishly supports Mayor Ferguson’s re-election. Transport systems – Metrobus, public vs private transport; PMQs Hilary Benn asks about Syrian refugees – former French foreign minister Roland Dumas and British secret services supporting armed uprising in Syria, destabilisation of Middle East, free movement and free market; less people out of work – low wages, fiddling figures, low productivity; Council to cap number of Hackney cabs in Bristol – people using cabs much less, hackney cabs from North Somerset, Taunton, Wiltshire, Newport and Cardiff plying for trade in Bristol citizens income, living wage, rental caps; Snowden – story that Russia and China deciphered leaked documents and this put lives of British agents at risk – clip from CNN, Craig Murray discusses why the Sunday Times story is a lie, other side of story in mainstream media missing, Snoopers Charter.
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Second hour: Investigative reports: Chris Coates, author of ‘Utopia Britannica’, and one of the starters of a co-housing project in Lancashire Co-housing, discusses his co-housing project and co-housing generally: price of building a two/three bedroom house about £60k – but average London rents now reached £18k/year or £1,500/month. So four years of rent of the average London home will build you a new house. Squatting, renewable energies – particularly hydro energy. PMQs – the need for more social housing – housing benefit paid to private landlords up £1.5bn – homelessness, right to buy, less people registered to vote, housing bubble, how much it costs to build a house; after crash in 1930s large council estates built afterwards. Becontree in Dagenham is generally considered to be the largest council estate (population over 100,000; the largest public housing development in the world), with Wythenshawe in Greater Manchester the second largest. Utopias – fear of potential revolution so workers given gardens to stop them going to political meetings, garden cities and co-operative servant share. Chilcot Inquiry delay – South African nuclear weapons and Tories; capitalism – oligarchy not democracy; North/ South divide in Britain? – the con peddled about austerity and the economy; prospect of the poor keeps Cartier boss up at night – social warfare, propaganda and war in the media.
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To Martin Summers:
I once listened to capitalist american economist Robert L. Heilbroner on the cbc(Canadian Broadcasting Company) radio in what is called the annual(?) Massey Lectures back in the mid 1990’s. If memory serves, He said something like Capitalism is quite problematic on the International scale. He agreed that capitalism was best on the national level. From Wikipedia a quote from Heilbroner : “….preferred capitalist model was the highly redistributionist welfare states of Scandinavia; he stated that his model society was “a slightly idealized Sweden.”[4]
However, again a quote and non quotes from Wikipedia, Robert L. Heilbroner makes a ham fisted statement after the dissolution of the USSR:
” ‘ Though an outspoken socialist for nearly his entire career, Heilbroner famously wrote in a 1989 New Yorker article prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union:
[Heilbroner says] Less than 75 years after it officially began, the contest between capitalism and socialism is over: capitalism has won…Capitalism organizes the material affairs of humankind more satisfactorily than socialism.[3]
He further wrote in Dissent in 1992 that “capitalism has been as unmistakable a success as socialism has been a failure”[3] and complimented Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, and Ludwig von Mises on their insistence of the free market’s superiority. He emphasized that “democratic liberties have not yet appeared, except fleetingly, in any nation that has declared itself to be fundamentally anticapitalist.’ ”
A. what is meant by anti-capitalist in Heilbroners terminology?
B.Is it true “democratic liberties” have not yet appeared in any anti capitalist nation?
C.Aren’t there various forms of socialism other than the Soviet Model? And of course aren’t their varied forms of capitalist states other than the USA model(indeed like the one of Sweden in the mid to late 20th century)?
D)What proof is there that “Capitalism organizes the material affairs of humankind more satisfactorily than socialism”
would be grateful for your comments on these questions and others you think are related
dahszil
male
usa