We’re staying about 500 yards from the MI6 HQ and the body of an intelligence officer has just been found stuffed into a large bag outside his apartment, five minutes away. Rumours are, of course, flying around like bullets in a bad spy movie but there is certainly something strange about the whole episode. We shall see. Private Eye usually has the best information about this sort of thing and I was at their lunch yesterday. Nothing is known yet. I’ll be having dinner with Sir Martin Gilbert in a few days and he may have some insights.
On a very different issue, tea with friend Walter Hooper next week. Walter is a dear man who was CS Lewis’s secretary and confidante in 1962. Always a joy to spend time with him in his lovely Oxford home and to chat about what he’s up to, the great Lewis and matters of life and faith. I’ll post some photos and write more when I return.
Yukon is angry because he has no idea how to respond to this.
Michael Coren said: “… but there is certainly something strange about the whole episode.”
You think?
Sounds like you’ve gone rogue and are playing out some fantasy that you’re an investigative journalist.
CS Lewis, the English author, is dead – Michael must have been at a seance.
Yeah, that would have been a relevant point had he claimed to have been talking to Lewis and not Walter Hooper, Lewis’ former secretary.
Read again CropDuster.
I was hoping this entry was going to reveal that CS Lewis was actually a UK spy! Maybe if you read the Chronicles of Narnia while listening to a Pink Floyd album it would reveal the sites of Soviet warheads. Oh well…
Folks – do NOT bother responding to the CropDuster, the troll, who most likely is Yukon, The Great White North, etc.
As you can see, CropDuster does not even bother to read, let alone comprehend, Micheal’s posts.
Officially my position is that the officer in question had gambling debts. I mean he was homosexual and his lover killed him. I mean he committed suicide. I mean home invasion. I mean aliens killed him. Honestly, Coren, do you really think you’ll get the straight poop on this guys’ death. British Intelligence couldn’t get the time of day right. And even if they did guess it , they would not say. Call in Clouseau.
Please get back to Canada, Mr. Coren. A lot has been happening in the demented dominion the past week or so, and I need your trenchant commentary to put it all in perspective. Our friend, Tarek Fatah, had some interesting things to say about it in a short interveiw on CBC(!), but I’d really prefer watching the more luxuriant treatment given to issues on your show.
Hehe… maybe Yukon was the guy who sent that letter to Tim Denis about Michael (at the end of Friday’s show). It definitely had that “flavour”.
@CropDuster: Tarek Fatah has never said or done anything to make me disbelieve what he says; and, indeed, quite the opposite.
mattby,
Englighten us, we, where CTS doesn’t air, wouldn’t know what happened on last Friday’s show. The CTS website is two weeks behind schedule. It shouldn’t be but it is. The Production Manager, Mr. Maskell, told me by email CTS had hired Dorie to solve the problem. Part of her job is to post aired shows in a timely manner. She doesn’t. I guess CTS is still too short staffed.
-SMC
Way to try and get someone fired! You remind me of this professor I once had who would write to restaurants and ask them why their signs didn’t have apostrophes.
“Dear Hot Peppers, I am a Professor of English literature. If the sign outside your place of business is trying to communicate that your establishment is own by a person named Hot Pepper, you have failed! The possessive is conveyed with an apostrophe before the S. Please fix this mistake and mail me a coupon for a free cheeseburger as compensation for my grammatical diligence.”
It never occurred to the poor man that the restaurant’s name might not have been indicating possession at all but rather been advertising the abundance of Hot Peppers readily available to customers.
Anyway, before I’m accused of digressing from the point of this article, let me direct things back to the murder of Gareth Williams (the name of the young man who was found near MI6 HQ.) As I see it, there’s no sense in cluttering this page with speculation as so few facts are available to us. What might be a more fruitful point of discussion is how the whole affair relates to the notion of the so-called surveillance state.
A recent article by Charlotte Gill and Emily Andrews in The Daily Mail, reveals that Williams was affiliated with the Echelon intelligence gathering system and was working on monitoring internet phone calls and Skype communications. The article also mentions that the police are using something called “cell site analysis”, by which they trawl through records of hundreds of private phone calls made in the vicinity of the murder. They can pin point a call location within a 200 square yard area. Here’s a link to the article if anyone is interested:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1307571/Was-MI6-spy-Gareth-Williams-victim-perfect-murder.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
While most of us are willing to trade a certain degree of privacy in exchange for a safer society, I often wonder how far is too far. I was born in England and visit from time to time. In the last 20 years I have seen it transform, more and more into a veritable panoptic state. There seem to be security cameras everywhere, far more than you see in Canada and the United States. Who knows, maybe this kind of high tech surveillance will actually bring Williams killer or killers to justice, nonetheless, there is something disturbing about the, ever shrinking, circle of privacy.
Ross,
She has had the job for months now. If she can’t handle the position maybe she needs to be fired. Or, if the work load is too high for one person CTS should hire additional people. Either way, if they are not going to maintain the online video service why offer it?
Maybe they can hire me. I’m currently unemployed (how else could I have time to post so much). I lost my job when the company I worked for moved all manufacturing to China, despite the fact that third rate foreign manufacturing had already embroiled our company in a financially crippling parts recall. CTS people, if you’re paying attention, I have an English B.A and a background in writing of the technical, academic and entertainment media varieties. I’ve also worked in graphic design and office admin.
CropDuster
Tariq is a very moderate man who vocally opposes radical Islam.
Hey, anyone want to talk about the implication of a surveillance state?
I’m sure Judi Dench will get to the bottom of it.
@Cropduster – Get your head out of your ass.
CropDuster
A.) Don’t get me or anyone else here started on 9/11.
B.) All that means is people were wrong about them being moderate Muslims not there are no moderate Muslims.
C.) Do you even know who Tariq Fatah is?
Did you hear about the 3 doctors arguing about who is easiest to operate on?
The 1st doctor said Ross, when you open Ross up all the parts are numbered you just have to replace the part with the corresponding number.
The 2nd doctor said Marty, when you open him up all the parts are different colors, you don’t even have to know how to read numbers.
The 3rd doctor shook his head sagely and said Cropduster, to Cropduster there are only two parts, the mouth and the asshole, and both of those are interchangable.
9/11 happened and that’s a fact. Spin the reason all you want.
@ Padre
Shit happens so what’s your point?
Steve,
Why must you resort to the use of foul, offensive, and profane language? Does it create some sort of sick arousal?
Padre
Some folks are obviously more sensitive than others, would it have helped if I’d said “feces happens..”, would that make you sufficiently comfortable to actually express your point? I suspect you got my point inspite of the assualt my language had on your delicate sensibilities.
It’s an interesting point that my reference to a natural animal waste by-product is taken by you to be “foul, offensive, and profane” and yet in the next sentence you suggest by way of a question that it may “create some sort of sick arousal”. You have taken my use of the word “shit” as an offense and yet are completely comfortable attempting to give offence to me. You have very strange sensibilities indeed.
Michael;
You’ve been back a while … when do we see pictures and hear more about your lunch with Walter Hooper and about C.S. Lewis?