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On this Page: [latest WWIII news] - [WWIII news links]
A counterfeit world order - starting in
the cradle of civilisation, Iraq
Do please take the time to look
through the evidence compiled by the
9/11 truth movement.
Democratic institutions and rights, particularly
in the UK & US, are under sustained
covert attack.
War is terrorism with a bigger budget
You could be endangering your family and loved ones by not having read this book - 911 Synthetic Terror, Made in USA by Webster Griffin Tarpley
'And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet' Matthew 24:6
Between the lines - what the mainstream
press isn't telling us
http://www.rense.com/general45/drk.htm
Most recent additions
12Nov06 - Mail on Sunday
- OUTRAGE AT LONDON STING BY U.S. SPIES
by Alf Mendes
It would seem that the US Administration is finally approaching its point-of-no-return in the Near/Mid-East region, due, in no small measure, to the arrogant stupidity of its global strategy in the region which has resulted in chaos in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
For decades there has been a close politico/economic relationship with Saudi Arabia, best exemplified by: (a) the setting up of the joint Arabian American Oil Company which was given exclusive rights to mine, produce and export oil from the eastern part of the country, free of Saudi taxes and duties; (b) In 1943, President Franklin Roosevelt made Saudi Arabia eligible for Lend-Lease assistance by declaring the defense of Saudi Arabia of vital interest to the U.S, and in 1945, King Abdel Aziz and President Roosevelt cemented the tacit oil-for-security relationship when they met aboard the USS Quincy in the Suez Canal - an agreement later formalized in 1951.
Now, today, America finds Saudi Arabia deeply alarmed at the chaotic situation in Iraq - the main reason for the latter’s concern being that it shares a border with Iraq - a country now, in effect, under the control of Shiite Muslims, thus posing a serious threat to the Sunnis of Saudi Arabia, with its monarchical, puritanical Wahhalabites.
As evidence of this concern - as revealed by the managing director of the Saudi National Securiy Assessment Project (NSAP), Nawaf Obaid, in the Washington Post in November ‘06:
(a) a month before the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Saudi foreign minister had warned President Bush that he would be “solving one problem and creating five more” if he removed Saddam Hussein by force;
(b) two months before he quit his job as Saudi Ambassador to the US in December ‘06, Prince Turki al-Faisal had, in a speech, said “since America came into Iraq uninvited, it should not leave Iraq uninvited”. Nawaf adding “If it does, one of the first consequences will be massive Saudi intervention to stop Iranian-backed Shiite militias from butchering Iraqi Sunnis”;
(c) “Major Saudi tribal confederations, which have extremely close historical and communal ties with their counterparts in Iraq, are demanding action. They are supported by a new generation of Saudi royals in strategic government positions who are eager to see the kingdom play a more muscular role in the region”.
(d) “Finally, Abdullah may decide to strangle Iranian funding of the militias through oil policy. If Saudi Arabia boosted production and cut the price of oil in half, the kingdom could still finance its current spending. But it would be devastating to Iran, which is facing economic difficulties even with today's high prices”. (This would pose an intriguing question: “What would be ARAMCO’S reaction to this?”).
With reference to (b) in the paragraph above, Nawaf - with a touch of irony - could have added that Prince Turki al-Faisal had been head of the Saudi intelligence services at the time his government had been allied with America in supporting the mujahadeen/taliban during the latters’ struggle against the USSR in Afghanistan.
As reported by the CNN on December 13th ‘06: at Vice-President Dick Cheney’s trip to saudi Arabia in November 25th ‘06 (his fourth such trip), King Abdullah had warned him that, in the event of the US pulling out of Iraq, Saudi Arabia would back the Sunnis in that country, and, referring to the recent US Iraq Study Group’s call for further talks with Iran and Syria, he “voiced strong opposition” to such ‘talks’.
On the 19th December ‘06, Parliament - and the Brtish public - were somewhat puzzled by Tony Blair’s decision, via the Attorney General, to stop the 3-year-old Security Fraud Office (SFO) investigation into allegations of corruption/bribery between the BAE and the Saudi government - covering the past 20 years. As reported by the Independent on Sunday (IOS) of 17th december ‘06: BAE had claimed that in the previous month “..the Saudi government had halted the commercial talks over the 10 billion-pound Eurofighter deal because of anger over the SFO inquiry”.
In view of the foregoing subject matter of this article, it would seem that Blair’s timing was , at the very least, intriguing. And keeping in mind his subordinate role vis-a-vis Bush (who, as revealed above now finds himself in yet another impasse - this time with the Saudis), then surely the only rational explanation for Blair’s decision to close down the SFO’s investigation is that he was told to ‘lay-off the Saudis at this critical US/Saudi impasse.
(Author’s poscript: as author of my article “The Gulf War” [written in the aftermath of the US invasion of Iraq in 1991] I made the following prediction: “Nevertheless, if this means that, as the custodians of such omnipotent weapons, the Americans may now be perceived as unchallengeable on the conventional battlefield, then the angry resentment and frustration of the Arab fellaheen - exacerbated by the Gulf War - will both enhance the isolation of their Sheikhs and Emirs, and foment Khomeini-like revolts against those same Sheikhs and Emirs”. Today, I await, with trepidation, the materialisation of my prediction...)
Nicola Smith, Brussels and Michael Woodhead, Frankfurt
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0%2C%2C2089-2496216%2C00.html
10th December 2006
GERMANY’S European commissioner, Günter Verheugen, faced calls to resign this weekend after photographs showing him naked on a beach with his chief of staff were obtained by a magazine.
The 62-year-old commissioner had already become embroiled in accusations of favouritism and a conflict of interest after he appointed Petra Erler, 48, to her £94,000-a-year job amid reports of a close friendship. He has denied that they are having an affair.
Jose Manuel Barroso, the commission president, defended Verheugen but insiders suggested that behind-the-scenes pressure was mounting for both him and Erler to go.
While accusations of favouritism were denounced by Verheugen, one of Barroso’s vice-presidents and the commissioner for enterprise and industry, as “pure slander”, photographs of the pair holding hands during a two-week seaside holiday in Lithuania last summer have already been splashed across the German press.
Last week Brussels and Berlin joined forces in an attempt to dampen down the publicity, fearful that it would overshadow Germany’s presidency of the European Union, which starts in the new year. But the heat seems certain to intensify if Focus magazine publishes the pictures, which were taken on a nudist beach in August.
Last week Verheugen and Erler were insisting they had done nothing wrong. Ensconced in her commission office late on Friday night, Erler said in a shaky voice: “I’m sure you understand that this is an entirely private matter.”
However, the photographs were shown to a number of German MEPs last week and several of them demanded Verheugen’s resignation.
Focus, whose lawyers were debating whether publishing the photographs would breach Germany’s strict privacy laws, has up to six pictures of the couple naked on a beach. One is said to be of them in the water and another shows them lying in a hollow in the sand. Verheugen is said to be wearing nothing but a white baseball cap.
He was reported yesterday to have instructed a Hamburg lawyer to ensure that the photographs would not be published, citing “invasion of privacy”.
Markus Ferber, a senior member of the parliament’s budget committee, said: “Mr Verheugen says there is nothing between him and the chief of his cabinet. The naked photographs make it clear that that isn’t correct. To protect the reputation of his office he should accept the consequences and resign.”
Verheugen has repeatedly insisted there is no sexual relationship with Erler. “Can’t two adults do as they wish in their private lives?” he reportedly asked.
At the family home in Brühl, south of Bonn, his wife Gabriele remained outwardly unperturbed. “This is old hat,” she said when confronted with the details of the Lithuania trip. “I knew that my husband had this holiday.”
Rumours about Verheugen and Erler began to circulate earlier this year when they were apparently spotted holding hands while wandering through expensive shops on the exclusive Avenue Louise in Brussels, and on another occasion arm in arm holding flowers at a local weekend market.
Journalists began to ask questions after Verheugen appointed Erler, who was already on his staff and likes to dress in black with silver jewellery, to head his office in April. Her salary increased from £6,000 to £7,800 a month.
She also began to act as his gatekeeper. “If you want to get Verheugen to do something, you first have to have Erler on board. He eats out of her hand. Resisting her is pointless,” said an official.
Verheugen first met Erler, a single mother with a daughter, on the political and social circuit in Brandenburg in the late 1990s.
She had already earned a formidable reputation as a high-flyer while state secretary for Europe in the first and only elected East German government. The position brought her into contact with Angela Merkel, the future German chancellor, who was then working as a government press officer.
In 1999, Erler was invited to join Verheugen’s staff and she became one of his most trusted aides. Sources close to Verheugen say it seemed only logical for him to appoint someone who had his complete confidence. “He’s been a little bit naive really,” said the source.
During their Lithuanian holiday, Verheugen and Erler gave an interview to the country’s largest newspaper, Lietuvos Rytas.
“We have had breakfast together and then went to cafes and bars,” Verheugen told the paper. He insisted the trip was perfectly innocent, calling it a “joint meeting during vacation time”.
Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the German foreign minister, sprang to the embattled commissioner’s defence. “There is hardly anyone who knows the EU better than Verheugen, and as a heavyweight in Brussels with us taking over the presidency he is indispensable,” he said.
Merkel has also backed him. Her spokesman said: “The German government shares the European commission’s view . . . that the private life of commissioner Verheugen should be respected.”
If Verheugen were to heed calls for his resignation, it would create a headache for Berlin, with tensions likely in the governing “grand coalition” since the social democrats of the SPD and the conservatives of the CDU would argue over the appointment of a successor.
By Christopher Leake - Mail On Sunday - 12th November 2006
HOME AFFAIRS EDITOR
UNDERCOVER American agents are staging secret 'sting' operations in Britain against criminal and terrorist suspects they want to extradite to the US.
In a recent operation, agents from Amer-ica's Department of Homeland Security set up a suspect by posing as dealers wanting to illegally sell night-vision goggles for export to Iran.
The spies arranged a series of clandestine meetings in London hotels, which they secretly filmed as evidence. It is thought to be the first time American agents have been caught using such sting tactics in Britain.
Last night urgent questions were being asked about whether the British Government had been aware of the operation. If so, it raises issues of the State collaborating with foreign agencies to entrap suspects - and if not it raises the spectre of American spies working unchecked on British soil.
Human rights campaigners demanded an explanation from Home Secretary John Reid and Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett.
The case has provoked a huge row because the agents used tactics banned in Britain. In addition, the offence of which he is accused would not be a crime in this country. If British police officers had employed this type of sting, the ensuing case would almost certainly be thrown out of court.
In July 2003, ten defendants, accused of laundering £15 million, walked free from Southwark Crown Court after Judge George Bathurst-Norman described police actions as 'massively illegal'. The judge said a police sting aimed at trapping them had 'overstepped the line between legitimate crime detection and unacceptable crime creation'.
Following the US spy sting an Iranian-born businessman - named by Whitehall officials last night as former Iranian ambassador to Jordan Nosratollah Tajik - now faces extradition to America.
Mr Tajik, who has lived with his family in Britain for several years, is accused of conspiring to sell military equipment to Islamic extremists. He was arrested on the Americans' behalf by British police officers before the alleged deal went ahead and detained in prison for a week.
The sting operation also raises new questions about Britain's one-sided extradition arrangements with the United States, under which British citizens can be sent across the Atlantic for trial with ease. It is much harder for British authorities to extradite American citizens to the UK.
During the operation, the under-cover American agents, who were unarmed, claimed they wanted to sell night-vision goggles, said to be worth £50,000, for export to Iran, in breach of US export controls.
Mr Tajik, who is 52 and was recently in hospital with a serious illness, has since been released on substantial bail and has reported daily to a police station near his Durham home. He is an honorary fellow of Durham University's Institute for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies and has an engi-neering degree from the Univer-sity of Westminster.
Mr Tajik is now due to appear at an extradition hearing at City of Westminster magistrates court on December 4. The Mail on Sunday understands Mr Tajik's legal team will claim he has no terrorist connections or criminal record and that the Amer-ican agents acted illegally as 'agents provocateurs' by trapping him.
Sources close to Mr Tajik say he feels he is being made a scapegoat for America's opposition to Iran, and the case could widen the rift between America and Iran because of Mr Tajik's former diplo-matic role.
According to a witness at a House of Representatives inquiry into state-sponsored terrorism in Iran in February last year, Mr Tajik was one of several Iranian diplomats recruiting Palestinians to establish terrorist cells.
Matthew Levitt, director of ter-rorism studies at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said: 'Iran actively recruits Palestinians for terrorist training in its camps.'
He added: 'Iran arranged for free travel, medical treatment and terrorist training for Palestinians [who had been wounded in the violence in the Middle East] who then returned to the Palestinian ter-ritories to establish terrorist cells. Among those involved in the recruitment drive were... Iranian ambassador to Jordan Nosratollah Tajik.'
Iran, along with Syria, is also the main sponsor of Hezbollah.
It is not known whether the sting operation is connected to a British investigation launched in August after Israel accused Britain of indi-rectly supplying Hezbollah terror-ists with military night-vision equipment that helped them target Israeli soldiers in Lebanon.
The batch of 250 systems, each stamped 'Made in Britain', was dis-covered by Israeli troops in Hezbol-lah command bunkers in southern Lebanon. Israel demanded to know whether the night -vision gear was part of a batch sold by Britain to Iran in 2003 for use against drug smugglers.
The sting comes just days after it was revealed that Home Office Ministers signed away crucial British extradition rights with America without holding a single meeting with their US counter-parts. The Government last month defeated attempts to block further 'fast-track' extraditions despite a rebellion by backbench Labour MPs. .
Critics of the 2003 treaty claim that the burden of proof now required makes it too easy for US authorities to demand that British subjects stand trial in America, as demonstrated by the recent case of the NatWest Three.
British bankers Gary Mulgrew, David Bermingham and Giles Derby fought a long-running but unsuccessful battle to avoid extra-dition on fraud charges related to the collapse of energy giant Enron. They were extradited in July, and were not allowed to return to the UK despite being granted bail. Their trial will be held in Houston, Texas, next year.
Shami Chakrabarti, director of the human rights group Liberty, said last night: 'We already have a one-sided extradition arrangement that allows people to be bundled off to America without so much as a by-your-Ieave. Now we have US agents operating in Britain entrap-ping people into criminality in the first place.
'The Home Secretary and the Foreign Secretary must tell us the nature of these agents' operations in Britain.'
Liberal Democrat Home Affairs spokesman Nick Clegg said last night: 'The case of rendition flights to transport American prisoners for interrogation in other countries raised concerns about the degree to which the American security services run operations on British soil without the full knowledge of the British Government.
'Everyone wants the British and American security services to co-operate well, but we don't want a situation in which American author-ities can act on British soil with complete impunity and without regard for British, domestic law.'
The Metropolitan Police refused to comment on the case. A spokesman said: 'We do not discuss our inves-tigative techniques, but we do noth-ing that is illegal and we work to Home Office guidelines.'
A Home Office spokeswoman said: 'We are aware that this man is wanted by the US Government on charges of alleged arms sales. The matter is before the courts, so we cannot comment.'
Litvinenko, now a British citizen, co-authored a book in 2002 entitled Blowing up Russia: Terror from Within, in which he alleged Federal Security Service (FSB) agents coordinated apartment block bombings in Russia that killed more than 300 people in 1999. Officials blamed the bombings on Chechen rebels.
Litvinenko in very serious condition, remains in intensive care
11/23/2006
The hospital treating him said "he is heavily sedated and on a ventilator because overnight he went into a heart failure." The BBC reported three unexplained "objects of dense matter" had been found in his stomach.
Former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, poisoned in London three weeks ago, has suffered a sudden turn for the worse and is now seriously ill, the hospital treating him said on Thursday.
"There has been a major deterioration in Mr Litvinenko's condition overnight. He is now in a very serious condition and remains in intensive care," London's University College Hospital said.
The 41-year-old critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin says he fell ill after meeting two Russians at a hotel. He had been investigating the killing of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, also a vocal critic of Putin, who was gunned down at her Moscow flat on Oct 7.
Litvinenko's friends accuse the Kremlin of orchestrating a plot to poison him, but Russia has dismissed the allegation as "nonsense".
Alexander Goldfarb, a friend of the London-based former agent, told the BBC that Litvinenko was on life support. "He is heavily sedated and he is on a ventilator because overnight he went into a heart failure ... although the doctor who spoke to his wife and to me said his heart is not damaged. It is beating normally," he said.
The BBC reported that three unexplained "objects of dense matter" -- one of which had seemingly ruptured -- had been found in Litvinenko's stomach.
Goldfarb said an X-ray that had been taken had revealed what he called "shadows", but that they were not being treated as threatening or suspicious.
"The doctor who has seen these X-rays says these are three shadows -- he didn't characterise these as foreign objects or a rupture or something that he has swallowed. "They don't know their origin and they are not concerned at all about this from a medical standpoint," Goldfarb said.
Litvinenko has lost all his hair and is suffering major organ failure. The toxicologist treating him has said the poison may have been laced with a radioactive substance to render it more lethal.
Litvinenko, now a British citizen, co-authored a book in 2002 entitled Blowing up Russia: Terror from Within, in which he alleged Federal Security Service (FSB) agents coordinated apartment block bombings in Russia that killed more than 300 people in 1999. Officials blamed the bombings on Chechen rebels.
Nov 23, 2006 - http://www.sana.org/eng/22/2006/11/23/88350.htm
BEIRUT, (SANA) - Lebanese Minister of Industry Pierre Gemayel who was assassinated the day before is paid tribute today in central Beirut . the funeral ceremony was made at St George Cathedral where Patriarch Nassrallah Sfeir conducted the rites.
Meanwhile, the Egyptian newspaper al-Ahram underlined today that fingers are pointed to the Israeli Mossad in the case of assassinating Pierre Gemayel, noting "there is an intention to divide and bring to account with victories and heroism of the national Lebanese resistance."
In an article, the newspaper said " The Mossad itself has executed hundred of criminal acts in similar circumstances on the Lebanese soil and everywhere it was caught red handed with dirty actions ."
It added and here we are with a new dirty operation that could not be executed in that way and at this time but by the Mossad, its agents and supporters of defeated and callers for normalization as well as Israel's widows.
Another Egyptian newspaper al-Akhbar, said that Israel has planned for the assassination of Pierre Gemayel because it does not want to forget its defeat in Lebanon but wants to make an interior war in revenge against the Lebanese, noting that pointing fingers will not be stopped as long as the Lebanese security and judiciary have no evidence and no one is tried for involvement in the series of assassinations.
In Tehran, the Iranian Foreign Minister Manoushaher Muttaki condemned assassination of Pierre Gemayel saying enemy's of Lebanon and his unity and solidarity are those behind the assassination.
In a joint press conference with his Malaysian counterpart, Muttaki hoped to solve and settle pending issues in Lebanon on the basis of wisdom and dialogue with the aim of establishing the unity and national solidarity.
By Philip Thornton, Economics Correspondent
Published: 20 November 2006
http://news.independent.co.uk/business/news/article1998906.ece
Europe's failure to produce proper accounts is an "annual embarrassment", the Treasury minister Ed Balls is to say today, in a harsh verdict on the Commission's bean-counters.
The Economic Secretary to the Treasury is condemning the failure of the EU's accounts to gain approval from its own auditors for the 12th year in a row. He is to tell MPs today that Britain will take the lead in reforming the management of the EU Budget.
His tough language will be seen as a sign that Mr Balls, who is seen as Gordon Brown's right-hand man, is prepared to reinforce the Chancellor's reputation for delivering harsh messages to fellow EU finance ministers.
Mr Balls flies to Brussels tomorrow for the debate in the Belgian capital between finance ministers over the 2007 EU Budget.
Today, he is to tell the annual conference of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales that the failure to get the European Court of Auditors to sign off the EU's accounts is a disappointment. "Europe must do better to end this annual embarrassment," he will say.
At the same time he will deliver a written statement to MPs, pledging the Government to provide Parliament with an annual statement on all EU Budget spending within the UK and ask the National Audit Office to audit it.
At tomorrow's meeting, Mr Balls will urge other EU member states to follow this model. The Treasury said the proposal had already won support from the Netherlands and Denmark. The move is likely to be backed by the Commission, the European Parliament and the Court of Auditors.
Mr Balls will say: "All member states must accept their responsibilities to work together to achieve the clean bill of health for the EU's accounts that taxpayers deserve."
Four-fifths of EU spending is jointly managed between the Commission and member states, meaning countries have the power to ensure money is well spent within their borders, in particular by strengthening their management of agricultural and structural funds, and their controls against fraud. The European Commission in London was unavailable to comment.
Meanwhile, the ICAEW published its business confidence monitor, showing the first fall for five quarters. It said it was the first sign the latest rise in interest base rates to 5.0 per cent had had an impact on the economy.
Business confidence among companies employing fewer than 10 people hit its lowest level recorded since the survey began three years ago. Confidence in micro businesses, historically the most buoyant of business sizes and accounting for 95 per cent of UK businesses, fell to an index score of zero this quarter.
This mid-term US election has resulted in President G.W Bush appointing Robert Michael Gates as Defense Secretary to replace Donald Rumsfeld. (Whether or not the Senate authorises this appointment is of no pertinence to this article). A brief resume of Gates role on the US political scene is therefore called for:
While attaining his Master’s degree in history at Indiana University (1966), he was recruited to join the CIA - and after doing his 2-year stint in the US Air Force, he became a full-time CIA Intelligence Analyst, and, as such was assigned to the National Security Staff, serving there from 1974 to 1979. Returning to the CIA in late 1979, he was subsequently named the Director of the DCI/DDCI Executive Staff in 1981, Deputy Director for Intelligence in 1982, and Deputy Director of Central Intelligence from April 18, 1986, to March 20, 1989.
In early 1987 Gates had been nominated to become the Director of Central Intelligence, but withdrew after it became clear that the Senate would reject the nomination because of controversy about his role in the Iran-Contra affair. Understandably, Gates was close to many figures who played significant roles in the Iran-Contra Affair and being in a position to have known of their activities, was therefore called in late December 1986, to testify before the Independent Counsel Lawrence E. Walsh, who had been appointed to carry out an investigation into this matter. This investigation received an additional impetus in May 1991, when President George H.W. Bush nominated Gates to be Director of Central Intelligence (DCI), as a result of which the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) requested in a letter to the Independent Counsel on May 15, 1991, any information that would “significantly bear on the fitness” of Gates for the CIA post. This investigation resulted in a minutely detailed report completed by September 3, 1991 which concluded, in its chapter 16 - and in typical double-speak legalese: “Independent Counsel found insufficient evidence to warrant charging Robert Gates with a crime for his role in the Iran/contra affair. Like those of many other Iran/contra figures, the statements of Gates often seemed scripted and less than candid. Nevertheless, given the complex nature of the activities and Gates's apparent lack of direct participation, a jury could find the evidence left a reasonable doubt that Gates either obstructed official inquiries or that his two demonstrably incorrect statements were deliberate lies”. After reading this report, this author can only add that Gates was prone at times to suffer a convenient ‘loss-of-memory’. (An intriguing postscript to this: At the time the Independent Counsel reached this decision, the possibility remained that Clair E. George, the CIA's former deputy director for operations, could have provided information warranting reconsideration of Gates's status in the investigation. George refused to cooperate with Independent Counsel and was indicted on September 19, 1991. George subpoenaed Gates to testify as a defense witness at George's first trial in the summer of 1992, but Gates was never called - and he was subsequently pardoned by President Bush).
As revealed by Pierre Salinger in his book “Secret Dossier”, in late 1989, the Director of the Kuwaiti State Security Department, Brigadier al-Fahd, had had a secret week-long meeting in Langley, Virginia, with the US Director of the CIA, William Webster. In his own words: “We agreed with the American side that it was important to take advantage of the deteriorating situation in Iraq in order to put pressure on that country’s government to delineate our common border. The CIA gave us its view of appropriate means of pressure, saying that broad co-operation should be initiated between us, on condition that such activities are co-ordinated at a high level”. On the other hand, as noted by Kenneth Timmerman in his book “The Death Lobby”, a delegation of US Senators visited Saddam Hussein at Mosul on April 12 1990 to try and persuade the latter not to jeopardise the “foundations of a sound business relationship”between the two countries. Saddam’s reply was merely to threaten Israel if it attacked Iraq. When Dennis Kloske of the US commerce Department learnt of this, he suggested that the US impose new controls on licences for exports to Iraq at an interagency meeting. This was criticized by Robert Gates and ruled out by Robert Kimmitt (under-secretary of state for political affairs). “If the United States didn’t sell high technology products to Iraq, then France, Britain and Germany would”. Saddam had, in effect, been given the ‘go-ahead’.
In view of the fact that Webster was Gates predecessor as DCI, it is therefore obvious that the latter was well aware of the meeting between Webster and al-Fahd (noted above). The only conclusion to be drawn from this is that the US had effectively manipulated the circumstances surrounding the Iraq\Kuwait confrontation - thus ensuring the inevitability of the invasion that followed in August 1990.
In his book “The Silent Conspiracy” (p. 421), Stephen Dorril reported that “The CIA launched Operation Maseraagh (‘laundry’) which flooded Iraq with forged dinars to undermine the economy” (with a little help from Britain), adding that “At the beginning of 1992, CIA Director Robert Gates travelled round the Middle East states to drum up support for renewed covert action”.
As a prelude to what follows, it is necessary to recall that, in the ‘80’s, U.S. military assistance to Iraq during the latter’s war against Iran resulted in an unwelcome controversy in America, known as ‘Iraqgate”. And In 1995, the American company Teledyne Industries Inc.was accused of having shipped explosive zirconium pellets to Chilean manufacturer Carlos Cardoen, who then fashioned them into cluster bombs used by Iraq in said war. Howard Teicher, a former national security official under Ronald Reagan, came forward with a startling affidavit in the Teledyne case. He asserted that the secret arming of Iraq had been ordered by President Reagan in June 1982 as part of a National Security Decision Directive. Under it, CIA Director William Casey and his then-deputy, Robert Gates, "authorized, approved and assisted" delivery of cluster bombs to Iraq through Cardoen. With Clinton now president, instead of welcoming the new evidence, the administration attacked the credibility of Teicher's affidavit and ordered it sealed as a national security secret. Federal prosecutors then convinced the Teledyne case judge to block Teicher's testimony on the grounds that it was irrelevant - and Clinton promptly had the Teicher affidavit sealed as a "state secret"! (Another intriguing postscript: As reported by Seymour Hersh in his book, “The Samson Option” [footnote p.260]: Ben- Manashe, of the Israeli Defense Force, “..also accused Robert M. Gates...of direct involvement, despite Israeli protests, in the sale of arms, including chemical weapons, to Iraq from 1986 to1989”. He had obviously been one of the whistleblowers exposing Teledyne).
The foregoing clearly exemplifies the fact that the US Administration is prepared to use whatever means are necessary to attain their ultimate goal of economic/political domination on a global scale - ‘double-speak’ was now the ‘order of the day’. And the fact that both Republican and Democrat Presidents share the same aim - and use of the same manipulative tactics to achieve this aim - merely reveals that their allegiance is primarily to the US Corporate Establishment, that epitome of capitalism, rather than to its electorate. This is understandable, in view of the fact that, for decades now, presidential elections were bought by the Corporate Establishment, and, since the mid-sixties, augmented by the introduction of manipulated electronic vote-rigging systems - which culminated in Dubya Bush’s Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of October 2002. (A misnomer of an Act if there ever was one!). No US government can now reasonably claim to be a democracy. Indeed, It is capitalism with strong overtones of fascism.
At this point it is pertinent to the subject of this article to note that one Robert Michael Gates for some years served on the board of directors of a company, Votehere, which, in their own words “... is a pioneer in developing secure e-voting technology that simplifies the election process...It is the leading worldwide supplier of secure Internet voting technology”. And they are not kidding - the USA has ensured that vote-rigging methods are now widespread.
In conclusion, it can justifiably be assumed that by appointing Gates to replace Rumsfeld, Bush Jnr. is thus assuring his corporate controllers that there will be little change of strategy during this administration.
The immediate future looks bleak for the earthlings on this planet Earth!
Daily Mail - 14th November 2006
Security has been stepped up around police investigating the cash for honours allegations.
Special measures have been brought in to protect detectives and the incident room involved in the inquiry, the Evening Standard - the Mail's sister paper - has learned.
The extra security is believed to include additional CCTV cameras and alarms.
Security is understood to be particularly tight surrounding the Scotland Yard offices of temporary Assistant Commissioner John Yates, who is leading the investigation.
His team of hand-picked detectives and investigators are working from an incident-room in a secret location in central London. Sources say it was standard practice to review the security surrounding potentially vulnerable offices which may contain sensitive information.
One source said: "This is one of the most difficult and sensitive inquiries the Yard has ever undertaken. It could topple a government, so people have had to think of every contingency."
Tensions surrounding the inquiry are rising as it moves steadily closer to the heart of the Government and the Prime Minister himself.
Questions surrounding the security of police investigations into sensitive issues were first raised during the Lord Stevens inquiry into collusion between the security forces and paramilitaries in Northern Ireland.
The former Met chief 's HQ - supposedly one of the most secure buildings in the province - were burned down while offices in another supposedly secure location were burgled and highly sensitive documents were stolen.
While police emphasise there has been no evidence of any dirty tricks surrounding Mr Yates's investigation, Scotland Yard confirmed security at the premises involved in the cash for peerages investigation had been reviewed but refused to comment further.
Members of Tony Blair's inner circle - including director of government relations Ruth Turner and, reportedly, chief-of-staff Jonathan Powell - have already been quizzed.
Last week it emerged that virtually all ministers who served in the Cabinet in the run-up to last year's general election had been contacted by Scotland Yard.
Detectives are now preparing to interview the Prime Minister in person in the coming weeks. Asked yesterday whether Mr Blair had been contacted over the affair, a Downing Street spokesman said there had been "no change".
At the weekend senior Downing Street figures are reported to have accused the police of deliberately setting out to prove that Mr Blair and other No10 officials were corrupt.
They are also said to be angry at the way the inquiry is being run and claim that the police are leaking information to the media. The alleged remarks prompted fears that the inquiry was being targeted by a smear campaign orchestrated by Labour and Downing Street.
However, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott yesterday declared himself satisfied with the police's conduct.
The investigation was sparked by claims this year that wealthy Labour backers were being rewarded with seats in the House of Lords in return for providing secret loans.
The scope of the inquiry was then widened to cover similar claims about the Conservatives.
Three people - including Labour's unofficial fundraising chief Lord Levy - have been arrested since April, with many others questioned.
Scotland Yard sources say officers on the Operation Ribble investigation team are as determined as ever to establish the truth.
Mr Yates, 47, is one of the Yard's most experienced detectives and colleagues say he won't be intimidated from pursuing his investigation.
One said: "He will follow the evidence trail, go where the evidence takes him."
The former public school-educated history graduate is considered to be the Met's most experienced troubleshooter and is no stranger to taking on difficult assignments. He led the illfated inquiry into the Princess of Wales butler inquiry which collapsed at the Old Bailey in 2002 after an 11th hour intervention by the Queen. After that case Mr Yates was fiercely criticised and friends say the experience made him doubly determined to ensure that the cash for honours investigation was fair and thorough. The investigating team has also refused to speak about the inquiry and Mr Yates has declined all requests for interviews.
The investigation has recently been widened to look into possible accounting irregularities involving millions of pounds of Labour party loans.
Police are examining claims that officials tried to hide as much as £12 million in party loans in the approach to last year's election.
However Mr Blair's role in the honours process is still considered to be at the heart of the inquiry.
He is said to have been one of only two Cabinet ministers who knew about the secret Labour loans. The only other minister with prior knowledge of the £5 million worth of loans from businessmen is claimed to have been former party chairman Ian McCartney.
Labour claims it has committed no wrongdoing in securing more than £5 million of secret loans from a clutch of businessmen to fund its 2005 campaign.
But investigators want to know whether the deals were used to circumvent a 2000 Act of Parliament requiring all donations of more than £5,000 to be made public.
The Government has since changed the rules to ensure all loans are also fully declared.
Attorney General Lord Goldsmith today revealed that he had not received a letter from the police investigating the affair asking him for an interview. Lord Goldsmith also insisted he would not shy from any decision on whether prosecutions should be brought as a result of the inquiry.
Other Cabinet members - including Gordon Brown, John Prescott and Jack Straw - have been sent letters asking them to set out what they know about the loans.
Daily Mail, Wednesday, November 1, 2006
By Sean Poulter
Consumer Affairs Correspondent
SIX out of ten Britons are tired of the rat race and considering ditching their material ambitions for a better quality of life.
The dream that inspired the Seventies sitcom The Good Life has endured for decades. But never has it been so popular.
Sixty-one per cent of working adults are reassessing their priorities and thinking about a 'lifeshift' which would give them stress-free jobs and more time with their loved ones.
Three years ago, the proportion was only 53 per cent.
The findings come in a survey by the Prudential, which reveals that those most likely to be seeking a change are aged 35 to 44, with children, in well paid jobs and with a home.
Alongside that, both partners will be working, probably long hours, and they are likely to be living under the tyranny of a hefty mortgage.
Dropping out of the fast lane was once considered something of a sur-render to the stress that is so often the price of material success.
But the study suggests the pursuit of emotional balance is now consid-ered a positive and worthy aspiration.
The Prudential found that 17 million Britons would happily give up money and material wealth for a better lifestyle, whether it be to get away from city life, find a more fulfilling career, or build a new life abroad.
At the same time, 38 per cent would be happy to take a lower paid job in return for more leisure hours without making a geographical move.
______________________________
Better quality state education
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
The research found that a good work/life balance is the most impor-tant aspect of any job for a quarter of the nation. A third of workers said money was not their key motivator. Forty per cent would consider moving abroad, while a third would relo-cate to cheaper areas of the UK. .
Gary Shaughnessy, of the Prudential, said: 'The country cottage and move abroad are two things people normally associate with retirement.
'But this is increasingly becoming an aspiration for the younger genera-tions. Whereas in the past ditching the rat race for a less stressful exis-tence could be seen as a sign that you couldn't hack the pace, the "life-shifters" are showing us that, for many people, a balanced lifestyle is what really counts towards being fulfilled.'
Spiralling house prices, particularly in London and the South, have opened the door to life shifting for millions.
It has become possible to sell a home in the South and use the equity to buy a property outright in another part of the country or overseas.
Once the mortgage is gone, workers can afford to take a job paying much less than they are used to.
Another motivation is the search for a better quality state education.
The highest number of lifeshifters are in Greater London, where the fig-ure is 71 per cent.
In the North East, a desire to spend more time with the family was the biggest factor. People in the North West and in Scotland were appar-ently happiest with their current lifestyles.
spoulter-at-dailymail.co.uk
by Alf Mendes - 03Nov06 - bilderberg.org
It is an indisputable fact that the collapse of the USSR in 1991 was the most significant post-WW 2 event on the world scene (as the Americans would be the first to admit) - leading, as it did, inevitably, to the cataclysmic scenario facing us today. It is thus essential to examine this said event in greater detail if we are to reach a clearer understanding of the matter - always keeping in mind that it was but one more step in the stand-off between the capitalist West and the communist USSR - and that its border with that unstable nation, Afghanistan, would, understandably, play a crucial role in subsequent events - given the fact that the Soviet Republics in that region were of Muslim orientation. This was exacerbated by the following events preceding the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979: (a) In Afghanistan, Mohammed Daoud ousted his brother-in-law, King Zahir Shah, in 1973; (b) In 1978, Mir Akbar Parcham, leader of the communist-orientated Parcham Party (of Afghanistan), was murdered & Daoud ordered the arrest of other leading figures of the Parcham Party - which resulted in the Parcham Party taking over the government in a coup. Daoud was killed. [1]
As revealed by Zbigniew Brzezinski: “on July 3, 1979, unknown to the American public and Congress, President Jimmy Carter secretly authorized $500 million to create an international terrorist movement that would spread Islamic fundamentalism in Central Asia and ‘de-stabilise’ the Soviet Union. The CIA called this ‘Operation Cyclone’ and in the following years poured $4 billion into setting up Islamic training schools in Pakistan (Taliban means ‘student’). Young zealots were sent to the CIA's spy training camp in Virginia, where future members of al-Qaeda were taught ‘sabotage skills’ - terrorism... In Pakistan, they were directed by British MI6 officers and trained by the SAS”. [2]
Five months later, and well-aware of Ops. Cyclone, in December ‘79, the USSR invaded Afghanistan, and after a long and devastating war with guerrilla opposition forces (the mujahideen) the last of the Soviet troops left Afghanistan in February1989, their economy and rubles in tatters. America’s role in destabilising the USSR (as noted above) therefore calls for closer scrutiny, and from the vantage point of hindsight, the fact that in the aftermath of the collapse of the USSR the American oil companies (with others) quickly bought their way into the vast reserves of Russian oil and gas is surely proof enough that this was one of the crucial aims of America’s strategy. [3]
This ‘destabilisation’ was implemented, primarily, by money-laundering - an illegal method used by political, military, intelligence, business, drug cartels, and the Sicilian Mafia - better known as ‘Black Ops.’. Two Americans, Leo Emil Wanta, and the notorious Marc (Reich) Rich, were the main players in this - but it must not be forgotten that the Medellin Cartel and the Sicilian Mafia also played a crucial role in this money-laundering scam.
Leo Emil Wanta had worked at the White House, the National Security Council, the Central Intelligence Agency and six other government agencies during his career (which lasted from 1963 until his arrest in 1993), holding numerous jobs: in the DEA, the CIA, and Department of Defense - many of a secretive nature. And as for the Soviet Union - in a publicised interview he had stated that, during Reagan’s administration, and working under Bill Casey’s Special Operations Branch, Black Ops. (see above) “he had dealt with both the fusion bomb and the destabilisation of the ruble” - in conjunction with Kok Howie Kwong of the Chinese Secret Service! [4]
As evidence of America’s enormous influence on the global political scene, Wanta was acting as Somalian ambassador to Switzerland when he was arrested by authorities there on July 7, 1993, in Geneva, held for four months, then extradited to Wisconsin to stand trial for state taxes of $14,000 owed for the years 1982 and 1988., and sentenced to 22 years in prison, for a crime which he was not guilty of. He had, in fact, paid the sum noted above twice - under protest! It later transpired that the Wisconsin revenue agent at the trial had fiddled Wantas’ state tax returns: a print out from the State in December 1995 revealed that the sum he owed was $00.15! [5]
Intriguingly, on September 21st 1996 - and while in prison - he wrote a letter to Hillary Rodham Clinton, referring to "U.S. President Bill Clinton's Short Term Notes and IMF Sale of Bullion", reminding her both of his "de-stabilization of the Soviet Union Rubles (SUR)", and how he had "prevented the Soviet & Italian Mafiosa from the Soviet Funds in favour of our U.S. Treasury & Metals Accounts in excess of US$ 150 billion" - closing his letter with the somewhat threatening statement: "Until my legal release from the un-consitutional/ false incarceration in Wisconsin--as a diplomat & non-resident--I am legally interested in the corporate placement of short-term notes & I.M.F. gold bullion/troy ounce delivery contract. Thank you for your kind assistance in this timely situation". In plain english: if he was not released, he would ‘spill the beans’. On Jan. 10, 1997, Wanta received a reply to this letter from Erskine Bowles at the White House, as a result of which, on February 1, 1997, after Bowles had checked with W.H. Agency Relations, Leo Wanta was released on $90,000 bail. His ‘threat’ had proven effective!
Here, it is important to note that at one point “Wanta had bank accounts at Metishe Bank in Moscow, Avenue Bank on the Champs-Elysee in Paris, Credito Italiano in Milan, Anker Bank in Geneva, Swiss Bank Corporation in Geneva, the Algemeine Spaar in Brussels, the Zentralsparkasse und Kommerzialbank in Vienna, Creditanstalt Bankverein in Vienna, and--the perennial favorite of money launderers--Citibank in Milan, New York, and Los Angeles”. [6] Furthermore, according to Wanta’s Los Angeles attorney, he and President George Bush Snr. had “set up the Ameritrust account in the Credit Suisse bank for the government to use in case it needed to counter terrorists from overseas”.[7]
Inasmuch as banks bear the ultimate responsibility for the movement of money - including that which is ‘laundered’. Their role in this matter will therefore be looked at more closely below.
In 1983 Marc David Rich was convicted in U.S. federal court of tax evasion, racketeering, and other charges related to Rich's oil deals with Iran during a U.S. embargo, and fled to Switzerland, where he has settled since, having gained Swiss citizenship - thus making him unextraditable to face trial in America. However, his wife lived on in America and contributed money to Clinton’s library fund and Hillary’s Senate campaign in 2000. It was therefore hardly surprising that President Clinton pardoned Marc Rich just before leaving office in January of 2001. [8]
Head of the world’s second largest commodities company in the world, Marc Rich was soon providing 5 million tons of grain to Russia, as well as becoming the largest exporter of raw materials from that country. After all, he had been operating on Soviet territory since 1983. As reported in the Russian Izvestiaya of June 5th1993: Rich collaborated with the Russian Istok, transferring 4 million tons of petroleum to Western Europe - at a profit of about half-a-billion dollars. And, by 1993, his yearly turnover on ex-Soviet territory was $3 billion - up half-a-billion dollars over the previous year.
In an article of this length, the above is understandably not a complete list of the money-laundering activities of Wanta and Rich, but confirms the role played by America in it. At this point, it is important to examine the role of the banks, as implied above. It goes without saying that they must have been perfectly well aware of the illegality involved. This is confirmed by the fact that, ‘that central bank of central banks’, the Bank for International Settlements [9], had, in December 1988, in their Statement: ‘Prevention Of Criminal Use Of The Banking System For The Purpose Of Money-Laundering’ considered the matter comprehensively. The BIS had been formed in 1930, ostensibly to deal with the problem of economically unstable post-WW 1 Germany. In fact (as revealed by historian Carroll Quigley in his book“Tragedy and Hope - a History of the World in Our Time” [Macmillan & Co. 1966]), its immediate aim was to install the Nazi Party into power in 1933 to act as a tactical foil against communist USSR - a tactic in which Hjalmar Schacht, ex-Governor of the Reichbank, and co-founder of the BIS, had played a crucial role - with not-a-little-help from the fascist-minded Bank of England Governor Montagu Norman (a fellow co-founder of the BIS)- and Corporate America.
To return to the BIS Statement mentioned above: of particular significance are the following comments made in the preamble/introduction: (section 3) noting that in some countries the national banking supervisory authorities have a specific responsibility in the suppression of money-laundering - while others do not have direct responsibility - “This reflects the role of banking supervision, the primary function of which is to maintain the overall financial stability and soundness of banks rather than to ensure that individual transactions conducted by bank customers are legitimate”; and (section 6) This “Statement is not a legal document and its implementation will depend on national practice and law.....Whatever the legal position in different countries, the Committee considers that the first and most important safeguard against money-laundering is the integrity of banks own managements”..(this authors’ emphases).
In other words: the most influential powerful banking organisation on this earth is unable to stop money-laundering. Indeed, many -if not all - of its members engage in this ‘illegal ‘ practice!
The only conclusion to be drawn from this is that this is the price we have to pay for living in a capitalist society.
[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/april/29/newsid_2970000/2970317.stm
[2] http://www.sianews.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=271&mode=&order=0&thold=0
[3] http://www.bilderberg.org/pepis03.htm “The Crux of the Matter” by Alf Mendes
[4] http://www.apfn.org/pdf/Vreeland_faxes.htm
[5] http://www.apfn.org/apfn/wanta.htm
[6] http://www.aci.net/kalliste/
[7] Ref; [4] above
[8] http://www.who2.com/marcrich.html
[9] http://www.spectrezine.org/war/Mendes4.htm http://www.spectrezine.org/Economy Society/mendes.htm
Rocket launcher ‘found at dentist’s house’
Published on 06/10/2006
http://www.nwemail.co.uk/news/viewarticle.aspx?id=420965
A RETIRED Grange dentist is accused of being part of a bomb plot after a record number of explosives were seized in a Lancashire town. David Bolais Jackson, 62, of Trent Road, Nelson, was arrested on Friday in the Lancaster area after leaving his Grange practice for the last time. Jackson was charged with being in possession of an explosive substance for an unlawful purpose.
However, it is unclear who or what the intended target might have been. Police found rocket launchers, chemicals, British National Party literature and a nuclear or biological suit at his home. The find came shortly after they had recovered 22 chemical components from the house of his alleged accomplice, Robert Cottage, a former BNP election candidate, who lives in Colne.
The haul is thought to be the largest ever found at a house in this country.
http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/article.php?article_id=9882
by Charlie Kimber
Here's a police seizure of weapons that wasn’t splashed all over the front pages. This week a British National Party election candidate has been accused of possessing the largest amount of chemical explosives of its type ever found in the country. That’s right, the largest ever - imagine if he’d been an Asian man. Home secretary John Reid would have held a special press conference and it would have led every news bulletin.
The home of another man charged with similar offences contained a rocket launcher and a nuclear biological suit as well as BNP literature and chemicals!
Robert Cottage of Talbot Street, Colne, and David Bolus Jackson of Trent Road, Nelson, made separate appearances in court charged with being in possession of an explosive substance for an unlawful purpose. Cottage was arrested at his home on Thursday of last week, while retired dentist Jackson was arrested in the Lancaster area on Friday.
The 22 chemical components recovered by police are believed to be the largest haul ever found at a house in this country. Cottage stood as a BNP candidate in the Pendle council elections in May.
Christiana Buchanan, who appeared for the prosecution in Jackson's case, alleged the pair had "some kind of masterplan".
http://www.mpacuk.org/content/view/2823/34/
http://www.ministryoftruth.org.uk/2006/10/06/
RELATED:
Far right targets NUJ members
http://www.journalism.co.uk/news/story1072.shtml
14:44 - 10 October 2006
A Lecturer at Bristol University says it is "utterly reasonable" for North Korea to carry out testing for nuclear weapons.Dr Eric Herring, right, a senior lecturer in international politics at Bristol University, blamed American foreign policy over the last 50 years for provoking North Korea into atomic testing.
The test was carried out in defiance of international warnings and was described by the White House as a "provocative act", while China denounced it as "brazen".
But Dr Herring said: "Between 1950 and 1953 the Americans killed three million people in North Korea, shooting everything that moved, and there's a lot of anger still there.
"Officially America is still at war with North Korea, which has repeatedly said that it wants security guarantees and promises that it won't be attacked again.
"If they get that, they will promise not to use atomic weapons and will freeze all nuclear testing.
"President Clinton was close to getting that but when Bush came to power he put North Korea straight on his 'axis of evil', ended all negotiations and started talking about preemptive war."
Dr Herring said it was only the "disastrous" war in Iraq which would stop an invasion of North Korea.
He said: "The cost of the war in Iraq has put America under so much pressure that it will restrain them from going to war again."
as seen at
http://www.nineeleven.co.uk/board/viewtopic.php?t=4631
and
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2006/10/352658.html
Webster Tarpley's revelations about 'Able Danger' the terrorist exercise team on 911 organised by US special forces, mean that we are beginning to identify the true planners, inside the US military, of the 911 attacks. Yet these facts are being deliberately kept from the European public by a Western media who apparently refuse to listen.
So how can those of us who understand that 'False Flag' 911 type attacks have been going on for many years' work to change that?
With the reporting of 21st Century terrorism the British press has let the public down catastrophically. It is as if Allan Francovich's three Timewatch 'Gladio' documentaries of 1992, showing far-right NATO Special Forces gunning down and blowing up hundreds of innocent European civilians, had never been made.
Through systematic bias and a criminally complicit government the BBC, which the public is legally forced to fund, has turned on us and become an accessory to the crime. Despite the wealth of evidence to the contrary, the corporation's misleading and partial coverage is that of the discredited Metropolitan Police and MI5 anonymous 'narrative' line of unproven but 'obvious' Islamic guilt. After London's most devastating attack since the blitz, Londoners are told there will be no enquiry and to: 'trust us, they're suicide bombers'.
The Corporation crossed a lethal professional line when it decided to refer to the four 7/7 suspects as 'suicide bombers'. By rubber stamping Muslim guilt here in the UK, ignoring Peter Power/Visor Consultants' parallel exercise; the Netenyahu/Scotland Yard warning and other hard facts, the corporation has taken on a leading role in an anti-Muslim pogrom. BBC actions now fly in the face of its motto carved on Broadcasting House, 'Nation Shall Speak Peace Unto Nation', as its one-sided presentation of the facts of modern terrorism assumes a NeoCon/Zionist case for a religious war against Islam and for Islamic oil.
The fact that such an extraordinary proportion of the corporation, and other mainstream media's senior staff, are Jewish begins to look less a result of 'fears of another Jewish holocaust' or 'individual merit' and more a Pro-Israeli, anti-Arab bias which has urgently to be corrected.
A professional journalistic blunder is committed with almost every new story of a 'suicide bomber'. Whether a bomb explodes accidentally, by remote control or if a 'bomber' believes he has a shipment of cocaine in his bag he's still likely to be termed a 'suicide bomber' in the news. In April 2004 Bush's Iraq chief Paul Bremer initiated the Iraqi insurgency by closing down the Al Sadr newspaper. The reason? The editor had printed a front page lead story that a 'suicide bomb' in a bus queue was, according to eyewitnesses, actually a missile fired from a helicopter. The newspaper was closed down by the US Army the next day.
The simple lie, referring to a 'suicide bomber' on the say-so of military 'contacts' with little or no evidence, is a propaganda narrative of which Josef Goebbels himself would be proud. It sends out a clear message demonising the target racial or religious group as 'insane', dangerous and impossible to reason with. Condemned with no proof, no court case the lie of the 'suicide-bomber' is not only bad journalism, it seeds genuine terrorism. When a racial or religious group, after false flag attacks, becomes demonised and targeted by racists it begins to fight back and give rise to real terrorism.
False flag or domestic state terrorism is proving a horrific but successful tool both to persuade MP's to wage war, and cow populations into accepting a stripping away of civil liberties. The horror 'serves well' to dissuade almost everyone, including police and investigative journalists from addressing the truth and pursuing the true criminals. The aversion to believing states can kill their own people means that everybody wants to believe 'official lies' but what sort of world does that leave for our children?
Horrific unprovoked massacres at Supermarkets and Railway Stations, no wonder people want to forget them. But we do so at our peril as they explain many oddities with terrorism 'spectaculars' today. 'Gladio' False Flag 'Strategy of Tension' attacks have been going on throughout Europe under the watch of NATO Intelligence's Clandestine Planning Committee (CPC) since the 1960's. It all became public with an Italian Parliamentary Enquiry in 1990 followed by one in Belgium. Make sure your local politicians, soldiers, journalists and police force are aware of Gladio, maybe by giving them a DVD copy of Allan Francovich's BBC Timewatch series.
2nd SS Panzer Korps Oberstgruppenführer Paul Hausser said after the war that NATO was "formed from the international brigades of the SS". Gladio, which was organised by NATO, is alleged by Belgian journalist Rene Haquin to be "a secret army on the model of the SS". Hundreds of innocent people have been killed in false flag terrorist attacks, particularly in Belgium and Italy, where Prime Minister Aldo Moro was kidnapped then assassinated for inviting Communists to join the Italian Government. These attacks were blamed on leftist groups such as Baader Meinhof, Red Brigades etc. which came out of the 1968 student uprisings. So be on your guard, the rogue network looks increasingly to be an 'ODESSA' organisation and there is no reason to think the 7/7 attack on London will be their last.
Be vigilant for warning signs such as drills or exercises, 'power failures' or unusual delays including unusual announcements on tube or rail station platforms or other public places. Carry recording equipment, camera and notebook with you at all times and keep contact details of all those you question. Use your right to take pictures of or film anyone who approaches or follows you and do not be afraid of arrest. If the police are either too embarrassed to admit their failures or complicit in false flag terror it is up to us ordinary people to gather evidence and find ways round them if necessary.
Much interesting information comes out in the hours immediately following a false flag attack. Set your radio cassette, computer, and DVD/VHS to record as much output as possible for later use. It is interesting to note that almost all London's Indymedia (IM) reporters were away from town covering the G8 in Gleneagles on the day of the 7/7 attacks. If you find strong evidence that points to a false flag attack, check the source then contact every newsroom you can immediately. If you found the info. on the Internet, save it immediately as a PDF file for later use as much material evidence was published on the net, noticed by the rogue network and removed after legal threats. Remind all publishers that legal threats and/or polite requests to remove 'inaccurate' articles will probably originate with the rogue network.
Choose your favoured method, writing, photography, audio or video and practice until you know you can turn up at the scene of a 'terrorist attack' able to gather evidence by talking to survivors or eyewitnesses or simply taking pictures. Familiarise yourself with how to upload files to IM and remember, if their editors tamper with or hide your material you can make a fuss about it, republish it as many times as you want on IM and there are always other places you can publish too along with the fact that it's been hidden on IM.
Keep a list of newsdesk phone numbers for your favourite news services so you can become a freelance journalist for the day. You can telephone TV news or the papers before publishing your pictures or copy free on the net but don't let them faff you about. If they do, get their name and politely ask to speak to the editor. Remember, if you come across a scoop or take a good photograph you may be able to sell an exclusive for a five-figure sum!
Centuries ago the Egyptian state mislead its people by censoring anything which showed its leaders in a bad light. Today, the battle for public opinion is much more subtle and being fought by a secret 'rogue network' of which researchers, producers and media managers are largely unaware. With tentacles in the secret state, police, the City of London, politics, press etc. the network keeps several steps ahead of the game. It uses the vacuum of information immediately following 'spectacular' false flag terror events to disseminate lies, which soon become myths. The rogue network then acts through its media owners and agents to discredit anyone who comes close to gaining enough exposure to challenge that myth and there is a reluctance amongst production staff to backtrack, a reluctance to admit professional mistakes. The rogue network also like to infiltrate our movement so that they can have pieces 'on both sides of the chessboard'.
0500 909 693, 0207 224 2000, learn these phone in numbers and use them. Phone-ins are the least used and most obvious way by which anyone can simply pick up a phone and present thousands of people with evidence (or just opinion) that 911 was an inside job, or point out misconceptions with any attack. Challenge the assumption that 'suicide bombers' were behind the 7/7 attacks, and remember, millions of people have simply not been posed basic questions like 'where was the US Air force for 1 hr 45 minutes on 911?'
Having worked on these shows I can tell you that some days there is a distinct lack of people calling in and that those producing the programme are only too happy to have someone make a controversial point to get the show going. Some phone-ins are on specific topics and others are an 'anything goes' so try to choose your phone-in sensibly. Particularly if you can move a stale debate on terrorism on by pointing out the lack of evidence that the four so-called 'London bombers' actually did it. A list of eight or ten 'killer questions' to hand might be helpful to have handy while you're on the air, see if you can get them all the questions in!
Mainstream media is moving closer every day to the monolithic multinational model. Safeguards such as guarantees of regional ITV news and locally produced programmes have gone out of the window to benefit shareholders. These are some of the main reasons the media has failed us over 911 and terrorism as a whole.
1. Long time lag as evidence emerges - journalists don't know the facts
2. Journalists' fear - job insecurity is exacerbated by low wages
3. 'Burden of proof' is skewed in favour of government
4. Downing St./NeoCon/Zionist/MI6 (I/OPS) penetration of editorial process - journalists' copy scanned & censored before publication
5. High cost of investigative journalism - pressure of time means journalists don't leave the office
6. Ideological influence of media's financial backers, banks and shareholders
7. Young and/or credulous candidates employed as journalists because they're cheap and don't ask too many questions
8. Reluctance to backtrack - "sorry everyone we got it wrong!"
Behind the scenes journalists discuss at length the reliability of sources and contacts. Whispering campaigns abound which is why it's essential to speak to journalists personally, and build up a list of contacts (see 911 truth PR - below).
Brilliant -Tarpley identifies US Special Forces exercise Able Danger/Able Warrior as at the heart of 911 - drills and exercises that 'turn real' are clearly the preferred MO of Gladio, 911 and 7/7 - see and read - nuff said
If you haven't seen all Daniel Hopsicker's various 911 and related DVD's then do please have a look. His professional experience has taught him to travel to the scene of the myth creation to do primary research which blows that myth apart. For example in Venice, Florida where the 911 'hijackers' supposedly 'learned to fly' Daniel interviews witnesses who pour scorn on the official version of events.
Many of these local witnesses want to explode the myth. The lies they see in the mainstream press coverage can make them puzzled and angry. They often feel a necessity to 'unburden themselves'. You may remember that people who were in key positions as witnesses to 911 'hijacker training' in Venice found that crucial evidence was either 'lost' by the FBI or never gathered in the first place. The same happened in London with at least one witness to the killing of Jean Charles De Menezes at Stockwell contacting the anti-terror 'hotline' only to be told later that his contact details and statement had been 'lost'. This leaves people feeling let down and undervalued by a criminalised or otherwise inadequate law enforcement system and often only too happy to talk on camera.
Through a lot of original hard work and determination Daniel has built up the credibility to get well known public figures to front his productions and shown beyond a shadow of a doubt how much more fruitful the 'inside job' line of enquiry is than the barmy conspiracy theories!
Back in 2004 I came across Simon Aaronowiz's www.911truthradio.com internet radio site. He put together a 14 hour continuous audio loop of mostly telephone interviews with key 'witnesses for the prosecution' for 911 being an inside job, interspersed with music. At the Dialect Radio Co-op in Bristol we were relaying that audio stream off the London Indymedia server at Rackspace when it was famously seized, without explanation, by the FBI.
To build 911 truth radio Simon bought an eight channel audio mixer with clean feed for £150 and a Telebalance unit for about the same price. These are available from Canford Audio, Broadcast Warehouse and other radio equipment stockists. He also used two computers, one to stream the audio using Shoutcast software and the other to play in music and pre-recorded interviews. The end result was streamed at 8-16k bitrate so that it could be heard uninterrupted on a dialup account. It is also possible to have an extra 32-64k bitstream to give broadband listeners an FM rather than AM sound quality. On top of this £350 a relay server costs about £20 a month or you may be able to use Indymedia which is free. Most importantly this unique 14 hour loop of evidence was produced with minimum time and manpower.
Journalists are very busy people but they appreciate being forewarned of significant events and informed of significant stuff they don't know in the immediate aftermath. As a movement we need to absolutely sharpen up and focus attention on our eight killer questions of 911. These are the points and questions which will persuade people to take our cause seriously rather than ridicule it. We hold our movement up to ridicule if we don't insist on discussing 911 on solid ground.
We need a London based team to build on contacts within the mainstream press and independent production companies to get articles placed and documentaries commissioned. This team should have an identifiable logo for all press releases and well trained spokespeople who have the discipline to stick to hard facts and the confidence to think on their feet during a live interview.
There are times when news programmes are much more likely to cover issues we are concerned about. And we must identify and use those windows by following the news and proactively contacting newsdesks with our point of view. "Who is working on the X story, we may have something for them"
Opposing what is probably the best financed and technologically advanced rogue network in history is an intimidating task. Sometimes it can be difficult to see how the ultimate triumph of truth, righteousness and justice will ever materialise.
There are powerful psychological forces at work when challenging an earth-shattering lie like the 911 myth. Adolf Hitler knew this well and used it to his advantage cowing much of the German population and that of occupied nations with his myth of the German 'master race' the scapegoating of the Jews, Gypsies etc. and the ultimate threat of the concentration camp.
The rogue network appears to have, at its core, a Nazi-like 'death cult', possibly linked to the Skull and Bones club at Yale University, that accrues power from spilling innocent human blood and from the knowledge that the more evil it becomes the less anyone will dare to take it on. Put bluntly, the fact that press and public 'don't want to go there' is an essential psychological element in the rogue network's depraved plans.
Spiritual beliefs and an understanding that we are not fighting alone are essential if one is not to give up in the face of apparently overwhelming odds. But the forces of darkness know this and are certain to be preparing their own man-made phoney spiritual solutions. Beware of spiritual paths promising 'hidden knowledge'. Freemasonry, Scientology or Spain's 'Nuevo Acropolis' are examples. Truth is pure and simple stuff, it neither thrives nor is it disseminated in a secretive way. As Carl Jung said: "The maintenance of secrets acts like a psychic poison that alienates the possessor from the community."
The most powerful weapon we have may simply be our own love of righteousness expressed through prayer, meditation and spiritual fellowship.
As well as dismantling the 911 myth with hard evidence it we have a responsibility to point the way, as a sort of 'deep-ecology' 911 truth policy, towards a world where cataclysmic fraud like 911 can never happen again. George Monbiot's The Age of Consent begins to address international politics.
Nationalisation of money, land, water, energy and even the railways would all massively thwart the rogue network's private plan to own our world. We have to show we're clear about what exactly would make the world a better place, however 'impossible' people tell us those reforms are. Humour and ridicule of idiotic puffed-up 'leaders' plays a crucial part in this.
We cannot entirely blame the mainstream press for not dealing with our issues for one central reason: Few people have a good enough grasp of the facts of 911 and 7/7, even fewer are able to 'go public' and articulate those facts with any confidence, therefore nobody but the 911 truth movement can make a case for producing a 911 sceptic documentary. i.e. They don't know what we know!
We assume too easily that the facts which brought us to a 911 sceptic point of view are known about, so when making our case we must bear two things in mind.
1) To aim as much of our material as possible at an audience that believes the official version of events covering all the questions they are likely to have about our evidence and never assuming any audience knowledge other than the official version.
2) We must allow as our spokespeople only those who stick to the territory which we are sure of such as eyewitness accounts of explosions or hijackers inability to fly, not get side-tracked with techno-babble we can't prove such as 'holograms' or 'pods'. This stuff should be for internal discussion, a kind of peer review, only. Anyone who breaks ranks with easily discredited speculative stuff is 'pissing in the pot'.
Daniel Hopsicker - http://www.madcowprod.com
Webster Tarpley - http://www.tarpley.net
Operation Gladio - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio - DVD available from http://www.bilderberg.org/videos.htm
Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom - www.cpbf.org.uk - 0208 521 5932
Monetary reform - The Bromsgrove Group - www.prosperityuk.com - 0141 332 2214
Monetary reform - Green Economics Institute - www.greeneconomics.org.uk - 07990 590463
Sustainable Economics Magazine - www.sustecweb.co.uk
NATO's Secret Armies: Operation GLADIO and Terrorism in Western Europe - Daniele Ganser
Radio Production by Robert McLeish - Focal Press
McNae's Essential Law for Journalists - Butterworths
Media Law for Journalists - Ursula Smartt
The Brotherhood, the secret world of the freemasons - Stephen Knight
Take a look at and link to this page full of cheap 911 DVD's
http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Public-Information-Films_W0QQcolZ4QQdirZ1QQfsubZQ2d33QQftidZ2QQtZkm
http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=74747
This makes perfect sense to me because the ISI works hand-in-hand with both the CIA and MI6. It also works with several terrorist groups which are collectively known as 'Al Qaeda'. Most of these groups can be traced back to the CIA and MI6. By making threats to bomb Pakistan "back to the stone age" etc it has proven very easy for the Musharraf regime to be used by the USUK to promote the lie of the "War on Terror." -Rory Winter.
Mumbai, September 30: Claiming to have cracked the July 11 serial blasts in Mumbai trains, Mumbai Police said that Pakistan's ISI was the `mastermind' behind the terror attacks carried out by Lashkar-e-Toiba with help from SIMI activists.
Addressing a press conference, Mumbai Police Commissioner A N Roy said that out of the 15 people arrested in connection with the blasts the `direct role' of 12 people has been established. Out of them, 11 are Pakistanis, who had arrived in India in batches, Roy said.
The conspiracy was hatched in Mumbai and adjoining areas after taking training in Bahawalpur in Pakistan, he said.
The Commissioner said the main players behind the blasts are Faizal Sheikh, Kamaluddin Ansari, Ehtasham Siddiqui, general secretary of SIMI, Maharashtra.
Two of the Pakistanis had come through Nepal reaching Mumbai around May 25. The second group had come via Bangladesh after spending some time in Kolkata while another separate group of four people had come through the Gujarat border.
Roy said they were kept in separate places in Mumbai. Faizal Sheikh, a local, had arranged rented houses for them one in Malad and four in Bandra in Mumbai.
About 15 to 20 KG of RDX was used in the blasts which was brought from Pakistan by one Ehsanullah. Ammonium Nitrate which was mixed with RDX was provided by local groups. The bombs were put together in the Chembur area by one Mohammad Ali around July 8 to 10.
Roy said the bombs were kept in Faizal's home in Bandra from where they were transported to the Railway Stations in taxis. The bombs were kept in eight pressure cookers of five litre capacity which were bought from two shops.
Each bomb contained two to 2.5 kg of RDX and 3.5 to four KG of ammonium nitrate. The pressure cookers were kept inside bags which were in turn camouflaged in things like newspapers and umbrellas, he said.
Roy said teams of two people each in a combination of a Pakistani and an Indian took the bombs in taxis and placed them in the trains.
All the bombs were fitted with quartz timers and the suspects left the trains before the bombs were set to go off.
He said Saleem, a Pakistani from Lahore, had died in the blasts carried out in Khar and Bandra section.
Of the seven Indians suspected to be involved in the blasts four have been arrested. They are Faizal Sheikh, Kamaluddin Ansari, Ehtashan Siddiqui and Naved.
A hunt is on for three other Indians suspected to have been involved in the blasts.
Roy said the accused had purchased eight pressure cookers and used seven for triggering blasts.
"It was a professional, precise and well-planned operation," he said.
He said the first clue received by the police was a phone call made from Navi Mumbai to a place along the Indo-Nepal border.
Following this piece of information, police arrested prime suspect Kamaluddin Ansari from Madhubani in Bihar.
He said all the arrested were trained in Pakistan and knew how to dodge interrogators.
The Commissioner said the narco-analysis tests conducted on the arrested persons also helped in tying several loose ends.
Faizal Sheikh told police he had received around Rs 60 lakh from Pakistan during the last few years. Police recovered 26,000 Riyals from his house, which he received from one Rizwan Devra, an ISI operative living in Saudi Arabia, Roy said.
http://www.newcriminologist.co.uk/article.asp?aid=1158484887
Lieutenant-Colonel (ret.) Nigel Wylde, a former senior British Army Intelligence Officer, has suggested that the police and government story about the "terror plot" revealed on 10th August was part of a "pattern of lies and deceit."
British and American government officials have described the operation which resulting in the arrest of 24 mostly British Muslim suspects, as a resounding success. Thirteen of the suspects have been charged, and two released without charges.
According to security sources, the terror suspects were planning to board up to ten civilian airliners and detonate highly volatile liquid explosives on the planes in a spectacular terrorist operation. The liquid explosives -- either TATP (Triacetone Triperoxide), DADP (diacetone diperoxide) or the less sensitive HMTD (hexamethylene triperoxide diamine) -- were reportedly to be made on board the planes by mixing sports drinks with a peroxide-based household gel and then be detonated using an MP3 player or mobile phone.
But Lt. Col. Wylde, who was awarded the Queen's Gallantry Medal for his command of the Belfast Explosive Ordnance Disposal Unit in 1974, described this scenario as a "fiction." Creating liquid explosives is a "highly dangerous and sophisticated task," he states, one that requires not only significant chemical expertise but also appropriate equipment.
"The idea that these people could sit in the plane toilet and simply mix together these normal household fluids to create a high explosive capable of blowing up the entire aircraft is untenable," said Lt. Col. Wylde, who was trained as an ammunition technical officer responsible for terrorist bomb disposal at the Royal Army Ordnance Corps in Sandhurst.
After working as a bomb defuser in Northern Ireland, Lt. Col. Wylde became a senior officer in British Army Intelligence in 1977. During the Cold War, he collected intelligence as part of an undercover East German "liaison unit," then went on to work in the Ministry of Defense to review its communications systems.
"So who came up with the idea that a bomb could be made on board? Not Al Qaeda for sure. It would not work. Bin Laden is interested in success not deterrence by failure," Wylde stated.
"This story has been blown out of all proportion. The liquids would need to be carefully distilled at freezing temperatures to extract the required chemicals, which are very difficult to obtain in the purities needed."
Once the fluids have been extracted, the process of mixing them produces significant amounts of heat and vile fumes. "The resulting liquid then needs some hours at room temperature for the white crystals that are the explosive to develop." The whole process, which can take between 12 and 36 hours, is "very dangerous, even in a lab, and can lead to premature detonation," said Lt. Col. Wylde.
If there was a conspiracy, he added, "it did not involve manufacturing the explosives in the loo," as this simply "could not have worked." The process would be quickly and easily detected. The fumes of the chemicals in the toilet "would be smelt by anybody in the area." They would also inevitably "cause the alarms in the toilet and in the air change system in the aircraft to be triggered. The pilot has the ability to dump all the air from an aircraft as a fire-fighting measure, leaving people to use oxygen masks. All this means the planned attack would be detected long before the queues outside the loo had grown to enormous lengths."
Even if it was possible for the explosive to have been made on the aircraft, a detonator, probably made from TATP, would be needed to set it off. "It is very dangerous and risky to the individual," Wylde said. "As the quantity involved would be small this would injure the would-be suicide bomber but not endanger the aircraft, thus defeating the object of bringing down an aircraft."
Despite the implausibility of this scenario, it has been used to justify wide-ranging new security measures that threaten to permanently curtail civil liberties and to suspend sections of the United Kingdom's Human Rights Act of 1998. "Why were the public delicately informed of an alleged conspiracy which the authorities knew, or should have known, could not have worked?" asked Lt. Col. Wylde.
"This is not a new problem," he added, noting that 'shoe-bomber' Richard Reid had attempted to use this type of explosive on a plane in December 2001. "If this threat is real, what has been done to develop explosive test kits capable of detecting peroxide based explosives?" asked Wylde. "These are the real issues about protecting the public that have not been publicised. Instead we are going to get demands for more internment without trial."
Lt. Col. Wylde also raised questions about the criminal investigation into the 7th July terrorist attacks in London last year. He noted that police and government sources have maintained "total silence" about the detonation devices used in the bombs on the London Underground and the bus at Tavistock Square. "Whatever the nature of the primary explosive materials, even if it was home-made TATP, the detonator that must be used to trigger an explosion is an extremely dangerous device to make, requiring a high level of expertise that cannot be simply self-taught or picked-up over the internet," Wylde stated.
The government's silence on the detonation device used in the attacks is "disturbing," he said, as the creation of the devices requires the involvement of trained explosives experts. Wylde speculated that such individuals would have to be present either inside the country or outside, perhaps in Eastern Europe, where they would be active participants in an international supply-chain to UK operatives. "In either case, we are talking about something far more dangerous than home-grown radicals here."
Wylde's concerns are echoed by others familiar with British terrorism-related intelligence operations, such as Glen Jenvey, who is profiled in the bestselling book, The Terror Tracker, by terrorism investigator Neil Doyle. Jenvey worked for several military attaches monitoring terrorist groups in London and obtained crucial video and surveillance evidence used by British police to arrest radical cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri, who was convicted last February.
"I've been closely monitoring the internet communications of extremist Muslim groups inside the UK both before and after 7/7, and they are intimately interconnected," said Jenvey, who is affiliated with the London-based terror watch group VIGIL. "We've identified a coordinated leadership of at least 20 and up to 60 people, extremist preachers with blatant international al-Qaeda terrorist connections."
Jenvey noted that even though they are known to the authorities and are monitored while breaking the law with impunity, particularly in their private sermons, the police have failed to take appropriate action against them. "The police don't need to round up and detain thousands of British Muslims. If they only arrested, charged and prosecuted these 20 key terrorist leaders, they will have a struck a fatal blow against the epicentres of al-Qaeda extremism in the UK. But they're sitting on this."
Jenvey points to Omar Bakri Mohammed, a colleague of convicted terrorist Abu Hamza who headed the now-banned Islamist group al-Muhajiroun in the United Kingdom. Despite being exiled to Lebanon, Omar Bakri continues to communicate with UK-based extremist groups which are believed to be successors of al-Muhajiroun operating under new names, including the Saved Sect and al-Ghurabaa. British security sources have confirmed that the 7/7 bombers were associates of Omar Bakri's network, and Bakri himself publicly boasted a year before the London bombings that an al-Qaeda cell in London was planning a terrorist strike.
An investigation by the counterterrorism unit in the New York Police Department found that Bakri's al-Muhajiroun had formed 81 front groups and support networks in six countries, most of them based in London, the home counties bordering London, the Midlands, Lancashire and West Yorkshire. By the time Home Secretary Dr. John Reid moved in July to proscribe the latest incarnation of al-Muhajiroun, al-Ghurabaa, this sprawling interconnected network was fully functioning and continues to operate namelessly, despite proscription. Bakri's network has recently adopted the name "Al Sabiqoon Al-Awwaloon".
Jenvey complains that, despite the arrest in early September of radical cleric Abu Abdullah, convicted terrorist Abu Hamza's successor at the Finsbury Park Mosque, a "hardcore group of 20 or more extremists operating around Omar Bakri" remains at large. "The police have every reason to act, and they know who these people are. Their failure to do so has only exacerbated unjustified demonization of Muslims. These extremists are not Muslims in any meaningful sense, they are simply terrorists obsessed with violence."
Even the arrest of Abu Abdullah only occurred after his support for terrorism was widely reported in the British and American media in late August. On 23rd August, he justified the killing of Westerners and told CNN correspondent Dan Rivers that Tony Blair is a "legitimate target" of jihad. The Sunday Times remarked that he "is apparently being allowed to operate unchecked by the authorities five months after a law was passed making it a criminal offence to glorify terrorism."
Torture may have been used to extract evidence for the weekend police raids which resulted in the arrest of 14 British Muslims, including Abdullah. Sources confirm that information came from detainees at Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo, where interrogation techniques classified as torture under international law are routinely used.
The reluctance to take decisive action against the leadership of the extremist network in the UK has a long history. According to John Loftus, a former Justice Department prosecutor, Omar Bakri and Abu Hamza, as well as the suspected mastermind of the London bombings Haroon Aswat, were all recruited by MI6 in the mid-1990s to draft up British Muslims to fight in Kosovo. American and French security sources corroborate the revelation. The MI6 connection raises questions about Bakri's relationship with British authorities today. Exiled to Lebanon and outside British jurisdiction, he is effectively immune to prosecution.
Other London-based radical clerics with terrorist connections also had a relationship to the security services. Abu Qatada, described as al-Qaeda's European ambassador, was, according to French sources a long-time MI5 informant. Pakistani government insiders similarly believe that Ahmed Omar Sheikh Saeed, the British al-Qaeda finance chief from Forest Gate, not only worked with the ISI, Pakistani's military intelligence service, but was also recruited by the CIA as an informant. Saeed, who reportedly wired several hundred thousand dollars to alleged chief 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta, is currently in Pakistani custody for the murder of Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl.
Omar Bakri regularly uses the internet to communicate from Lebanon with his followers in Britain. On Sunday evening, 3rd September, Omar Bakri told participants in an online chat forum that he had been pulled in by the Lebanese authorities at the request of the US and British governments and questioned in relation to the "terror plot". Although he denied involvement in the plot, he claimed that some of the 24 British Muslim suspects were known to him. When asked to confirm or deny whether Bakri had indeed been arrested at the request of the British, the Foreign Office had no comment. Bakri said that he was regularly questioned by Lebanese officials on behalf of the British government.
The official reluctance to act against Bakri and his active associates in the UK does not match the government's willingness to act pre-emptively to foil a plot of doubtful reality. Official reluctance to acknowledge the significance of the detonators used in the 7/7 terrorist operation suggests that the threat is far more sophisticated than authorities have admitted, and that emphasis on home-grown amateurs is mistaken. Lt. Col. Wylde's observations would seem to indicate that the terror-threat narrative is being manipulated for reasons of political expediency.
#
Acknowledgements: Thanks to Graham Ennis, Nigel Wylde and Glen Jenvey for
their research assistance and contribution to this story. They bear no
responsibility for any errors therein. An abridged version of this story
will be printed in The Muslim News, UK on 29th September 2006.
Monday, August 21, 2006
Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed - www.independent inquiry.co.uk
http://nafeez.blogspot.com/2006/08/truth-about-terror-plot-and-new-pseudo.html
I am disappointed to say that so far there has been very little serious critical discussion, grounded in factual analysis, of the alleged “Terror Plot” foiled on the morning of Wednesday, 10th August 2006. Except for a few noteworthy comment pieces, such as Craig Murray’s critical speculations published by the Guardian last Friday, the mainstream media has largely subserviently parroted the official claims of the British and American governments. This is a shame, because inspection of the facts raises serious problems for the 10/8 official narrative.
On the basis of the “Terror Plot”, Prime Minister Tony Blair is planning “to push through 90-day detention without charge for terror suspects.” Home Secretary Dr. John Reid has ordered the draft of new anti-terror legislation that would suspend key parts of the Human Rights Act 1998, to facilitate the indefinite detention of terrorism suspects in the UK without charge or trial. The law is planned to apply also to British citizens. And since 10th August, Britain was on its highest “critical” state of alert, which indicates the threat of an imminent terrorist attack on UK interests. Only in the last few days was it lowered back down to “severe”.
The stark truth is that the “Terror Plot” narrative has been thoroughly, hopelessly, politicized. There was never any evidence of an imminent plot. A senior British official involved in the investigation told NBC News on 14th August that:
“In contrast to previous reports… an attack was not imminent, [and] the suspects had not yet purchased any airline tickets. In fact, some did not even have passports.”
If British security officials knew that an attack was not imminent, the decision to raise the alert level to critical, indicating an imminent threat, was unjustified by the available intelligence -- this was, in other words, a political decision.
Other British officials told NBC News that many of the suspects had been under surveillance for more than a year, since before the 7th July 2005 terrorist attacks. “British police were planning to continue to run surveillance for at least another week to try to obtain more evidence” -- as it was clearly lacking. But: “American officials pressured them to arrest the suspects sooner.” An American official also confirmed the disagreement over timing.
The NBC News report further reveals, citing British security sources, that British police did not want to yet arrest Rashid Rauf, the alleged mastermind, al-Qaeda facilitator and key informant on the details of the plot: “British security was concerned that Rauf be taken into custody ‘in circumstances where there was due process,’ according to the official, so that he could be tried in British courts. Ultimately, this official says, Rauf was arrested over the objections of the British.”
However, the arrest of Rashid Rauf is at the crux of the case, as it purportedly triggered the ensuing wave of arrests, with Rauf providing in-depth details of the plot to his interrogators in Pakistan. Among the details attributed to Rauf is the idea that the plotters intended to mix a “sports drink” with a gel-like “peroxide-based paste” to create a chemical explosive that “could be ignited with an MP3 player or cell phone.”
The problem is that several Pakistani newspapers reported on 13th August that “Rauf had ‘broken’ under interrogation.” The reports were described by a Pakistani human rights group “as confirmation that he had been tortured.” According to the Guardian, “Asma Jehangir, of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, said that it was obvious how the information had been obtained. ‘I don’t deduce, I know -- torture,’ she said. ‘There is simply no doubt about that, no doubt at all.’”
That most of the details about the plot came from Rauf, who has been tortured and “broken” while under interrogation in Pakistan, raises serious questions about the credibility of the story being promoted by the British and American governments.
The revelation bears hallmarks of a familiar pattern. It is now well-known that the interrogation of terror suspects using torture was responsible for the production of the false “Ricin Plot” narrative. In much the same way as Pakistan has done now, Algerian security services alerted the British in January 2003 to the alleged plot after interrogating and torturing a former British resident Mohammed Meguerba. We now know there was no plot. Police officials repeatedly claimed they had found plastic tubs of ricin -- but these claims were false. Four of the defendants were acquitted of terrorism and four others had the cases against them abandoned. Only Kamal Bourgass was convicted, but not in connection with the “Ricin Plot”, rather for murdering Special Branch Detective Constable Stephen Oake during a raid. Indeed, the “rendition” of terror suspects orchestrated by Britain, the United States, and other western states, attempts to institutionalize and legitimize torture as a means for the production of fundamentally compromised information used by western states to manipulate domestic public opinion.
It is perhaps not all that surprising then to learn that, according to a Daily Mail headline, the Pakistanis have found “no evidence against ‘terror mastermind’”, despite two weeks of interrogation under torture and forensic combing of Rauf’s home and computer. The plot “may not have been as serious, or as far advanced, as the authorities initially claimed”, observes the Mail somewhat sheepishly, and belatedly. “Analysts suspect Pakistani authorities exaggerated Rauf’s role to appear ‘tough on terrorism’ and impress Britain and America.” I wonder if the paucity of evidence has something to do with why, as the Independent on Sunday reported: “Both Britain and Pakistan say the question of Mr Rauf’s possible extradition [to the UK] is some way off.” Indeed. A spokesman for Pakistani’s Interior Ministry gave some helpful elaboration, telling the Mail that extradition “is not under consideration.”
The extradition to Britain of the alleged chief mastermind of a plot to kill thousands of Americans and British citizens by simultaneously blowing up multiple civilian airliners has, in other words, been ruled out indefinitely.
All the evidence now suggests that the Americans wanted immediate arrests without proper evidence. It seems, there was no imminent necessity of such immediate action, nor was there sufficient evidence of an imminent plot, other than the claims of an informant under torture. There are only two further possibilities. Either there was no real evidence of any plot at all; or these premature arrests could have seriously compromised a long-term surveillance operation against suspects who may have been involved in a wider network involved in terrorist-related activity, an operation that has now been scuppered -- meaning that we may never know for sure what they were actually planning.
Meanwhile, reports of material evidence in the UK have been unnervingly threadbare. Only eleven out of the 24 suspects arrested over the alleged airliner bomb plot have been charged, largely it seems on the basis of police findings of “bomb-making equipment and martyrdom videos”. Out of the other thirteen, two have been released without charge. But the “bomb-making equipment” discovery of “chemicals” and “electrical components” is ambiguous at best, especially given that police descriptions of the alleged bomb construction plan is to mix a sports drink with a peroxide-based household gel (the chemicals), and detonate the mixture with an MP3 player or mobile phone (electrical components). If possession of such items makes you a terror suspect in possession of potential bomb-making equipment, then we are all terror suspects. As Craig Murray observes:
“Let me fess up here. I have just checked, and our flat contains nail polish remover, sports drinks, and a variety of household cleaning products. Also MP3 players and mobile phones. So the authorities could announce -- as they have whispered to the media in this case -- that potential ingredients of a liquid bomb, and potential timing devices, have been discovered. It rather lowers the bar doesn’t it?”
Yes -- clearly, it lowers the bar to potentially include millions of perfectly normal British citizens. The police story is also, simply, scientifically absurd, as Murray further notes: “The idea that high explosive can be made quickly in a plane toilet by mixing at room temperature some nail polish remover, bleach, and Red Bull and giving it a quick stir, is nonsense.” Citing US chemistry experts, Washington-based information security journalist Thomas C. Greene similarly concludes that
"... the fabled binary liquid explosive -- that is, the sudden mixing of hydrogen peroxide and acetone with sulfuric acid to create a plane-killing explosion, is out of the question... But the Hollywood myth of binary liquid explosives now moves governments and drives public policy. We have reacted to a movie plot."
A report by Asia Times Pakistan Bureau Chief Syed Shahzad citing Pakistani intelligence sources confirms that the British-born Pakistanis arrested in Lahore and Karachi were active members of al-Muhajiroun, the banned UK-based extremist Islamist group currently directed by Omar Bakri Mohammed from Lebanon. Moreover, they had been penetrated by Pakistani intelligence services. “I can tell you with surety”, said one Pakistani source, “that the boys [recently] arrested in Pakistan have long been identified by the Pakistani establishment.” They had come to Pakistan and “interacted with a few officials of the Pakistani army” with a view to stage a coup against the Musharraf regime. Omar Bakri has repeatedly issued fatawas calling for the assassination of Musharraf. In fact:
“Pakistani intelligence -- coming from a strong military background -- penetrated deep into them… The closeness of the Pakistani intelligence with some boys with a Muhajiroun background was a known fact, but at what stage it turned out to be their ‘London terror plot’, we are completely in the dark. However, I safely make a conjecture that those highly motivated boys were exploited by agents provocateurs. A religious Muslim youth in his early 20s is undoubtedly full of hatred against the US, and if somebody would guide them to carry out any attack on US interests, there would be a strong chance that they would go for that. And I think this is exactly what happened… they were basically [en]trapped.”
I have no doubt that these individuals could have been associated with extremist groups. But while it may be possible they were involved in terrorist-related activity, it is now indisputable that there was no evidence of an imminent plot, and the specific claims about the details were obtained from an informant under torture. We should therefore be very cautious in accepting the “Terror Plot” official narrative, as there is clearly a continuing danger of political interference compromising ongoing intelligence investigations for political expedience.
But the deep involvement of the Pakistani ISI in penetrating the very group that was subsequently arrested and tortured, raises serious questions about what was going on. Moreover, the Asia Times also notes that the Pakistani intelligence operation against these groups was coordinated on the initiative of the CIA and MI6. Indeed, MI6 had also ensured that a deep undercover British intelligence operative had “infiltrated the group, giving the authorities intelligence on the alleged plan”, according to several US government sources.
The revelation that the arrestees were associated with al-Muhajiroun also raises serious intelligence issues. Omar Bakri Mohammed, the leader of the group, which recently operated under the names of the Saved Sect and al-Ghuraaba, was recruited by MI6 in the mid-1990s to recruit British Muslims to fight in Kosovo. Despite being implicated in the 7/7 London bombings, the British government exiled him to Lebanon where he resides safely outside of British jurisdiction, and thus effectively immune from investigation and prosecution. One inevitably wonders about the nature of Bakri’s corrupt relationship with British intelligence services today.
So what were the CIA, MI6 and ISI doing? Given the disturbing context here, in which the entire “Terror Plot” narrative has obviously been deeply politicized and to some extent even fabricated, a balanced analysis needs to account precisely for the stated new “counter-terror” strategies of western intelligence services. In August 2002, a report by the Pentagon’s Defense Science Board revealed the latest strategic thinking about creating a new US secret counterintelligence organization -- the Proactive Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG) -- which would, among other things, conduct highly clandestine operations to “stimulate reactions” among terrorist groups, by infiltrating them or provoking them into action in order to facilitate targeting them. In January 2005, Seymour Hersh revealed in the New Yorker that the P2OG strategy had been activated:
“Under Rumsfeld’s new approach, I was told, US military operatives would be permitted to pose abroad as corrupt foreign businessmen seeking to buy contraband items that could be used in nuclear-weapons systems. In some cases, according to the Pentagon advisers, local citizens could be recruited and asked to join up with guerrillas or terrorists. This could potentially involve organizing and carrying out combat operations, or even terrorist activities.”
Hersh refers to a series of articles by John Arquilla, a professor of defense analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School, in Monterey, California, and a RAND terrorism consultant, where he elaborates on this strategy of “countering terror” with Pseudo-Terror. “When conventional military operations and bombing failed to defeat the Mau Mau insurgency in Kenya in the 1950s,” muses professor Arquilla, “the British formed teams of friendly Kikuyu tribesmen who went about pretending to be terrorists. These ‘pseudo gangs’, as they were called, swiftly threw the Mau Mau on the defensive, either by befriending and then ambushing bands of fighters or by guiding bombers to the terrorists’ camps.” He goes on to advocate that western intelligence services should use the British case as a model for creating new “pseudo gang” terrorist groups, purportedly to undermine “real” terror networks. “What worked in Kenya a half-century ago has a wonderful chance of undermining trust and recruitment among today’s terror networks. Forming new pseudo gangs should not be difficult.” He then confidently observes about John Walker Lindh, the young American lad who joined the Taliban before 9/11: “If a confused young man from Marin County can join up with Al Qaeda, think what professional operatives might do.”
Hmmm....
I’m thinking about it, and I’m looking at the deep intelligence penetration of al-Qaeda affiliated networks like al-Muhajiroun by the CIA, MI6 and ISI, and unfortunately I’m not experiencing the same sense of elation as Arquilla. Is the 10/8 “Terror Plot” connected to the post-9/11 P2OG strategy?
Whatever happened on 10/8, it is not the majestic “success story” painted by the British and American governments. It is symptomatic of something far worse, the mechanics of which will never be truly understood in the absence of a full-scale independent public inquiry focusing on the 7th July bombings, but including associated British and western “security” policies which see Pseudo-Terrorism as a legitimate tool of statecraft.
http://nafeez.blogspot.com/2006/08/truth-about-terror-plot-and-new-pseudo.html
By Thomas C Greene in Washington
Published Thursday 17th August 2006 09:42 GMT
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/08/17/flying_toilet_terror_labs/
Analysis The seventh angel poured out his bowl into the air; And a loud voice came forth out of the temple of Heaven, From the throne, saying, "It is done!" - Revelation 16:17
Binary liquid explosives are a sexy staple of Hollywood thrillers. It would be tedious to enumerate the movie terrorists who've employed relatively harmless liquids that, when mixed, immediately rain destruction upon an innocent populace, like the seven angels of God's wrath pouring out their bowls full of pestilence and pain.
The funny thing about these movies is, we never learn just which two chemicals can be handled safely when separate, yet instantly blow us all to kingdom come when combined. Nevertheless, we maintain a great eagerness to believe in these substances, chiefly because action movies wouldn't be as much fun if we didn't.
Now we have news of the recent, supposedly real-world, terrorist plot to destroy commercial airplanes by smuggling onboard the benign precursors to a deadly explosive, and mixing up a batch of liquid death in the lavatories. So, The Register has got to ask, were these guys for real, or have they, and the counterterrorist officials supposedly protecting us, been watching too many action movies?
We're told that the suspects were planning to use TATP, or triacetone triperoxide, a high explosive that supposedly can be made from common household chemicals unlikely to be caught by airport screeners. A little hair dye, drain cleaner, and paint thinner - all easily concealed in drinks bottles - and the forces of evil have effectively smuggled a deadly bomb onboard your plane.
Or at least that's what we're hearing, and loudly, through the mainstream media and its legions of so-called "terrorism experts." But what do these experts know about chemistry? Less than they know about lobbying for Homeland Security pork, which is what most of them do for a living. But they've seen the same movies that you and I have seen, and so the myth of binary liquid explosives dies hard.
Making a quantity of TATP sufficient to bring down an airplane is not quite as simple as ducking into the toilet and mixing two harmless liquids together.
First, you've got to get adequately concentrated hydrogen peroxide. This is hard to come by, so a large quantity of the three per cent solution sold in pharmacies might have to be concentrated by boiling off the water. Only this is risky, and can lead to mission failure by means of burning down your makeshift lab before a single infidel has been harmed.
But let's assume that you can obtain it in the required concentration, or cook it from a dilute solution without ruining your operation. Fine. The remaining ingredients, acetone and sulfuric acid, are far easier to obtain, and we can assume that you've got them on hand.
Now for the fun part. Take your hydrogen peroxide, acetone, and sulfuric acid, measure them very carefully, and put them into drinks bottles for convenient smuggling onto a plane. It's all right to mix the peroxide and acetone in one container, so long as it remains cool. Don't forget to bring several frozen gel-packs (preferably in a Styrofoam chiller deceptively marked "perishable foods"), a thermometer, a large beaker, a stirring rod, and a medicine dropper. You're going to need them.
It's best to fly first class and order Champagne. The bucket full of ice water, which the airline ought to supply, might possibly be adequate - especially if you have those cold gel-packs handy to supplement the ice, and the Styrofoam chiller handy for insulation - to get you through the cookery without starting a fire in the lavvie.
Once the plane is over the ocean, very discreetly bring all of your gear into the toilet. You might need to make several trips to avoid drawing attention. Once your kit is in place, put a beaker containing the peroxide / acetone mixture into the ice water bath (Champagne bucket), and start adding the acid, drop by drop, while stirring constantly. Watch the reaction temperature carefully. The mixture will heat, and if it gets too hot, you'll end up with a weak explosive. In fact, if it gets really hot, you'll get a premature explosion possibly sufficient to kill you, but probably no one else.
After a few hours - assuming, by some miracle, that the fumes haven't overcome you or alerted passengers or the flight crew to your activities - you'll have a quantity of TATP with which to carry out your mission. Now all you need to do is dry it for an hour or two.
The genius of this scheme is that TATP is relatively easy to detonate. But you must make enough of it to crash the plane, and you must make it with care to assure potency. One needs quality stuff to commit "mass murder on an unimaginable scale," as Deputy Police Commissioner Paul Stephenson put it. While it's true that a slapdash concoction will explode, it's unlikely to do more than blow out a few windows. At best, an infidel or two might be killed by the blast, and one or two others by flying debris as the cabin suddenly depressurizes, but that's about all you're likely to manage under the most favorable conditions possible.
We believe this because a peer-reviewed 2004 study in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS) entitled "Decomposition of Triacetone Triperoxide is an Entropic Explosion" tells us that the explosive force of TATP comes from the sudden decomposition of a solid into gasses. There's no rapid oxidizing of fuel, as there is with many other explosives: rather, the substance changes state suddenly through an entropic process, and quickly releases a respectable amount of energy when it does. (Thus the lack of ingredients typically associated with explosives makes TATP, a white crystalline powder resembling sugar, difficult to detect with conventional bomb sniffing gear.)
By now you'll be asking why these jihadist wannabes didn't conspire simply to bring TATP onto planes, colored with a bit of vegetable dye, and disguised as, say, a powdered fruit-flavored drink. The reason is that they would be afraid of failing: TATP is notoriously sensitive and unstable. Mainstream journalists like to tell us that terrorists like to call it "the mother of Satan." (Whether this reputation is deserved, or is a consequence of homebrewing by unqualified hacks, remains open to debate.)
It's been claimed that the 7/7 bombers used it, but this has not been positively confirmed. Some sources claim that they used C-4, and others that they used RDX. Nevertheless, the belief that they used TATP has stuck with the media, although going about in a crowded city at rush hour with an unstable homebrew explosive in a backpack is not the brightest of all possible moves. It's surprising that none of the attackers enjoyed an unscheduled launch into Paradise.
So, assuming that the homebrew variety of TATP is highly sensitive and unstable - or at least that our inept jihadists would believe that - to avoid getting blown up in the taxi on the way to the airport, one might, if one were educated in terror tactics primarily by hollywood movies, prefer simply to dump the precursors into an airplane toilet bowl and let the mother of Satan work her magic. Indeed, the mixture will heat rapidly as TATP begins to form, and it will soon explode. But this won't happen with much force, because little TATP will have formed by the time the explosion occurs.
We asked University of Rhode Island Chemistry Professor Jimmie C. Oxley, who has actual, practical experience with TATP, if this is a reasonable assumption, and she tolds us that merely dumping the precursors together would create "a violent reaction," but not a detonation.
To release the energy needed to bring down a plane (far more difficult to do than many imagine, as Aloha Airlines Flight 243 neatly illustrates), it's necessary to synthesize a good amount of TATP with care.
So the fabled binary liquid explosive - that is, the sudden mixing of hydrogen peroxide and acetone with sulfuric acid to create a plane-killing explosion, is out of the question. Meanwhile, making TATP ahead of time carries a risk that the mission will fail due to premature detonation, although it is the only plausible approach.
Certainly, if we can imagine a group of jihadists smuggling the necessary chemicals and equipment on board, and cooking up TATP in the lavatory, then we've passed from the realm of action blockbusters to that of situation comedy.
It should be small comfort that the security establishments of the UK and the USA - and the "terrorism experts" who inform them and wheedle billions of dollars out of them for bomb puffers and face recognition gizmos and remote gait analyzers and similar hi-tech phrenology gear - have bought the Hollywood binary liquid explosive myth, and have even acted upon it.
We've given extraordinary credit to a collection of jihadist wannabes with an exceptionally poor grasp of the mechanics of attacking a plane, whose only hope of success would have been a pure accident. They would have had to succeed in spite of their own ignorance and incompetence, and in spite of being under police surveillance for a year.
But the Hollywood myth of binary liquid explosives now moves governments and drives public policy. We have reacted to a movie plot. Liquids are now banned in aircraft cabins (while crystalline white powders would be banned instead, if anyone in charge were serious about security). Nearly everything must now go into the hold, where adequate amounts of explosives can easily be detonated from the cabin with cell phones, which are generally not banned.
The al-Qaeda franchise will pour forth its bowl of pestilence and death. We know this because we've watched it countless times on TV and in the movies, just as our officials have done. Based on their behavior, it's reasonable to suspect that everything John Reid and Michael Chertoff know about counterterrorism, they learned watching the likes of Bruce Willis, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Vin Diesel, and The Rock (whose palpable homoerotic appeal it would be discourteous to emphasize).
It's a pity that our security rests in the hands of government officials who understand as little about terrorism as the Florida clowns who needed their informant to suggest attack scenarios, as the 21/7 London bombers who injured no one, as lunatic "shoe bomber" Richard Reid, as the Forest Gate nerve gas attackers who had no nerve gas, as the British nitwits who tried to acquire "red mercury," and as the recent binary liquid bomb attackers who had no binary liquid bombs.
For some real terror, picture twenty guys who understand op-sec, who are patient, realistic, clever, and willing to die, and who know what can be accomplished with a modest stash of dimethylmercury.
You won't hear about those fellows until it's too late. Our official protectors and deciders trumpet the fools they catch because they haven't got a handle on the people we should really be afraid of. They make policy based on foibles and follies, and Hollywood plots.
Meanwhile, the real thing draws ever closer.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/08/17/flying_toilet_terror_labs/page2.html
Nick Kollerstrom
Guardian columnist Mark Honigsbaum was outside Edgware Road during the morning of July 7th. He had been speaking all morning to survivors as they were evacuated, and his phone call put through from the Hilton Hotel opposite the Edgware Road tube was made around noon to The Guardian newsdesk. He first filed this audio report, after speaking to a good eyewitness source at Marks and Spencers who believed the Edgware Road bomb was under the train, and then he later composed and sent off a written account (1). His written account did not make it into the next day's edition of the paper, despite his vivid, first-hand accounts of the terrible event.
His audio-report has a Guardian URL: http://stream.guardian.co.uk:7080/ramgen/sys-audio/Guardian/audio/2005/07/07/honisbaum_070705.ra but is not indexed in the Guardian's audio-report library, www.guardian.co.uk/audio/. It thus hovers in a limbo condition, where it could not be deleted because too many people had copied it, yet remained unpublished and un-archived. What was the problem?
If there was a problem, it was just that of a journalist telling the truth.
The shattered survivors filed into the nearby Marks and Spencer's, and then into the London Hilton opposite, to be treated for shock and burns. 'What seems to have happened is that ... passengers had just left Edgware Road when they heard a massive explosion under the carriage of the train' he explained, which had caused all this mayhem. Just as their train left for Paddington, passengers felt the blast as 'tiles and covers on the floor of the train suddenly flew up, and then, the next thing they knew, there was an almighty crash which they now believe was from a train opposite hitting their train which had been derailed by the explosion. Then everything went black and the carriage filled with smoke. A man caught by the blast had "very, very bad injuries to his legs". www.nineeleven.co.uk/board/viewtopic.php?p=248 www.nineeleven.co.uk/board/viewtopic.php?t=157
On Saturday, The Guardian published an anodyne, chopped-up version of the Honigsbaum report www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1524554,00.html. 'Davinia', Mark reported on the audio, experienced a massive fireball coming towards her, and the next thing she knew she was burned all over. That is the only part of the above story which got into print. Otherwise, the printed account gave more space to a witness in the eastwards-travelling circle-line train. In seven paragraphs it described how the train slammed to a halt after the blast, and then on the track ahead 'There were huge pieces of metal which had been ripped out of their rivets lying about.' It tells of windows being broken, but gave no indication as to what caused the train to stop - as did Mark's initial report, so clearly (2).
Personal testimonies were heard this year by the '7 July Review Committee' of the London Assembly. It was given a mandate 'to review some of the lessons to be learned from the 7 July bomb attacks on London'. http://www.london.gov.uk/assembly/resilience/ No-one seems to have commented on the striking corroboration of the Honigsbaum thesis here given.
www.london.gov.uk/assembly/resilience/2006/77reviewmar23/minutes/transcript.pdf
7th July Review committee 3rd session 23 March 2006:
Here is the disturbing testimony of 'John': 'Just after the train left Edgware [Road] station, there was a massive bang followed by two smaller bangs and then an orange fireball. I put my hands and arms over my ears and head as the windows and the doors of the carriage shattered from the blast. Splintered and broken glass flew through the air towards me and other passengers. I was pushed sideways as the train came to a sudden halt. … Shouting and screaming were now coming from the train that had stopped next to us … Passengers left by the trackside door, that had been blown away.
'I walked into an unknown hell… I got to the centre of the carriage and my foot slipped beneath me, and I fell into a hole in the floor. My arm stopped me going right through and on to the live rail beneath. My bag, which I had been carrying on one side, jammed me to a standstill. My other arm was resting on what I thought was a soft bag. My forearms were keeping me from falling through the hole. I could not see a thing. I thought I was going to die; there was no one there; they had all left the carriage. I put my knees into the foetal position to stop them from touching the live rail beneath me. I tried to swing my legs to see if I could find a ledge or a bracket underneath the carriage to rest my shoes on, but there was not any (He is rescued from the hole) I could not see anything below my waist, but managed not to fall into any of the holes…'
'Jason asked me to look after another man, who I will call Stan, who was halfway through a hole in the floor. This is where the double doors of the carriage should have been. There was a massive hole in the floor and the roof; the metal all around it was all jagged and bent from the explosion. Parts of the metal were covered in blood.
I went to a little ledge - all that was left of the floor - to see if I could get close to Stan to give him some water from my bottle, but I could not because of the jagged pieces of metal. I went inside the hole and tried to reach Stan, but I slipped on a blood-coated sheet of metal. I thought that I might try to jump into the hole, but decided that, if I did, I would get impaled on the large, jagged, pointed piece of metal that was protruding from the hole.
'The maintenance light from the Tube wall threw a soft beam of light on to Stan's face. All the other areas of the floor were dark with no light. I told him and Stan that I would go and get help. I could not get out of the train from that side, so I had to return back the way I came. I could not see anything below my waist, but managed not to fall in any of the holes.'
His rescuer had just finished putting a tourniquet on a man's leg. Another person asked for help in putting a tourniquet on 'David's leg' …. 'There had been screaming in the carriage alongside, which I had ignored, but now the screaming was coming from the end of our carriage … After all the death and destruction in the carriage, we had to get a result: he must not die. The screams were getting louder, "We are all going to die. It is a waste of time. Al-Qaeda planted bombs in each carriage," they screamed. I walked alongside the track to find Jason with two women. He said their feet had been severely injured by the blast. The women continued screaming, 'It is all a waste of time. We are all going to die.' I said, 'That might be the case, but you still have your legs. Other people have lost their legs down the carriage, and are in a far worse state than you.'
Let us try to summarise. People have legs or feet blown off, never their arms: that is a recurrent theme. No hint appears of any Muslim with a bomb - that is common to all witnesses in this sixty-page report. There is a huge hole in the floor between two doors, with jagged, blood-coated metal sticking upwards everywhere. And, there was more than one hole: after being rescued from one, 'John' then managed to avoid falling into 'any of the holes.' More than one blast was experienced, with people screaming about multiple bombs. More than one train was involved - and, it may not be our business to fathom exactly how this event was arranged.
Moving on to other testimony from the London Assembly hearings: 'Ben' was in the approaching train, travelling from Paddington towards Edgware road, when at 08.51 there was a very loud bang, and 'Our train came to a very sudden stop, as did the train travelling in the opposite direction. I initially thought the two trains had struck each other… 'Tim' was likewise in the approaching train at Edgware Road: 'When the explosion occurred, the noise was both vast and quiet. Darkness came immediately,' He was able to get through into the damaged circle-line train where he could use his medical skills: 'So many questions flooded my brain as I worked to tie up leaking blood supplies, observe the dead and move swiftly to those who showed signs of life. A man already referred to by John this morning, half in and half out of the floor, was still breathing. He had no shirt, just a charred torso….' He saw 'Alison,' 'a person blown out of the doors and into the wall of the tunnel …. Her right leg was not the right shape.'
These are real and vivid human testimonies. We now turn to a different case, not included in that London Assembly testimony, which demonstrates, I suggest, the condition of 'False Memory Syndrome'. Danny Biddle was in a coma for six weeks after losing an eye and both legs in the Edgware Road blast that morning and is lucky to be still alive. As he lay recovering, he watched the 'Khan' video of 5th September and it exerted a deep effect upon him. http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=16167609%26method=full%26siteid=94762%26headline=tube%2dbomber%2dstared%2dme%2dstraight%2din%2dthe%2deyes%2das%2dhe%2dset%2doff%2dthe%2dexplosion%2dthat%2dblew%2dmy%2dlegs%2daway-name_page.html From being in that vulnerable state, he had placed before him the powerful images of this terror-video. Then, almost three weeks after watching that video, he was ready to share his memories of the event.
The first version of Biddle's story (24th September) had him standing in the tube and seeing Khan, who was ten feet away and sitting down, fiddle in his rucksack and then 'pull a cord.' Biddle 'was then hurled out of the carriage and left lying with the carriage doors crushing his legs.' A South African Army officer rescued him by prising the train doors off his legs. The doors had fallen onto him and chopped them off. It sounds as if 'Khan' were on the crowded train before he was, as he was sitting down while Biddle was standing up. (The Mirror, 24th September)
Two months later his story appeared in The Sunday Times, and now we hear of Biddle getting on the Circle line train at Liverpool Street station that morning. He found himself standing right next to 'Khan': 'That morning I got on the front of the train, which was closest to the stairs, and stood next to the bomber, Mohammad Sidique Khan. I looked at him, as you do. He seemed quite calm. Nothing, in retrospect, made me think: "This guy's got a bomb." He looked at me, and as he did so he put his hand inside his rucksack, looked at me again, looked away, and pulled back his hand.' Biddle is now claiming to have survived being right next to the bomb - which supposedly splattered 'Khan' all over the walls! Biddle does not say 'I got on at Liverpool street, then four stops later Khan got on and stood next to me,' but he rather implies that Khan was already on the train; still less does he say, 'I saw Khan sitting down ten feet away from me'. (3)
Next, 'I was slammed straight out of the train by the force of the blast, bounced off the wall of the tunnel - that's how I got the big scar on my head - and skidded along like a rag doll. As I landed, the train came to a halt and the doors, opened out by the blast, closed violently - guillotining my legs.' The blast caused the doors of a moving train to open, so Mr Biddle could be thrown against the wall of the tunnel - then have his legs chopped off by a tube door? Tube doors are rubber, gentle, and unable to cut anything, least of all a leg.
(4th December: www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2099-1891957,00.html )
Mr Biddle recalled how his large, South African rescuer (Adrian Heili) climbed under the train, and while doing so checked as to whether the 'live rail' was still live by laying his hand upon it. This has to be a dream-hallucination, as such things do not happen in the real world. We respectfully suggest that Mr Biddle may not as yet have fathomed the dire memories, of what blew his legs off that terrible morning.
It is of interest to compare Biddle's memory with that of another who was sitting fairly close to him, and who likewise lost a leg. But, Mr David Gardiner recalls being blown upwards and hitting his head on the roof of the coach; his testimony only occurred a year after the event: he was a mere three feet away from the bomb when it went off, the Evening Standard revealed - '... three feet from Mohammed Sidique Khan' - but gave no evidence of Khan being there (June 21, p.2). Sitting next to the Perspex barrier, Gardiner reckons this helped to save his life: 'Everything went black. I remember being lifted, floating through the air, hitting my head. Next thing I was sprawled on the floor. It was dark and murky, people were moaning.' His left leg had to be amputated above the knee. Mr Gardner described his sensation as the blast went off: 'I was floating through air, wondering if I'd be alive when I came down' (4).
'Tell Tony he's Right' blared The Sun's headline for November 8th with a horrific picture of Professor John Tulloch, who was slowly recovering from his wounds, having been not far from Mr Biddle when the blast occurred. Mr Tulloch had not been consulted over this front-page exposure. He had been was sitting directly opposite where the media and police were placing Khan the supposed (but curiously unseen) master-bomber, and no shortage of people had asked him if he could remember this. Was he not sitting just three feet away from Khan? (5) The image of the bomber failed to trigger his memory, and he remains unconvinced whether he saw the man who may have been sitting opposite him. "I don't know if I did see him," he said. "I'm still not sure." (6) http://www.team8plus.org/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?1411
Going back to his very first interview on July 13th, he had there stated: 'I don't remember hearing any noise or blast. But I could see a strange nasty yellow light and then it all went black … Then I saw another train next to us. I assumed it must have been a train crash' (7) Three months later, an interview with the Western Mail proclaimed 'Survivor may have seen bomber moments before explosion', and gave a detailed account of the events (8) - but with no hint of him seeing Khan. He merely described a gruesome bright yellow colour, by which everything had seemed distorted, a sudden yellow snapshot of the carriage.
Commendably, Prof. Tulloch protested at The Sun's 'using my image to push through draconian and utterly unnecessary terrorism legislation.' http://politics.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,15935,1638843,00.html . The comment he made about Blair's initial response to the news of July 7th, from his bed in Paddington hospital, remains of interest:
'I saw those photos of Blair at Gleneagles. I saw his performative act, the way he put his head down and held his hands. Of course he was ready for it. Of course he had his performance all ready for it. I was very angry about that."
As a professor of media studies, he should know.
Let us here bear in mind that which Bridget Dunne has mulled over in her column, as follows. The Metropolitan Police reported that the event happened on a
Westbound Circle Line train coming into Edgware Road station, approx. 100 yards into the tunnel. The explosion blew a hole through a wall onto another train on an adjoining platform. The device was in the second carriage, in the standing area near the first set of double doors. The MPS website
Witnesses are fairly unanimous that Westbound Circle line train had just left Edgware Road station. Both Westbound and Eastbound Circle (and District) lines run adjacently from that station with no wall between them: so somebody just dreamed up a hole being blown in a wall! But, the blast did happen in the second carriage.
'Transport for London' counted six fatalities from the Edgware Road blast. It added: 'A Hammersmith & City line train at Edgware Road sustained damage, while passing Circle line train 216 when the device exploded. No fatalities or injuries were recorded on the Hammersmith & City line train'. http://bridgetdunnes.blogspot.com/ The status of this damaged Hammersmith and City line remains a bit of a mystery.
The anonymous 'Official Account' or 'narrative' of May, 2006 concerning the events of July 7th had no comment on which trains were involved in the Edgware Road event, while the London Assembly's report of June 6th just stated, 'At 9.07 am, Fire Control received a call alerting them to the location of the incident on the Hammermith and City Line at Edgware Road.' - and that was all! (9) The main blast cannot however have been on this line.
Jenny Nicholson, 26, who died that morning, seems to have been on the eastbound Circle line service she had boarded at Paddington station (She had phoned her boyfriend, James White, minutes earlier) (10). www.guardian.co.uk/attackonlondon/story/0,,1725371,00.html. This suituation turned out to have theological implications, as the mother of the young lady, the Rev Julie Nicholson, found herself unable to celebrate communion for her parishioners, and announced that she was resigning from her parish, because the 'wound within' had to heal. The Bishop of Bristol commented that 'These situations in life shake the faith of everybody, because they immediately bring into focus the 'why' question.' This 'why' question did not, we gathered, allude to how someone could be killed in a train going in the opposite direction to that on which a suicide bomb is said to have exploded, but was solely addressed to the Deity.
The Eastbound Circle Line train was just passing by the westbound train and coming into Edgware Road, when its driver Geoff Porter experienced 'a bright yellow glow' (he mentioned no sound) and "My first thought was that the other train had derailed and hit me." He jammed on the brakes, and then allowed his passengers to disembark out from his driver's compartment. Later, he walked through his train to check that everyone was OK. Passengers had soot on their faces but he saw no injuries. (Mr Porter added, curiously, 'Two guys had gas masks on, I don't know where they got them from.' http://the-inquirer.net/default.aspx?article=24542 ) Thus any death of Jenny Nicholson could not have been on this train (11).
It would appear that several trains were involved, and that the rush to pin the blame on a single (unseen, unphotographed) suicide bomber has led to the marginalizing of debate over how the explosions really took place.
Chris stones: 'The window behind me had exploded in, part of the ceiling was on the floor and there was a large hole in the floor…. We broke through into the next carriage where it was even worse.' http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/4659237.stm
Will Thomas: 'I was on the eastbound Circle Line train from Paddington … I thought we had collided with the westbound train.'
Sharan: 'I was in the last carriage of the Circle Line train that had just left Paddington. The tube had just left when there was a sudden explosion and the square marked area in the centre of the tube exploded … There was black smoke everywhere and a very strong smell as if the wiring in the carriage was burning. … After a painful 30 minutes we were told to walk up to the front carriage and down the tunnel. As I walked I began crying because I could not bear to see the state of the front 3 carriages. There was smashed glass everywhere, the carriage had almost melted.'
Yotty Toda: When I reached the end of the first carriage, I thought I would see the driver's compartment, but it was totally blown off. I saw parts of the compartment - such as the doors and the roof - scattered around the track.
These typical testimonies, collated by the BBC from eyewitness Edgware Road survivors, do not localise the blast to a single carriage; they reaffirm that the blast came from below; and they have the train windows imploding, not exploding as they would have done, were the bomb inside the carriage. http://z13.invisionfree.com/julyseventh/index.php?showtopic=12
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4662423.stm
One would like to see a photograph of the floor of the coach, or even have a journalist be allowed to see the floor of the coach. Instead, the coaches have been hidden away, no-one knows where: the primary evidence at the scene of the crime has been removed. We have no pictures whatsoever of any part of the Edgware road incident!
In the absence of this, a comparison may be of some value, with the memory of a survivor of the synchronous Aldgate-Liverpool Street blast, Mr Bruce Lait:
"I remember an Asian guy, there was a white guy with tracksuit trousers and a baseball cap, and there were two old ladies sitting opposite me…We'd been on there for a minute at most and then something happened. It was like a huge electricity surge which knocked us out and burst our eardrums. I can still hear that sound now…We were right in the carriage where the bomb was … The policeman said 'mind that hole, that's where the bomb was'. The metal was pushed upwards as if the bomb was underneath the train. They seem to think the bomb was left in a bag, but I don't remember anybody being where the bomb was, or any bag."
The blast came from below - with not a Muslim or a rucksack in sight. His local newspaper the Cambridge News reported this on July 11th www.cambridge-news.co.uk/news/region_wide/2005/07/11/83e33146-09af-4421-b2f4-1779a86926f9.lpf His testimony was given in a mere day or two after the blast which tends to make it reliable, in contrast with Mr Biddle's which only came to him more than two months later, after seeing a suggestive video on the subject.
1. Tony Gosling spoke to Mr Honigsbaum on August 20th, who provided these details.
2. A year later, reviewing the use of his report by 'conspiracy theorists,' Honigsbaum endeavoured to detach himself from the thrust of his earlier report www.guardian.co.uk/attackonlondon/story/0,,1806794,00.html, but without saying what was wrong with it.
3. By next January, Biddle is recalling Khan as standing up with the rucksack on his back http://www.guardian.co.uk/attackonlondon/s...1697438,00.html - a view highly incompatible with people losing their legs and feet.
4. Hampstead & Highgate Express, June 23, p.3.
5. Sunday Telegraph/ Australia, 7/10/05
6. John Tulloch's book One Day in July (June 2006) appeared more confident that he had, after all, seen Khan.
7. News of the World, 10/9/05
8. Western Mail, 10/11/05 also 12th Oct. http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/0200wales/tm_objectid=16238382&method=full&siteid=50082&headline=survivor-may-have-seen-bomber-moments-before-explosion-name_page.html
9. www.london.gov.uk/assembly/reports/7july/report.pdf, pp.27-30, section 2.47.
10. J.N. was travelling in from Reading and got on the Underground at Paddington. As a regular commuter she would arrive at her London office at nine o'clock: so it is hard to have her going in the other direction by mistake, as TV reconstructions have suggested.
11. http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4153/is_20050711/ai_n14719918
http://www.guardian.co.uk/attackonlondon/story/0,16132,1525969,00.html July 11th 2005.
* On July 7th police entered Edgware Road station, Sky News reported, to perform a 'controlled explosion' http://melbourne.indymedia.org/uploads/controlled_explosion_02.avi, and this had the effect of 'hampering the operation to collect evidence from the scene.' This was not reported by any newspaper, presumably because the notion of a further, unexploded bomb is incompatible with the 'suicide bomber' theory.
* Kurush Anklesaria testified: "I was on the train going from Bayswater station sitting in the first compartment of the train and after passing Paddington station at about 08:50 there was a huge blast just at the side of my feet and part of the floor was ripped open." www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,,2-10-1462_1733932,00.html Its hard to evaluate this because other reports do not have the Eastbound-train getting its floor torn open. But, if you want to believe that Jenny Nicholson really did die in that Eastbound train, this quote may be helpful.
You can download Nick's document here
23/07/06 - By DAN NEWLING, Daily Mail
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=397256&in_page_id=1770
David Kelly did not commit suicide and may have been the victim of a murder and subsequent coverup, according to a campaigning MP.
Norman Baker has spent six months investigating the death of the Government weapons expert, found dead in an Oxfordshire wood three years ago.
Mr Baker - who stepped down from the Liberal Democrat front bench to carry out his investigation - published his preliminary results and called for a new public inquiry.
His concerns begin with the method of Dr Kelly's supposed suicide, cutting a minor artery with a blunt gardening knife.
He would have been the only person that year to have successfully killed themselves that way in the UK.
The scientist's family and friends insist he had shown no sign of feeling suicidal. Emails and the minutes of meetings he attended also showed him behaving perfectly normally - and he was looking forward to his daughter's wedding.
Mr Baker also questions the painkillers Dr Kelly is said to have taken, not least because the levels found in his stomach were incompatible with his supposed consumption.
There are also basic questions about the police investigation - including the appearance beside Dr Kelly's body of a bottle of water, knife and watch which the people who found him say they did not see.
On the Hutton Inquiry itself, Mr Baker - whose conclusions were outlined in the Mail on Sunday - says Lord Hutton was completely out of his depth.
He had never chaired such an important inquiry and had a history of making pro-Government decisions as a judge. The MP claims Hutton was personally selected for the job by Tony Blair's close friend Charles Falconer, the Lord Chancellor.
The tragic story began in May 2003 when BBC radio journalist Andrew Gilligan alleged that the Government had deliberately 'sexed up' a dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction to justify an invasion.
The Government went on the offensive and eventually exposed Dr Kelly as the BBC man's source, a move which thrust the publicity-shy scientist into a media storm.
Days later, the 59-year-old father of three was found slumped under a tree five miles from his home in Abingdon, Oxfordshire.
'More than enough cause to reopen the inquest' - Baker
The Government immediately set up an inquiry under Lord Hutton to investigate the death. The two-month probe concluded that the scientist had taken his own life.
Mr Baker has consistently been a thorn in the Government's side. He previously revealed former minister Peter Mandelson's links to the Hinduja brothers, who were granted British passports shortly after investing money to the Millennium Dome.
He claimed that since the Hutton Inquiry concluded, there has been 'growing public disquiet' about Dr Kelly's death.
He said: "Any reasonable person looking at the evidence would, at the very least, agree that further investigation is necessary.
"If it wasn't suicide, then clearly Dr Kelly was bumped off. My aim is to find out exactly what happened. Frankly, there is more than enough cause to reopen the inquest."
Mr Baker's investigation comes after three senior doctors claimed the official cause of death - a severed ulnar artery in the wrist - was extremely unlikely to be fatal.
David Halpin, Stephen Frost and Searle Sennett said: "Arteries in the wrist are of matchstick thickness and severing them does not lead to life-threatening blood loss."
Mr Baker said that, according to the Office for National Statistics, Dr Kelly was the only person in 2003 to kill themselves that way. He says a scientist would have cut a larger artery, ensuring a swift death.
Although Dr Kelly was facing intense pressure over his exposure as the BBC source, Mr Baker produces evidence that he did not appear depressed.
Two days before his death, he made jokes at a Government committee meeting. On the day he disappeared, he spoke of returning to Iraq in the future.
He was a member of the Baha'i faith, which forbids suicide, and one of his daughters was about to marry. Dr Kelly's sister Sarah Pape, a consultant plastic surgeon, told the Hutton Inquiry: "In my line of work I deal with people who may have suicidal thoughts, and I ought to be able to spot those even in a phone conversation.
"But I have gone over in my mind the two conversations we had and he certainly did not betray to me any impression that he was anything other than tired.
"He certainly did not convey to me that he was feeling depressed and absolutely nothing that would have alerted me to the fact that he may have been considering suicide."
An inquest into Dr Kelly's death was opened, but never concluded as the Hutton Inquiry was deemed to have served the same purpose. Mr Baker criticises this decision, arguing that, unlike an inquest, the Hutton Inquiry did not have the power to subpoena witnesses or make them give evidence under oath.
He says: "What was the point of setting up an inquiry to look into the circumstances of Dr Kelly's death when the facts had, it appeared, already been decided?"
Peter Jacobsen, solicitor for Dr Kelly's widow, said the family would not comment.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=397256&in_page_id=1770
EXCLUSIVE Coroner quits.. saying he can't cope with the workload He's fed up with pressure from royals, No 10 and Fayed
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=17428661&method=full&siteid=94762&headline=di-inquest-rocked--name_page.html
By Jeff Edwards And Vanessa Allen - 22 July 2006
ROYAL coroner Michael Burgess has quit the inquest into Diana's death because he is sick of being pressured from all sides.
He has officially told the Lord Chancellor he is stepping aside because of "work pressures" involving his day-to-day job as Surrey coroner.
But insiders say the truth is Mr Burgess could no longer cope with the endless delays, political interference and intrigues which have engulfed the Diana case.
They say he was being pressed on one side by royal aides who wanted him to put an end to damaging conspiracy theories claiming Diana and lover Dodi Fayed were murdered.
At the same time Dodi's father Mohamed Al Fayed was applying pressure from the other direction - insisting his son and the princess had been assassinated.
Matters were further complicated by No.10 taking a keen interest - and its anxiety to avoid a crisis.
The insider said: "He was caught between a rock and a hard place with no room for manoeuvre."
Mr Burgess, 60, had signalled his frustration by answering queries as to when the inquest would finally be held with the acerbic reply: "Why don't you ask Downing Street?"
The resignation comes a month before Mr Burgess was due to receive the report of an official inquiry into Diana's death in Paris in 1997.
It means the inquest, which was expected to be held next year, may now be further delayed until 2008 as a replacement coroner is found.
Whoever takes over will have to familiarise themselves with the estimated 20,000 documents associated with the deaths.
A retired judge is now expected to take over the case, which is said to have assumed "Titanic proportions".
Harrods owner Mr Al Fayed was said to be delighted that Mr Burgess had decided to quit.
A source close to Dodi's father said: "Mr Al Fayed has always believed the case was so important that a county coroner was not sufficiently powerful to oversee it. His view is that this move elevates the investigation to a higher level."
Mr Al Fayed had led a concerted campaign against the way the inquest was being handled, saying the Royal coroner could be part of a cover-up. He had threatened to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights because Mr Burgess had agreed to implement an ancient law by which the inquest jury would be made up of royal household members.
Mr Burgess will continue with his day-to-day job as Surrey coroner.
The inquest is expected to involve more than 100 witnesses and will run for at least three months.
The official investigation into Diana's death has been carried out by former Scotland Yard chief Lord Stevens. It is expected to conclude that the deaths were an accident but that some elements of the case will never be known - a finding likely to further fuel the conspiracy theories.
The final decision about how much evidence to consider and what questions to ask will rest on the shoulders of the new judge.
They will also have to decide what evidence to hear in public and what is too sensitive to reveal - possibly including the truth about rumours that Diana was pregnant when she died. Mr Burgess ordered the fresh police investigation into the deaths when he opened inquests for Diana and Dodi in January 2004. Lord Stevens and a team of 10 detectives have uncovered fresh witnesses and evidence.
Princess Diana and Dodi were killed when their chauffeur-driven Mercedes crashed at high speed in a Paris tunnel in August 1997. Driver Henri Paul was over the drink-drive limit.
2 July 2006 - Sunday People
http://www.people.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=17321725&method=full&siteid=93463&headline=diana-inquiry-cop-quits--name_page.html
EXCLUSIVE Probe blow as he takes £250k job with Tesco
By Caroline Waterston
SCOTLAND Yard's investigation into Princess Diana's fatal car crash has been rocked after its top detective quit.
Assistant Commissioner Alan Brown has resigned from the Metropolitan Police to become £250,000-a-year head of security at Tesco.
A source told The People: "Bosses desperately want I him to stay on as he is the most senior detective in the investigation. It's a headache they don't need."
The inquiry, known as Operation Paget, was set up in 2004 and is likely to cost around £2million.
It is set to report later in the year - but Mr Brown, 50, intends to start his new job with the supermarket giant this summer.
He has even apparently turned down requests to stay on at the Met, including a pay rise.
Our source added: "Mr Brown is a crucial player in this investigation, particularly as it is nearing an end. Without him it's bound to be more of a struggle to tie up loose ends neatly."
Diana's death in the crash in Paris on August 31, 1997, sparked a host of conspiracy theories.
Former Met Commissioner Lord John Stevens was made head of the subsequent inquiry and he put Mr Brown in charge of a 12-strong team of detectives. Mr Brown joined the Met as a cadet in 1974 and quickly worked his way up through the CID ranks.
He headed Operation Trident which tackled gun crime in the black community and is now in the specialist crime directorate earning around £170,000 a year.
He will receive a £75,000-a-year police pension.
Brown said: "I'm hoping to retire later this year to take up a new post in the private sector.
"This is a great opportunity for me personally."
A Met spokesman said: "His leaving is in no way related to the Diana inquiry and his departure will not impact on the outcome of the inquiry."
Tesco confirmed his appointment as security boss.
c.waterston-at-people.co.uk
http://www.people.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=17321725&method=full&siteid=93463&headline=diana-inquiry-cop-quits--name_page.html
http://news.scotsman.com/politics.cfm?id=1024802006
AN MP conducting an investigation into the death of Dr David Kelly last night claimed his computer files have been wiped.
Norman Baker, Lewes MP, said he has evidence to prove Dr Kelly did not die as a result of suicide.
The Liberal Democrat said he had told police he believes computer files at his Lewes constituency office have been remotely wiped.
The MP told the BBC: "What my investigations to date have demonstrated is that there are significant medical doubts from professional medical people about the alleged cause of death.
"Indeed there are a number of specialist medical experts who tell me that it is clinically impossible for Dr David Kelly to have died the way that was described.
"I am suggesting the explanation for suicide simply doesn't add up."
Dr Kelly was the Ministry of Defence scientist whose conversations with a BBC journalist led to reports that the government "sexed up" the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. In July 2003 he was found dead with his wrists slashed.
http://news.scotsman.com/politics.cfm?id=1024802006
John Dugard Heads HRC’s Fact-finding Mission to Palestinian Territories
08/07/2006
Palestine Media Center – PMC
http://www.palestine-pmc.com/details.asp?cat=1&id=1169
Ignoring international outcries for restraint and diplomacy, the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) were on Saturday advancing their reoccupation push into the Gaza Strip amid Palestinian, Arab and Islamic diplomatic efforts to stop the Israeli invasion, efforts that have been aborted so far by a US-led western diplomacy.
“We are determined to create a professional chaos, to jump from one place, to emerge, to use this method or another, to leave the territory and enter it again after a while,” Israel’s Gaza Division Commander Brigadier General Kochavi told Ynet on Friday, after a visit by the IOF Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General Dan Halutz.
The IOF overnight Saturday reoccupied areas 500 meters deep in eastern Gaza Strip two days after reoccupying a belt of the northern Mediterranean coastal strip Israel called a buffer zone, including the sites of the three former Jewish colonial settlements of Nisanit, Elei Sinai and Dugit.
At least 38 Palestinians were killed and more than 120 others wounded, some of them critically, since the IOF invaded Gaza Strip at midnight Tuesday on July 27. Three Palestinians were also killed in the West Bank.
Much of the power, water, road and government infrastructure is bombed to rubble amid an exacerbating humanitarian crisis in the densely-populated strip - sealed off from outside world for the 15th consecutive day.
Thousands of Palestinian passengers are stranded on the Egyptian side of the border and an elderly man died on Friday while waiting to enter Gaza.
The Palestinian National Authority (PNA) rejected an Israeli offer on Friday to allow the opening of the Karm Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom) border crossing between Israel and Egypt to let more than 5000 Palestinians stranded on the Egyptian side of the border into the Gaza Strip, indicating that there was a deal sponsored by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to use the Gaza-Egypt crossing of Rafah for passengers.
The EU condemned “the loss of lives caused by disproportionate use of force” by the IOF and “the humanitarian crisis it has aggravated,” Finnish PM Matti Vanhanen, whose country holds the EU’s rotating presidency, said in St Petersburg on Friday.
IOF troops entered the towns of Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza forcing inhabitants to evacuate in thousands as fighting was reported from house to house between the reoccupying forces and small groups of anti-occupation activists armed with individual weapons against tanks and armored vehicles.
President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday chaired an emergency meeting for the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in Gaza City.
The Committee decided to be in held until the current crisis is over and set up a national committee to manage the crisis, chaired by Abbas and comprising representatives of the government, the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), the national and Islamic political groups and the civil society.
Israel claims that the aim of its invasion is to free the captured Israeli soldier, Cpl. Gilad Shalit, and stop the launching of home-made Palestinian rockets at Israeli targets.
Father of the captured Israeli soldier, Noam Shalit, called on Israel’s government Thursday to consider releasing some of more than 10,000 Palestinian prisoners, including more than 100 women and 413 children under 18, in exchange for his son, despite the government's refusal to negotiate with the captors.
A top Israeli government official suggested on Friday that Israel might release Palestinian prisoners as part of an Egyptian proposal to win freedom for the Israeli soldier.
Avi Dichter, Israel's minister of public security, said that once the Israeli soldier was released and the rocket attacks from Gaza stopped, "then, in a goodwill gesture, Israel, as it has in the past, knows how to free prisoners."
On July 6 Arab states asked the UN Security Council to demand that Israeli forces immediately withdraw from Gaza, but France and the United States criticized their proposed resolution as unbalanced.
The Arab draft resolution, introduced in the 15-nation council by Qatar, condemned Israel's arrest and detention of dozens of elected Palestinian officials and the “large-scale military assault” in Gaza launched after Palestinian anti-occupation activists seized one of its soldiers.
The draft demanded that Israel “immediately cease its aggression” against Palestinian civilians, pull its forces out of Gaza, and release the kidnapped Palestinian cabinet ministers, parliamentarians, officials and mayors.
It also expressed the council's appreciation, without elaboration, for efforts aimed at “finding a diplomatic solution for the issue of the release of prisoners including the Israeli soldier.”
“It is not balanced enough, and we will propose amendments, and we think it requires a lot of work,” French Ambassador Jean-Marc de la Sabliere told reporters after the council's initial closed-door talks on the draft.
But Riyad Mansour, Palestinian UN observer, said the text's supporters would show “all the necessary flexibilities to make the draft resolution as balanced as possible.”
Meanwhile the UN 47-state Human Rights Council (HRC) agreed on Thursday to send a fact-finding mission headed by John Dugard to the Palestinian territories and adopted a resolution demanding a halt to Israel's “extensive military operations” against Palestinians.
The resolution was passed by a majority vote at the end of a two-day special session of the newly formed council, called by the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC).
The vote was 29 delegations in favor, 11 against, with five abstentions and two African delegations absent, officials said.
The 29 countries which voted in favor of the resolution were: Algeria, Argentina, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Cuba, Ecuador, Ghana, Guatemala, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Malaysia, Mali, Mauritius, Morocco, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Tunisia, Uruguay and Zambia.
The European Union member states on the council, including Britain, France and Germany, voted against. Finland, speaking on behalf of the EU, took the floor to say that the situation needed to be addressed in a “more balanced manner.”
Canada also voted against, while China and Russia voted in favor of the resolution.
China, Cuba, Ecuador, Ghana, Guatemala, India, Peru, Philippines, Russia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Uruguay and Zambia were the non-OIC countries, which voted for the resolution.
John Dugard, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the territories, will head the HRC fact-finding team, which will also include four UN human-rights staff and two security guards. No dates or itinerary were announced for the mission.
The resolution was presented by Pakistan on behalf of the OIC.
The resolution voiced “grave concern at the violations of the human rights of the Palestinian people caused by the Israeli occupation, including the current extensive Israeli military operations.”
The council also urged “Israel, the occupying power, to immediately release the arrested Palestinian ministers,” lawmakers and “all other arrested Palestinian civilians,” and called “for a negotiated solution to the current crisis.”
“While we gather here in this hall, Israeli tanks are moving and shelling Palestinians,” Mohammad Abu-Koash, Palestinian ambassador to the UN in Geneva, told the council ahead of voting.
The United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan once again appealed to both sides to “pull back from the brink” for the sake of all civilians in the region.
“I call again for an immediate halt to the disproportionate use of force by Israel, which has already killed and wounded many civilians; for the release of Israeli Army Corporal Gilad Shalit; and for the cessation of rocket fire into Israel,” Annan, who was traveling in Germany, said through a statement released by his spokesman.
“These measures are an absolute prerequisite for defusing the tensions which are escalating every day,” he affirmed.
In the statement, Annan also repeated his reminder – to both sides of the conflict – of their obligations under international humanitarian law, “which calls on them to take constant care to spare civilian populations and to refrain from any attack which may cause loss of civilian life and property.”
http://www.palestine-pmc.com/details.asp?cat=1&id=1169
This is the text of a talk given by Shaykh Daoud yesterday evening:
By Shaykh Daoud Rosser-Owen
[Paper delivered to the Gulf Cultural Club, 45 Chalton Street, London NW1, at 1830 on 5 July 2006]
http://www.gv2000.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=40 [registration required]
I begin with a slight digression; and at the end of the Paper, I invite you to make up your own minds, because I believe it goes beyond the obvious – or the “usual suspects”.
In two days time, we will reach the first anniversary of the London Bombings, described by Keith Mothersson in an advertisement in The Independent yesterday as the “biggest slaughter in London since the Luftwaffe” with 56 people killed and many injured and yet the government is resisting calls for an independent enquiry claiming that it would be a “distraction” and “too expensive”. In today’s newspapers it has been revealed, as if it were relevant, that the “Bloody Sunday” enquiry has cost so far £400 million.
Why should we need a public independent enquiry? Well, for a start, to establish just who exactly the perpetrators were, how they carried out the atrocity, and the significance of the events of that day and related events on later days – such as the egregious murder of the Brazilian electrician Jean-Charles de Menezes.
But why rake over the past? Can’t we just put it behind us? Why waste all that money? We all know who did it. It was those four Anglo-Pakistanis from Leeds.
How do we know this? Because the authorities say so. Yet, having demonstrated that they are willing to lie us unconscionably into the commission of two wars of aggression against sovereign countries that in no way threatened British interests, I fail to see why, exactly, we should take the authorities’ word for the perpetrators of 7 July without being presented with substantial evidence of the kind that would stand up in a court of law. But no such evidence has been produced. Nothing has been seen that would establish an actus reus against the nominees, let alone their mens rea.
These famous terms of British law come from the principle stated by Sir Edward Coke CJ namely, actus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea, which means, “an act does not make a person guilty unless (their) mind is also guilty” – that is to say, the general test is one that requires proof of fault, culpability, or blameworthiness both in behaviour and mind.
Anthony Charles Linton Blair, who today [5 July 2006] has yet again been impertinently lecturing the Muslim communities in the UK on weeding out the extremists in their midst, has so little respect it would appear for Her Majesty’s Muslim subjects or the Rule of Law that he refuses to prove the claim he made just three hours after last year’s bombings that it was “Muslim suicide bombers” who did it. And so, as a consequence, the entire Muslim community in the UK has been demonized on an assertion.
Which brings me to the topic of extremism and terrorism, and who benefits from them?
Roger Scruton, in The Dictionary Of Political Thought (Hill & Wang, New York, 1982) defines “extremism” as:
“A vague term, which can mean: 1. Taking a political idea to its limits, regardless of ‘unfortunate’ repercussions, impracticalities, arguments and feelings to the contrary, and with the intention not only to confront, but also to eliminate opposition. 2. Intolerance towards all views other than one’s own. 3. Adoption of means to political ends which show disregard for the life, liberty, and human rights of others”.
This is a pretty fair definition of the concept. And hearing it put like that most Muslims would recognize two things – firstly, this is stating the antithesis of Islamic scholarship, and secondly, that there are quite a few people in the Muslim communities who embrace such a style. So, immediately, I am claiming that ‘theological or doctrinal extremism’ of the second category is illegitimate in Islam.
On the website “islamfortoday.com” there is a fairly long and comprehensive list of offerings from various people – Muslim and non-Muslim alike – expatiating on the notion that extremism is illegitimate in Islam under the heading “Muslims against Extremism and Fundamentalism”.
It is thus demonstrable that many scholars have been pointing this out for quite a time. So how is it that, apparently, the Muslim Communities are beset by such demagogues and their followers?
Well, firstly, to put it into context, very few of the imams and community leaders can actually be categorized that way. Nearly all of them – whether Shi’ah or Sunnah - embrace and teach “traditional mainstream Islam”. The hand-full of well-known faces from the front page of the tabloids or broadsheets, have largely achieved their notoriety because of the attentions of the media. One could say that they are largely creations of the media: most people in the Muslim communities have avoided them, and have frequently questioned their credentials.
The theology they have espoused – a derivative of Wahhabiism (itself considered heretical by much reputable scholarship from both the Shi’ah and Ahlu-s Sunnah) – is clearly deviant. Their followers have been, for the most part, sadly quite disturbed or disillusioned individuals. It needs to be stressed that there are very few such people in the UK Muslim communities. Though they appear, through their “Walter Mitty-esque” theatrics and loudmouthed opinions to be more and more dangerous than they really are, they are actually relatively few in number. And the teachings of their gurus have frequently been condemned by many authorities from, for example, the late Dr Zaki Badawi KBE (yarhamuhu-Llah) to the visiting Shaykh Yusuf al-Qaradawi.
It is a moot point, however, how these people were able to preach and act as they have for so long unhindered, given that much of what they have said has been actionable, without there having been a considerable degree of connivance from the authorities, making them in effect, if not in fact, agents provocateurs. And it isn’t as though the authorities have been unaware of their presence or the disquiet felt within the Muslim Communities at their activities – this has been made known to them since before the murder of WPC Yvonne Fletcher in St James’s Square on 17 April 1984. The notorious occupation of the Finsbury Park Mosque by Abu Hamza al-Masri and his cronies was a matter that was allowed to drag on by the authorities for some four years – until January 2003 – despite the police and the Charity Commissioners being informed about it just after it happened. And similarly have been the indulgence shown to Abu Qatada, and to Umar Bakri Muhammad.
The matter at hand here is that the Muslim communities have done everything that could be expected within the law to limit the activities of such demagogues – further steps could only be taken by the authorities. It is therefore unfair to demand of the Muslims that they “should put their house in order”. How, precisely, without breaking the law? If the authorities will not use their powers under, for example, the Ecclesiastical Places Act 1860, what more do they expect of the members of the Muslim communities?
Many of the angry youths who gravitate to the presence of these people have previous to this been outside the ambit of mosques and religious leaders of any stripe. How to reach out to them generally is a question for sociologists and people experienced in the psychology of disaffected youth. But, in a manner of speaking, their entering the suhbah of the demagogues may well make them accessible eventually to the traditional scholars. But, that notwithstanding, it seems to bear out the dictum that should be familiar to the authorities with the extensive experience of Her Majesty’s Security Forces in countering extremism that “if you don’t give the moderates today something to take home to their communities, you will be dealing with the extremists tomorrow”.
By making foolish statements generally anathematizing the Muslim communities and their leaders, politicians, other authorities, and the media are actually exacerbating any problems that the communities have with extremism; and apparently showing to the potential recruits that the mainstream leaders are ineffectual. Why not go with Demagogue A, he might do better? And then, eventually, we end up with a generation of dissociated and alienated people: how do they then become responsible members of civil society? This returns us to the area of government policies, and is not wholely – or mainly - the responsibility of the Muslim communities.
So, in the authorities’ previous culpable indulgence of these people, and their present almost hysterical demonisation of the Muslims generally, it can be said with a certainty that the UK Muslims are not benefiting from extremism. The only benefit seems to be for those who can enjoy or take advantage from the discomfiture of the Muslims, whoever they may be.
As for Terrorism; when I asked a representative from the Association of Chief Police Officers for a definition I was referred to the Terrorism Act 2000 where there is in Part 1, a rambling and almost inchoate treatment of the topic:
“Terrorism: interpretation.
1. - (1) In this Act "terrorism" means the use or threat of action where-
(a) the action falls within subsection (2),
(b) the use or threat is designed to influence the government or to intimidate the public or a section of the public, and
(c ) the use or threat is made for the purpose of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause.
(2) Action falls within this subsection if it-
(a) involves serious violence against a person,
(b) involves serious damage to property,
(c ) endangers a person's life, other than that of the person committing the action,
(d) creates a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public, or
(e) is designed seriously to interfere with or seriously to disrupt an electronic system.
(3) The use or threat of action falling within subsection (2) which involves the use of firearms or explosives is terrorism whether or not subsection (1)(b) is satisfied.
(4) In this section-
(a) "action" includes action outside the United Kingdom,
(b) a reference to any person or to property is a reference to any person, or to property, wherever situated,
(c ) a reference to the public includes a reference to the public of a country other than the United Kingdom, and
(d) "the government" means the government of the United Kingdom, of a Part of the United Kingdom or of a country other than the United Kingdom.
(5) In this Act a reference to action taken for the purposes of terrorism includes a reference to action taken for the benefit of a proscribed organisation…”
This appallingly badly drafted description is actually stating in effect that an armed bank robbery that takes place in, for example, the Republic of Ireland in which actual bodily harm is caused to a member of the public is prima facie an act of terrorism in the UK. This is a palpable absurdity.
However, there is a rather more succinct definition offered by the American writer and former State Department official William Blum in his book Rogue State: a Guide to the World's Only Super Power:
“The word "terrorism" has been so overused in recent years that it's now commonly used simply to stigmatize any individual or group one doesn't like for almost any kind of behavior involving force. But the word's raison d'être has traditionally been to convey a political meaning, something along the lines of: the deliberate use of violence against civilians and property to intimidate or coerce a government or the population in furtherance of a political objective. Terrorism is fundamentally propaganda, a very bloody form of propaganda. It follows that if the perpetrators of a terrorist act declare what their objective was, their statement should carry credibility, no matter what one thinks of the objective or the method used to achieve it.”
So, from this, terrorism is a methodology aimed at forcing a superior power to concede demands, usually withdrawal of forces, or the granting of independence, or some such goal, but it is geared to raising the political cost through promoting fear among the civilian population which then forces the government to give in. It is a tactic. It is not an entity in itself, with a life of its own. It is Terry Jones’s “abstract noun” that he rhetorically asked George Walker Bush how one bombed it.
It is considered an illegitimate tactic under the Geneva Conventions that otherwise allows (under Art 47 of the APGC77) “insurgency” warfare even by those not displaying any form of symbol providing the arms are borne openly. Such organizations may resort to it but at other times employ more conventional tactics – at the one incident they are terrorists, at the other they are “protected persons”.
For example, at Warren Point the IRA committed a straightforward guerrilla ambush of a British Army unit – this was not “terrorism”; however, the Bishopsgate bombing (or any of the Europa Hotel, Belfast, bombings) were terrorist acts.
It is entirely illegitimate in Islamic Law. It is to be distinguished in Islamic terms from Resistance or Guerrilla Warfare, which are targeted at "those bearing arms against you" and cannot be allowed to be confused with terrorism. This is literal: as soon as one of “those bearing arms against you” puts down his or her weapon, for whatever reason, he or she becomes sacrosanct. This applies to off-duty servicemen and women, and to police, as well as emergency services, and civilians generally.
Terrorism (irhab), as it is aimed at civilians or the unarmed, is categorically forbidden. It comes under the heading of hirabah, which is the antithesis of jihad. Its advocates are not jihadis, as people have taken to calling them, but hirabis and this crime has always been considered to merit the most severe punishments.
And the further notion that there is something called “suicide terrorism” in Islam is also unproven “beyond a reasonable doubt” and given that suicide (intihar) is utterly forbidden in Islam, the presumption must be to demand the asserters prove that Muslims have actually committed such acts.
Suicide is "anticipating the Decree" and arrogating to oneself the dispensation over one's ajal that belongs to the Almighty alone. Some Muslims confused the description of one of the fighters at Badr throwing away some dates and fighting until he was killed, and a description of the War against the Dajjal when the Muslims would send out parties to fight him and they would all be martyred, and have taken this confusion to sanction suicide attacks. This simply betrays ignorance, and a lack of proper tarbiyah. The "fighting until one is killed" has nothing to do with blowing oneself up with explosives, when there is no chance of survival. In the cases described in the hadiths, there is always the possibility that when the fighting ends a person is left alive - their deaths are still at the discretion of the Almighty.
All this is clear, and has been elucidated by all the reputable authorities of the contemporary Muslim World, from the late Shaykhu-l Islam 'Abdu-l 'Aziz bin Baz yarhamuhu-Llah of Saudi Arabia, to the late Grand Mufti of Syria, Shaykh Ahmad Koftaro yarhamuhu-Llah, to the modernist scholar Shaykh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, to the Grand Ayatollah Sayyid 'Ali Khamene'i. There is no disagreement between Shi'ah and Sunnah, between Wahhabis and mainstream Muslims, between Ahlu-t Tariqah and non-mystics.
Remember, Qaradawi condemned 9/11 the day after it happened in the same terms that Bin Baz condemned the Riyad Bombers: whoever did it cannot be a Muslim because, even if they came from Islam, in perpetrating these outrages they had exited Islam. Ayatollah Khamene'i made some similar statement after last year's atrocity on 7 July. Qaradawi qualified his comments with the observation that though forbidden, in the case of Palestine it was understandable.
However, in the context of Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan, for example, we are faced with resistance to occupations that are not “terrorism” per se, but are legitimate actions under the terms of the 1977 Additional Protocol – a recognition that is conspicuously absent from the Terrorism Act 2000 or any reference in it to the earlier Geneva Conventions Act 1957 or the subsequent Geneva Conventions (Amendment) Act 1995.
There was demonstrable Irish “irregular military” activity (some of it terroristic) for 32 years from 1968-2000 within the United Kingdom. There has never been any proved such activity involving Muslims. And yet the Muslim communities have suffered a degree of intrusive and suppressive policing, and the population of the United Kingdom generally has had its “ancient liberties” constrained in a manner that was never experienced by the Irish or by the Roman Catholics since the late1960s, or at any previous time since the Stuart monarchy of the 17th Century. How has terrorism, and in particular George Walker Bush’s proclaimed “Global War On Terror” that we have been signed up for by the Prime Minister volens nolens, benefited us?
Indirectly, of course, it may well have benefited large corporations such as Halliburton, Bechtel, DynCorp, or the Carlyle Group through the reconstruction contracts they have been awarded in Iraq, but that’s not the same as seeing how the rest of us might have gained. In fact, we’ve lost much and are in the process of losing more.
I was re-reading yesterday the text of a lecture given by Lord Justice Judge, Deputy Chief Justice for England and Wales, in Buenos Aires on 29 October 2003 entitled “An Independent Judiciary”, and yet again it set me thinking. And I see in today’s [5 July 2006] newspapers that the judiciary are getting restive at being the butt of attacks from Mr Blair and his myrmidons.
We need a robust and independent judiciary today almost more than at any previous time in our history, with the Constitution being systematically destroyed and a large section of the Queen’s subjects, the Muslim communities, being demonised and hounded in the prosecution of an alien agenda by agents of Her Majesty’s government.
Judge LJ cited Edmund Burke. “One of our great thinkers, Edmund Burke, one of the many Englishmen who said publicly that the complaints of the then colonists, in what we now call the United States, in the 1760s were entirely justified, spoke of “the cold neutrality of an impartial judge”. And that encapsulates the twin principles of independence and incorruptibility.”
Indeed, meetings between judges of the Commonwealth produced the guidelines in 1998 known as the “Bangalore Principles of Judicial Conduct” which assert the principle that, “judicial independence is a pre-requisite to the rule of law, and a fundamental guarantee of a fair trial”. Some might say that we are far too far down that road as it is, and that the Rule of Law in Mr Blair’s Britain is something in suspended animation.
I am minded of the late great judge Lord Denning in the trial of Gouriet v Union of Post Office Workers and Others 1977. Denning MR stated, “When the Attorney General comes… and tells us that he has a prerogative by which he alone can say whether the criminal law can be enforced in these courts or not – then I say he has no such prerogative. He has no prerogative to suspend or dispense with the laws of England. If he does not give his consent, then any citizen of the land – any one of the public who is adversely affected – can come to this court and ask that the law be enforced.”
In these days, with the Queen’s First Minister and a succession of Home Secretaries behaving like a collective Stuart monarch suspending habeas corpus, arbitrarily arresting people and holding them in secure prisons without charge or trial, anathematising a whole community by innuendo and assertion, prosecuting illegal wars of aggression against sovereign states on utterly mendacious grounds, and generally conducting themselves in a manner above the law, we need a return to the days of the Rule of Law.
I have quoted before the words of Thomas Fuller (1608-1661), “Be you never so high, the law is above you”. In 1688, the Glorious Revolution removed the Stuart king James II. Before he could be replaced by Queen Mary II and King William III in a collective monarchy they had to agree to the Bill of Rights in which it is stated, “The pretended power of suspending of laws or the execution of laws by regal authority without the consent of Parliament is illegal.”
But what happens when a House of Commons dominated by one faction arrogates to itself kingly powers, and does just that? It has “parliamentary consent” in that the House of Commons nowadays claims to speak for all. This is new ground, and we are entering into a parliamentary dictatorship under John Stuart Mill’s “tyranny of the majority”. Or have we evolved beyond that to a “tyranny of the executive”, or even – with the “presidential” prime ministership – to a “tyranny of the prime minister”? How do we trammel the arrogance of Parliamentary factions and their executive?
Perhaps there is indeed mileage in the Leader of the Conservative Party, David Cameron’s, suggestion of a new Bill of Rights? The 1689 Bill was aimed at curbing the power of the Executive of the time. For Cameron’s suggestion to be useful it must trammel the power of an overmighty Parliament-dominating Executive as it did King William and Queen Mary.
As Thomas Jefferson stated in his inaugural address as President of the United States, “If the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable… the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression”.
Dr Samuel Johnson, the Tory essayist and compiler of the famous dictionary, observed in the 18th Century, “To permit a law to be modified at discretion is to leave the community without law. It is to withdraw the direction of that public wisdom by which the deficiencies of private understanding are to be supplied”.
Atkin J, in the famous trial Liversidge and Anderson 1942 AC, stated “In England, amidst the clash of arms, the laws are not silent. They may be changed, but they speak the same language in war as in peace. It has always been one of the pillars of freedom, one of the principles of liberty for which… we are now fighting, that judges are no respecters of persons, and stand between the subject and any attempted encroachments on his liberty by the executive, alert to see that any coercive action is justified in law”.
Lord Justice Judge stated in his lecture, “[Lord Atkin] refused to accept the argument for a statutory provision, enabling the Home Secretary to intern those he believed to be unreliable or potentially dangerous to the defence of the realm without having to provide reasons”.
This is exactly the same specious nonsense being advocated by Mr Blair through the various Home Secretaries and Attorneys General, except that now they do not even have the excuse of being involved in a legitimate war. And there are so many problems and unanswered questions about the “official narratives” concerning the outrages in New York on 11 September 2001, in Madrid on 11 March 2004, and London on 7 and 21 July 2005 that give rise to concern that what we are actually seeing is a series of “false flag operations” to blame the Muslims and to justify illegal war.
Earlier in his ruling, Lord Atkin had said, “In this case I have listened to arguments which might have been addressed acceptably to the Court of the King’s Bench in the time of Charles I. I protest, even if I do it alone, against a strained construction put upon words, with the effect of giving an uncontrolled power of imprisonment to the Minister”.
Lord Atkin was overruled; but it is instructive to remember that, speaking in the House of Lords, another Law Lord, Lord Diplock, stated, some 40 years later, that the House of Lords should admit that Lord Atkin was right and the Law Lords were wrong in Liversidge.
It is instructive that it is their Lordships who have been resisting the attempts of Mr Blair to destroy the British Constitution, and who have as a consequence been on the receiving end of thinly disguised policies to curb their powers and independence.
As for who benefits directly from Terrorism and Extremism, I ask you to make up your own minds. Are they those who made obscene fortunes from the “put options” on September 11, 2001, or the subsequent insurance claims? Are they the members of the Orwellian plutocratic collectivism that seems to believe it can side-step responsible government? Are they simply those who would expand the power and intrusion of the state over its citizens? Are they those who treasonously believe that they can use Her Majesty’s Forces to serve the alien agenda of a foreign power? Are they those who have a vested interest in furthering the “security state”? Or who?
Benjamin Franklin, one of the drafters of the American Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States of America in July 1776, said, “Those who give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety”.
Rinn m’anam còmhnuidh fhada bhuan le neach thug fuath do shìth.
Gu cogadh tha iad togarrach; air sìth ‘n tràth labhras
mi
(“My soul made dwelling for ages with a folk taking aversion from peace.
They are keen for warring; I speak for a time of peace”)(Salm 120)
How can anyone feel safe amid this silence?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/newscomment.html?in_page_id=1787&in_article_id=394119
http://www.nineeleven.co.uk/board/viewtopic.php?t=2465&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0
London - July 7th 2005. A day of slaughter, tears and solidarity. 56 precious lives lost, hundreds are injured, traumatised, bereaved. All of us made less secure. Muslims suffer increased suspicion and attacks.
Before anyone could know, the Prime Minister hints at who was responsible. Despite the pre-war 'framing' of Iraq, most media take Blair as reliable and give credence to unattributable police and intelligence 'sources' (aka hearsay). Where facts are scarce or contradictory, the emotional appeal of the notion of 'Islamic terror' will plug the holes.
Although some people, including some Muslims, abuse their religion to target civilians, calm assessment should have suggested additional possibilities:
Who did it last time? Soho pub (fascist) and Bishopsgate (IRA). Terrorism has also been practiced by British, US and other intelligence agencies, ask the Irish, ask the survivors of the Bologna rail station massacre of 1980, successfully blamed on Red Brigade patsies (Reference 1) 'Britain's 9-11' ? - as if that conspiracy tale is beyond question! (2)
The biggest slaughter in London since the Luftwaffe, yet - according to Blair - a Public Inquiry would be 'a distraction'. Too slow. Too expensive! 'Besides', went the subtext, 'we all know who did it, don't we?' But do 'we'? And did the promised 'narrative' (3) deal with awkward facts or paper over the difficulties?
1) Identity of alleged perpetrators: if you were on a jury would you convict on the basis of this photograph of the supposed 'bombers' supposedly entering Luton station that morning? (Photo image in attachment)
1) faces indistinct - yet June 28th images from this camera 14 much clearer; 2) left arm of 'Khan' appears entangled with railing ; 3) 'Hussain's' feet are incorrectly mirrored in the glass frontage of the building behind 'Khan' ; 4) Report puts station entry at 7.15.
2) Lack of CCTV footage: From the surveillance capital of the world we have not one image of the four suspects on the day. Instead of connected footage from a score of cameras, we have to take alleged CCTV sightings on trust. But after the Lawrence Inquiry finding of'institutional racism', and now after the Stockwell and Forest Gate shootings and lies, the Met has no right to expect trust (4)
3) Luton departure: The Official Report says the Leeds 4 caught the 7.40 train. Small problem. Thameslink officials say the 7.40 didn't run that day. Also that the 7.30 (left at 7.42) didn't arrive until 8.39 - too late to catch Circle line trains. (5) Who would you normally trust?
4) London arrival: The suspects are reported (but not shown) on CCTV near Thameslink platform at 8.26 'heading in the direction of the London Underground system' (i.e. by subway to the tube platforms) but then 'are seen' hugging at Kings Cross [underground ticket hall?] 'around 8.30', before splitting up after which they 'must have' boarded their various trains, beginning 8.35, so we are told. (No, it doesn't make sense to us either.)
5) How were bodies identified? Khan's personal documents were found to have miraculously survived at the epicentre of three explosions. Lindsay's ID only turned up at the crime scene on 15 July, two days after his house was searched. His DNA was long said to be have been found on his station parking ticket - yet the Report has his car towed away [contrary to car park policy] as unticketted.
6) Nature of explosives: Initial reports were of military explosives, now its HMTD or extremely unstable TATP - which doesn't flash, and thus doesn't match survivor accounts of flashes. 10 months later the Report solemnly tells us 'Expert examination continues but it appears that the bombs were home made.'
7) Location of explosives: The Official Report ignores the testimony of Aldgate survivor Bruce Lait and policewoman Lizzie Kenworthy, who independently reported a hole in the floor with the metal pushed up.
8) Coincidence: No mention of radio and TV interviews with senior ex-policeman and security consultant, Peter Power: 'At half past nine this morning we were actually running an exercise for a company of over a thousand people in London based on simultaneous bombs going off precisely at the railway stations where it happened this morning'.
9) Tavistock Sq : Bus workers report the 30 Bus was the only one diverted that morning, and its depot had been visited for 20 hours by a 'non-regular' maintenance crew at the weekend. Internet tittle tattle? Maybe. Yet, why should we believe an equally anonymous 'Yard source' that the (normally reliable) bus CCTV system wasn't operating? Especially when only one picture from the (evidently working) traffic cam has been released.
There is no possible public interest served by not reassuring Muslims and many others who worry that there may be something to hide. [Added now: Among extraordinary coincidences here are the location of the blast, just outside the offices of The BMA and The Lancet, which had ruffled feathers with its research that 100,000 civilians had died in Iraq, and also the location of a van from a company which among other things offers specialist controlled explosions - which appears to have been level with the back of the bus, though doubtless is entirely innocent.]
10) Prior knowledge? The Head of Mossad confirmed (6) earlier AP reports that 'the Mossad office in London received advance notice of the attacks' (6 minutes). No mention in the Official Report. What about the Leeds end? The Intelligence and Security Committee Report into the London Bombings describes Khan as having been 'peripheral' to previous surveillance and investigative operations. Yet much time and money was spent on photographing him, tapping his telephone and tracking his car. Transcripts of the taped telephone conversations were never made available to the ISC. Why not?
More and more people are asking 'Could the Leeds 4 have been stopped? Was it incompetence or something worse?' (7) In the light of severe 'London end' discrepancies should the question rather be: Was Khan and his network being groomed as credible patsies? (in which case it would be important that they were shielded from arrest before they were duped or otherwise drawn in). What proof do we really have that they even made it to Luton?
We just do not know, and we suggest the reader doesn't either. Please join in the pressure for the full truth to come out - whatever it turns out to be.
1) A 'patsy' is someone who gets the blame in a frame-up. See Webster Tarpley's model of False-flag state terrorism carried out by State and privatised networks: 9/11 Synthetic Terror - Made in USA; (Progressive Press, 2005); In Europe see Nato's Secret Armies- Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe, Daniele Ganser (Cass, 2005). On terrorism as state doctrine, see 'google' P2OG
2) Scholars for 911 Truth : http://www.st911.org/ ; see also http://www.mujca.com/ - Muslims, Jews and Christians Against 911 False Witness
3) Report of the Official Account of the London Bombings of July 7th 2005.
4) Campaign against Criminalising Communities http://http://www.cacc.org.uk/
5) E-mails 16/8/05 and 25/8/05 from Customer Relations, Kings Cross, and Communications Manager, Luton.
6) Bild am Sonntag, July 2000
7) An interesting book which is getting a lot of attention is Nafeez Ahmed's, The London Bombings - An Independent Inquiry (Duckworth, 2006). This casts very sharp doubts on the London end of the official story (train times, nature and location of explosives) but then completely ignores his opening fifty pages when he proceeds to examine how 'the bombers' (assumed to be the Leeds 4) could have been linked to Al-Qaida and under MI5 surveillance.
8) Facts not referenced here can mostly be checked on http://www.julyseventh.co.uk or http://www.officialconfusion.com/77/index.html .
1) Against all attacks on harmless civilians
2) Don't presuppose 'Muslim guilt'
3) Support whistleblowers.
4) Release the evidence - CCTV, traffic cam, phone, computer, bank, etc
5) For a credible and searching Independent Public Inquiry: adequate Remit; extensive Powers; open Procedures; appropriate Resources; broad social Composition; widely acceptable (including in Beeston).
6) Support Amnesty's boycott of any public inquiry conducted under Blair's Inquiries Act 2005 (designed to shield spook wrongdoing).
7) An end to War of Terror raids on Muslim communities!
Further information from J7AAA, 2b Darnhall Cres, Perth PH2 0HH; keith[dot]mothersson[at]phonecop[dot]coop ; or 01738 783677; mob: 07815 653389
http://web.amnesty.org/wire/May2003/China
The use of lethal injection as a method of execution is becoming increasingly popular among provincial authorities in China. In January 2003 a journalist and a group of "several dozen" court officers from all prefectures, cities and counties in Gansu province were taken by officials of the provincial high court to an unnamed detention centre near Lanzhou to attend a lecture and then witness the execution by lethal injection of 11 convicted prisoners. This was reportedly the largest group of prisoners to be executed by lethal injection on one single occasion since the method was introduced in Lanzhou.
Execution by lethal injection as an alternative to the firing squad was introduced in China in the revised Criminal Procedure Law in 1997 and was first used on an experimental basis in Yunnan province. The current "strike hard" anti-crime campaign, launched in 2001, under which defendants are often sentenced to death for crimes which at other times are punishable by imprisonment, has led to a rise in executions. During 2001 and 2002 AI recorded more than 5,900 death sentences and more than 3,500 executions in China, although the true figures were believed to be much higher.
In an effort to improve cost-efficiency, Chinese provincial authorities are beginning to introduce so-called mobile execution vans. These are intended to replace the traditional method of execution by firing squad in which prisoners are taken to an execution ground and made to kneel with hands cuffed before being shot in the head. Officials in Yunnan province explained that only four people are required to carry out the execution in the mobile vans: the executioner, one member of the court, one official from the procuratorate and one forensic doctor.
Eighteen mobile executions vans, converted 24-seater buses, are being distributed to all intermediate courts and one high court in Yunnan province. The windowless execution chamber at the back contains a metal bed on which the prisoner is strapped down. Once the needle is attached by the doctor, an act which breaches international medical ethics, a police officer presses a button and an automatic syringe inserts the lethal drug into the prisoner's vein. The execution can be watched on a video monitor next to the driver's seat and can be recorded if required.
The newspaper Beijing Today reported that use of the vans was approved by the legal authorities in Yunnan province on 6 March. Later that same day, two farmers, Liu Huafu, aged 21, and Zhou Chaojie, aged 25, who had been convicted of drug trafficking, were executed by lethal injection in a mobile execution van. Zhao Shijie, president of the Yunnan Provincial High Court, was quoted as praising the new system: "The use of lethal injection shows that China's death penalty system is becoming more civilized and humane." However, members of China's legal community have voiced their concerns that it will only lead to an increase in the use of the death penalty.
http://web.amnesty.org/wire/May2003/China
http://www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,12780,1523838,00.html
The G8 must seize the opportunity to address the wider issues at the root of such atrocities
I have rarely seen the Commons so full and so silent as when it met yesterday to hear of the London bombings. A forum that often is raucous and rowdy was solemn and grave. A chamber that normally is a bear pit of partisan emotions was united in shock and sorrow. Even Ian Paisley made a humane plea to the press not to repeat the offence that occurred in Northern Ireland when journalists demanded comment from relatives before they were informed that their loved ones were dead.
The immediate response to such human tragedy must be empathy with the pain of those injured and the grief of those bereaved. We recoil more deeply from loss of life in such an atrocity because we know the unexpected disappearance of partners, children and parents must be even harder to bear than a natural death. It is sudden, and therefore there is no farewell or preparation for the blow. Across London today there are relatives whose pain may be more acute because they never had the chance to offer or hear last words of affection.
It is arbitrary and therefore an event that changes whole lives, which turn on the accident of momentary decisions. How many people this morning ask themselves how different it might have been if their partner had taken the next bus or caught an earlier tube?
But perhaps the loss is hardest to bear because it is so difficult to answer the question why it should have happened. This weekend we will salute the heroism of the generation that defended Britain in the last war. In advance of the commemoration there have been many stories told of the courage of those who risked their lives and sometimes lost their lives to defeat fascism. They provide moving, humbling examples of what the human spirit is capable, but at least the relatives of the men and women who died then knew what they were fighting for. What purpose is there to yesterday's senseless murders? Who could possibly imagine that they have a cause that might profit from such pointless carnage?
At the time of writing, no group has surfaced even to explain why they launched the assault. Sometime over the next few days we may be offered a website entry or a video message attempting to justify the impossible, but there is no language that can supply a rational basis for such arbitrary slaughter. The explanation, when it is offered, is likely to rely not on reason but on the declaration of an obsessive fundamentalist identity that leaves no room for pity for victims who do not share that identity.
Yesterday the prime minister described the bombings as an attack on our values as a society. In the next few days we should remember that among those values are tolerance and mutual respect for those from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Only the day before, London was celebrating its coup in winning the Olympic Games, partly through demonstrating to the world the success of our multicultural credentials. Nothing would please better those who planted yesterday's bombs than for the atrocity to breed suspicion and hostility to minorities in our own community. Defeating the terrorists also means defeating their poisonous belief that peoples of different faiths and ethnic origins cannot coexist.
In the absence of anyone else owning up to yesterday's crimes, we will be subjected to a spate of articles analysing the threat of militant Islam. Ironically they will fall in the same week that we recall the tenth anniversary of the massacre at Srebrenica, when the powerful nations of Europe failed to protect 8,000 Muslims from being annihilated in the worst terrorist act in Europe of the past generation.
Osama bin Laden is no more a true representative of Islam than General Mladic, who commanded the Serbian forces, could be held up as an example of Christianity. After all, it is written in the Qur'an that we were made into different peoples not that we might despise each other, but that we might understand each other.
Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies. Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. Al-Qaida, literally "the database", was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians. Inexplicably, and with disastrous consequences, it never appears to have occurred to Washington that once Russia was out of the way, Bin Laden's organisation would turn its attention to the west.
The danger now is that the west's current response to the terrorist threat compounds that original error. So long as the struggle against terrorism is conceived as a war that can be won by military means, it is doomed to fail. The more the west emphasises confrontation, the more it silences moderate voices in the Muslim world who want to speak up for cooperation. Success will only come from isolating the terrorists and denying them support, funds and recruits, which means focusing more on our common ground with the Muslim world than on what divides us.
The G8 summit is not the best-designed forum in which to launch such a dialogue with Muslim countries, as none of them is included in the core membership. Nor do any of them make up the outer circle of select emerging economies, such as China, Brazil and India, which are also invited to Gleneagles. We are not going to address the sense of marginalisation among Muslim countries if we do not make more of an effort to be inclusive of them in the architecture of global governance.
But the G8 does have the opportunity in its communique today to give a forceful response to the latest terrorist attack. That should include a statement of their joint resolve to hunt down those who bear responsibility for yesterday's crimes. But it must seize the opportunity to address the wider issues at the root of terrorism.
In particular, it would be perverse if the focus of the G8 on making poverty history was now obscured by yesterday's bombings. The breeding grounds of terrorism are to be found in the poverty of back streets, where fundamentalism offers a false, easy sense of pride and identity to young men who feel denied of any hope or any economic opportunity for themselves. A war on world poverty may well do more for the security of the west than a war on terror.
And in the privacy of their extensive suites, yesterday's atrocities should prompt heart-searching among some of those present. President Bush is given to justifying the invasion of Iraq on the grounds that by fighting terrorism abroad, it protects the west from having to fight terrorists at home. Whatever else can be said in defence of the war in Iraq today, it cannot be claimed that it has protected us from terrorism on our soil.
r.cook@guardian.co.uk
Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
http://www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,12780,1523838,00.html
http://www.nineeleven.co.uk/board/viewtopic.php?p=4070
The revelation that all three of the 7/7 bombers were involved in the crack cocaine dealing scene in and around Beeston, Leeds, should come as no suprise.
http://www.radiodialect.net/index.php?cmd=blog&blogId=78 [towards the end of this podcast]
The picture painted for us that these lads were devout Muslims steeped in the Koran and affairs of the local mosques starts to wear a bit thin ... just like 9/11 suicide pilot Mohammed Atta's penchant for strip clubs and vodka. But remembering what happened to the Jews in early 1930's Germany isn't that what we might expect?
The revelation comes from Adrian Connock, webmaster of the best international resource on the London bombings namely www.officialconfusion.com/77/
The premise that devout followers of the prophet Mohammed, peace be upon him, have a predisposition to destroy the over-liberal values of Western society with violence is a misnomer. They want to do so by persuasion something the British press doesn't appear to get very excited about and hardly ever explains. Of course the persecution and, yes, racism, that Asians and Arabs are subjected to these days will be a seed of anger in their hearts but any individual that follows the prophet closely will know that, like Moses and Jesus Christ before him Mohammed preached tolerance and advised his followers to be slow to anger and to try every route to peace. Hardly a suicide bomber & killer of innocent civillians' charter.
Mohammed Siddique Kahn's heavily edited video is the only official evidence which has been released, or more correctly leaked, pointing to his wish to avenge the wrongs done against the Islamic world by Western nations and International Financial Institutions. The video unfortunately, due to the heavy editing and lack of lip-synch, could never be taken seriously by a court of law, thankfully for the crooks that overdubbed and edited it.
Journalistically challenged luvvies such as Fiona Bruce, the invisible croak voiced Daleks who tell her what to think from the gallery and their 'trial by television' tools are the only way to get a busy public to take the suicide bomber line seriously.
Turns out of course that the key 'muslim fundamentalist' at the demo in London after the publication of the cartoons of the prophet Mohamed was actually - again - a crack cocaine dealer. Now, presumably back in jail after breaking his probation. And not flavour of the month with those of the Islamic faith who he's dropped in it.
Crack cocaine dealing activities of the 7/7 bombers are also evidence of a close collaboration with international organised crime, aka. the Mafia who are much more likely to be the nefarious force behind the bombings and, as anyone who has been following this story knows, the evidence that these lads were suicide bombers simply is not there, unless you count selected anonymous press leaks and selected CCTV stills as evidence.
Why, then, has the government stalled all attempts at a public enquiry on the bombings? Don't they want to stop the next one?
Or could it be that the international criminals who look likely to be behind the 50 deaths on 7/7/05 have such influence that they are also in a strong position within the British government?
If there were ever an excuse for a Very British Coup to take place to remove the dishonest NeoCon puppets who, like Doctor Who's aliens, have colonised the British Executive then surely it is now. Brigadeer Lethbridge Stewart where are you now in our hour of need. With the sheepish Labour party spellbound by blue eyed PR boy Tony and his witch doctors a military coup might be the only way to rid Britain of corruption.
'Glorifying terror'? Perish the thought
Published - Mar 05 2006 01:18AM EST || AP
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002844807_wdig05.html
WASHINGTON(AP) Russia's emergence as an increasingly authoritarian state could impair U.S.-Russian ability to cooperate on key international security issues, according to an analysis by a major foreign policy organization.
Continuation of Russia's drift away from democratic norms under President Vladimir Putin "will make it harder for the two sides to find common ground and harder to cooperate even when they do," said the report, issued by the Council on Foreign Relations.
It warned that some critical problems cannot be dealt with effectively unless Moscow and Washington cooperate.
"If Russia remains on an authoritarian course, U.S.-Russian relations will almost certainly continue to fall short of their potential," it said.
The report was co-chaired by Jack Kemp, a former Republican presidential candidate; and John Edwards, the Democratic candidate for vice president in 2004. Kemp formerly served in the House, Edwards in the Senate.
Release of the report on Sunday was timed to coincide with the Washington visit of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. He arrives Monday and will meet the next day with President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
The report urged that the United States preserve and expand cooperation on dealing with the threat posed by Iran's nuclear program and on coping with the risk of Russian nuclear materials falling into the wrong hands.
On the whole, though, the report said relations are headed in the wrong direction.
"In particular, Russia's relations with other post-Soviet states have become a source of significantly heightened U.S.-Russian friction," it said.
It urged that Washington counter Russian pressures that undermine the "stability and independence" of its neighbors by helping to secure the success of those states that "want to make the leap into the European mainstream."
The report was especially critical of the Kremlin's energy export policy, accusing it of turning "a prized asset of economic relations into a potential tool of political intimidation."
Ukraine, it said, "has been the most shocking and coercive application of this view to date, but others may lie ahead."
The report recommended that the United States go beyond mere expressions of concern about the rollback of Russian democracy. It urged that Washington step up support for organizations committed to free and fair parliamentary and presidential elections in 2007-2008. –[This might be focusing on the NGO’s that Russia has accused of attempting to govern by infulence Russian policy in a defacto fashion.]
"Russia's course will not _ must not _ be set by foreigners, but the United States and its allies cannot be indifferent to the legitimacy of this process and to the leaders it produces," the report said. –[This is the “cover- your –ass” clause] If you want to bring forth leaders spouting a certain agenda then is required that democracy come forth in order to fund a political agenda in focus with the Councils intent, producing leaders of the Councils ideology. This is where the council becomes dependent on current leadership, hopefully there vast Bilderberg purse has had enough clout to in western politics to effectly hit another homerun in the East.
Among many setbacks to Russian democracy in recent years, the subordination of the judiciary to executive power received particular importance in the study.
"Under President Putin, power has been centralized and pluralism reduced in every single area of politics. As a result, Russia is left only with the trappings of democratic rule _ their form, but not their content," the report said.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002844807_wdig05.html
The X Factor: Israel's military planners say they know how to forestall Tehran's nuclear schemes. The options—and their cost.
By Kevin Peraino and John Barry
Newsweek http://msnbc.msn.com/id/11182458/site/newsweek
Feb. 13, 2006 issue - As scary as the idea may sound, the Israelis may not be bluffing. Their defense experts display no doubt whatsoever that Israel's Air Force can cripple Iran's nuclear program if necessary. The trick, they say, is to go after the system's weak spots. "You need to identify the bottlenecks," says a senior Israeli military source, asking not to be named for security reasons. "There are not very many. If you take them out, then you really undermine the project." Shlomo Brom, a former Israeli armed forces chief of strategic planning, says the destruction of two or three key facilities would probably suffice. He singles out the Natanz uranium-enrichment complex and the conversion plant at Esfahan as critical.
It wouldn't be as easy as it sounds. Tehran, taking obvious lessons from Israel's successful 1981 bombing of Saddam Hussein's reactor at Osirak, has done its best to shield potential targets like Natanz. "They are dispersed, underground, hardened," says the senior Israeli military source. U.S. analysts say each facility would require multiple hits before serious damage was done. Still, the Israelis—who have an undeclared nuclear arsenal of their own, and refuse international inspections or oversight—insist they have all the firepower they need: more than 100 U.S.-made BLU-109 "bunker buster" earth-penetrating bombs. "I think they could do the job," says the senior Israeli source.
Logistics is a bigger hurdle. Each separate target would require a small fleet of aircraft. Israel's F-15s and F-16s would need advance escorts of "electronic countermeasures" aircraft to jam Iran's air-defense radars, and every one of those planes would need an entourage of fighter aircraft. At short range, Tehran's newly upgraded MiG-29 interceptors are a match for just about anything in the air. "To get there and bomb the facilities, that's the easy part," says Brom. "The difficult part is how to get back. We're not making kamikaze runs."
To hit Osirak in 1981, Israel's bombers flew in low over Saudi Arabia. In a study published late last year by the U.S. Army War College, Brom suggests that a strike against Iran's facilities could arrive by way of the Indian Ocean—roughly twice the operational radius of Israel's newest strike aircraft under optimal flying conditions. But Israel's fleet of specialized planes for in-flight refueling—five aging KC-130H tankers—doesn't have the capacity to get all those aircraft there and back again. The only way to manage it would be with a covert stopover midway—it's anybody's guess where.
The Israelis admit they can only disable the Iranian program, not destroy it. "The real question is what you achieve if the best you can do is to delay the project for a few years," says a senior U.S. administration official, speaking anonymously because it's a sensitive topic. The cost to the region's stability could be devastating. Meanwhile, Israel continues to upgrade its own arsenal, acquiring two new German subs that could launch nuclear-armed cruise missiles for a "second-strike" deterrent. Perhaps the threats are only a way of pushing the West to get tough with Tehran before the arms race gets even more heated. But if so, it's one hell of an act.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/11182458/site/newsweek
http://www.ahora.cu/english/SECTIONS/international/2006/Febrero/08-02-06a.htm
Ahora.cu / 08-02-2006 The Iranian ambassador to Cuba said on Tuesday in Havana that Tehran will not resign to its legitimate right to develop nuclear energy for peaceful means. During a press conference Tuesday morning, Ahmad Edrisian rejected pressures from the US government and its allies that attempt to block the access of developing nations to nuclear technology for civilian use. He went on to condemn the recent resolution against Iran adopted by the Governors Board of the International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA, characterizing it as political and approved under enormous pressures from Washington and its western allies. The Iranian ambassador added that Teheran has adopted the decision to develop nuclear energy for the country's economic and social development, a national goal which they will not renounce.
The Iranian diplomat pointed out that it's willing to offer any guarantee to the international community on the civil character of its nuclear program, but suspended cooperation with the IAEA and with its compliance with the Additional Protocol of the Non Proliferation Treaty. However, the Iranian ambassador in Havana said that his country will remain in the IAEA and cooperate with that institution only in the framework of the Non Proliferation Treaty. Edrisian reiterated the official position of Iran against weapons of mass destruction, which he said is prohibited by their national religion and military doctrine and assured that Teheran has sufficient means to defend itself from any aggression. He stressed that International Atomic Energy Agency and the west close their eyes to the arsenal of nuclear weapons that the Zionist state of Israel possesses, and its killing and violations of the human rights of the Palestinian people.
The Iranian ambassador thanked Cuba for its vote against the anti-Iranian resolution approved by the IAEA. He pointed out that bilateral relations are at thier best moment and that Iran is working towards increasing economic ties with the island.
The Iranian official added that Cuba and his country maintain common positions on international issues. He expressed satisfaction that Cuba will be assuming the presidency the Movement of Non Aligned Countries during the summit scheduled later this year in Havana.
http://www.ahora.cu/english/SECTIONS/international/2006/Febrero/08-02-06a.htm
Richard Norton-Taylor and Tania Branigan
Monday January 30, 2006
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,,1697823,00.html
Tony Blair told George Bush that he was prepared to join the invasion of Iraq without a second UN resolution in January 2003, before he received legal advice from the attorney general, according to new material to be published this week.
Evidence that the prime minister was determined to commit British troops to the war is revealed in a new edition of Lawless World by Philippe Sands QC, professor of international law at London University. The first edition caused controversy last year by revealing that Lord Goldsmith, the attorney general, told Mr Blair two weeks before the invasion that military action could be illegal.
Downing Street yesterday dismissed the new claims as Prof Sands "simply trying to get more publicity" for his book.
His additional material confirms that the attempt to get a second UN resolution was "a sham", according to a source familiar with what was discussed at the White House meeting on January 31 2003. Mr Bush had already decided that the invasion should take place in March 2003 and Mr Blair apparently made no objection, though he said a second resolution by the UN would be preferable.
It is understood the two leaders expressed concern that the UN inspectors had not come up with any evidence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. But they planned to go ahead with the invasion anyway. Foreign Office lawyers said an attack on Iraq without a second resolution would be illegal.
A Downing Street spokesman said: "During this time there were frequent discussions between the UK and US governments about Iraq, but we would not comment on the prime minister's conversations with other leaders."
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,,1697823,00.html
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,,1689856,00.html
Richard Norton-Taylor
Thursday January 19, 2006
The Guardian
The government is secretly trying to stifle attempts by MPs to find out what it knows about CIA "torture flights" and privately admits that people captured by British forces could have been sent illegally to interrogation centres. A hidden strategy aimed at suppressing a debate about rendition - the US practice of transporting detainees to secret centres where they are at risk of being tortured - is revealed in a briefing paper sent by the Foreign Office to No 10.
The document shows that the government has been aware of secret interrogation centres, despite ministers' denials. It admits that the government has no idea whether individuals seized by British troops in Iraq or Afghanistan have been sent to the secret centres. Dated December 7 last year, the document is a note from Irfan Siddiq, of the foreign secretary's private office, to Grace Cassy in Tony Blair's office. It was obtained by the New Statesman magazine, whose latest issue is published today.
It was drawn up in response to a Downing Street request for advice "on substance and handling" of the controversy over CIA rendition flights and allegations of Britain's connivance in the practice.
"We should try to avoid getting drawn on detail", Mr Siddiq writes, "and to try to move the debate on, in as front foot a way we can, underlining all the time the strong anti-terrorist rationale for close cooperation with the US, within our legal obligations."
The document advises the government to rely on a statement by Condoleezza Rice last month when the US secretary of state said America did not transport anyone to a country where it believed they would be tortured and that, "where appropriate", Washington would seek assurances.
The document notes: "We would not want to cast doubt on the principle of such government-to-government assurances, not least given our own attempts to secure these from countries to which we wish to deport their nationals suspected of involvement in terrorism: Algeria etc."
The document says that in the most common use of the term - namely, involving real risk of torture - rendition could never be legal. It also says that the US emphasised torture but not "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment", which binds Britain under the European convention on human rights. British courts have adopted a lower threshold of what constitutes torture than the US has.
The note includes questions and answers on a number of issues. "Would cooperating with a US rendition operation be illegal?", it asks, and gives the response: "Where we have no knowledge of illegality, but allegations are brought to our attention, we ought to make reasonable enquiries". It asks: "How do we know whether those our armed forces have helped to capture in Iraq or Afghanistan have subsequently been sent to interrogation centres?" The reply given is: "Cabinet Office is researching this with MoD [Ministry of Defence]. But we understand the basic answer is that we have no mechanism for establishing this, though we would not ourselves question such detainees while they were in such facilities".
Ministers have persistently taken the line, in answers to MPs' questions, that they were unaware of CIA rendition flights passing through Britain or of secret interrogation centres.
On December 7 - the date of the leaked document - Charles Kennedy, then Liberal Democrat leader, asked Mr Blair when he was first made aware of the American rendition flights, and when he approved them. Mr Blair replied: "In respect of airports, I do not know what the right hon gentleman is referring to."
On December 22, asked at his monthly press conference about the US practice of rendition, the prime minister told journalists: "It is not something that I have ever actually come across until this whole thing has blown up, and I don't know anything about it." He said he had never heard of secret interrogation camps in Europe. But Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, recently disclosed that Whitehall inquiries had shown Britain had received rendition requests from the Clinton administration.
In 1998, Mr Straw, then home secretary, agreed to one request, but turned down another because the individual concerned was to be transported to Egypt. He agreed that Mohammed Rashed Daoud al-Owhali, suspected of involvement in the bombing of the US embassy in Nairobi, could be transported to the US for trial via Stansted, according to the briefing paper. Owhali was subsequently given a life sentence.
Shami Chakrabarti, director of the human rights group Liberty, which has demanded an inquiry into allegations of British collusion in rendition flights, said she was "deeply disappointed" by the memo. "The government seems more concerned about spinning than investigating our concerns," she said. She has written to Mr Straw saying the government must now give its full support to the inquiry conducted, at Liberty's behest, by the chief constable of Greater Manchester, Michael Todd.
Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrats' foreign affairs spokesman, said Mr Blair had fully endorsed Ms Rice's statement, yet the prime minister had clear advice that it might have been deliberately worded to allow for cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. "I am submitting an urgent question to the speaker and expect the foreign secretary to come to parliament to explain the government's position," he said. "Evasion can no longer be sustained: there is now overwhelming evidence to support a full public inquiry into rendition."
Andrew Tyrie, Conservative MP for Chichester and chairman of the parliamentary group on rendition, said last night: "All the experts who have looked at Rice's assurances have concluded that they are so carefully worded as to be virtually worthless. Relying on them, as the government appears to be doing, speaks volumes". He said his committee would pursue the issue.
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,,1689856,00.html
by Richard Norton-Taylor
Published in The Guardian on Tuesday, January 10, 2006
A former general has called for impeachment proceedings against Tony Blair, accusing the prime minister of misleading parliament and the public over the invasion of Iraq.
General Sir Michael Rose, commander of UN forces in Bosnia in 1994, writes in today's Guardian: "The impeachment of Mr Blair is now something I believe must happen if we are to rekindle interest in the democratic process in this country once again". Britain was led into war on false pretences, he says. "It was a war that was to unleash untold suffering on the Iraqi people and cause grave damage to the west's prospects in the wider war against global terror."
Reflecting widespread unease among serving military chiefs over Iraq, Gen Rose says most British people had consistently opposed the decision to invade.
"These people have seen their political wishes ignored for reasons that have now proved false. Nor has there been any attempt made in parliament to call Mr Blair personally to account for what has transpired to be a blunder of enormous strategic significance," he writes.
It should not be surprising that "so many of the voters of this country have turned their backs on a democratic system which they feel has so little credibility and is so unresponsive".
The general, a former director of special forces, says MPs should investigate just how far the prime minister went to evaluate the quality of the intelligence about Iraq's weapons programme.
Military commanders were inevitably more cautious about using military force than politicians, since they understood better than most the consequences of engaging in war. Though in a democracy they had to remain subordinate to their political masters, they had a clear responsibility to point out "when political strategies are flawed or inadequately resourced".
Gen Rose tells Martin Bell, the former BBC correspondent in a programme, Iraq: The Failure of War, to be broadcast on Channel 4 on Friday, that he would "certainly" have resigned had he been in office at the time of the invasion.
That, he says, might have caused the politicians to "think twice about what they were doing".
Gen Sir Rupert Smith, who took over from Gen Rose as UN commander in Bosnia, says of Iraq in the programme: "We often actually reinforce our opponent's ability to achieve his objective because his strategy is always to get us to over-react."
General Sir Michael Walker, chief of defence staff, has said in public only that British military presence in Iraq was a "politically-charged issue" which has affected recruitment since people saw the armed forces as "guilty by association" with Mr Blair's decision to invade the country.
General Sir Mike Jackson, head of the army, has criticised US tactics in Iraq. British commanders were told by Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, chief of defence staff at the time of the invasion, to deal with Iraqi officers and Ba'athists to help maintain law and order. That order was rescinded in May 2003 on the instructions of US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Mr Blair's official spokesman said yesterday: "General Rose is entitled to his view. Equally, the government is entitled to point out that we have had free democratic elections in Iraq for the first time in well over a generation."
Published in The Guardian on Tuesday, January 10, 2006
Sun Dec 25, 2005 12:02 PM GMT
By Philip Pullella
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict, in his first Christmas address, on Sunday urged humanity to unite against terrorism, poverty and environmental blight and called for a "new world order" to correct economic imbalances.
The Pope made his comments to tens of thousands of pilgrims gathered under umbrellas in a rainy St Peter square for his "Urbi et Orbi" (to the city and the world) message and blessing.
In his address, telecast live from the central balcony of St Peter's Basilica to tens of millions of people in nearly 40 countries, he also urged his listeners not to let technological achievements blind them to true human values.
He said humanity should look to the Christ child for encouragement in times of difficulty and fear.
"A united humanity will be able to confront the many troubling problems of the present time: from the menace of terrorism to the humiliating poverty in which millions of human beings live, from the proliferation of weapons to the pandemics and the environmental destruction which threatens the future of our planet," he said.
"Do not fear; put your trust in him! The life-giving power of his light is an incentive for building a new world order based on just ethical and economic relationships," he said, speaking in Italian.
Marching bands of the Swiss Guard and Italian police played for the crowd near a larger-than-life nativity scene, making for a festive atmosphere despite the rain.
The address by the leader of the world's some 1.1 billion Roman Catholics was different in style than those of his predecessor John Paul, who died last April.
John Paul wrote his Christmas addresses in free-style verse and resembled poetry, whereas Benedict's was in prose like a normal homily or speech.
After the address, Benedict wished the world a Happy Christmas in 33 languages, including Arabic, Hebrew, Swahili, Japanese and Latin. His predecessor sometimes used twice as many languages on Christmas.
Since his election, the Pope has repeatedly reminded Catholics not to give in to an "ethical relativism" where circumstances can be used to justify actions that should be considered wrong in all cases.
The Pope, wearing a gold cape and with a gold mitre, continued in that line on Sunday address by focussing on the dangers of technology and progress.
"Today we can dispose of vast material resources. But the men and women in our technological age risk becoming victims of their own intellectual and technical achievements, ending up in spiritual barrenness and emptiness of heart," he said.
"That is why it is so important for us to open our minds and hearts to the birth of Christ, this event of salvation which can give new hope to the life of each human being," he said.
He also urged respect for the rights of people suffering in the Darfur region of Sudan, made another appeal for peace in the Holy Land and called for "actions inspired by fairness and wisdom" in Iraq and Lebanon.
The Pope asked God to favour dialogue on the Korean peninsula so that "dangerous disputes" there and elsewhere in Asia can be solved peacefully.
The Sunday Urbi et Orbi followed a Christmas eve midnight mass attended by a congregation that packed St Peter's Basilica.
In his homily at that mass he urged the world's Catholics to be beacons of peace in a troubled world.
The next major event on the Pope's Christmas season calendar is a mass on the Feast of the Epiphany on January 6.
In early January, the Pope is due to publish his first encyclical, a major writing addressed to all Church members. The encyclical deals with the individual's personal relationship with God.