Bilderberg.org

[TonyGosling]

PEPIS#84 - Bilderberger in the dock at last
Sunday Mar 11, 5:28 pm

Dear all,


It's nearly that dastardly Bilderberg time of the year again. As
Conrad Black faces the music, just as we should ensure all criminals,
particularly the rich ones must, Marek Tysis and I are already well on
the way to collating all your helpful input and tracking down the
venue and dates of this year's Bilderberg meeting. It's happening
somewhat interactively on the Bilderberg.org forum - please register
if you haven't already as I'm beginning to send out updates via the
forum too.
http://www.bilderberg.org/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=3


Much has already been said about the run-up to a violation of Iranian
sovreignty, possibly using nuclear weapons. The recent bombing of the
Iranian Republican guard in Zahadan and apparent kidnapping of an
Iranian general in Turkey suggest that NATO/Nazi black operations have
already begun. I simply want to add my voice to those pleading for
readers in a position to stop this occuring, within UK, US or Israeli
positions of power, to do their bit to prevent this violation of the
UN Charter - as a matter of extreme urgency.


Anyway, enjoy another offering of news - my little antidote to what
you haven't read in today's Sunday Papers.


1. Lord on trial: Enter the woman in Black
2. Tonight's new Adam Curtis offering on BBC2 at 9pm
3. The Pinay Cercle and assassinations
4. Tony Gosling - shameless self-publicist....
5. Prince Charles - Nazi company he keeps
6. Isreali soldiers using Palestinian children as human shields
7. Brigadeer Gordon Kerr - demon of death paid by the British taxpayer
8. US and UK already doing black ops. inside Iran


1. Lord on trial: Enter the woman in Black
What Barbara Amiel wears to court this week could reveal much about
how the case against her husband is going
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article2347522.ece
By Stephen Foley in New York
Published: 11 March 2007


What to wear to one's husband's trial? A difficult choice for a
supportive spouse at the best of times, but how much worse when you
are Barbara Amiel, whose voluminous wardrobe and spending constitutes
exhibits A to nearly Z at the fraud trial of Lord Black of
Crossharbour, erstwhile proprietor of The Daily Telegraph.


Definitely not her $140 "jogging attire" prosecutors allege was put
through expenses at the media company that Lord Black illegally used
as his personal piggy bank.


With the trial due to begin in Chicago on Wednesday, there is precious
little time left for Lady Black to choose between a dozen designer
handbags with which to accessorise her chosen outfit. Yet trial
lawyers agree that her choice could affect her husband's chances of
securing the acquittal he believes is coming.


In 14 counts of fraud, racketeering and obstruction of justice, Lord
Black is accused of looting more than $80m (£41m) from his company,
Hollinger International, to finance a lifestyle of conspicuous
consumption, with lavish parties, lavish homes and lavish clothes that
propelled him and his wife into a social whirl of celebrity and minor
royalty. At every turn, prosecutors are planning to inject Lady
Black's famous spending habits; defence lawyers have struggled to get
much of this evidence ruled out as an irrelevance. Both sides are
quibbling over whether 11,000 emails between the couple, many of which
are from Lady Black asking for her husband to pick up some expense or
other, will be admissible.


Lord Black is believed to have hired expensive "jury consultants", who
offer tips and tricks on how to make an appropriate impression with
jurors, and sartorial advice for the peer and his wife will have been
part of the deal.


Experts agree that she will have to walk a fine line. Daniel Horowitz,
a veteran criminal defence lawyer, reckons that a toned down, gloomy
outfit could prove ill-fitting.


He said: "She's Imelda Marcos. She has got to be unapologetic for her
excesses. Turning up in anything less than a flamboyant outfit, and
the jury will know that she's messing with us, trying to fool us."


Edward Greenspan, Lord Black's defence lawyer, says that the team
could still decide that Lady Black's presence in the courtroom is more
of a hindrance than a help, in which case she will be banished. Lord
Black himself says that he doesn't expect his wife to be there every
day. "She's a big girl," he told the Canadian magazine Macleans. "It's
up to her, but I don't know if she wants to sit through all of the
evidence. I'm sure she'll put in an appearance from time to time to
show the flag."


If she does stay for the evidence, you can be sure the jury will be
looking across to her as they hear tales of how Hollinger is said to
have picked up most of the tab for her $54,000 birthday party at a New
York restaurant.


These are not mere indulgences to be expected of a press baron whose
empire once spanned Canada, the UK, the US and Israel, the prosecution
says. Although Lord Black controlled Hollinger, there were minority
shareholders in the company and his expenses were coming out of their
profits.


Most controversially, he and his cronies allegedly took home millions
of dollars in "non-compete" clauses that were written into deals to
sell Hollinger's papers - fees that prosecutors say rightfully
belonged to Hollinger. Lord Black and his co-accused - associates John
Boultbee, Peter Atkinson and Mark Kipnis - deny there was anything
wrong with the arrangements.


The Black trial is expected to last three months. Doubts still remain
over whether Lord Black himself will testify. His handlers are worried
that a typically florid, arrogant performance on the stand would turn
off a jury. Much will depend on what will be left of the credibility
of David Radler, Lord Black's right-hand man for 35 years. Radler has
turned prosecution witness, agreeing to serve 29 months in a Canadian
jail in return for admitting one fraud charge.


Between Radler's choice of words, and Lady Black's choice of outfit
lies the fate of the rambunctious peer.


2. Tonight's new Adam Curtis offering on BBC2 at 9pm


The Trap - a new documentary from Adam Curtis explores individualism
and freedom
The Trap starts on 11 March on BBC2 at 9pm
http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/article.php?article_id=10878
by Anindya Bhattacharyya


"Human beings will always betray you. You can only trust the numbers."
This chilling declaration flashes up in the opening credits of The
Trap: What Happened To Our Dream Of Freedom, a new documentary series
by Adam Curtis which starts on BBC2 next week.
Curtis is best known for his 2004 series The Power of Nightmares: The
Rise Of The Politics of Fear. This detailed how neocons in the US
talked up the threat of radical Islamism to justify their "war on
terror".
The Trap is even more ambitious in scope. Like The Power Of
Nightmares, it uses archive footage and interviews to explore the
history and political impact of an idea - in this case the model of
"individual freedom" that underlies neoliberal economics.
Curtis traces the roots of this idea to the early post war years, when
a circle of right wing thinkers - followers of the Austrian economist
Friedrich von Hayek - became influential in shaping US nuclear
strategy during the Cold War.
These researchers, including the mathematician John Nash, gathered at
the Rand Corporation in California. They developed "game theory" to
model what a "rational" military strategy would be in the face of
threatened mutual nuclear annihilation.
These games imagined a paranoid world where individuals ruthlessly
sought rewards and modified their behaviour in the light of that of
their opponents.
Crucially, this behaviour could be measured "objectively", allowing
researchers to create computerised models and calculate "optimal"
strategies.
Curtis's documentary traces how its underlying vision of social
behaviour was picked up and generalised to areas such as psychology,
economics and management theory. The political crisis of the 1970s
offered the chance for the followers of Hayek to take centre stage.
They attacked notions of a "public service ethos" in state controlled
institutions, arguing that public sector workers were motivated purely
by self-interest - just like the "lonely robots" of their computer
models.
Private sector management techniques were imported into public
services, displacing previous attitudes with performance indicators,
targets and incentives. This, it was claimed, would remove
"inefficiencies" and induce "rational" behaviour into sluggish
bureaucracies.


Market
Curtis notes that while this project started in the 1980s with
Margaret Thatcher's introduction of the "internal market" into the
NHS, it really took off under John Major's government - and has been
ruthlessly expanded under New Labour.
But far from "rationalising" public services, this battery of
statistics had the opposite effect. Public sector managers started to
"game the system" - fiddle the figures by reorganising services to
artificially meet targets.
Curtis cites examples from the health service, education and policing.
In one instance, hospital managers took the wheels off trolleys and
reclassified them as "beds" in order to hit their target of reducing
the number of patients on trolleys.
New Labour's response to this madness was to create even more targets
in a futile effort to balance out the distortions produced by the
system.
Public services were plunged into a nightmare world of metrics, audits
and meaningless jargon - what Curtis calls the "tyranny of objective
numbers". The results of this shift have been disastrous, Curtis
argues - and even some of the original founders of game theory, such
as John Nash, now agree.
Far from bringing "freedom" from bureaucracy, neoliberal management
policies have increased social inequality, plunged the poorest in
society into misery, and fuelled the rampant concentration of wealth
in the hands of a new super elite. Under New Labour social mobility
has declined to the lowest levels since the Second World War.


Ideas
Curtis narrates his story by splicing together archive footage of news
events, social situations, even clips from television dramas and
films. It's a compelling and original style that places his work
somewhere between a documentary, an essay and a dream.
However, it has limitations. Watching The Trap one can't help feeling
drawn into the paranoid world of the Rand Corporation theorists.
While Curtis expertly traces the development of their ideas, he is
silent when it comes to explaining why those ideas took hold.
There is no sense of any kind of alternative vision, nor any pointers
to a solution. Episodes such as the rise of Margaret Thatcher just
"happen", with the immense political conflicts of that period
relegated to a footnote. Rather than seeing ideas as being consciously
promoted by particular social forces, Curtis paints a world where we
all just sleepwalk into oblivion.
Nevertheless, Curtis's work is gripping and thought provoking. His
documentaries are proof that television can deal with complex issues
without being patronising.
The final programme in the three part series - still in preparation as
Socialist Worker went to press - examines the "war on terror" as an
attempt by neoliberals to extend their deranged vision of "individual
freedom" by force. If the first two episodes are anything to go by,
The Trap is a strong contender for "must see" documentary of the year.


3. The Pinay Cercle and political assassinations
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Cercle
Please check out these two fascinating articles on 'Le Cercle', a far-
right political solutions club made up of ex intelligence people.


http://www.gnosticliberationfront.com/le_cercle.htm
Le Cercle
"... the Circle consists of a loose gathering of various conservative
and anti-Communist politicians, publicists, bankers and VIPs that
meets some twice a year in various parts of the world. Its origins
stem from the former French Prime Minister Antoine Pinay. The Circle,
which still exists today, also invites guest speakers... One recent
development is the establishment within the Circle of a command staff
or of an inner circle which then works out particularly suitable means
for action on current political questions." - German intelligence
chief Hans Langemann, 1980
"Le Cercle is a secret transnational intelligence and direct action
group, that, according to all accounts, is funded by the CIA. We only
know the dates and places of a handful of Circle meetings (1), which
were attended by about a hundred persons at a time. Before the 1990's,
it was called Cercle Violet, or initially, Cercle Pinay, in both cases
after its (French) chairman. In later times, chairmanship of Le Cercle
went on to the British. The Pinay Circle used to fight the spread of
communism worldwide, at all costs, even in our own backyard. This
threat largely ceased to exist when the USSR collapsed and the role of
the Circle had to change. Today, its members are probably talking
about "Al-Qaeda infiltration" instead of "communist infiltration",
although looking at the people involved with the Circle, one wonders
how many actually believe in the 'War on Terror' as a tool to spread
"freedom" and "democracy". We will get to that later.........."
http://www.gnosticliberationfront.com/le_cercle.htm


Pinay Cercle - by David Guyatt, 1999 -
http://www.copi.com/articles/guyatt/circle_of_power.html
CIRCLE OF POWER
By David Guyatt
Perhaps more sinister, and certainly more shadowy than the
Bilderbergers, the "Pinay Cercle" is an "Atlanticist" right-wing
organisation of serving and retired intelligence operatives, military
officers and politicians that conspired to "affect" changes in
government. Amongst other things they claim credit for engineering the
election of Margaret Thatcher in the U.K. and may have been behind the
ousting of Australia's Gough Whitlam.
Now almost forgotten, the decade of the "Seventies" was a time of
immense political upheaval, dirty tricks and incessant rumours of
right-wing military Coup d'etats in leading western democracies.
Amongst the long list of resulting casualties of this "decade of
tension" were Britain's Prime Ministers: Harold Wilson and Ted Heath,
Australia's Gough Whitlam, Sweden's Olaf Palme, America's Jimmy Carter
and France's Francois Mitterand. The more southern flanks of Nato's
European axis: Portugal, Spain, Turkey and Greece converted rumour
into chilling fact via the steel-blue glaze of gun-barrels. Italy,
home of Pizza, the Pope, and Propaganda Due (P2) came in for its own
brand of political fixit, courtesy of Uncle Sam's very own CIA.


As the decade of the "eighties" slowly slipped above the now less than
pink eastern horizon, right-wing beneficiaries of a co-ordinated
international destabilisation programme gave their heart-felt thanks.
Among them were Britain's Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher - Madonna of
the Armaments industry - and America's less brittle, and considerably
less acute, Ronald Reagan - humble originator of the mega-tax-buck-
swallowing SDI "Star Wars" programme and also, thus, a valued friend
of the boys at Guns R Us International.


These two decades saw a proliferation of right-wing, quasi official
and secretive groups that co-ordinated intelligence, propaganda and
undertook covert black-operations around the globe. One of the most
shadowy of all is the "Pinay Cercle", named after its founder Antoine
Pinay, Premier of France in 1951. Known more simply as "Le Cercle" it
is recognised as a more clandestine sister organisation to the already
very secretive Bilderberg Group1 - a "behind-the-scenes 'invisible'
influence" network..................
http://www.copi.com/articles/guyatt/circle_of_power.html


4. Tony Gosling - shameless self-publicist....


I shall be in London next Monday (19th March '07) to give a talk on a
mystery subject connected either with last month's diabolical BBC2
Conspiracy Files film about 9/11, the subsequent scandal that BBC
World reported the collapse of WTC7 25 minutes before it happened or
on the involvement of Israeli security company Verint Systems with the
7/7 London bombings. Time is 7pm, venue is the Indian YMCA Fitzroy
Square W1T 6AQ (Warren Street tube, Northern & Victoria lines) .
http://www.nineeleven.co.uk/board/viewtopic.php?t=7710


5. Prince Charles - Nazi company he keeps


These short quotes should prove to those who don't already know that
show Prince Charles is a great admirer of the Nazi Architect Albert
Speer. I first came across that fact in a brilliant BBC4 documentary
'Jerry Building' by Jonathan Meades, so it was with absloute horror
that I read the following article in last week's Daily Mail, knowing
that most people wouldn't realise that our future King (and antichrist
if you believe Tim Cohen's book 'The antichrist and a cup of tea') is
such a devoted fan of Speer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Meades#TV_works
No doubt Charles will be sending someone to the Bonhams auction on the
27th to buy these letters, saving them from public scrutiny much as
the allegedly threatening letters from Prince Philip to Princess Diana
have been 'disappeared'.


quote 1 - "Still, Prince Charles, who has built his own version of the
past in the form of the ghastly Poundbury, is sure to love it. For
Charles is not only a huge fan of Tolkien but also of Poundbury
designer Leon Krier, who has written a book defending the architecture
of Albert Speer. Interesting to know where those piffling opinions
come from."
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/film/2006/12/whod_buy_a_house_in_hobbiton...


quote 2 - "... two and three (so similar they can be discussed
together) dealt with a potpourri of incidents and issues, some past
and some present, that Kasher considered to be related to Hitler's art
programs. Here we saw material about Philip Johnson's and Mies van der
Rohe's flirtations with the Nazi party in the early '30s, about Baron
Thyssen's and Peter Ludwig's postwar patronage of Arno Breker, and
about Prince Charles's admiration for the architecture of Albert
Speer. Kasher stretches his subject to include hostility to avant-
garde art in more general terms: he invokes Harry Truman's befuddled
critique of those "nutty modern artists" as well as (predictably)
Jesse Heims's campaign against "*************" contemporary art."
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1248/is_n10_v81/ai_14488116


Speer did know of Holocaust
8th March 2007
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_arti...
For years Hitler's architect and arms minister Albert Speer claimed he
was unaware of plans to exterminate the Jews.
His avoidance of blame for the genocide is thought to have spared him
the noose at the end of the Second World War.
But a newly-discovered letter shows Speer knew the Nazis' mass murder
was plotted by Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS and Gestapo.
Speer - one of the most important men in the Reich after Hitler -
confessed his guilt to the wife of a Belgian resistance leader killed
by the Nazis in a letter dated 1971.
He told Helene Jeanty: "There is no doubt: I was present when Himmler
announced on October 6, 1943 that all Jews would be killed."
Speer wrote to Mrs Jeanty, who wrote a book he admired, after serving
a 20-year sentence for war crimes - mainly for the use of slave
labour.
Previously Speer claimed that while he was at the conference where
Himmler revealed the Final Solution, he had left before the
announcement was made.
Speer denied involvement in the Holocaust in his best-selling book
Inside The Third Reich, and later in extensive interviews with the
author Gitta Sereny - who spent 12 years writing a book about him.
The unpublished letters between Speer and Mrs Jeanty, written between
1971 and Speer's death in 1981, have surfaced from an anonymous
British source.
They are expected to fetch up to £4,000 at Bonhams in London on March
27.


see also the spin version of Prince Charles in today's Sunday Express
CHARLES: HOW I'LL RULE
http://www.express.co.uk/news_detail.html?sku=1362


6. Israeli soldiers using Palestinian children as human shields


Israeli group says troops used Palestinian civilians as human shields
Last updated at 15:51pm on 9th March 2007
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in...
The Israeli army said that it was looking into new allegations that
troops used Palestinians as human shields during an operation in the
West Bank city of Nablus.


The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem charged that while conducting
a major operation against Palestinian gunmen in the city last week,
troops took two minors - a 15-year-old boy and an 11-year old girl -
along while they searched houses for militants and weapons, forcing
them to enter the houses first.


The use of civilians in military operations has been ruled illegal by
Israel's Supreme Court and is prohibited by military orders.


The army said that it was checking the new charges.


The first indication that troops used Palestinians as human shields in
the Nablus operation came when an Associated Press Television camera
captured what appeared to be such a scene on February 25.


The footage shows Sameh Amira, 24, accompanying troops as they enter
apartments in the city's casbah, or Old City.


The army promised a "thorough inquiry" into that incident.


Amira's cousin, 15-year-old Amid Amira, told B'Tselem field workers
that soldiers took him at the same time as they took Sameh. They
forced him to come along as they searched three houses, he said,
making him enter rooms first, empty cupboards and open windows.


Jihan Dadush, 11, told B'Tselem that soldiers took her from her home
three days later, on February 28, forcing her to open the door of a
neighboring apartment and enter ahead of them.


The soldiers then took her home, she said.


Until 2005, soldiers employed a tactic of making civilians knock on
their neighbors' doors to warn them of an impending raid, claiming
this protected bystanders by spurring militants to surrender
peacefully.


But in a landmark 2005 ruling, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled the
tactic illegal and barred any use of civilians in military
operations.


B'Tselem spokeswoman Sarit Michaeli urged the army to open a military
police investigation into the Nablus incidents.


"The army must investigate what happened and act accordingly - try
people, make sure the rules are clarified and understand where the
failures were, in order to prevent this from happening again," she
said.


In August 2002, a 19-year-old Palestinian student, Nidal Daraghmeh,
was killed when troops in the West Bank town of Tubas forced him to
knock on the door of a neighboring building where a Hamas fugitive was
hiding.


Gunfire erupted and Daraghmeh was killed.


7. Brigadeer Gordon Kerr - demon of death paid by the British taxpayer
Unit linked to scandals may be in Iraq
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/article2294205.ece
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/02/363117.html
Thursday, February 22, 2007
By Chris Thornton


Questions have been tabled in Parliament about reports that the
shadowy Army unit linked to Troubles intelligence scandals is now
operating in Iraq.
The Joint Services Group (JSG), which allegedly operates out of
Baghdad's Green Zone, is said to be the new name for the Force
Research Unit (FRU) - the Army outfit that ran notorious agents like
Brian Nelson and IRA mole Stakeknife.
SDLP leader Mark Durkan has demanded answers from the Ministry of
Defence about the group's reported operations in Iraq. His party has
called for their withdrawal from that country.
The JSG is alleged to be running Iraqi agents using techniques learned
in Northern Ireland, where FRU ran key informers inside the IRA and
loyalist groups - but may have allowed them to get away with murder in
order to preserve their cover.
SDLP justice spokesman Alban Maginness said the unit "will only make
it worse" for the people of Iraq if they operate in the same way that
they did in Northern Ireland.
FRU's work with Nelson, a UDA intelligence officer, was exposed when
he was jailed for conspiracy to murder. But full details of his work,
including links to the murder of solicitor Patrick Finucane, have
never been fully explained.
The Army unit also operated the IRA agent known as Stakeknife. He is
alleged to have operated within the IRA's internal security
department, which involved him in the deaths of alleged informers.
Four years ago, up to two dozen members of FRU were named in criminal
investigation files sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions by
Lord Stevens, the head of the Stevens Inquiry. No public action has
been taken on those
In his 2003 report, Lord Stevens said collusion had taken place
involving members of FRU and loyalist and republican paramilitaries.
The unit is said to have been renamed as the JSG in the wake of that
report.
Prior to the invasion of Iraq, the JSG is said to have operated
exclusively in Northern Ireland. But as terrorist units spread
throughout Iraq, it was deployed to develop intelligence gathering.
British defence sources are reported to have claimed the group has
saved hundreds of lives, prevented suicide bombings and gathered
intelligence that helped coalition forces kill Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,
the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, last year.
But Mr Maginness said the unit has "never been called to account for
their actions" in Northern Ireland.
"The FRU has been involved in murder and mayhem in the North," he
said.


see also
'Green slime' invades Iraq
http://www.williambowles.info/ini/ini-0366.html


8. Are US and UK aready doing black ops. inside Iran?
Zahedan bombings intended to foment Sunni-Shia conflict: governor
http://www.mehrnews.ir/en/NewsDetail.aspx?NewsID=449498
http://www.tehrantimes.com/Description.asp?Da=2/18/2007&Cat=2&Num=009


TEHRAN, Feb. 17 (MNA) -- A percussion bomb exploded in the
southeastern city of Zahedan late Friday, two days after a car bomb
blasted near a bus and martyred 11 military personnel.


At 11 p.m. on Friday, a bomb was blasted in Zahedan's beltway, and was
followed by the sound of shooting.


Wednesday's terrorist act targeted Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps
(IRGC) personnel as they were riding a bus from their housing compound
to work.


Zahedan Governor Hassan-Ali Nuri said that Friday's percussion bomb
did not cause any casualties or damage.


The terrorists are attempting to incite division between Shias and
Sunnis and provoke ethnic conflicts, Nuri commented.


However, Nuri told the Mehr News Agency that "Zahedan is in peace at
the moment."


Soltan-Ali Mir, the director of the political and security office at
Sistan-Baluchestan province, said after Wednesday's incident some
weapons and ammunitions were found and "it is interesting that the
weapons are made by the United States and Britain."


Mir said the detained terrorists revealed in their confessions that
they had some meetings in certain neighboring countries for their
financial support and "this indicates that the U.S. and Britain are
involved in the recent incidents."


One of the detainees admitted that they were told to assassinate Sunni
leaders and then accuse the Shias and thereby trigger ethnic
conflicts, Mir added.


Wednesday's attack was claimed by a Sunni militant group, Jundallah,
which is headed by Abdulmalik Rigi, and has been blamed for committing
terrorist acts in the country.


Provincial police commander Brigadier General Mohammad Ghafari said
that three main perpetrators of the bombings and a total of 65
suspects have been arrested.


Zahedan's representative in the Majlis, Hossein-Ali Shahriari, stated
that after the explosion on Friday night "more than two thousand
people" came to the region to "confront the vicious forces with bare
hands".


The recent bombings can have no objective but to cause terror, the MP
underlined.


Condemning Wednesday's terrorist bus attack, the United Nations
Security Council on Thursday called for those responsible for the
deadly incident to be brought to justice. The UN Secretary-General Ban
Ki-Moon also condemned the terrorist bombing.


Thousands of Zahedan's Shia and Sunni people have signed a petition
calling for the establishment of security in the province and
announced that they are prepared to cooperate in bringing stability to
Zahedan.


see also
Ethnic Opposition on the Rise in Iran
http://www.aina.org/news/2007030893202.htm