Extracts from an article at Medialens:
http://www.medialens.org/alerts/06/060131_welcome_to_mars.php
The Independent is feeling the heat from public criticism of its adverts pushing foreign travel, cars and endless consumerism. A recent editorial noted:
“Just ponder this as you flick through those holiday brochures and even the travel pages of this newspaper to brighten up the grey January days... Fuelled by cheap flights, the British wanderlust seems far from sated. Fuelled is the operative word here. For the cost of cheap flights may be low in pounds sterling but the cost to the environment is high.” (‘All these flights abroad could end up costing us the earth’, leader, The Independent, January 28, 2006)
It is rare indeed for a paper to even hint at the negative impacts of the advertising it carries.
Over at the Independent on Sunday (IoS), deputy editor Michael Williams dismissed readers protesting the paper's climate-killing adverts as “a curmudgeonly lot of puritans, miseries, killjoys, Stalinists and glooms.” (Williams, ‘A bottle of bubbly for the best way to fly’, Independent on Sunday, January 22, 2006)...
Where are the news reports on how economic ‘growth’ is destroying the planet and impoverishing billions?
Where are the BBC Ten O’Clock News headlines declaring ‘Big business is once again blocking action on climate change’, and ‘Industry is spending billions on PR campaigns to fuel dangerous consumption’?
When did ITN news bulletins last declare ‘The government is succumbing to intense lobbying from the nuclear industry’, or ‘Global capitalism is destroying the planet’s life-support systems’?
~~
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Monday, March 13, 2006
The disgraceful silence of the Liberal Democrats
It looks as if Labour may be kicked out of a fair number of its seats in Scotland. Should the Liberal Democrats also be kicked out because of their silence on the Shirley McKie case?
(McKie case and Lockerbie: aangirfan: McKie case linked to Lockerbie; Scottish justice ... )
The following letter appeared in The Herald, 13 March 2006:
http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/57909-print.shtml
Disgraceful LibDem silence on McKie case
In what is becoming the longest-running political saga our justice system has experienced, the silence of our Liberal Democrat MSPs is deafening.
The lack of comment on the need, or not, for a judicial inquiry on the Shirley McKie case is nothing short of disgraceful and while their new leader, Menzies Campbell, raises questions about Scotland's legal system, his MSPs meekly toe the executive line.
If this travesty of justice had occurred elsewhere in the UK, the LibDem MPs would be demanding a full and public inquiry but in Scotland they conspire in a political cover-up to match the legal cover-up.
Their former leader, Jim Wallace, was justice minister at the time and has questions to answer. This misguided loyalty to Jim Wallace and their party stands on its head any notion that they are a party of justice and fairness and is a betrayal of what the Scottish Parliament was set up for.
Their position is a disgrace and the total opposite of the principles of fairness and justice they have always claimed to stand for.
Now, in government, they stand for concealment, intrigue and cover-up. They probably believe they can get away with this because they think the McKie scandal is not of interest to the people of Scotland – well, they are wrong.
Democracy always catches up with those politicians who put their own narrow interests first.
A substantial political shift in Scotland is taking place as huge swings against Labour take place in election after election, in the past 12 months, and with the Liberals defending their part in a failing executive they cannot claim to be the alternative.
It is time that both these parties spent time in opposition where their corrupt and selfish behaviour can do less damage.
Bob Ewen, Nairn.
~~
(McKie case and Lockerbie: aangirfan: McKie case linked to Lockerbie; Scottish justice ... )
The following letter appeared in The Herald, 13 March 2006:
http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/57909-print.shtml
Disgraceful LibDem silence on McKie case
In what is becoming the longest-running political saga our justice system has experienced, the silence of our Liberal Democrat MSPs is deafening.
The lack of comment on the need, or not, for a judicial inquiry on the Shirley McKie case is nothing short of disgraceful and while their new leader, Menzies Campbell, raises questions about Scotland's legal system, his MSPs meekly toe the executive line.
If this travesty of justice had occurred elsewhere in the UK, the LibDem MPs would be demanding a full and public inquiry but in Scotland they conspire in a political cover-up to match the legal cover-up.
Their former leader, Jim Wallace, was justice minister at the time and has questions to answer. This misguided loyalty to Jim Wallace and their party stands on its head any notion that they are a party of justice and fairness and is a betrayal of what the Scottish Parliament was set up for.
Their position is a disgrace and the total opposite of the principles of fairness and justice they have always claimed to stand for.
Now, in government, they stand for concealment, intrigue and cover-up. They probably believe they can get away with this because they think the McKie scandal is not of interest to the people of Scotland – well, they are wrong.
Democracy always catches up with those politicians who put their own narrow interests first.
A substantial political shift in Scotland is taking place as huge swings against Labour take place in election after election, in the past 12 months, and with the Liberals defending their part in a failing executive they cannot claim to be the alternative.
It is time that both these parties spent time in opposition where their corrupt and selfish behaviour can do less damage.
Bob Ewen, Nairn.
~~
The cover-up of the biggest act of terrorism in the UK
The following letter is taken from The Herald.
http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/57909-print.shtml
March 13 2006
Excerpts from the letter by Dr Jim Swire:
The warning on behalf of the lord advocate that a public interest immunity certificate might be used against Iain McKie's legal team (March 10) creates yet another link between the handling of this case and the Lockerbie one.
During the Lockerbie fatal accident inquiry held at Dumfries, we started to try to question matters relating to the failure to act upon warnings received before the atrocity, and the woefully inadequate state of security at Heathrow.
We then learned that the (Thatcher) government of the day had prepared at least three PII certificates (gagging orders) to block questioning on these subjects...
It was not until years later, during the appeal by Mr al Megrahi at Zeist, that we learned for the first time that an unknown intruder had broken into "airside" at Heathrow the night before Lockerbie, giving access to the "Iran Air" facilities beside the assembly area for PanAm baggage containers, and that no investigation of this break-in had occurred prior to the departure of the Lockerbie flight the following evening...
Dr Jim Swire, Rowans Corner, Calf Lane, Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire.
~~
http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/57909-print.shtml
March 13 2006
Excerpts from the letter by Dr Jim Swire:
The warning on behalf of the lord advocate that a public interest immunity certificate might be used against Iain McKie's legal team (March 10) creates yet another link between the handling of this case and the Lockerbie one.
During the Lockerbie fatal accident inquiry held at Dumfries, we started to try to question matters relating to the failure to act upon warnings received before the atrocity, and the woefully inadequate state of security at Heathrow.
We then learned that the (Thatcher) government of the day had prepared at least three PII certificates (gagging orders) to block questioning on these subjects...
It was not until years later, during the appeal by Mr al Megrahi at Zeist, that we learned for the first time that an unknown intruder had broken into "airside" at Heathrow the night before Lockerbie, giving access to the "Iran Air" facilities beside the assembly area for PanAm baggage containers, and that no investigation of this break-in had occurred prior to the departure of the Lockerbie flight the following evening...
Dr Jim Swire, Rowans Corner, Calf Lane, Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire.
~~
What really happened to Yugoslavia.
The following is taken from:
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m21436&l=i&size=1&hd=0
Article by MICHEL COLLON
March 11, 2006
1 Did the war begin in 1991 with the secessions of Slovenia and Croatia?
NO.
In 1979, the BND (German CIA) sent a team of secret agents to Zagreb.
Mission: to support Franjo Tudjman, a racist who actively promoted ethnic hatred and did all he could toward the break-up of Yugoslavia.
Germany supported and financed this Croatian Le Pen, and sent him arms before the war.
To what end?
Berlin never acknowledged the existence of the unified Yugoslav state which had courageously resisted German aggression in the two world wars.
By once more breaking Yugoslavia into easily dominated mini-states, Germany sought to control the Balkans.
An economic zone it could annex in order to remove it from local authority, to export German products to it, and to dominate it as a market.
And a strategic route toward the oil and gas of the Middle East and the Caucasus.
In 1992, the Bavarian Interior Minister declared: "Helmut Kohl has succeeded where neither Emperor Guillaume nor Hitler could."
2 Did Germany deliberately provoke the civil war?
YES.
At the beginning of the Maastricht Summit in 1991, German Chancellor Kohl was alone in wanting to break up Yugoslavia and precipitously to recognize the 'independence' of Slovenia and Croatia, in defiance of both International Law and the Yugoslav Constitution.
But the rise of German power would impose this madness on all its partners.
Paris and London fell right in line.
According to The Observer, "Prime Minister Major paid dearly for supporting German policies toward Yugoslavia which all observers said precipitated the war."
In effect, all the experts had warned that this 'recognition' would provoke a civil war. Why?
1. Nearly every Yugoslav Republic was a mix of diverse nationalities. Separating the territories was as absurd as dividing Paris or London into ethnically pure municipal districts.
2. By favoring the neo-fascist Tudjman and the Muslim nationalist Izetbegovic (who had in his youth collaborated with Hitler), it was certain that panic would be provoked among the important Serb minorities who had lived for centuries in Croatia and Bosnia. Every Serb family had lost at least one member to the horrible genocide committed by the fascist Croats and Muslims, agents of Nazi Germany in 1941-45. Only Tito's Yugoslavia had been able to bring about peace, equality and coexistence. But Berlin, then Washington, wanted once and for all to break this country they saw as being 'too far to the Left'
3 Did the US remain 'passive and disinterested' during this war?
NO.
Lord Owen, special European Union envoy to Bosnia, and later a well-placed observer, wrote in his memoirs: "I greatly respect the United States. But in recent years (92-95) this nation's diplomacy has been guilty of needlessly prolonging the war in Bosnia."
What was its aim?
While the Germans were busy taking control of Slovenia, Croatia and, eventually, Bosnia, Washington put pressure on Izetbegovic, the Muslim nationalist leader in Sarajevo: "Don't sign any peace agreements proposed by the Europeans. We will win the war for you on the ground."
Washington then prolonged for two years the horrible suffering inflicted on all the people of Bosnia.
By what means?
1. Setting aside all the advantages Berlin had gained in this strategic region of the Balkans.
2. Dividing and weakening the European Union.
3. Installing NATO as the Continental European policeman.
4. Restricting all Russian access to the Mediterranian Sea.
5. Imposing its military and political leadership on all the other wars being prepared.
Because the war against Yugoslavia was at the same time a non-declared war against Europe.
After the fall of the Berlin wall, US strategies were geared toward stopping, at all costs, the emergence of a European superpower. So everything was done to weaken Europe militarily and politically.
4 Did the World Bank and the IMF help in destroying this country?
YES.
In December 1989, the IMF imposed draconian conditions on Yugoslavia which forced liberal prime minister Markovic to beg for aid from George Bush Sr.
This 'help' was aimed at destabilizing and bankrupting all large state-owned businesses.
The World Bank dismantled the banking system, laid off 525,000 workers in one year, then ordered the immediate elimination of two out of every three jobs.
The quality of life fell dramatically.
These policies and the growing incidence of work stoppages in solidarity with displaced workers in all the Republics heightened the contradictions among the leaders of the various Republics to whom Belgrade could no longer provide financing.
To get themselves out of this mess, the leaders had to resort to divisive tactics and invested greatly in nationalist hatreds. This war was ignited from abroad. Like so many others.
The war against Yugoslavia was a war of globalization.
All the great Western powers sought to liquidate the Yugoslav economic system which they found too Leftist: with a strong public sector, important social rights, resistance to the multinationals...
The real reason for these various wars against Yugoslavia can be read in this reproach (this threat?) from the Washington Post: "Milosevic was unable to grasp the political message of the fall of the Berlin wall. Other Communist politicians accepted the Western model, but Milosevic went the other way." (4 August 1996).
5 Did the media give a phony image of 'our friends' Tudjman & Izetbegovic?
The hyper-nationalist Croat and Muslim leaders were presented as the pure victims, great anti-racist democrats.
But their past as much as their present should have alerted us: When he took power, Franjo Tudjman declared: "I'm happy my wife isn't a Jew or a Serb."
He hurriedly renamed the streets that had carried the names of antifascist partisans, reinstated the money and the flag of the old genocidal fascist regime, and changed the Constitution in order to run off the Serbs.
During his 1990 electoral campaign, Izetbegovic reissued his 'Islamic Declaration': "There can be neither peace nor coexistence between the Islamic religion and those social and political institutions that are non-Islamic."
He set up a corrupt and mafia-ridden regime based primarily on the lucrative black market and the hijacking of funds from international aid.
He called for assistance, with Washington's blessings, from Islamic mercenaries, most notably from al Qaeda.
Once the war had started, serious crimes were committed by all three camps, but by hiding these histories, the situation was rendered incomprehensible.
6 Did the media hide the essential history and geography of Bosnia?
YES.
We were made to believe that the Serbs were the aggressors, that they had invaded Bosnia from outside its borders.
In reality, three national groups had been living in Bosnia for a long time: the Muslims (43%), the Serbs (31%), the Croats (17%). And one should not forget that 7% of 'Yugoslavs' were born of mixed marriages or preferred to eschew narrow national identities.
Dividing Bosnia according to nationalities, as the EU did, was absurd and dangerous. Because this diverse population was completely intermingled: the Muslims lived primarily in the cities while the Serbs and Croats made up the peasantry and were dispersed throughout the sub-regions.
Bosnia could not be divided without civil war.
In fact, the Serbs of Bosnia did not fight to invade the territories of 'others', but to save their own lands and establish corridors of communication between them.
It was an absurd and bloody situation, with all the ravages of a civil war, but this civil war was provoked by the great powers.
7 Was the presumption of "Serb aggressors, Croat and Muslim victims" correct?
NO.
In command of the UN forces in Bosnia from July 1993 to January 1994, Belgian general Briquemont was well placed to declare: "The disinformation is total (...) Television needs a scapegoat. For the moment, there is complete unanimity in condemning the Serbs, and that in no way facilitates the search for a solution. I don't think one can view the problem of ex-Yugoslavia and of Bosnia-Herzegovina only from the anti-Serb angle. It is much more complicated than that. One day in the middle of the Croat-Muslim war, we gave some information on the massacres committed by the Croatian army. An American journalist said to me: 'If you give out that sort of information, the American public won't understand anything.'"
It is not a question of denying the crimes committed by the Serb forces.
The ideology one finds in the writings of Bosnian Serb leader Karadzic is extremely right wing.
But in reality, after the break-up of Yugoslavia, on all sides, certain criminal and political forces used the methods of war to seize territory and riches.
In the three camps - Croat, Muslim and Serb - militias committed grave crimes. To the detriment of all the people.
Thus, in August 1994, the Muslim nationalist leader in Sarajevo, Izetbegovic, attacked the Muslim region of Bihac, controlled by Fikret Abdic, who had distanced himself from Izetbegovic and wanted to live in harmony with his Serb and Croat neighbors.
In this offensive, Izetbegovic was aided by six US generals.
Remaining silent to the crimes of 'our friends' but demonizing whoever resists us is classic war propaganda.
Numerous media lies were totally fabricated by a US public relations firm, Ruder Finn.
Colleagues of the famous Hill & Knowlton, who created the media lie about Kuwaiti incubators stolen by the Iraqis.
8 Did Serbia initiate a program of ethnic cleansing?
NO.
If one believes that ethnic cleansing was actually the program of 'the dictator Milosevic', one has to admit that this program was sadly ineffective. Because throughout the war years and still today, one of every five inhabitants of Serbia is a non-Serb.
In Belgrade there are and have always been many minorities living without any difficulty: Muslims, Gypsies, Albanians, Macedonians, Turks, Hungarians, Gorans . . .
In reality, contrary to the image given by the press, Serbia is today the only state of the ex-Yugoslavia, along with Macedonia, that remains 'multinational'.
On the other hand, all the NATO protectorates - Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo - practiced an almost total ethnic purification.
Milosevic objected to the excesses committed by the Serb militias in Bosnia. His wife made several declarations against them.
An embargo was even applied by Serbia against Karadzic.
Certainly, part of Serb public opinion was influenced by racist nationalism. But this was due precisely to Germany and the great powers having plunged the country into civil war and thus into hatred.
9 Did the media correctly report on Srebrenica?
NO.
First element.
Even if it's a matter of condemning abominable crimes, historical truth - necessary for reconciliation - is not served by the propagandistic processes that unreflexively use the term 'genocide', by the obfuscation of the fact that that some of the victims died in combat or by the systematic exaggeration of the numbers.
Inquests have determined that many of the 'victims' were found some months later voting in subsequent elections or even taking part in other battles with Izetbegovic's army.
This information was and remains obscured.
We won't here go into the argument over numbers which only serious historians will be able to sort out definitively.
Second element.
Why did the media hide the events essential to an understanding of this drama?
In the beginning, this region was inhabited by Muslim AND Serbs.
The latter were run off in 1993 by an ethnic cleansing committed by the Muslim nationalist troops of Izetbegovic.
French general Morillon, who commanded the UN force there, charges: "On the night of the Orthodox Christmas, the holy night of January 1993, Nasser Oric led raids on Serb villages. . . . There were heads cut off, abominable massacres committed by the forces of Nasser Oric in all the neighboring villages."
(Documents of information from the French National Assembly, Srebrenica, t 2, pp. 140-154)
The desire for vengeance does not excuse the crimes committed later.
But why systematically hide the crimes of 'our friends'?
Third element.
Like other so-called demilitarized 'safe havens', Srebrenica was in reality an area used by the forces of Izetbegovic to regroup, the UN protecting them from total defeat.
Astonishingly, Oric's troops retreated from Srebrenica just a week before the massacre.
French general Germanos: "Oric had widely declared that they had abandoned Srebrenica because they'd wanted Srebrenica to fall. The 'they' was Izetbegovic."
And why?
It is interesting to return to a curious UN report, written a year and a half earlier by Kofi Annan: "Izetbegovic had learned that a NATO intervention into Bosnia was possible. But it would happen only if the Serbs forced their way into Srebrenica and massacred at least 5,000 people [sic]."
A massacred predicted a year and a half before it happened! (UN Report of 28-29 November)
General Morillon also informed us that "It is Izetbegovic's people who opposed the evacuation of all those who had asked to be taken out, and there were many."
His conclusion: "Mladic fell into a trap at Srebrenica."
10 Were the first victims of the war killed by Serbs?
NO.
June 28, 1991, the Slovenian police executed (at least) two unarmed soldiers of the Yugoslav national army who had surrendered at Holmec, a post on the Austrian border.
This was acknowledged by the newspaper Slovenske Novice.
It has also been 'established from the very beginning' that three soldiers of this same Yugoslav army were executed at a post on the Italian border after surrendering themselves.
(Facts and testimony reported to the ICY at The Hague, cfr Forgotten Crimes, Igor Mekina, AIM Ljubljana, 11/02/99).
11 Was the famous image of the 'concentration camps' false?
YES.
Fabricated by Bernard Kouchner and Médecins du Monde, this image showed some 'prisoners' held, seemingly, behind barbed wire.
One of them had terribly protruding ribs.
Kouchner had pasted beside the photo a guard tower from Auschwitz and the accusation 'mass extermination'. To hammer home the message "Serbs = Nazis".
He thus abetted a campaign of demonization launched by the US public relations firm Ruder Finn.
But the whole thing was faked and taken from a report by British TV channel ITN.
The trickery became obvious when one viewed the footage shot at the same time by a local TV news crew.
In reality, the British camera had been deliberately placed behind the two lonely strands of barbed wire that formed a fence surrounding an old enclosure for farming equipment.
The 'prisoners' were on the 'outside' of the barbed wire. Free because they were refugees in this camp to escape the war and the militias who would force them to fight.
In the complete film, the only prisoner who speaks English declares to the ITN journalist three times that they are being well treated and are safe.
The man with the protruding ribs (gravely ill) was called to the foreground when all his mates looked to be in too good a shape.
Kouchner's montage was a gross falsehood. (Cfr Liars' Poker, p. 34)
There certainly were camps in Bosnia. Not for extermination, but rather for the preparation of prisoner exchanges.
Violations of Human Rights were committed here.
But why were the UN reports on this subject hidden from us?
They accounted for six Croat camps, two Serb camps and one Muslim camp.
12 Were we given the true stories on the three large massacres in Sarajevo?
NO.
Three times Western public opinion was shocked by these terrible images: dozens of victims blown to bits in front of a bakery or in the marketplace of Sarajevo.
Immediately the Serbs were accused of having killed civilians by bombarding the city. This despite numerous contradictions in official communications.
But never was the public informed of the results of inquiries made outside the UN.
Nor of the reports which accused the forces of president Izetbegovic.
Furthermore, high Western officials knew about them but kept them carefully hidden.
It was only much later that the editor-in-chief of the Nouvel Observateur, Jean Daniel, admitted: "Today I have to say it. I heard, in succession, Edouard Balladur (French Prime Minister at the time), François Léotard (Minister of the Army), Alain Juppé (Foreign Minister) and two 'high-ranking' generals, whose confidence I will not betray by naming them, tell me (. . .) that the shell fired on the marketplace was itself also from the Muslims! They would have brought carnage upon their own people! Was I afraid of this observation? Yes, the Prime Minister answered me without hesitating... "
(Nouvel Observateur, August 21, 1995)
Why these manipulations?
As if by chance, each massacre took place just before an important meeting to justify some Western measures: an embargo against the Serbs (92), a NATO bombing (94), a final offensive (95).
NATO and Izetbegovic applied an essential principle of war propaganda: justify the offensive with a media lie, a 'massacre' to shock public opinion.
The official version of the siege of Sarajevo hides several points:
1. The Serb forces certainly committed serious crimes. But the civilians who wanted to flee through a tunnel that permitted them to leave the city were stopped by the Izetbegovic regime. He wanted to maximize the clientele for his black market, hijacking international aid money.
2. It was especially important to present a black and white image of a victim people and their aggressors. In reality, even in Sarajevo, Izetbegovic's snipers regularly killed the inhabitants of Serb sections of the city without anyone ever speaking of it.
3. Some equally grave atrocities went down, for example, at Mostar. But here they were due to fighting between the Croat and Muslim forces who had long before run off all the Serbs.
13 Was the largest ethnic cleansing of the war committed by the Croat army?
YES.
On August 4, 1995, a hundred thousand Croat soldiers, a hundred and fifty tanks, two hundred troop transports, more than three hundred pieces of artillery, and forty missile launchers attacked the Serb population of the Krajina.
More than 150,000 Serbs were forced to leave this region which they had inhabited for centuries.
The worst atrocities of the war were committed: the Croat forces killed the elderly who could not flee, and burned 85% of the abandoned houses.
Clinton called the offensive 'useful'.
His Secretary of State said: "The retaking of the Krajina could lead to a new strategic situation which might be favorable for us."
Worse yet: the United States advised Croatia in carrying out its offensive, according to an admission by the Croatian foreign minister.
Furthermore, it was Washington that took charge of the 'democratic' training of this army. (Liars' Poker, pp. 193-194)
14 Did the US use depleted uranium weapons also in Bosnia?
YES.
At an international conference, "Uranium, the victims speak", organized in Brussels in March 2001, a Bosnian doctor presented a Bosnian Serb forest ranger, a victim like many others of multiple atypical and fast moving cancers, after having been exposed to DU in areas of US bombardment.
A Bosnian health official laid out some statistics : the population of a Serb neighbourhood of Sarajevo bombed by US planes in 1995, (a population later expelled from that city), showed a five-fold increase in various types of cancer.
The weapons using depleted uranium allowed the US - but also France and Great Britain - to get rid of waste materials from their nuclear plants.
These by-products seriously pollute the earth as well as the underground water table, causing cancer, leukemia and monstrous birth defects (including babies born to contaminated GIs).
In short, use of these depleted uranium arms transformed several countries into nuclear waste dumps for eternity. (video and brochure "Uranium, the victims speak").
15 "Was the war against Yugoslavia the US's only good war?
NO.
The United States tried to make believe that it had fought a humanitarian war. And to present itself, for once, as a defender of Muslims. But in reality Washington and Berlin provoked this war. Deliberately. In the selfish interest of conquering certain strategic objectives: the economic colonization of the Balkans, gaining control of the routes for transporting oil, and the fight for world domination.The USA has never fought a humanitarian war. And it was not the fireman in this war against Yugoslavia, it was the firebug. It was the most guilty of inflicting suffering on all the people. The USA can not be, on the one hand, the friend of the Muslims in the Balkans, and, on the other, their worst enemy in Palestine and Iraq. The US is the Muslims' enemy everywhere.And the most dangerous enemy of all the people of the world. It threatens Syria, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, and some day even China. Because its war strategy has no other goal than to maintain an unjust economic order, to dominate and exploit every country on earth to the end of further enriching a small handful of super - billionairs.This is why it is so important to unmask all the media lies and to make the truth known about the war against Yugoslavia: It was a war of aggression.
___________________________
In conclusion. An appeal.
We will not give you a 'score' to evaluate the degree to which you have suffered from media manipulations. That would be indecent. During this decade, too many innocents suffered and suffer still because of the disinformation orchestrated by the great powers in order to advance their imperialist domination.
And other people, closer to you, or yourself perhaps, have suffered another injury: knowing what was traumatizing you behind these orchestrated lies, but not being able to do anything about it.
Such was the powerful indoctrination of the public consciousness.The answers that we set forth here are the results of long research, which took a great deal of time and required detailed investigation to break out the truth.
We would like only to show you that it is possible for each of you to escape the media's hypnotic spell meant to make us accept the unacceptable.What to do? It's not enough, after the lies of each conflict, to say: "Never again!"
We must search without ceasing to understand what is truly at stake economically and strategically in each war. To yank the curtain on the puppeteers who pull the strings from off-stage. To organize collectively, to investigate more rapidly.
~~~
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m21436&l=i&size=1&hd=0
Article by MICHEL COLLON
March 11, 2006
1 Did the war begin in 1991 with the secessions of Slovenia and Croatia?
NO.
In 1979, the BND (German CIA) sent a team of secret agents to Zagreb.
Mission: to support Franjo Tudjman, a racist who actively promoted ethnic hatred and did all he could toward the break-up of Yugoslavia.
Germany supported and financed this Croatian Le Pen, and sent him arms before the war.
To what end?
Berlin never acknowledged the existence of the unified Yugoslav state which had courageously resisted German aggression in the two world wars.
By once more breaking Yugoslavia into easily dominated mini-states, Germany sought to control the Balkans.
An economic zone it could annex in order to remove it from local authority, to export German products to it, and to dominate it as a market.
And a strategic route toward the oil and gas of the Middle East and the Caucasus.
In 1992, the Bavarian Interior Minister declared: "Helmut Kohl has succeeded where neither Emperor Guillaume nor Hitler could."
2 Did Germany deliberately provoke the civil war?
YES.
At the beginning of the Maastricht Summit in 1991, German Chancellor Kohl was alone in wanting to break up Yugoslavia and precipitously to recognize the 'independence' of Slovenia and Croatia, in defiance of both International Law and the Yugoslav Constitution.
But the rise of German power would impose this madness on all its partners.
Paris and London fell right in line.
According to The Observer, "Prime Minister Major paid dearly for supporting German policies toward Yugoslavia which all observers said precipitated the war."
In effect, all the experts had warned that this 'recognition' would provoke a civil war. Why?
1. Nearly every Yugoslav Republic was a mix of diverse nationalities. Separating the territories was as absurd as dividing Paris or London into ethnically pure municipal districts.
2. By favoring the neo-fascist Tudjman and the Muslim nationalist Izetbegovic (who had in his youth collaborated with Hitler), it was certain that panic would be provoked among the important Serb minorities who had lived for centuries in Croatia and Bosnia. Every Serb family had lost at least one member to the horrible genocide committed by the fascist Croats and Muslims, agents of Nazi Germany in 1941-45. Only Tito's Yugoslavia had been able to bring about peace, equality and coexistence. But Berlin, then Washington, wanted once and for all to break this country they saw as being 'too far to the Left'
3 Did the US remain 'passive and disinterested' during this war?
NO.
Lord Owen, special European Union envoy to Bosnia, and later a well-placed observer, wrote in his memoirs: "I greatly respect the United States. But in recent years (92-95) this nation's diplomacy has been guilty of needlessly prolonging the war in Bosnia."
What was its aim?
While the Germans were busy taking control of Slovenia, Croatia and, eventually, Bosnia, Washington put pressure on Izetbegovic, the Muslim nationalist leader in Sarajevo: "Don't sign any peace agreements proposed by the Europeans. We will win the war for you on the ground."
Washington then prolonged for two years the horrible suffering inflicted on all the people of Bosnia.
By what means?
1. Setting aside all the advantages Berlin had gained in this strategic region of the Balkans.
2. Dividing and weakening the European Union.
3. Installing NATO as the Continental European policeman.
4. Restricting all Russian access to the Mediterranian Sea.
5. Imposing its military and political leadership on all the other wars being prepared.
Because the war against Yugoslavia was at the same time a non-declared war against Europe.
After the fall of the Berlin wall, US strategies were geared toward stopping, at all costs, the emergence of a European superpower. So everything was done to weaken Europe militarily and politically.
4 Did the World Bank and the IMF help in destroying this country?
YES.
In December 1989, the IMF imposed draconian conditions on Yugoslavia which forced liberal prime minister Markovic to beg for aid from George Bush Sr.
This 'help' was aimed at destabilizing and bankrupting all large state-owned businesses.
The World Bank dismantled the banking system, laid off 525,000 workers in one year, then ordered the immediate elimination of two out of every three jobs.
The quality of life fell dramatically.
These policies and the growing incidence of work stoppages in solidarity with displaced workers in all the Republics heightened the contradictions among the leaders of the various Republics to whom Belgrade could no longer provide financing.
To get themselves out of this mess, the leaders had to resort to divisive tactics and invested greatly in nationalist hatreds. This war was ignited from abroad. Like so many others.
The war against Yugoslavia was a war of globalization.
All the great Western powers sought to liquidate the Yugoslav economic system which they found too Leftist: with a strong public sector, important social rights, resistance to the multinationals...
The real reason for these various wars against Yugoslavia can be read in this reproach (this threat?) from the Washington Post: "Milosevic was unable to grasp the political message of the fall of the Berlin wall. Other Communist politicians accepted the Western model, but Milosevic went the other way." (4 August 1996).
5 Did the media give a phony image of 'our friends' Tudjman & Izetbegovic?
The hyper-nationalist Croat and Muslim leaders were presented as the pure victims, great anti-racist democrats.
But their past as much as their present should have alerted us: When he took power, Franjo Tudjman declared: "I'm happy my wife isn't a Jew or a Serb."
He hurriedly renamed the streets that had carried the names of antifascist partisans, reinstated the money and the flag of the old genocidal fascist regime, and changed the Constitution in order to run off the Serbs.
During his 1990 electoral campaign, Izetbegovic reissued his 'Islamic Declaration': "There can be neither peace nor coexistence between the Islamic religion and those social and political institutions that are non-Islamic."
He set up a corrupt and mafia-ridden regime based primarily on the lucrative black market and the hijacking of funds from international aid.
He called for assistance, with Washington's blessings, from Islamic mercenaries, most notably from al Qaeda.
Once the war had started, serious crimes were committed by all three camps, but by hiding these histories, the situation was rendered incomprehensible.
6 Did the media hide the essential history and geography of Bosnia?
YES.
We were made to believe that the Serbs were the aggressors, that they had invaded Bosnia from outside its borders.
In reality, three national groups had been living in Bosnia for a long time: the Muslims (43%), the Serbs (31%), the Croats (17%). And one should not forget that 7% of 'Yugoslavs' were born of mixed marriages or preferred to eschew narrow national identities.
Dividing Bosnia according to nationalities, as the EU did, was absurd and dangerous. Because this diverse population was completely intermingled: the Muslims lived primarily in the cities while the Serbs and Croats made up the peasantry and were dispersed throughout the sub-regions.
Bosnia could not be divided without civil war.
In fact, the Serbs of Bosnia did not fight to invade the territories of 'others', but to save their own lands and establish corridors of communication between them.
It was an absurd and bloody situation, with all the ravages of a civil war, but this civil war was provoked by the great powers.
7 Was the presumption of "Serb aggressors, Croat and Muslim victims" correct?
NO.
In command of the UN forces in Bosnia from July 1993 to January 1994, Belgian general Briquemont was well placed to declare: "The disinformation is total (...) Television needs a scapegoat. For the moment, there is complete unanimity in condemning the Serbs, and that in no way facilitates the search for a solution. I don't think one can view the problem of ex-Yugoslavia and of Bosnia-Herzegovina only from the anti-Serb angle. It is much more complicated than that. One day in the middle of the Croat-Muslim war, we gave some information on the massacres committed by the Croatian army. An American journalist said to me: 'If you give out that sort of information, the American public won't understand anything.'"
It is not a question of denying the crimes committed by the Serb forces.
The ideology one finds in the writings of Bosnian Serb leader Karadzic is extremely right wing.
But in reality, after the break-up of Yugoslavia, on all sides, certain criminal and political forces used the methods of war to seize territory and riches.
In the three camps - Croat, Muslim and Serb - militias committed grave crimes. To the detriment of all the people.
Thus, in August 1994, the Muslim nationalist leader in Sarajevo, Izetbegovic, attacked the Muslim region of Bihac, controlled by Fikret Abdic, who had distanced himself from Izetbegovic and wanted to live in harmony with his Serb and Croat neighbors.
In this offensive, Izetbegovic was aided by six US generals.
Remaining silent to the crimes of 'our friends' but demonizing whoever resists us is classic war propaganda.
Numerous media lies were totally fabricated by a US public relations firm, Ruder Finn.
Colleagues of the famous Hill & Knowlton, who created the media lie about Kuwaiti incubators stolen by the Iraqis.
8 Did Serbia initiate a program of ethnic cleansing?
NO.
If one believes that ethnic cleansing was actually the program of 'the dictator Milosevic', one has to admit that this program was sadly ineffective. Because throughout the war years and still today, one of every five inhabitants of Serbia is a non-Serb.
In Belgrade there are and have always been many minorities living without any difficulty: Muslims, Gypsies, Albanians, Macedonians, Turks, Hungarians, Gorans . . .
In reality, contrary to the image given by the press, Serbia is today the only state of the ex-Yugoslavia, along with Macedonia, that remains 'multinational'.
On the other hand, all the NATO protectorates - Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo - practiced an almost total ethnic purification.
Milosevic objected to the excesses committed by the Serb militias in Bosnia. His wife made several declarations against them.
An embargo was even applied by Serbia against Karadzic.
Certainly, part of Serb public opinion was influenced by racist nationalism. But this was due precisely to Germany and the great powers having plunged the country into civil war and thus into hatred.
9 Did the media correctly report on Srebrenica?
NO.
First element.
Even if it's a matter of condemning abominable crimes, historical truth - necessary for reconciliation - is not served by the propagandistic processes that unreflexively use the term 'genocide', by the obfuscation of the fact that that some of the victims died in combat or by the systematic exaggeration of the numbers.
Inquests have determined that many of the 'victims' were found some months later voting in subsequent elections or even taking part in other battles with Izetbegovic's army.
This information was and remains obscured.
We won't here go into the argument over numbers which only serious historians will be able to sort out definitively.
Second element.
Why did the media hide the events essential to an understanding of this drama?
In the beginning, this region was inhabited by Muslim AND Serbs.
The latter were run off in 1993 by an ethnic cleansing committed by the Muslim nationalist troops of Izetbegovic.
French general Morillon, who commanded the UN force there, charges: "On the night of the Orthodox Christmas, the holy night of January 1993, Nasser Oric led raids on Serb villages. . . . There were heads cut off, abominable massacres committed by the forces of Nasser Oric in all the neighboring villages."
(Documents of information from the French National Assembly, Srebrenica, t 2, pp. 140-154)
The desire for vengeance does not excuse the crimes committed later.
But why systematically hide the crimes of 'our friends'?
Third element.
Like other so-called demilitarized 'safe havens', Srebrenica was in reality an area used by the forces of Izetbegovic to regroup, the UN protecting them from total defeat.
Astonishingly, Oric's troops retreated from Srebrenica just a week before the massacre.
French general Germanos: "Oric had widely declared that they had abandoned Srebrenica because they'd wanted Srebrenica to fall. The 'they' was Izetbegovic."
And why?
It is interesting to return to a curious UN report, written a year and a half earlier by Kofi Annan: "Izetbegovic had learned that a NATO intervention into Bosnia was possible. But it would happen only if the Serbs forced their way into Srebrenica and massacred at least 5,000 people [sic]."
A massacred predicted a year and a half before it happened! (UN Report of 28-29 November)
General Morillon also informed us that "It is Izetbegovic's people who opposed the evacuation of all those who had asked to be taken out, and there were many."
His conclusion: "Mladic fell into a trap at Srebrenica."
10 Were the first victims of the war killed by Serbs?
NO.
June 28, 1991, the Slovenian police executed (at least) two unarmed soldiers of the Yugoslav national army who had surrendered at Holmec, a post on the Austrian border.
This was acknowledged by the newspaper Slovenske Novice.
It has also been 'established from the very beginning' that three soldiers of this same Yugoslav army were executed at a post on the Italian border after surrendering themselves.
(Facts and testimony reported to the ICY at The Hague, cfr Forgotten Crimes, Igor Mekina, AIM Ljubljana, 11/02/99).
11 Was the famous image of the 'concentration camps' false?
YES.
Fabricated by Bernard Kouchner and Médecins du Monde, this image showed some 'prisoners' held, seemingly, behind barbed wire.
One of them had terribly protruding ribs.
Kouchner had pasted beside the photo a guard tower from Auschwitz and the accusation 'mass extermination'. To hammer home the message "Serbs = Nazis".
He thus abetted a campaign of demonization launched by the US public relations firm Ruder Finn.
But the whole thing was faked and taken from a report by British TV channel ITN.
The trickery became obvious when one viewed the footage shot at the same time by a local TV news crew.
In reality, the British camera had been deliberately placed behind the two lonely strands of barbed wire that formed a fence surrounding an old enclosure for farming equipment.
The 'prisoners' were on the 'outside' of the barbed wire. Free because they were refugees in this camp to escape the war and the militias who would force them to fight.
In the complete film, the only prisoner who speaks English declares to the ITN journalist three times that they are being well treated and are safe.
The man with the protruding ribs (gravely ill) was called to the foreground when all his mates looked to be in too good a shape.
Kouchner's montage was a gross falsehood. (Cfr Liars' Poker, p. 34)
There certainly were camps in Bosnia. Not for extermination, but rather for the preparation of prisoner exchanges.
Violations of Human Rights were committed here.
But why were the UN reports on this subject hidden from us?
They accounted for six Croat camps, two Serb camps and one Muslim camp.
12 Were we given the true stories on the three large massacres in Sarajevo?
NO.
Three times Western public opinion was shocked by these terrible images: dozens of victims blown to bits in front of a bakery or in the marketplace of Sarajevo.
Immediately the Serbs were accused of having killed civilians by bombarding the city. This despite numerous contradictions in official communications.
But never was the public informed of the results of inquiries made outside the UN.
Nor of the reports which accused the forces of president Izetbegovic.
Furthermore, high Western officials knew about them but kept them carefully hidden.
It was only much later that the editor-in-chief of the Nouvel Observateur, Jean Daniel, admitted: "Today I have to say it. I heard, in succession, Edouard Balladur (French Prime Minister at the time), François Léotard (Minister of the Army), Alain Juppé (Foreign Minister) and two 'high-ranking' generals, whose confidence I will not betray by naming them, tell me (. . .) that the shell fired on the marketplace was itself also from the Muslims! They would have brought carnage upon their own people! Was I afraid of this observation? Yes, the Prime Minister answered me without hesitating... "
(Nouvel Observateur, August 21, 1995)
Why these manipulations?
As if by chance, each massacre took place just before an important meeting to justify some Western measures: an embargo against the Serbs (92), a NATO bombing (94), a final offensive (95).
NATO and Izetbegovic applied an essential principle of war propaganda: justify the offensive with a media lie, a 'massacre' to shock public opinion.
The official version of the siege of Sarajevo hides several points:
1. The Serb forces certainly committed serious crimes. But the civilians who wanted to flee through a tunnel that permitted them to leave the city were stopped by the Izetbegovic regime. He wanted to maximize the clientele for his black market, hijacking international aid money.
2. It was especially important to present a black and white image of a victim people and their aggressors. In reality, even in Sarajevo, Izetbegovic's snipers regularly killed the inhabitants of Serb sections of the city without anyone ever speaking of it.
3. Some equally grave atrocities went down, for example, at Mostar. But here they were due to fighting between the Croat and Muslim forces who had long before run off all the Serbs.
13 Was the largest ethnic cleansing of the war committed by the Croat army?
YES.
On August 4, 1995, a hundred thousand Croat soldiers, a hundred and fifty tanks, two hundred troop transports, more than three hundred pieces of artillery, and forty missile launchers attacked the Serb population of the Krajina.
More than 150,000 Serbs were forced to leave this region which they had inhabited for centuries.
The worst atrocities of the war were committed: the Croat forces killed the elderly who could not flee, and burned 85% of the abandoned houses.
Clinton called the offensive 'useful'.
His Secretary of State said: "The retaking of the Krajina could lead to a new strategic situation which might be favorable for us."
Worse yet: the United States advised Croatia in carrying out its offensive, according to an admission by the Croatian foreign minister.
Furthermore, it was Washington that took charge of the 'democratic' training of this army. (Liars' Poker, pp. 193-194)
14 Did the US use depleted uranium weapons also in Bosnia?
YES.
At an international conference, "Uranium, the victims speak", organized in Brussels in March 2001, a Bosnian doctor presented a Bosnian Serb forest ranger, a victim like many others of multiple atypical and fast moving cancers, after having been exposed to DU in areas of US bombardment.
A Bosnian health official laid out some statistics : the population of a Serb neighbourhood of Sarajevo bombed by US planes in 1995, (a population later expelled from that city), showed a five-fold increase in various types of cancer.
The weapons using depleted uranium allowed the US - but also France and Great Britain - to get rid of waste materials from their nuclear plants.
These by-products seriously pollute the earth as well as the underground water table, causing cancer, leukemia and monstrous birth defects (including babies born to contaminated GIs).
In short, use of these depleted uranium arms transformed several countries into nuclear waste dumps for eternity. (video and brochure "Uranium, the victims speak").
15 "Was the war against Yugoslavia the US's only good war?
NO.
The United States tried to make believe that it had fought a humanitarian war. And to present itself, for once, as a defender of Muslims. But in reality Washington and Berlin provoked this war. Deliberately. In the selfish interest of conquering certain strategic objectives: the economic colonization of the Balkans, gaining control of the routes for transporting oil, and the fight for world domination.The USA has never fought a humanitarian war. And it was not the fireman in this war against Yugoslavia, it was the firebug. It was the most guilty of inflicting suffering on all the people. The USA can not be, on the one hand, the friend of the Muslims in the Balkans, and, on the other, their worst enemy in Palestine and Iraq. The US is the Muslims' enemy everywhere.And the most dangerous enemy of all the people of the world. It threatens Syria, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, and some day even China. Because its war strategy has no other goal than to maintain an unjust economic order, to dominate and exploit every country on earth to the end of further enriching a small handful of super - billionairs.This is why it is so important to unmask all the media lies and to make the truth known about the war against Yugoslavia: It was a war of aggression.
___________________________
In conclusion. An appeal.
We will not give you a 'score' to evaluate the degree to which you have suffered from media manipulations. That would be indecent. During this decade, too many innocents suffered and suffer still because of the disinformation orchestrated by the great powers in order to advance their imperialist domination.
And other people, closer to you, or yourself perhaps, have suffered another injury: knowing what was traumatizing you behind these orchestrated lies, but not being able to do anything about it.
Such was the powerful indoctrination of the public consciousness.The answers that we set forth here are the results of long research, which took a great deal of time and required detailed investigation to break out the truth.
We would like only to show you that it is possible for each of you to escape the media's hypnotic spell meant to make us accept the unacceptable.What to do? It's not enough, after the lies of each conflict, to say: "Never again!"
We must search without ceasing to understand what is truly at stake economically and strategically in each war. To yank the curtain on the puppeteers who pull the strings from off-stage. To organize collectively, to investigate more rapidly.
~~~
Sunday, March 12, 2006
UK policemen telling lies? A senior policeman committing rape?
From the Sunday Mail (Scotland), 5/29/2005
A SENIOR police officer has claimed detectives faked diaries and planted evidence in a bid to frame a 12-year-old for the murder of his older brother.
A secret police report released last week brands the murder squad who investigated the death of 14-year-old Lawrence Haggart criminal and incompetent.
The report by James Mackay, the then assistant chief constable of Tayside Police, shows officers became so obsessed with nailing Lawrence's young brother Dennis for the crime that they ignored the true killer - serial paedophile Brian Beattie.
~
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/article350779.ece
Scotland Yard was at the centre of a new row over the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes following allegations that he was the suspect in a rape case...
A source told The Independent on Sunday: "This is a deliberate attempt to deflect the blame. First [the police] tried to say he was a terrorist and now this... he is no longer here to defend himself."
The Independent on Sunday last month revealed that the IPCC report alleges police tried to fake evidence relating to the killing by altering the police log. According to the report an officer outside the flats wrongly identified Mr de Menezesas Osman and firearms officers were dispatched to stop him. Once it was known an innocent man had been killed, the log was altered so that instead of reading "it was Osman", it read "it was not Osman".
~
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/1334372.stm
A senior police officer has been found guilty of raping two women.
Inspector A. C. carried out the attacks on the women in their homes.
C. brutally raped one of his victims, known only as Mrs X, several times while on police duty including one occasion shortly after she attempted to commit suicide because of the abuse.
He overpowered his second victim Mrs Y in her artist's studio and raped her on the floor as she cried out in pain.
The assaults took place between 1993 and 1996.
At the High Court in Glasgow a jury of eight men and seven women took two hours to convict father-of-two C. of the rapes and other charges of indecent assault against the two women.
~
From The Mail on Sunday, 26 February 2006:
Claire is a police officer.
"Claire says she was not the only one at her station with a drugs problem. She knew of at least five other officers there who took Class-A drugs."
~
The Mail on Sunday, 26 February 2006, tells the story of an accountant, Andrew Ramsay, kidnapped in Glasgow by men in police uniforms.
When he was kidnapped, Ramsay was with his partner, Beverley Sinclair, a policeman's widow.
Ramsay ran a business with a young Eastern European woman which was based in one of Scotland's most notorious brothels.
Ramsay had been due to give evidence at a major money-laundering trial.
The two men who kidnapped Ramsay presented what appeared to be police identity cards.
The kidnappers used 'police jargon'.
One of the kidnappers was 6 foot tall.
Detective Superintendent Willie Prendergast described Ramsay as a well respected, upstanding member of the community.
~~
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4153/is_20041104/ai_n12104865
A POLICEMAN accused of raping a woman with another officer insisted today that she willingly took part in group sex.
Constables M W and A L, both 30, deny attacking the 23-year-old woman in her living room after being called out to help her.
But W told of his shame at indulging in a threesome with the drunken woman and a fellow officer while on duty and as her three children and a babysitter slept upstairs.
Police corruption in UK 'at Third World levels'
Police chief- Lockerbie evidence was faked
Lockerbie - new forensic tests suggest evidence was planted by the CIA
McKie case linked to Lockerbie; Scottish justice controlled by the CIA? Reputation of Scottish justice in ruins?
~~
A SENIOR police officer has claimed detectives faked diaries and planted evidence in a bid to frame a 12-year-old for the murder of his older brother.
A secret police report released last week brands the murder squad who investigated the death of 14-year-old Lawrence Haggart criminal and incompetent.
The report by James Mackay, the then assistant chief constable of Tayside Police, shows officers became so obsessed with nailing Lawrence's young brother Dennis for the crime that they ignored the true killer - serial paedophile Brian Beattie.
~
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/article350779.ece
Scotland Yard was at the centre of a new row over the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes following allegations that he was the suspect in a rape case...
A source told The Independent on Sunday: "This is a deliberate attempt to deflect the blame. First [the police] tried to say he was a terrorist and now this... he is no longer here to defend himself."
The Independent on Sunday last month revealed that the IPCC report alleges police tried to fake evidence relating to the killing by altering the police log. According to the report an officer outside the flats wrongly identified Mr de Menezesas Osman and firearms officers were dispatched to stop him. Once it was known an innocent man had been killed, the log was altered so that instead of reading "it was Osman", it read "it was not Osman".
~
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/1334372.stm
A senior police officer has been found guilty of raping two women.
Inspector A. C. carried out the attacks on the women in their homes.
C. brutally raped one of his victims, known only as Mrs X, several times while on police duty including one occasion shortly after she attempted to commit suicide because of the abuse.
He overpowered his second victim Mrs Y in her artist's studio and raped her on the floor as she cried out in pain.
The assaults took place between 1993 and 1996.
At the High Court in Glasgow a jury of eight men and seven women took two hours to convict father-of-two C. of the rapes and other charges of indecent assault against the two women.
~
From The Mail on Sunday, 26 February 2006:
Claire is a police officer.
"Claire says she was not the only one at her station with a drugs problem. She knew of at least five other officers there who took Class-A drugs."
~
The Mail on Sunday, 26 February 2006, tells the story of an accountant, Andrew Ramsay, kidnapped in Glasgow by men in police uniforms.
When he was kidnapped, Ramsay was with his partner, Beverley Sinclair, a policeman's widow.
Ramsay ran a business with a young Eastern European woman which was based in one of Scotland's most notorious brothels.
Ramsay had been due to give evidence at a major money-laundering trial.
The two men who kidnapped Ramsay presented what appeared to be police identity cards.
The kidnappers used 'police jargon'.
One of the kidnappers was 6 foot tall.
Detective Superintendent Willie Prendergast described Ramsay as a well respected, upstanding member of the community.
~~
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4153/is_20041104/ai_n12104865
A POLICEMAN accused of raping a woman with another officer insisted today that she willingly took part in group sex.
Constables M W and A L, both 30, deny attacking the 23-year-old woman in her living room after being called out to help her.
But W told of his shame at indulging in a threesome with the drunken woman and a fellow officer while on duty and as her three children and a babysitter slept upstairs.
Police corruption in UK 'at Third World levels'
Police chief- Lockerbie evidence was faked
Lockerbie - new forensic tests suggest evidence was planted by the CIA
McKie case linked to Lockerbie; Scottish justice controlled by the CIA? Reputation of Scottish justice in ruins?
~~
Links to Israel
Links to Israel
The following is taken from:
http://www.mylinkspage.com/israel.html
Keep an eye on the goods bar code: Israel's country prefix is 729.
Group 4 Falck owns a controlling stake in Hashmira, an Israeli security company which has close links with the Israeli Government. Until exposed in this Guardian report (9 October 2002) it supplied over 100 security guards to illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, supporting IDF troops in the military occupation.
IBM (ironically providers of tabulating machines to Nazi Germany, assisting the Holocaust).
AOL Time Warner.
The CAABU pages on Seldfridges and the illegal products it sells from the Occupied Territories.
McDonalds, purveyors of hamburgers, egg McMuffins and other fine comestibles. The US-based company has 80 outlets in Israel & is a major supporter of the Jewish United Fund which runs "Fun-filled Summer Family Missions to Israel" in which US families get to "visit an army base and meet with Israeli soldiers".
US companies with investments in Israel - kindly maintained and published by Israel's embassy in the US.
Johnson & Johnson, best known for their baby shampoo.
Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation.
Marks & Spencer, best known for their reliable underwear, are long term supporters of the state of Israel and Zionism.
Sara Lee, the international prepared foods company.
The Coca Cola company.
The Starbucks chain of coffee shops.
Timberland (who make boots and things).
Virgin Drinks is also moving into the Occupied Territories, selling soft drinks to Israel under the Virgin brand that have been made at the Mayanot "Super Drink" plant on Palestinian land just outside Jerusalem.
Danone, yes, the French company who make sugary yoghurt.
The Disney Corporation.
Home Depot is the US's biggest DIY chain. It's huge.
L'Oreal, with a host of top brands in designer clothing, perfumes and fashion accessories (Garnier, Lancome Paris, Helena Rubenstein, Giorgio Armani, Redken 5th Avenue, Ralph Lauren perfumes), is a "warm friend of Israel" with large-scale investments and commercial dealings there.
Revlon, who do make-up and other girly stuff...
Intel, makers of the chips that are quite possibly powering your computer (& mine).
Apax own Yell, the Merlin Entertainment Group, Stead & Simpson Group (shoe shops) Brands Hatch Leisure Holdings, easyEverything Limited (internet cafes). They have over $1billion invested in Israel.
Kimberly-Clark. who make paper towels in public toilets & other indispensable sanitary items.
Just why should Finnish mobile phone company Nokia be up to its neck in Israel?
A freelance Selfridges campaign site about the illegal products it sells from the Occupied Territories.
~~~~
The following is taken from:
http://www.mylinkspage.com/israel.html
Keep an eye on the goods bar code: Israel's country prefix is 729.
Group 4 Falck owns a controlling stake in Hashmira, an Israeli security company which has close links with the Israeli Government. Until exposed in this Guardian report (9 October 2002) it supplied over 100 security guards to illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, supporting IDF troops in the military occupation.
IBM (ironically providers of tabulating machines to Nazi Germany, assisting the Holocaust).
AOL Time Warner.
The CAABU pages on Seldfridges and the illegal products it sells from the Occupied Territories.
McDonalds, purveyors of hamburgers, egg McMuffins and other fine comestibles. The US-based company has 80 outlets in Israel & is a major supporter of the Jewish United Fund which runs "Fun-filled Summer Family Missions to Israel" in which US families get to "visit an army base and meet with Israeli soldiers".
US companies with investments in Israel - kindly maintained and published by Israel's embassy in the US.
Johnson & Johnson, best known for their baby shampoo.
Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation.
Marks & Spencer, best known for their reliable underwear, are long term supporters of the state of Israel and Zionism.
Sara Lee, the international prepared foods company.
The Coca Cola company.
The Starbucks chain of coffee shops.
Timberland (who make boots and things).
Virgin Drinks is also moving into the Occupied Territories, selling soft drinks to Israel under the Virgin brand that have been made at the Mayanot "Super Drink" plant on Palestinian land just outside Jerusalem.
Danone, yes, the French company who make sugary yoghurt.
The Disney Corporation.
Home Depot is the US's biggest DIY chain. It's huge.
L'Oreal, with a host of top brands in designer clothing, perfumes and fashion accessories (Garnier, Lancome Paris, Helena Rubenstein, Giorgio Armani, Redken 5th Avenue, Ralph Lauren perfumes), is a "warm friend of Israel" with large-scale investments and commercial dealings there.
Revlon, who do make-up and other girly stuff...
Intel, makers of the chips that are quite possibly powering your computer (& mine).
Apax own Yell, the Merlin Entertainment Group, Stead & Simpson Group (shoe shops) Brands Hatch Leisure Holdings, easyEverything Limited (internet cafes). They have over $1billion invested in Israel.
Kimberly-Clark. who make paper towels in public toilets & other indispensable sanitary items.
Just why should Finnish mobile phone company Nokia be up to its neck in Israel?
A freelance Selfridges campaign site about the illegal products it sells from the Occupied Territories.
~~~~
The Blair's mortgage debt of 'almost £4 million'.
Source: the Daily Mail, 11 March 2006.
The Daily Mail has revealed that the mortgage debt of Tony and Cherie Blair stands ‘at almost £4 million.’
Public records show that the Blairs took out a £3.46 million mortgage on their London townhouse in 2004. Mortgages on their other properties in Bristol and Durham amount to at least £472,500.
According to Gordon Rayner, in the Daily Mail, "The news raises fresh questions about just how the Blairs can afford their property investments." Tony Blair’s salary, after tax, is £113,000.
Cherie Blair reportedly earned £100,000 from a six-date charity tour of Australia and New Zealand.
According to the Daily Mail: "Mrs Blair faced demands to hand back her fee after it emerged that only 8% of the takings from her Melbourne appearance went to the Children’s cancer charity in question, a breach of local laws which say the figure must be at least 40%."
Mrs Blair bought two flats in Bristol with the help of convicted fraudster Peter Foster, who was a boyfriend of Mrs Blair’s Jewish friend Carole Caplin.
Mrs Blair, who works as a junior judge, at first denied Foster had had anything to do with the deal.
The Daily Mail obtained copies of Mrs Blair’s e-mails to Foster. In these e-mails, Mrs Blair thanked Foster for his help, saying: ‘You’re a star."
Mrs Blair was forced to admit she had misled the public.
There was further controversy when it emerged that Mrs Blair bought the properties using a ‘blind trust’ called the Manchester Trust. Ministers and their wives are supposed to have no control over such trusts.
~~~
The Daily Mail has revealed that the mortgage debt of Tony and Cherie Blair stands ‘at almost £4 million.’
Public records show that the Blairs took out a £3.46 million mortgage on their London townhouse in 2004. Mortgages on their other properties in Bristol and Durham amount to at least £472,500.
According to Gordon Rayner, in the Daily Mail, "The news raises fresh questions about just how the Blairs can afford their property investments." Tony Blair’s salary, after tax, is £113,000.
Cherie Blair reportedly earned £100,000 from a six-date charity tour of Australia and New Zealand.
According to the Daily Mail: "Mrs Blair faced demands to hand back her fee after it emerged that only 8% of the takings from her Melbourne appearance went to the Children’s cancer charity in question, a breach of local laws which say the figure must be at least 40%."
Mrs Blair bought two flats in Bristol with the help of convicted fraudster Peter Foster, who was a boyfriend of Mrs Blair’s Jewish friend Carole Caplin.
Mrs Blair, who works as a junior judge, at first denied Foster had had anything to do with the deal.
The Daily Mail obtained copies of Mrs Blair’s e-mails to Foster. In these e-mails, Mrs Blair thanked Foster for his help, saying: ‘You’re a star."
Mrs Blair was forced to admit she had misled the public.
There was further controversy when it emerged that Mrs Blair bought the properties using a ‘blind trust’ called the Manchester Trust. Ministers and their wives are supposed to have no control over such trusts.
~~~
Friday, March 10, 2006
Blair's Britain: more living below the poverty line; more billionaires.
The poverty line.
In 2003/04, 12 million people in Great Britain were in households living below the low income threshold.
This 12 million figure is much higher than in the early 1980s. More people are now living below the poverty line.
The low income threshold is £100 per week for a single adult, £260 per week for two adults living with two children, and £180 per week for a single adult living with two children.
Fuller details can be found at: http://www.poverty.org.uk/summary/key_facts.htm
Roman Abramovich, the Jewish owner of Chelsea football club, has an estimated worth of $18.2bn.
Philip and Cristina Green, Jewish owners of the Arcadia retail empire which includes Bhs and TopShop, have an estimated net worth of $7bn.
Though barely two percent of The USA's population is Jewish, close to half its billionaires are Jewish. (According to an article at: http://www.rense.com/general27/jlobby.htm )
Top 10 in the Forbes Rich List:
1 Bill Gates, US, worth $50bn (IT)
2 Warren Buffett, US, $42bn (finance)
3 Carlos Slim Helu, Mexico, $30bn (telecoms)
4 Ingvar Kamprad, Sweden, $28bn (retail)
5 Lakshmi Mittal, India, $23.5bn (steel)
6 Paul Allen, US, $22bn (IT/investment)
7 Bernard Arnault, France, $21.5bn (luxury goods)
8 Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Alsaud, Saudi Arabia, $20bn (investment)
9 Kenneth Thomson, Canada, $19.6bn (publishing)
10 Li Ka-shing, Hong Kong, $18.8bn (diversified investment)
Source for list: http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1727755,00.html
~~
In 2003/04, 12 million people in Great Britain were in households living below the low income threshold.
This 12 million figure is much higher than in the early 1980s. More people are now living below the poverty line.
The low income threshold is £100 per week for a single adult, £260 per week for two adults living with two children, and £180 per week for a single adult living with two children.
Fuller details can be found at: http://www.poverty.org.uk/summary/key_facts.htm
Roman Abramovich, the Jewish owner of Chelsea football club, has an estimated worth of $18.2bn.
Philip and Cristina Green, Jewish owners of the Arcadia retail empire which includes Bhs and TopShop, have an estimated net worth of $7bn.
Though barely two percent of The USA's population is Jewish, close to half its billionaires are Jewish. (According to an article at: http://www.rense.com/general27/jlobby.htm )
Top 10 in the Forbes Rich List:
1 Bill Gates, US, worth $50bn (IT)
2 Warren Buffett, US, $42bn (finance)
3 Carlos Slim Helu, Mexico, $30bn (telecoms)
4 Ingvar Kamprad, Sweden, $28bn (retail)
5 Lakshmi Mittal, India, $23.5bn (steel)
6 Paul Allen, US, $22bn (IT/investment)
7 Bernard Arnault, France, $21.5bn (luxury goods)
8 Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Alsaud, Saudi Arabia, $20bn (investment)
9 Kenneth Thomson, Canada, $19.6bn (publishing)
10 Li Ka-shing, Hong Kong, $18.8bn (diversified investment)
Source for list: http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1727755,00.html
~~
Thursday, March 09, 2006
How UK civil servant Michael Israel Michaels helped Israel get nuclear weapons.
The sources for the following are BBC Newsnight, 9 March 2006, and The New Statesman, 13 March 2006 edition.
http://www.newstatesman.com/200603130011
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/4789832.stm
Secret papers show how a British civil servant, Michael Israel Michaels, helped Israel get nuclear weapons in the 1960s.
Members of the British cabinet apparently knew nothing about it.
(Israel also had friends in France. The French helped build Israel's reactor and reprocessing plant at Dimona.)
BBC Newsnight has discovered secret files which show how people in Britain helped Israel get the atomic bomb.
Apparently the UK supplied Israel with plutonium.
Britain also sold Israel uranium-235, beryllium and lithium-6, which are used in atom bombs and hydrogen bombs.
When Harold Macmillan became UK prime minister, Britain supplied the heavy water that allowed Israel to start up its own plutonium production facility at Dimona.
Britain made hundreds of other secret shipments of nuclear materials to Israel in the 1950s and 1960s.
Tony Benn became UK technology minister in 1966.
He claims he was not told that Britain was exporting atomic energy materials to Israel.
"I'm not only surprised," he says, "I'm shocked."
In 1960, Britain's spies knew about Dimona in Israel. Photographs of Dimona had reached Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS) in London. Retired DIS analyst Peter Kelly knew about the UK's sale of heavy water to Israel. The transaction was signed off for the Foreign Office by civil servant Donald Cape.
Kelly's reports for the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) on "secret atomic activities in Israel" show that Britain's spies had no doubt about what was going on in Israel.
Kelly and his colleagues were challenged by Michael Israel Michaels, a senior civil servant at the UK science ministry. Michaels was also the UK representative at the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Authority).
Michaels tried to make out that Israel was not developing nuclear weapons.
In 1961 Michaels was invited to Israel by the Israeli nuclear chief. Michaels met the Israeli PM and other top Israelis.
Peter Kelly warned his bosses about Michaels.
Michaels's report gave Israel the all-clear.
In 1966 the UK Atomic Energy Authority wanted to export ten milligrams of plutonium to Israel. The Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office objected.
Michaels wrote "to protest strongly" against the objections. He claimed that small quantities of plutonium were not important.
Michaels won his battle. The plutonium was sold to Israel.
Former UK government Tony Benn claims that Michaels never referred the nuclear sales to him.
Benn says: "Michaels lied to me. I learned by bitter experience that the nuclear industry lied to me again and again."
Kelly believes that Michaels knew what Israel was doing.
When Michaels retired from the IAEA in 1971, the Israelis found him a job.
Former UK government minister Tony Benn was asked if UK prime minister Harold Wilson knew about the atomic exports to Israel.
Benn replied: "Harold was sympathetic to Israel." (Prime Minister Harold Wilson's key cronies were Jewish)
Benn believes that the exports were probably pushed through by civil servants working with the nuclear industry.
In a letter in 2006, the Foreign Office minister Kim Howells has admitted that Britain knew the heavy water was going to Israel.
Howells has not given this information to the IAEA.
According to Meirion Jones in The New Statesman:
"Howells and his boss, Jack Straw, are too busy telling the IAEA about the dangers of nuclear proliferation in another corner of the Middle East."
UK foreign secretary Jack Straw is Jewish.
~
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com/2005/08/uk-helped-israel-get-nuclear-bomb-was.html
aangirfan: Margaret Thatcher's Jewish links
aangirfan: MI5 and MI6
aangirfan - UK helped Israel get nuclear bomb. Was there an ...
~~~
http://www.newstatesman.com/200603130011
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/4789832.stm
Secret papers show how a British civil servant, Michael Israel Michaels, helped Israel get nuclear weapons in the 1960s.
Members of the British cabinet apparently knew nothing about it.
(Israel also had friends in France. The French helped build Israel's reactor and reprocessing plant at Dimona.)
BBC Newsnight has discovered secret files which show how people in Britain helped Israel get the atomic bomb.
Apparently the UK supplied Israel with plutonium.
Britain also sold Israel uranium-235, beryllium and lithium-6, which are used in atom bombs and hydrogen bombs.
When Harold Macmillan became UK prime minister, Britain supplied the heavy water that allowed Israel to start up its own plutonium production facility at Dimona.
Britain made hundreds of other secret shipments of nuclear materials to Israel in the 1950s and 1960s.
Tony Benn became UK technology minister in 1966.
He claims he was not told that Britain was exporting atomic energy materials to Israel.
"I'm not only surprised," he says, "I'm shocked."
In 1960, Britain's spies knew about Dimona in Israel. Photographs of Dimona had reached Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS) in London. Retired DIS analyst Peter Kelly knew about the UK's sale of heavy water to Israel. The transaction was signed off for the Foreign Office by civil servant Donald Cape.
Kelly's reports for the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) on "secret atomic activities in Israel" show that Britain's spies had no doubt about what was going on in Israel.
Kelly and his colleagues were challenged by Michael Israel Michaels, a senior civil servant at the UK science ministry. Michaels was also the UK representative at the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Authority).
Michaels tried to make out that Israel was not developing nuclear weapons.
In 1961 Michaels was invited to Israel by the Israeli nuclear chief. Michaels met the Israeli PM and other top Israelis.
Peter Kelly warned his bosses about Michaels.
Michaels's report gave Israel the all-clear.
In 1966 the UK Atomic Energy Authority wanted to export ten milligrams of plutonium to Israel. The Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office objected.
Michaels wrote "to protest strongly" against the objections. He claimed that small quantities of plutonium were not important.
Michaels won his battle. The plutonium was sold to Israel.
Former UK government Tony Benn claims that Michaels never referred the nuclear sales to him.
Benn says: "Michaels lied to me. I learned by bitter experience that the nuclear industry lied to me again and again."
Kelly believes that Michaels knew what Israel was doing.
When Michaels retired from the IAEA in 1971, the Israelis found him a job.
Former UK government minister Tony Benn was asked if UK prime minister Harold Wilson knew about the atomic exports to Israel.
Benn replied: "Harold was sympathetic to Israel." (Prime Minister Harold Wilson's key cronies were Jewish)
Benn believes that the exports were probably pushed through by civil servants working with the nuclear industry.
In a letter in 2006, the Foreign Office minister Kim Howells has admitted that Britain knew the heavy water was going to Israel.
Howells has not given this information to the IAEA.
According to Meirion Jones in The New Statesman:
"Howells and his boss, Jack Straw, are too busy telling the IAEA about the dangers of nuclear proliferation in another corner of the Middle East."
UK foreign secretary Jack Straw is Jewish.
~
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com/2005/08/uk-helped-israel-get-nuclear-bomb-was.html
aangirfan: Margaret Thatcher's Jewish links
aangirfan: MI5 and MI6
aangirfan - UK helped Israel get nuclear bomb. Was there an ...
~~~
Diana, Lord Stevens and IOPS
The source of the following is the Daily Express, 9 March 2006:
Lord Stevens is carrying out an investigation into the death of Princess Diana.
According to the Express:
1. Lord Stevens has reached no firm conclusions.
2. Mohamed al Fayed believes that a secret MI6 dirty tricks unit, called the International Operations Section or IOPS, is planting stories in the media that claim that Lord Stevens has concluded that Diana's death was an accident.
3. Lord Stevens has investigated the activities of two MI6 officers who were in Paris on the night of Diana's death.
4. One of these MI6 officers was linked to the alleged kidnap and torture of 28 people in Greece.
~~
Lord Stevens is carrying out an investigation into the death of Princess Diana.
According to the Express:
1. Lord Stevens has reached no firm conclusions.
2. Mohamed al Fayed believes that a secret MI6 dirty tricks unit, called the International Operations Section or IOPS, is planting stories in the media that claim that Lord Stevens has concluded that Diana's death was an accident.
3. Lord Stevens has investigated the activities of two MI6 officers who were in Paris on the night of Diana's death.
4. One of these MI6 officers was linked to the alleged kidnap and torture of 28 people in Greece.
~~
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
Moussaoui, Lander, a computer, patsies 'paid by US government'
The following is taken from:
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/9-11BasicQuestions
STEPHEN LANDER, Director MI5
1. Did Lander monitor a phone conversation between Zacarias Moussaoui and Richard Reid in Dec. 2000?
2. What did Lander tell representatives of the CIA about Zacarias Moussaoui?
Moussaoui's COMPUTER
What exactly was found on Z. Moussaoui's computer after 9/11, when local agents were given a Federal Intelligence Security Act (FISA) warrant, which they had requested six weeks previously? This ties directly into the question of the administration's dealings with the Taliban, its reluctance to investigate Saudi nationals, etc.
~~
From: A Brief Dossier on The Nation's Most Dangerous Terrorist, Zacarias ...
Moussaoui paid cash for his Minnesota flying lessons, and told his instructors he had no interest in learning how to take off or land, only steer. His erratic behavior led school officials to contact the FBI, which arrested in mid-August.
But the FBI's headquarters brushed the case off as insignificant and threw legal hurdles in front of the field agents who were barred even from looking at Moussaoui's laptop computer — which contained unimportant trivia like the names and phone numbers of al Qaeda commanders and September 11 hijackers.
~~
From Hijackers Patsies :
The FBI were all over these patsies:
*One lived with an FBI informant in San Diego.
*Even the FBI (in the field) says that superiors in the FBI (HQ) altered reports, foiling the inquiry into Moussaoui,Zacarias:
A senior F.B.I. agent (Rowley) in Minneapolis has accused a supervisor at the agency's Washington headquarters of altering a report in a way that made it impossible for investigators to obtain crucial evidence in the case of Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker, before the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington, government officials said today. NYT 1
Some of the hijackers worked with or for the US government:
* Zacarias Moussaoui claimed he had been under observation before 9/11 and that the hijackers' movements had been facilitated by the U.S. government.
* The wife on one of the patsies says in sworn testimony that they were paid by the US government.
* Mohammed Atta attended the Defense Language Institute at Monterey.
* Three of the alleged hijackers listed their address on drivers licenses and car registrations as the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Fla.
* One attended "California's Defense Language Institute in Presidio of Monterey, California.
*See the 911Encyclopedia topic: Hijackers-UsAirBaseConnections
Zacarias Moussaoui was being impersonated at a flight school.
~~
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/9-11BasicQuestions
STEPHEN LANDER, Director MI5
1. Did Lander monitor a phone conversation between Zacarias Moussaoui and Richard Reid in Dec. 2000?
2. What did Lander tell representatives of the CIA about Zacarias Moussaoui?
Moussaoui's COMPUTER
What exactly was found on Z. Moussaoui's computer after 9/11, when local agents were given a Federal Intelligence Security Act (FISA) warrant, which they had requested six weeks previously? This ties directly into the question of the administration's dealings with the Taliban, its reluctance to investigate Saudi nationals, etc.
~~
From: A Brief Dossier on The Nation's Most Dangerous Terrorist, Zacarias ...
Moussaoui paid cash for his Minnesota flying lessons, and told his instructors he had no interest in learning how to take off or land, only steer. His erratic behavior led school officials to contact the FBI, which arrested in mid-August.
But the FBI's headquarters brushed the case off as insignificant and threw legal hurdles in front of the field agents who were barred even from looking at Moussaoui's laptop computer — which contained unimportant trivia like the names and phone numbers of al Qaeda commanders and September 11 hijackers.
~~
From Hijackers Patsies :
The FBI were all over these patsies:
*One lived with an FBI informant in San Diego.
*Even the FBI (in the field) says that superiors in the FBI (HQ) altered reports, foiling the inquiry into Moussaoui,Zacarias:
A senior F.B.I. agent (Rowley) in Minneapolis has accused a supervisor at the agency's Washington headquarters of altering a report in a way that made it impossible for investigators to obtain crucial evidence in the case of Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker, before the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington, government officials said today. NYT 1
Some of the hijackers worked with or for the US government:
* Zacarias Moussaoui claimed he had been under observation before 9/11 and that the hijackers' movements had been facilitated by the U.S. government.
* The wife on one of the patsies says in sworn testimony that they were paid by the US government.
* Mohammed Atta attended the Defense Language Institute at Monterey.
* Three of the alleged hijackers listed their address on drivers licenses and car registrations as the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Fla.
* One attended "California's Defense Language Institute in Presidio of Monterey, California.
*See the 911Encyclopedia topic: Hijackers-UsAirBaseConnections
Zacarias Moussaoui was being impersonated at a flight school.
~~
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
Livni the terrorist
Eitan Livni1. "WE SHOULD always be charitable to the dead, but Eitan Livni was not a leader of a militant Jewish independence movement. The Irgun Zwai Leumi was a terrorist oganization, and a particularly nasty one.
"Even its defenders, who argued that the end could justify the means at decisive moments in history, were horrified by the massacre at Deir Yassin and the hanging of the British sergeants."
-Louis Heren, The Times, February 11, 1992.
2. The following is taken from Media Lens
MediaLens :: View topic - Israel's New Foreign Minister The ...
The New York Times
February 5, 2006
Israel's Top Envoy
By STEVEN ERLANGER
Tzipi Livni, 47, is the first woman to serve as Israel's foreign minister since Golda Meir did so half a century ago. Some think she may be the first since Ms. Meir to be prime minister...
She is also a deeply Israeli figure, the daughter of Zionist guerrillas - terrorists in some eyes -who met in the Irgun, the underground organization that fought the British and the Arabs, and that blew up the British headquarters in the King David Hotel in 1946, killing 91 people.
Her father, Eitan, was the Irgun's head of operations, and on his gravestone is the map of greater Israel, extending over both sides of the Jordan River...
Ms. Livni made her first visit as foreign minister to Cairo this week, when at a joint news conference the Egyptian foreign minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, compared Hamas to Likud, the right-wing party she left along with Ariel Sharon to form Kadima...
She served in the army, becoming a lieutenant, and at the age of 22 began working for the Mossad, the intelligence service, where she stayed for four years.
3. The Times Obituary, February 5, 1992
Eitan Livni Eitan Livni, a leader of the Irgun, the militant Jewish independence movement in British mandated Palestine, has died in Israel aged 72.
He was born Yerucham Bzozowitch in Gerodna, Poland, in 1919.
ON THE night of April 2, 1944, a few dozen Jewish insurgents sabotaged railway stations and bridges along 25 miles of line in Palestine.
They belonged to the Irgun group, headed by Menachem Begin, which had begun a campaign of violence against the British administration in Palestine at the beginning of that year...
Livni... in August 1947 was dispatched by Begin to organise Irgun's military activities against British targets in Europe...
Following independence Livni became chairman of the Irgun veterans organisation but in the 1970s, as a result of pressure from Begin who was by this time the leader of the parliamentary opposition, he was elected a member of the Israeli Knesset.
He remained there for three terms and helped to bring about the rightwing Likud coalition which gained power in 1977...
~
WE SHOULD always be charitable to the dead, but Eitan Livni (obituary, February 5) was not a leader of a militant Jewish independence movement. The Irgun Zwai Leumi was a terrorist oganization, and a particularly nasty one.
Even its defenders, who argued that the end could justify the means at decisive moments in history, were horrified by the massacre at Deir Yassin and the hanging of the British sergeants.
~~~
Monday, March 06, 2006
Diamonds, Dubai, the Russian-Israeli Mafia and bin Laden
While Osama bin Laden was in Africa, did the Israelis approach him to take over the diamond business from the Lebanese in West Africa?
Wayne Madsen makes some interesting allegations about Israel, Dubai, Chertoff, the Russian-Israeli Mafia and bin Laden.
The following is extracted from:
http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/
March 3, 2006
The Israeli, Dubai, Chertoff connection - its just the tip of the Russian-Israeli mafia and "Al Qaeda" iceberg.
For years, a handful of prosecutors, FBI agents, and investigative journalists have stressed the connections between Russian-Israeli mafia tycoons, weapons and diamond smugglers, and terrorist networks associated with "Al Qaeda" and affiliated organizations...
Chertoff is a long-time GOP political hack and neo-con operative...
It was Chertoff who ordered the FBI not to pursue Mossad cells discovered to be operating alongside the hijacker cells in northern New Jersey.
With FBI and other field law enforcement reports on suspicious Israeli office "mover" activity in the New York-New Jersey area in the months prior to 911, Chertoff failed to order an investigation of why Zim-American Israeli Shipping Company suddenly terminated its lease of offices on the 16th and 17th floors of the North Tower of the World Trade Center, forfeiting a $50,000 deposit a week prior to 911 and moving its operations to Norfolk.
Zim's parent company, Zim Israel Navigation Co, is half owned by the Israeli government. Norfolk's port operations are due to come under Dubai Ports World ownership if the buy-out deal is approved.
Therefore, it is no surprise that Zim's chairman wrote to Senator Clinton offering high praise for Dubai Ports World and revealed that Zim and Dubai Ports are "strong business partners."
Zim's chairman also revealed that Zim's ships use Dubai ports but under different flags other than Israeli.
Chertoff also failed to investigate the presence on the 33rd floor of the North Tower of the Trade Center of the Yemen Import Company, an office that, like Zim Shipping, had been cleared of all its personnel in the weeks prior to 911, leaving only an answering machine and fax in place.
As Assistant US Attorney, Chertoff also declined to prosecute Dr. Magdy Elamir, an Egyptian-born neurologist in Jersey City who was implicated in an FBI/ATF arms trafficking investigation code named Operation Diamondback.
It turned out that Elamir was a Chertoff's client in a fraud case brought against Elamir's HMO by the state of New Jersey.
NBC's Dateline, on August 2, 2002, referred to a 1998 foreign intelligence report obtained by the network, "The report alleges that an H.M.O. owned by Dr. Elamir in New Jersey was 'funded by ben [sic] Laden' and that in turn Dr. Elamir was skimming money from the H.M.O. to fund 'terrorist activities.'"
New Jersey investigators discovered that $15 million in funds from Elamir's HMO were unaccounted for and Dateline determined that some of the funds were transferred to off-shore bank accounts.
Chertoff represented Elamir at the time the money was shifted to the off-shore bank accounts.
The weapons smugglers targeted by Diamondback also included those who were smuggling nuclear components to the A Q Khan network.
It was this network that was a prime focus of Valerie Plame Wilson and her Brewster Jennings and Associates covert CIA operatives.
On January 14, 2005, Dateline's Chris Hansen interviewed ATF agent Dick Stoltz, the supervisor of Diamondback:
"In the summer of 1999, a group of illegal weapons dealers were meeting at a warehouse in Florida, their conversations recorded by federal investigators. One of the men, from Pakistan, was seeking technology for nuclear weapons. Who did he say he was working for?
Former federal undercover agent Dick Stoltz was posing as a black market arms dealer.
Hansen: "Did you realize what you had at the time?"
Stoltz: "No. We didn't."
But now he does - because A.Q. Khan is considered, by some, to be the most dangerous man in the world.
Why?
Because Dr. Khan has peddled nuclear weapons technology to some of the countries the United States considers most dangerous, and some accepted his offers."
"Undercover federal agent Dick Stoltz says there's evidence Khan's operatives were at work here in the U.S., like a man who asked if Stoltz could supply heavy water, an ingredient used to make plutonium for nuclear bombs. Stoltz: "He said that Dr. Khan was handling the negotiations behind the scene, as far as - the heavy water."
Chertoff, in a major conflict-of-interest, abused his authority to cover up the involvement of his client in the Diamondback probe.
Other than the Homeland Security Secretary's complete incompetence during Hurricane Katrina, why would someone like Michael Brown have special animosity towards Chertoff?
Perhaps Brown's past job as Commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association (IAHA) had something to do with his sudden call for Chertoff's firing in the wake of the Homeland Security chief's approval of the Dubai Ports World deal to take over operations at 21 U.S. ports.
Close Bush family friend, the Emir of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, is an avid horse racing fan and owner (as was the Emir's late father).
Dubai is the venue for an annual thoroughbred racing event where millions of dollars change hands in betting.
Horse betting in Dubai is believed by law enforcement officials to be a major conduit for money laundering in the region - something that must have been known to Brown as the oversight authority for the IAHA.
In what could be the most dramatic outcome of the Bush criminal scandal, Brown's experience with the IAHA may prove embarrassing to Chertoff and the Bush criminal cartel as Dubai comes under sharper focus.
Dubai is also an important diamond center.
And that brings us into Osama bin Laden's connections to the Israeli diamond trade.
The following was sent to WMR by a journalist source who was in Peshawar, Pakistan in the weeks following U.S. intervention in Afghanistan.
The information comes from a Taliban member who escaped into Pakistan:
"Osama left Afghanistan in a party of 26 people,
mostly his family members, on November 4 [2001].
He left from the "south." [possibly southern Iran].
"This may surprise you, but you must understand the
nature of business. A business partnership is based on
years of trust, and it is totally separate from
political or national loyalties."
"Osama, when he realized that he was trapped between
the Northern Front and the US forces, called on an
old business partner, who flew in his jetliner,
and ferried Osama to Africa."
"Osama was a rich man, a millionaire, but spend a lot
on the Afghan war and reconstruction. While he was in
Africa in exile, the Israelis approached him to take
over the diamond business from the Lebanese in West
Africa. (background: Muslims provide the strong arm
for the raw diamond trade in West Africa, and it
required a respected and tough Muslim like Osama to
wrestle the trade away from the Shi'ites from southern
Lebanon. The Israelis could not stand the thought of
their Antwerp diamond industry financing suicide
bombers in south Lebanon)."
"With the diamond trade under his control, Osama
became a billionaire (repeat), a billionaire . . . The
diamonds were sent to the Russian mafiyah, who then
sold to Antwerp."
(Antwerp, btw, was where the shoe bomber and countless
other "terrorists" were financed and where AQ [Khan] money
was being wired to New York via Hassidim diamond
merchants.)
For building materials and equipment, Bin Laden's
construction family routinely dealt with Jewish businessmen
through Yemen. Since Saudis could have no direct dealings,
the Bin Ladens used Yemenis, who lived alongside Jews in
their Yemeni homeland. This is how Osama's father
became so big.
"Inside Afghanistan, the Taliban were not anti-Jewish
because the Pashtun tribe are one of the "lost tribes
of Israel". Our customs and names are identical to
those of the Jews. So there was no problem in fighting
the Soviet occupation and then Shiite enemy, and Osama
led this fight."
In fact, this communique from Peshawar is born out by the story of Ambuy Gem Corporation president Yehuda Abraham, who was arrested at his New York "Diamond District" office in 2003 for his involvement in a Russian shoulder mounted missile launcher smuggling ring involving a British national with ties to the Viktor Bout smuggling ring, Hemant Lakhani, and a Malaysian national believed to have ties to Jemaah Islamiya, the Al Qaeda affiliate in southeast Asia.
Bout's smuggling network was partly based in Dubai.
Abraham, a Bukharan Jewish native of Afghanistan who spoke Pashto and Urdu.
A well-placed Israeli source told WMR that Afghan-born Jews are so rare, Abraham would "have most certainly been used as an agent by Mossad."
But Abraham, like Zim Shipping, had special dispensation under the Arab boycott of Israel.
A U.S.-Israeli dual national, Abraham maintained a diamond store in the lobby of the Sheraton Hotel in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
His primary clientele: the Saudi royal family.
It was also discovered that Abraham was operating a "hawalah" - an Islamic money transfer network - from his diamond business.
It was that hawalah that was used to transfer money from the weapons sales out of the United States.
Moreover, Osama bin Laden's diamond courier who fenced West African diamonds into the Hassidim-run Hatton Garden, London diamond district went by the very non-Muslim-sounding name of "Cyril Jacob."
A former Mossad chief told this editor in 2002 that if one wanted to find the source for most of Al Qaeda's funding, you didn't need to look any further than West Africa's diamond trade and "the six biggest U.S. banks in New York."
In addition, Osama Bin Laden is reported to own a fleet of merchant ships, something that makes the Dubai Ports World deal and Chertoff's endorsement of it even more suspect. Some of these ships reportedly are registered to China White Lines and involve Sicilian mafia business fronts.
In April 1993, Rashid bin Maktoum, the then-Crown Prince of Dubai opened a jewelry equipment manufacturers trade show in the emirate - the show highlighted the equipment needed for stone cutting and other jewelry-making processes.
Soon, Dubai rivaled Antwerp and Tel Aviv as a major diamond processing center - a business in which Bin Laden is now heavily invested.
Dubai Ports World and Zim Shipping, Michael Chertoff and Osama financiers and A Q Khan smugglers, New York and London Hassidim diamond dealers and Al Qaeda and affiliated terrorist organizations are connecting more dots.
~~
Wayne Madsen makes some interesting allegations about Israel, Dubai, Chertoff, the Russian-Israeli Mafia and bin Laden.
The following is extracted from:
http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/
March 3, 2006
The Israeli, Dubai, Chertoff connection - its just the tip of the Russian-Israeli mafia and "Al Qaeda" iceberg.
For years, a handful of prosecutors, FBI agents, and investigative journalists have stressed the connections between Russian-Israeli mafia tycoons, weapons and diamond smugglers, and terrorist networks associated with "Al Qaeda" and affiliated organizations...
Chertoff is a long-time GOP political hack and neo-con operative...
It was Chertoff who ordered the FBI not to pursue Mossad cells discovered to be operating alongside the hijacker cells in northern New Jersey.
With FBI and other field law enforcement reports on suspicious Israeli office "mover" activity in the New York-New Jersey area in the months prior to 911, Chertoff failed to order an investigation of why Zim-American Israeli Shipping Company suddenly terminated its lease of offices on the 16th and 17th floors of the North Tower of the World Trade Center, forfeiting a $50,000 deposit a week prior to 911 and moving its operations to Norfolk.
Zim's parent company, Zim Israel Navigation Co, is half owned by the Israeli government. Norfolk's port operations are due to come under Dubai Ports World ownership if the buy-out deal is approved.
Therefore, it is no surprise that Zim's chairman wrote to Senator Clinton offering high praise for Dubai Ports World and revealed that Zim and Dubai Ports are "strong business partners."
Zim's chairman also revealed that Zim's ships use Dubai ports but under different flags other than Israeli.
Chertoff also failed to investigate the presence on the 33rd floor of the North Tower of the Trade Center of the Yemen Import Company, an office that, like Zim Shipping, had been cleared of all its personnel in the weeks prior to 911, leaving only an answering machine and fax in place.
As Assistant US Attorney, Chertoff also declined to prosecute Dr. Magdy Elamir, an Egyptian-born neurologist in Jersey City who was implicated in an FBI/ATF arms trafficking investigation code named Operation Diamondback.
It turned out that Elamir was a Chertoff's client in a fraud case brought against Elamir's HMO by the state of New Jersey.
NBC's Dateline, on August 2, 2002, referred to a 1998 foreign intelligence report obtained by the network, "The report alleges that an H.M.O. owned by Dr. Elamir in New Jersey was 'funded by ben [sic] Laden' and that in turn Dr. Elamir was skimming money from the H.M.O. to fund 'terrorist activities.'"
New Jersey investigators discovered that $15 million in funds from Elamir's HMO were unaccounted for and Dateline determined that some of the funds were transferred to off-shore bank accounts.
Chertoff represented Elamir at the time the money was shifted to the off-shore bank accounts.
The weapons smugglers targeted by Diamondback also included those who were smuggling nuclear components to the A Q Khan network.
It was this network that was a prime focus of Valerie Plame Wilson and her Brewster Jennings and Associates covert CIA operatives.
On January 14, 2005, Dateline's Chris Hansen interviewed ATF agent Dick Stoltz, the supervisor of Diamondback:
"In the summer of 1999, a group of illegal weapons dealers were meeting at a warehouse in Florida, their conversations recorded by federal investigators. One of the men, from Pakistan, was seeking technology for nuclear weapons. Who did he say he was working for?
Former federal undercover agent Dick Stoltz was posing as a black market arms dealer.
Hansen: "Did you realize what you had at the time?"
Stoltz: "No. We didn't."
But now he does - because A.Q. Khan is considered, by some, to be the most dangerous man in the world.
Why?
Because Dr. Khan has peddled nuclear weapons technology to some of the countries the United States considers most dangerous, and some accepted his offers."
"Undercover federal agent Dick Stoltz says there's evidence Khan's operatives were at work here in the U.S., like a man who asked if Stoltz could supply heavy water, an ingredient used to make plutonium for nuclear bombs. Stoltz: "He said that Dr. Khan was handling the negotiations behind the scene, as far as - the heavy water."
Chertoff, in a major conflict-of-interest, abused his authority to cover up the involvement of his client in the Diamondback probe.
Other than the Homeland Security Secretary's complete incompetence during Hurricane Katrina, why would someone like Michael Brown have special animosity towards Chertoff?
Perhaps Brown's past job as Commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association (IAHA) had something to do with his sudden call for Chertoff's firing in the wake of the Homeland Security chief's approval of the Dubai Ports World deal to take over operations at 21 U.S. ports.
Close Bush family friend, the Emir of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, is an avid horse racing fan and owner (as was the Emir's late father).
Dubai is the venue for an annual thoroughbred racing event where millions of dollars change hands in betting.
Horse betting in Dubai is believed by law enforcement officials to be a major conduit for money laundering in the region - something that must have been known to Brown as the oversight authority for the IAHA.
In what could be the most dramatic outcome of the Bush criminal scandal, Brown's experience with the IAHA may prove embarrassing to Chertoff and the Bush criminal cartel as Dubai comes under sharper focus.
Dubai is also an important diamond center.
And that brings us into Osama bin Laden's connections to the Israeli diamond trade.
The following was sent to WMR by a journalist source who was in Peshawar, Pakistan in the weeks following U.S. intervention in Afghanistan.
The information comes from a Taliban member who escaped into Pakistan:
"Osama left Afghanistan in a party of 26 people,
mostly his family members, on November 4 [2001].
He left from the "south." [possibly southern Iran].
"This may surprise you, but you must understand the
nature of business. A business partnership is based on
years of trust, and it is totally separate from
political or national loyalties."
"Osama, when he realized that he was trapped between
the Northern Front and the US forces, called on an
old business partner, who flew in his jetliner,
and ferried Osama to Africa."
"Osama was a rich man, a millionaire, but spend a lot
on the Afghan war and reconstruction. While he was in
Africa in exile, the Israelis approached him to take
over the diamond business from the Lebanese in West
Africa. (background: Muslims provide the strong arm
for the raw diamond trade in West Africa, and it
required a respected and tough Muslim like Osama to
wrestle the trade away from the Shi'ites from southern
Lebanon. The Israelis could not stand the thought of
their Antwerp diamond industry financing suicide
bombers in south Lebanon)."
"With the diamond trade under his control, Osama
became a billionaire (repeat), a billionaire . . . The
diamonds were sent to the Russian mafiyah, who then
sold to Antwerp."
(Antwerp, btw, was where the shoe bomber and countless
other "terrorists" were financed and where AQ [Khan] money
was being wired to New York via Hassidim diamond
merchants.)
For building materials and equipment, Bin Laden's
construction family routinely dealt with Jewish businessmen
through Yemen. Since Saudis could have no direct dealings,
the Bin Ladens used Yemenis, who lived alongside Jews in
their Yemeni homeland. This is how Osama's father
became so big.
"Inside Afghanistan, the Taliban were not anti-Jewish
because the Pashtun tribe are one of the "lost tribes
of Israel". Our customs and names are identical to
those of the Jews. So there was no problem in fighting
the Soviet occupation and then Shiite enemy, and Osama
led this fight."
In fact, this communique from Peshawar is born out by the story of Ambuy Gem Corporation president Yehuda Abraham, who was arrested at his New York "Diamond District" office in 2003 for his involvement in a Russian shoulder mounted missile launcher smuggling ring involving a British national with ties to the Viktor Bout smuggling ring, Hemant Lakhani, and a Malaysian national believed to have ties to Jemaah Islamiya, the Al Qaeda affiliate in southeast Asia.
Bout's smuggling network was partly based in Dubai.
Abraham, a Bukharan Jewish native of Afghanistan who spoke Pashto and Urdu.
A well-placed Israeli source told WMR that Afghan-born Jews are so rare, Abraham would "have most certainly been used as an agent by Mossad."
But Abraham, like Zim Shipping, had special dispensation under the Arab boycott of Israel.
A U.S.-Israeli dual national, Abraham maintained a diamond store in the lobby of the Sheraton Hotel in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
His primary clientele: the Saudi royal family.
It was also discovered that Abraham was operating a "hawalah" - an Islamic money transfer network - from his diamond business.
It was that hawalah that was used to transfer money from the weapons sales out of the United States.
Moreover, Osama bin Laden's diamond courier who fenced West African diamonds into the Hassidim-run Hatton Garden, London diamond district went by the very non-Muslim-sounding name of "Cyril Jacob."
A former Mossad chief told this editor in 2002 that if one wanted to find the source for most of Al Qaeda's funding, you didn't need to look any further than West Africa's diamond trade and "the six biggest U.S. banks in New York."
In addition, Osama Bin Laden is reported to own a fleet of merchant ships, something that makes the Dubai Ports World deal and Chertoff's endorsement of it even more suspect. Some of these ships reportedly are registered to China White Lines and involve Sicilian mafia business fronts.
In April 1993, Rashid bin Maktoum, the then-Crown Prince of Dubai opened a jewelry equipment manufacturers trade show in the emirate - the show highlighted the equipment needed for stone cutting and other jewelry-making processes.
Soon, Dubai rivaled Antwerp and Tel Aviv as a major diamond processing center - a business in which Bin Laden is now heavily invested.
Dubai Ports World and Zim Shipping, Michael Chertoff and Osama financiers and A Q Khan smugglers, New York and London Hassidim diamond dealers and Al Qaeda and affiliated terrorist organizations are connecting more dots.
~~
Mills and the single mother
A single mother living on a council estate in London's East End is recorded as a director or company secretary of 19 companies which Mr Mills established on behalf of his Italian clients.
Mills is linked to a corrupt land deal involving a convicted criminal
The following is extracted from The Guardian 6 February 2006
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/labour/story/0,,1724362,00.html
1. The allegation that Mr Mills had raised his wife's status during a tax investigation prompted Tory MPs to question whether he had received special treatment. During the investigation, Mr Mills told his accountant he had received £350,000, which he initially said came from Mr Berlusconi, and now maintains came from another Italian client. The money - which was used to help pay a £625,000 mortgage on the couple's north London home - had not been declared to the taxman.
The leaked documents reveal that Mr Mills asked his accountant whether the special compliance office of Revenue & Customs needed to be contacted in view of his wife's position. It is not clear whether this was a plea for special treatment or not. Nevertheless, a number of tax specialists have suggested that the level of tax, interest and penalties which Mr Mills subsequently paid could be regarded as lenient.
2. Earlier in the week it emerged that Mr Mills had referred to his wife's status and claimed the "support and sympathy" of the prime minister in dealings with financial regulators in Dubai.
3. Questions were also asked yesterday about the single mother living on a council estate in London's East End who is recorded as a director or company secretary of 19 companies which Mr Mills established on behalf of his Italian clients.
4. Mr Mills was also linked to a corrupt land deal involving the convicted criminal whom he now insists was the source of the £350,000 payment at the heart of many of the couple's problems.
Italian prosecutors are reported to have discovered that Mr Mills was the administrator of a company registered in the Isle of Man that bought into the deal in the port of Salerno in 1992. The chief beneficiary, Diego Attanasio, was jailed for bribing officials to ensure the deal went through, and is now appealing against his sentence. This would mean, according to Mr Mills' current account of his affairs and according to Ms Jowell's statement last week to Sir Gus O'Donnell, the cabinet secretary, that their London home was paid for, in part, by a convicted criminal.
~~
Mills is linked to a corrupt land deal involving a convicted criminal
The following is extracted from The Guardian 6 February 2006
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/labour/story/0,,1724362,00.html
1. The allegation that Mr Mills had raised his wife's status during a tax investigation prompted Tory MPs to question whether he had received special treatment. During the investigation, Mr Mills told his accountant he had received £350,000, which he initially said came from Mr Berlusconi, and now maintains came from another Italian client. The money - which was used to help pay a £625,000 mortgage on the couple's north London home - had not been declared to the taxman.
The leaked documents reveal that Mr Mills asked his accountant whether the special compliance office of Revenue & Customs needed to be contacted in view of his wife's position. It is not clear whether this was a plea for special treatment or not. Nevertheless, a number of tax specialists have suggested that the level of tax, interest and penalties which Mr Mills subsequently paid could be regarded as lenient.
2. Earlier in the week it emerged that Mr Mills had referred to his wife's status and claimed the "support and sympathy" of the prime minister in dealings with financial regulators in Dubai.
3. Questions were also asked yesterday about the single mother living on a council estate in London's East End who is recorded as a director or company secretary of 19 companies which Mr Mills established on behalf of his Italian clients.
4. Mr Mills was also linked to a corrupt land deal involving the convicted criminal whom he now insists was the source of the £350,000 payment at the heart of many of the couple's problems.
Italian prosecutors are reported to have discovered that Mr Mills was the administrator of a company registered in the Isle of Man that bought into the deal in the port of Salerno in 1992. The chief beneficiary, Diego Attanasio, was jailed for bribing officials to ensure the deal went through, and is now appealing against his sentence. This would mean, according to Mr Mills' current account of his affairs and according to Ms Jowell's statement last week to Sir Gus O'Donnell, the cabinet secretary, that their London home was paid for, in part, by a convicted criminal.
~~
Sunday, March 05, 2006
Acts of fake terror to be used to control Scotland's oil?
Could this be the scenario:
Scotland discovers yet more oil and decides to become independent; the USA and its allies use acts of fake terror to provide an excuse to invade and control the oil....
Here are extracts from a news story in the Sunday Herald, 4 February 2006.
http://www.sundayherald.com/54443
By Rob Edwards
An exercise scenario, codenamed Neptune Warrior and obtained by the Sunday Herald, reveals that Scotland’s peaceful west coast has been transformed into a hotbed of terror in order to train military forces from four countries.
The UK, France, Germany and the US are currently engaged in a major air, land and sea exercise stretching from Campbeltown to Cape Wrath.
The cape, a military firing range, is under attack, while warships and submarines prowl the minches.
The training course, which involves 14 boats, 50 aircraft and two regiments of the Joint Ground Based Air Defence, began on February 25 and is due to end on Saturday.
In the leaked scenario:
England is “Mustardia”, a dictatorship seeking to establish “Greater Mustardia” by annexing parts of Scotland.
Scotland is “Brownia” and consists of six self-governing regions.
New oil and minerals have been discovered in the minches and sea of the Hebrides.
A Brownian fishing vessel is sunk in an act of terror.
War looms. A number of the fundamentalist groups including the international An-Quaich movement are operating in Brownia.
According to the Sunday Herald:
The imaginary scenario has provoked fierce criticism.
“It is an offence to the people of Scotland for the MoD to invite the US Navy to sail into our waters to fire shells at Cape Wrath,” said John Ainslie from the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. “They’re adding insult to injury by suggesting the Highlands and Islands are occupied by warring clans and terrorists. Most Scots feel this nation should be a force for peace in the world, not a military playground.”
~~~
Scotland discovers yet more oil and decides to become independent; the USA and its allies use acts of fake terror to provide an excuse to invade and control the oil....
Here are extracts from a news story in the Sunday Herald, 4 February 2006.
http://www.sundayherald.com/54443
By Rob Edwards
An exercise scenario, codenamed Neptune Warrior and obtained by the Sunday Herald, reveals that Scotland’s peaceful west coast has been transformed into a hotbed of terror in order to train military forces from four countries.
The UK, France, Germany and the US are currently engaged in a major air, land and sea exercise stretching from Campbeltown to Cape Wrath.
The cape, a military firing range, is under attack, while warships and submarines prowl the minches.
The training course, which involves 14 boats, 50 aircraft and two regiments of the Joint Ground Based Air Defence, began on February 25 and is due to end on Saturday.
In the leaked scenario:
England is “Mustardia”, a dictatorship seeking to establish “Greater Mustardia” by annexing parts of Scotland.
Scotland is “Brownia” and consists of six self-governing regions.
New oil and minerals have been discovered in the minches and sea of the Hebrides.
A Brownian fishing vessel is sunk in an act of terror.
War looms. A number of the fundamentalist groups including the international An-Quaich movement are operating in Brownia.
According to the Sunday Herald:
The imaginary scenario has provoked fierce criticism.
“It is an offence to the people of Scotland for the MoD to invite the US Navy to sail into our waters to fire shells at Cape Wrath,” said John Ainslie from the Scottish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. “They’re adding insult to injury by suggesting the Highlands and Islands are occupied by warring clans and terrorists. Most Scots feel this nation should be a force for peace in the world, not a military playground.”
~~~
Jowell and Mills and a pub deal and intrigue in Iran
According to Antony Barnett and Barbara McMahon in The Observer, 5 March 2006:
David Mills's business dealings spanned three continents and ran from defence to theme bars, from Iran to Italian TV.
How the lawyer's pub deal brewed a storm of trouble
According to The Observer, Tessa Jowell, the Culture Secretary, may have broken parliamentary rules on at least two occasions.
The Observer refers to industrial intrigue in Iran and to a chain of South African-themed sports bars and upmarket pubs across England.
After Blair won the 1997 general election, he made Jowell his public health minister.
According to The Observer:
At the time Jowell was involved in discussions with the drinks industry about a range of issues from relaxing drinking regulations to alcopops. She was also working on a white paper about the future of tobacco use that would see the government back away from banning smoking in pubs...
Documents obtained by The Observer reveal that on 8 February 1998, Mills used a company based in the British Virgin Islands to buy 90,895 shares in a little-known firm called the Old Monk Company...
The Old Monk Company is involved with pubs and drink.
Mills pumped £80,000 into the company...
Reportedly the shares were sold, on 3 September 1999, for £147,977.
Assuming the detailed evidence collected by the Italian prosecutor is accurate, this suggests that in a space of just 18 months while his wife was public health minister, Mills had turned a profit of £67,000 - a return of more than 80 per cent...
Opponents are likely to seize on this as an apparent conflict of interest that should have been declared.
The Observer article continues:
Within 18 months the Labour Party would be trying to secure votes at the 2001 General Election by sending out text messages to students saying: 'Cdnt give a XXXX 4 lst ordrs? Then vote Labour for extra time.'
After Labour was returned to power, Jowell was promoted to Culture Secretary with the job of driving through the new drinking laws.
In the summer of 2002 Mills talked to Baroness Symons, then a Foreign Office minister, about his interests in Iran.
According to The Observer:
He was trying to broker a $200m deal to sell aircraft to Iran but the problem was that the US had strict sanctions prohibiting this.
Mills explained the difficulty to his wife's colleague. Symons asked him to drop her a letter - a copy of which was leaked last January and revealed how Symons had given him advice on proceeding with the deal.
The Observer has now obtained the original letter which Mills wrote to Symons on 9 July 2002, 10 days after the Oxford dinner.
Mills wrote: 'Dear Liz... I am sure HMG [government] will wish to offer such support as it can to smooth the path with our American friends...'
The ministerial code states that ministers must declare to their permanent secretary the financial interests of their spouses if they could appear to be a potential conflict of interest.
At the time Mills, who had travelled to Tehran, confirmed that he had discussed his Iranian work with Jowell, so she was aware of it.
When contacted by The Observer in May 2003 about the original potentially sanctions-busting deal, Mills initially claimed that Jowell's permanent secretary had been informed, but he later admitted that this was not the case.
The Observer reminds us of the letter Mills sent to his accountant Drennan.
In it he explained how he had helped Berlusconi in a 1997 corruption trial by withholding the full truth. Mills admitted in the letter to Drennan: 'I told no lies, but I turned some very tricky corners to put it mildly ...[which] kept Mr B [Berlusconi] out of a great deal of trouble that I would have landed him in if I had said all I knew'.
Mills explained that under Italian law, he only had to answer questions put to him by prosecutors. The focus of that investigation was a Luxembourg company that Mills created more than a decade ago called Horizon. In a sense it is the root of all Mills's later problems.
In the early Nineties, the Italian government was concerned about Berlusconi's burgeoning media empire. It passed a law forcing him to sell off some of his television interests, something Berlusconi fiercely resisted. Mills came up with an ingenious solution: why not transfer Berlusconi's pay-TV channel into Horizon so that the media mogul could then show that the company was legally separate from him.
This worked, but for Mills there was an additional bonus. When the channel was eventually sold, Horizon was left with a windfall of £2m in March 1996. After Mills paid tax and shared it among the partners of his law firm, he was left with just under £500,000 - an amount Mills later described as 'not very much'. But what did he do with this money?
According to details of a 5 February meeting between Mills and his accountants, he used it to pay off a mortgage on his home. Documents from Rawlinson & Hunter state: 'The net sum of around £2m was then placed on deposit with DM's [David Mills's] bank, Guinness Mahon. It is understood that some of the dividend had been used by DM to repay his mortgage.'
So it would appear that even before the revelations last week that Mills used money from an Italian tycoon to pay off a December 2000 mortgage, funds from a company linked to Berlusconi were used by Mills to pay off an earlier mortgage.
It is unclear which of the eight mortgages Mills and Jowell took out on their two homes was paid by the Horizon windfall, but it is likely to refer to a Coutts mortgage the couple took out on their London house which was paid off in May 1996. In 1996 Jowell was in Opposition so she was not bound by any ministerial code.
~~~
David Mills's business dealings spanned three continents and ran from defence to theme bars, from Iran to Italian TV.
How the lawyer's pub deal brewed a storm of trouble
According to The Observer, Tessa Jowell, the Culture Secretary, may have broken parliamentary rules on at least two occasions.
The Observer refers to industrial intrigue in Iran and to a chain of South African-themed sports bars and upmarket pubs across England.
After Blair won the 1997 general election, he made Jowell his public health minister.
According to The Observer:
At the time Jowell was involved in discussions with the drinks industry about a range of issues from relaxing drinking regulations to alcopops. She was also working on a white paper about the future of tobacco use that would see the government back away from banning smoking in pubs...
Documents obtained by The Observer reveal that on 8 February 1998, Mills used a company based in the British Virgin Islands to buy 90,895 shares in a little-known firm called the Old Monk Company...
The Old Monk Company is involved with pubs and drink.
Mills pumped £80,000 into the company...
Reportedly the shares were sold, on 3 September 1999, for £147,977.
Assuming the detailed evidence collected by the Italian prosecutor is accurate, this suggests that in a space of just 18 months while his wife was public health minister, Mills had turned a profit of £67,000 - a return of more than 80 per cent...
Opponents are likely to seize on this as an apparent conflict of interest that should have been declared.
The Observer article continues:
Within 18 months the Labour Party would be trying to secure votes at the 2001 General Election by sending out text messages to students saying: 'Cdnt give a XXXX 4 lst ordrs? Then vote Labour for extra time.'
After Labour was returned to power, Jowell was promoted to Culture Secretary with the job of driving through the new drinking laws.
In the summer of 2002 Mills talked to Baroness Symons, then a Foreign Office minister, about his interests in Iran.
According to The Observer:
He was trying to broker a $200m deal to sell aircraft to Iran but the problem was that the US had strict sanctions prohibiting this.
Mills explained the difficulty to his wife's colleague. Symons asked him to drop her a letter - a copy of which was leaked last January and revealed how Symons had given him advice on proceeding with the deal.
The Observer has now obtained the original letter which Mills wrote to Symons on 9 July 2002, 10 days after the Oxford dinner.
Mills wrote: 'Dear Liz... I am sure HMG [government] will wish to offer such support as it can to smooth the path with our American friends...'
The ministerial code states that ministers must declare to their permanent secretary the financial interests of their spouses if they could appear to be a potential conflict of interest.
At the time Mills, who had travelled to Tehran, confirmed that he had discussed his Iranian work with Jowell, so she was aware of it.
When contacted by The Observer in May 2003 about the original potentially sanctions-busting deal, Mills initially claimed that Jowell's permanent secretary had been informed, but he later admitted that this was not the case.
The Observer reminds us of the letter Mills sent to his accountant Drennan.
In it he explained how he had helped Berlusconi in a 1997 corruption trial by withholding the full truth. Mills admitted in the letter to Drennan: 'I told no lies, but I turned some very tricky corners to put it mildly ...[which] kept Mr B [Berlusconi] out of a great deal of trouble that I would have landed him in if I had said all I knew'.
Mills explained that under Italian law, he only had to answer questions put to him by prosecutors. The focus of that investigation was a Luxembourg company that Mills created more than a decade ago called Horizon. In a sense it is the root of all Mills's later problems.
In the early Nineties, the Italian government was concerned about Berlusconi's burgeoning media empire. It passed a law forcing him to sell off some of his television interests, something Berlusconi fiercely resisted. Mills came up with an ingenious solution: why not transfer Berlusconi's pay-TV channel into Horizon so that the media mogul could then show that the company was legally separate from him.
This worked, but for Mills there was an additional bonus. When the channel was eventually sold, Horizon was left with a windfall of £2m in March 1996. After Mills paid tax and shared it among the partners of his law firm, he was left with just under £500,000 - an amount Mills later described as 'not very much'. But what did he do with this money?
According to details of a 5 February meeting between Mills and his accountants, he used it to pay off a mortgage on his home. Documents from Rawlinson & Hunter state: 'The net sum of around £2m was then placed on deposit with DM's [David Mills's] bank, Guinness Mahon. It is understood that some of the dividend had been used by DM to repay his mortgage.'
So it would appear that even before the revelations last week that Mills used money from an Italian tycoon to pay off a December 2000 mortgage, funds from a company linked to Berlusconi were used by Mills to pay off an earlier mortgage.
It is unclear which of the eight mortgages Mills and Jowell took out on their two homes was paid by the Horizon windfall, but it is likely to refer to a Coutts mortgage the couple took out on their London house which was paid off in May 1996. In 1996 Jowell was in Opposition so she was not bound by any ministerial code.
~~~
Saturday, March 04, 2006
Sack Rusbridger, White and Toynbee?
The following is from the excellent http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/
Invest in a TESSA
The Guardian's editor Alan Rusbridger still tries to defend his personal friend Tessa Jowell.
From today's Guardian Leader: "Ms Jowell has been acquitted by a questionable procedure. That does not make her guilty; a less questionable procedure would very likely acquit her too."
Oh yes. A genuinely independent judge would have no difficulty believing that her husband did not tell her for four years that he received a $600,000 gift, or that she saw nothing to indicate the mortgage had been paid off. Or that when she then remortgaged the same house again - twice - it did not occur to her that this would not be a problem if, as she claims, she believed the first mortgage had not been paid off.
Let me rephrase my "Does anyone believe her?" question. Does anyone believe her except Alan Rusbridger and Michael White? We all wait for Polly Toynbee's article entitled "Money laundering is OK if you have a peg on your nose."
(I suppose I ought to explain that. At the last general election, Polly Toynbee's Guardian column urged voters to vote New Labour but to show their disapproval of the illegal war on Iraq by wearing a peg on their nose while they did it.)
Craig
CRAIG MURRAY (Former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan)
~~
Which journalists work for MI6?
http://cryptome.org/mi6-bombings.htm
~~~
Invest in a TESSA
The Guardian's editor Alan Rusbridger still tries to defend his personal friend Tessa Jowell.
From today's Guardian Leader: "Ms Jowell has been acquitted by a questionable procedure. That does not make her guilty; a less questionable procedure would very likely acquit her too."
Oh yes. A genuinely independent judge would have no difficulty believing that her husband did not tell her for four years that he received a $600,000 gift, or that she saw nothing to indicate the mortgage had been paid off. Or that when she then remortgaged the same house again - twice - it did not occur to her that this would not be a problem if, as she claims, she believed the first mortgage had not been paid off.
Let me rephrase my "Does anyone believe her?" question. Does anyone believe her except Alan Rusbridger and Michael White? We all wait for Polly Toynbee's article entitled "Money laundering is OK if you have a peg on your nose."
(I suppose I ought to explain that. At the last general election, Polly Toynbee's Guardian column urged voters to vote New Labour but to show their disapproval of the illegal war on Iraq by wearing a peg on their nose while they did it.)
Craig
CRAIG MURRAY (Former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan)
~~
Which journalists work for MI6?
http://cryptome.org/mi6-bombings.htm
~~~
Friday, March 03, 2006
Jowell and 'thickset men with Italian names from Las Vegas'
The following is extracted from an article by Nick Cohen
http://www.nickcohen.net/?p=78
Married to the Mob February 22nd, 2006
Jowell and her husband David Mills are the most permissive members of the political class.
They swing, they groove…anything goes when Jowell-Millses throw a party.
Silvio Berlusconi? What a great guy!
Tony and Cherie holiday with him, and only bores in the Italian prosecutor’s office nag at David for helping out “Il Cavalero” when taxmen called.
Super casinos?
Killjoys went on and on about how they would redistribute wealth from people who needed to thickset men with Italian names from Las Vegas, who did not.
But, in the words of an old hipster, you should “try everything once except incest and folk dancing,” and Tessa decided it would be a scream to let gambling addiction rip.
When the squares had a go at her she had a wacky defence. She denounced opponents letting casino operators bankrupt gullible punters as “snobs.” That’s right, snobs. As if they were objecting to the party DJ playing hip-hop.
Something inside of me snapped when I heard that and it wasn’t just my picture of Jowell as a well-meaning busybody. Here was the wife of Silvio Berlusconi’s lawyer using the old Labour language of class struggle to defend the interests of gambling tycoons.
~~~
http://www.nickcohen.net/?p=78
Married to the Mob February 22nd, 2006
Jowell and her husband David Mills are the most permissive members of the political class.
They swing, they groove…anything goes when Jowell-Millses throw a party.
Silvio Berlusconi? What a great guy!
Tony and Cherie holiday with him, and only bores in the Italian prosecutor’s office nag at David for helping out “Il Cavalero” when taxmen called.
Super casinos?
Killjoys went on and on about how they would redistribute wealth from people who needed to thickset men with Italian names from Las Vegas, who did not.
But, in the words of an old hipster, you should “try everything once except incest and folk dancing,” and Tessa decided it would be a scream to let gambling addiction rip.
When the squares had a go at her she had a wacky defence. She denounced opponents letting casino operators bankrupt gullible punters as “snobs.” That’s right, snobs. As if they were objecting to the party DJ playing hip-hop.
Something inside of me snapped when I heard that and it wasn’t just my picture of Jowell as a well-meaning busybody. Here was the wife of Silvio Berlusconi’s lawyer using the old Labour language of class struggle to defend the interests of gambling tycoons.
~~~
Blair ministers 'have close relationships with US casino chiefs'
Source:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,6903,1544276,00.html
Antony Barnett, in the Observer on 7 August 2005, explained that UK government ministers have close relationships with US casino chiefs who plan to build Las Vegas-style casinos across Britain.
The Observer claims to have documents showing how the Department for Culture, led by Blair's friend Tessa Jowell, 'pressed the Treasury to change rules on money laundering to help US gambling corporations.'
The documents also show that 'ministers and department officials held meetings with senior casino officials behind closed doors in Las Vegas, South Africa and France as well as the UK.'
Tessa Jowell had told parliament in November 2004 that her department had not been involved in any discussions with casino groups about money laundering laws.
The Observer writes: 'The disclosures raise serious questions about statements denying any move on money laundering given to the Commons by the Culture Secretary, Tessa Jowell. The Conservatives have accused Jowell of misleading parliament and have written to her demanding an explanation.'
Top UK policemen are worried that criminals will use casinos to launder money.
When the opposition leader Michael Howard pressed Tony Blair about the casinos, Blair said claims that casinos had been offered special concessions were 'ridiculous'.
The Observer claims to have a briefing note sent in May 2004 from culture department official Richard Beston to culture minister Lord McIntosh, who was in charge of the bill.
This note shows that 'discussions about easing the rules on money laundering did take place between ministers and casino bosses and that Jowell's department tried to get the Treasury to give casino groups special exemptions.'
The note, released under the Freedom of Information Act, was sent just before a meeting with casinos boss Lloyd Nathan, at the House of Lords.
The note states: 'We [the DCMS] have asked the Treasury to consider revising the third money laundering draft directive to exempt casino members from showing ID when they enter the actual gaming floor ... If these discussions fail, I [McIntosh] will consider with industry how best to resolve this issue.'
The documents 'show how ministers and officials travelled across the globe at taxpayers' expense to meet casino bosses. One three-day trip only two weeks before the Gambling Bill was publish involved four officials travelling to Las Vegas and staying at the luxury Venetian Hotel.'
~~
Tessa Jowell's husband is David Mills, who is the brother-in-law of the recently retired head of Britain's Crown Prosecution Service, Ms Barbara Mills.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1441814,00.html
Philip Willan and Antony Barnett, March 20 2005, in the Observer, wrote about how David Mills, the husband of cabinet minister Tessa Jowell, has been accused of misleading Italian investigators and destroying documents in order to obstruct an inquiry into the business affairs of Silvio Berlusconi.
According to court documents, international lawyer David Mills allegedly played a key role in the creation and administration of a network of offshore companies that were at the heart of the fraud.
Mills is accused of suspected tax fraud and money laundering.
~~
'Dictator' picks 'mafia' cronies for his cabinet?
Politicians - Tessa Jowell, Cathy Jamieson, Michael Howard....
Michael Howard's cousin and gangsters.
Blair, McKinsey, Enron, CIA continued
Vote fraud in Jack Straw's constituency?
Masons, Israel, Gordon Brown....
~~
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,6903,1544276,00.html
Antony Barnett, in the Observer on 7 August 2005, explained that UK government ministers have close relationships with US casino chiefs who plan to build Las Vegas-style casinos across Britain.
The Observer claims to have documents showing how the Department for Culture, led by Blair's friend Tessa Jowell, 'pressed the Treasury to change rules on money laundering to help US gambling corporations.'
The documents also show that 'ministers and department officials held meetings with senior casino officials behind closed doors in Las Vegas, South Africa and France as well as the UK.'
Tessa Jowell had told parliament in November 2004 that her department had not been involved in any discussions with casino groups about money laundering laws.
The Observer writes: 'The disclosures raise serious questions about statements denying any move on money laundering given to the Commons by the Culture Secretary, Tessa Jowell. The Conservatives have accused Jowell of misleading parliament and have written to her demanding an explanation.'
Top UK policemen are worried that criminals will use casinos to launder money.
When the opposition leader Michael Howard pressed Tony Blair about the casinos, Blair said claims that casinos had been offered special concessions were 'ridiculous'.
The Observer claims to have a briefing note sent in May 2004 from culture department official Richard Beston to culture minister Lord McIntosh, who was in charge of the bill.
This note shows that 'discussions about easing the rules on money laundering did take place between ministers and casino bosses and that Jowell's department tried to get the Treasury to give casino groups special exemptions.'
The note, released under the Freedom of Information Act, was sent just before a meeting with casinos boss Lloyd Nathan, at the House of Lords.
The note states: 'We [the DCMS] have asked the Treasury to consider revising the third money laundering draft directive to exempt casino members from showing ID when they enter the actual gaming floor ... If these discussions fail, I [McIntosh] will consider with industry how best to resolve this issue.'
The documents 'show how ministers and officials travelled across the globe at taxpayers' expense to meet casino bosses. One three-day trip only two weeks before the Gambling Bill was publish involved four officials travelling to Las Vegas and staying at the luxury Venetian Hotel.'
~~
Tessa Jowell's husband is David Mills, who is the brother-in-law of the recently retired head of Britain's Crown Prosecution Service, Ms Barbara Mills.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1441814,00.html
Philip Willan and Antony Barnett, March 20 2005, in the Observer, wrote about how David Mills, the husband of cabinet minister Tessa Jowell, has been accused of misleading Italian investigators and destroying documents in order to obstruct an inquiry into the business affairs of Silvio Berlusconi.
According to court documents, international lawyer David Mills allegedly played a key role in the creation and administration of a network of offshore companies that were at the heart of the fraud.
Mills is accused of suspected tax fraud and money laundering.
~~
'Dictator' picks 'mafia' cronies for his cabinet?
Politicians - Tessa Jowell, Cathy Jamieson, Michael Howard....
Michael Howard's cousin and gangsters.
Blair, McKinsey, Enron, CIA continued
Vote fraud in Jack Straw's constituency?
Masons, Israel, Gordon Brown....
~~
The Pakistan-Israel relationship unlikely to benefit Pakistan
Graham Usher, in Middle East Report, 2 March 2006, wrote about 'Musharraf's Opening to Israel'.
http://www.merip.org/mero/mero030206.html
The following is extracted from the article:
In September 2005 Pakistani Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri met his then Israeli counterpart Silvan Shalom.
Unofficial Israeli-Pakistani contacts have been in existence for as long as the two states.
Both Israel and Pakistan were on the US side in the post-1948 world order.
Both acted against any Arab or Asian nationalism that might threaten US interests.
Usher writes:
Common ground was also found following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979...
Israel was not only active in currying diplomatic support for the mujahideen in Afghanistan, but also supplied arms to the Islamist fighters, through the agency of the CIA and with the blessing of Pakistan's dictator, Zia ul Haq...
The most important contacts were between the Mossad and Pakistan's shadowy Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, and the traffic was two-way.
Pakistan would pass on intelligence about the Gulf states and the nuclear ambitions of Iran and Libya, whose programs Pakistani scientists had helped to build. Israel would provide everything from training for Pakistani leaders' security guards to intelligence on India, with whom it has enjoyed full diplomatic relations since 1992...
Musharraf, prior to authorizing his foreign minister's handshake with Shalom, cleared the meeting with Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Jordan and the PA. He followed it with a “chance” encounter with Ariel Sharon on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in September, as well as an address to the American Jewish Congress that was received with a standing ovation.
One of Musharraf's aims is to counter Israel's burgeoning military relationship with India.
Pakistan fears that India has become the US strategic “choice in the region,” to be nurtured as a counterweight to China.
Usher writes:
The road to redemption leads through warmer relations with Israel, his advisers say, informed by their absolute conviction that “the Jewish lobby” controls not only Congress and the White House, but also the military-industrial complex and the media...
Perhaps Islamabad's greatest fear is that India will be promoted in Western strategic thinking to a “front-rank” nuclear power, leaving Pakistan mired in the distrusted second rank. The solution, says Pakistani analyst Mahmood ul Khan, is reaching out to Israel, not as an adversary (one of the rationales for developing the bomb Pakistan stated to its Arab backers), but as an ally.
ILLUSORY BENEFITS
Are any of these projected dividends of the rapprochement with Israel likely? The most probable answer is no.
Pakistan's view of the Indo-Israeli relationship overlooks the fact that it is a commercial as much as a military pact. Today, Indo-Israeli trade stands at a whopping $4.5 billion, with India purchasing $2 billion in arms from Israel's high-tech industries.
In return, Israel supplies upgraded weapons systems of Russian vintage, precisely what the Indian army requires, given its reliance on Soviet-era aircraft, artillery and tanks.
The idea that one foreign ministerial meeting will neutralize or counterbalance this robust partnership requires much imagination.
It is true that Pakistan has an image problem in the West, but it will take more than the clout of the pro-Israel lobby to redress it.
Musharraf's UN sojourn in September was a public relations disaster, despite the rapprochement with Israel, which received little press coverage in the US.
On the other hand, Musharraf's comments to the Washington Post that Pakistani women's claims of rape were a “money-making concern…to go abroad and get a visa for Canada” caused outrage among both Pakistani and US women's groups.
Because Musharraf denied making the remarks, which were captured on tape by the Post, his sentiments on this question turned into a week-long story.
Finally, an alliance between Pakistan and Israel in the teeth of a new Indo-US nuclear hegemony is also likely to be illusory.
More likely is that Israel will maintain its preferred “vague and veiled” nuclear policy, with Washington sustaining the fiction.
Pakistan will remain isolated, unable to shake off its dodgy status. If history is anything to go by, isolation could mean a new era of proliferation as Pakistan strives to keep up with the perceived Indian menace, auguring nuclear adventurism abroad ( a la A. Q. Khan) and renewed tensions with Washington.
The Pakistani people, still reeling from an earthquake that took 80,000 lives and destroyed thousands of schools, hospitals and homes, will bear the cost of the general's renewed adventurism or an intensified arms race with India...
~~
http://www.merip.org/mero/mero030206.html
The following is extracted from the article:
In September 2005 Pakistani Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri met his then Israeli counterpart Silvan Shalom.
Unofficial Israeli-Pakistani contacts have been in existence for as long as the two states.
Both Israel and Pakistan were on the US side in the post-1948 world order.
Both acted against any Arab or Asian nationalism that might threaten US interests.
Usher writes:
Common ground was also found following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979...
Israel was not only active in currying diplomatic support for the mujahideen in Afghanistan, but also supplied arms to the Islamist fighters, through the agency of the CIA and with the blessing of Pakistan's dictator, Zia ul Haq...
The most important contacts were between the Mossad and Pakistan's shadowy Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, and the traffic was two-way.
Pakistan would pass on intelligence about the Gulf states and the nuclear ambitions of Iran and Libya, whose programs Pakistani scientists had helped to build. Israel would provide everything from training for Pakistani leaders' security guards to intelligence on India, with whom it has enjoyed full diplomatic relations since 1992...
Musharraf, prior to authorizing his foreign minister's handshake with Shalom, cleared the meeting with Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Jordan and the PA. He followed it with a “chance” encounter with Ariel Sharon on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in September, as well as an address to the American Jewish Congress that was received with a standing ovation.
One of Musharraf's aims is to counter Israel's burgeoning military relationship with India.
Pakistan fears that India has become the US strategic “choice in the region,” to be nurtured as a counterweight to China.
Usher writes:
The road to redemption leads through warmer relations with Israel, his advisers say, informed by their absolute conviction that “the Jewish lobby” controls not only Congress and the White House, but also the military-industrial complex and the media...
Perhaps Islamabad's greatest fear is that India will be promoted in Western strategic thinking to a “front-rank” nuclear power, leaving Pakistan mired in the distrusted second rank. The solution, says Pakistani analyst Mahmood ul Khan, is reaching out to Israel, not as an adversary (one of the rationales for developing the bomb Pakistan stated to its Arab backers), but as an ally.
ILLUSORY BENEFITS
Are any of these projected dividends of the rapprochement with Israel likely? The most probable answer is no.
Pakistan's view of the Indo-Israeli relationship overlooks the fact that it is a commercial as much as a military pact. Today, Indo-Israeli trade stands at a whopping $4.5 billion, with India purchasing $2 billion in arms from Israel's high-tech industries.
In return, Israel supplies upgraded weapons systems of Russian vintage, precisely what the Indian army requires, given its reliance on Soviet-era aircraft, artillery and tanks.
The idea that one foreign ministerial meeting will neutralize or counterbalance this robust partnership requires much imagination.
It is true that Pakistan has an image problem in the West, but it will take more than the clout of the pro-Israel lobby to redress it.
Musharraf's UN sojourn in September was a public relations disaster, despite the rapprochement with Israel, which received little press coverage in the US.
On the other hand, Musharraf's comments to the Washington Post that Pakistani women's claims of rape were a “money-making concern…to go abroad and get a visa for Canada” caused outrage among both Pakistani and US women's groups.
Because Musharraf denied making the remarks, which were captured on tape by the Post, his sentiments on this question turned into a week-long story.
Finally, an alliance between Pakistan and Israel in the teeth of a new Indo-US nuclear hegemony is also likely to be illusory.
More likely is that Israel will maintain its preferred “vague and veiled” nuclear policy, with Washington sustaining the fiction.
Pakistan will remain isolated, unable to shake off its dodgy status. If history is anything to go by, isolation could mean a new era of proliferation as Pakistan strives to keep up with the perceived Indian menace, auguring nuclear adventurism abroad ( a la A. Q. Khan) and renewed tensions with Washington.
The Pakistani people, still reeling from an earthquake that took 80,000 lives and destroyed thousands of schools, hospitals and homes, will bear the cost of the general's renewed adventurism or an intensified arms race with India...
~~
Liam Fox and special relationships
Senior members of the UK's Conservative party have visited Washington.
"It was interesting for being more than simply a meeting of neo-con minds," wrote Steve McGookin, a journalist at the Financial Times.
Source:
http://www.forbes.com/2006/03/02/tory-politics-bush-cx_sm_0302mcgookin.html
Shadow Defense Secretary Liam Fox visited officials at the Pentagon. Liam Fox is regarded as being a neo-con.
Dr Fox supports Britain's "special relationship". Addressing the Heritage Foundation in Washington, Fox supported the US-UK transatlantic link.
Source: http://www.conservatives.com/tile.do?def=news.story.page&obj_id=127946
"In an interview for the London Evening Standard Liam Fox refused to deny that he might have had a gay relationship in the past."
Source: http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/politics/2005-134.html
Speaking to the Evening Standard Fox said, “I think you are entitled to a private life.”
At no point during the interview or in subsequent press conferences has Dr Fox denied ever having gay relationships, he has simply stated that there is no need to answer the questions.
In the 2001 Conservative Leadership contest, former Defence Secretary, Michael Portillo was forced to admit having had a gay relationship in the past.
~~~
"It was interesting for being more than simply a meeting of neo-con minds," wrote Steve McGookin, a journalist at the Financial Times.
Source:
http://www.forbes.com/2006/03/02/tory-politics-bush-cx_sm_0302mcgookin.html
Shadow Defense Secretary Liam Fox visited officials at the Pentagon. Liam Fox is regarded as being a neo-con.
Dr Fox supports Britain's "special relationship". Addressing the Heritage Foundation in Washington, Fox supported the US-UK transatlantic link.
Source: http://www.conservatives.com/tile.do?def=news.story.page&obj_id=127946
"In an interview for the London Evening Standard Liam Fox refused to deny that he might have had a gay relationship in the past."
Source: http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/politics/2005-134.html
Speaking to the Evening Standard Fox said, “I think you are entitled to a private life.”
At no point during the interview or in subsequent press conferences has Dr Fox denied ever having gay relationships, he has simply stated that there is no need to answer the questions.
In the 2001 Conservative Leadership contest, former Defence Secretary, Michael Portillo was forced to admit having had a gay relationship in the past.
~~~
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