According to The Times, 13 December 2005:
Lawyer accuses MI6 of 'torture' methods
MI6 agents are accused of the kidnapping and “psychological torture” of 28 Pakistanis held in Greece.
A leading Greek lawyer has presented a dossier to parliament in Athens of the treatment of 28 detainees by MI6 officers. Frangiscos Ragoussis alleges that the detainees were hooded and held in secret.
The men, all of Pakistani origin, claim that they were threatened by two British agents who warned them that their families in Greece and the UK would suffer also if they dared complain about their treatment.
These allegations come at an awkward time for the Government, which is facing demands for an investigation into the CIA’s use of British airports to ferry al-Qaeda suspects to secret prisons in Europe and the Middle East.
Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, denied yesterday that British airports had been used by the United States for so-called “extraordinary rendition” flights taking terrorist suspects for interrogation in third countries.
If Greek MPs decide to investigate the claims of mistreatment British ministers may have to defend the behaviour of its agents abroad. Mr Blair insists that Britain’s security services do not use torture here or overseas.
Security chiefs have never said how many were detained at their request, or what happened to these suspects.
Most of the 28 detained in Greece are still too scared to say anything, but one, Hizar Hayet, 32, has claimed that he was questioned about a series of mobile telephone calls linked with some of the four London suicide bombers.
None of the men was charged.
London bombs: former UK cabinet minister Meacher says MI6 is trying to cover its tracks.
"7/7 Bombers" movements Physically Impossible
7 July 'bus bomber' phoned 'tube bombers' after the tube explosions.
Lest we forget - Aswat
Aswat worked for MI6 in Kosovo?
Scotland Yard 'Not Interested' In Talking To 7/7 Bomb Mastermind
The security services had links to the four July 7 London 'bombers' a year before July 7th.
David Shayler, ex-MI5 agent: 'the London bombings were most likely carried out by the British government.'
~~~
Sunday, December 18, 2005
Saturday, December 17, 2005
UK: MORI poll finds only 58% of the public trust the police to tell the truth.
~
In Britain, a MORI poll (spring 2005) has found that only 58% of the public trust the police to tell the truth.
The proportion of people who told the British Crime Survey that the police were doing a good or excellent job has fallen to 49%.
A Home Office survey found that only 31% of the general public thought the criminal justice system was effective in reducing crime. Only 25% of victims thought the system was effective.
Source: The Economist, 17 December 2005.
Forensic mix-up casts fresh Lockerbie doubt.
Police chief- Lockerbie evidence was faked
LOCKERBIE BOMB - LONDON BOMBS
Lockerbie Bomb and Ecuador and New Zealand
Lockerbie bomb verdict thrown into doubt
Bruce Lait - I don't remember anybody being where the bomb was, or any bag.
Former Justice Dept. prosecutor John Loftus claims alleged London bombing mastermind Haroon Rashid Aswat is a "double agent" who "works for the MI6".
~
In Britain, a MORI poll (spring 2005) has found that only 58% of the public trust the police to tell the truth.
The proportion of people who told the British Crime Survey that the police were doing a good or excellent job has fallen to 49%.
A Home Office survey found that only 31% of the general public thought the criminal justice system was effective in reducing crime. Only 25% of victims thought the system was effective.
Source: The Economist, 17 December 2005.
Forensic mix-up casts fresh Lockerbie doubt.
Police chief- Lockerbie evidence was faked
LOCKERBIE BOMB - LONDON BOMBS
Lockerbie Bomb and Ecuador and New Zealand
Lockerbie bomb verdict thrown into doubt
Bruce Lait - I don't remember anybody being where the bomb was, or any bag.
Former Justice Dept. prosecutor John Loftus claims alleged London bombing mastermind Haroon Rashid Aswat is a "double agent" who "works for the MI6".
~
Public service rankings - Britain 11th out of 13 rich countries
~
Christopher Hood of Oxford University has told a conference on international public service rankings that Britain came 11th out of 13 rich countries over the period 1990-2005.
Source: The Economist December 17 2005.
~
Christopher Hood of Oxford University has told a conference on international public service rankings that Britain came 11th out of 13 rich countries over the period 1990-2005.
Source: The Economist December 17 2005.
~
Are the leaders of the IRA and Sinn Fein working for the UK security services?
"Down through the years republicans have been unmasked as agents. Many died - their bodies dumped on the border... However, the last one survived. Freddie Scappaticci, deputy head of the IRA`s internal security unit, was unmasked as an alleged British agent - accused of being Stakeknife - in 2003." http://www.utvlive.com/newsroom/indepth.asp?id=68362&pt=n
"The Kincora Scandal first broke on 3 April 1980 when three staff members of the Kincora Boys Home, Belfast, were charged with acts of gross indecency. Allegations continued to be made that elements of the security service, civil servants and a number of Loyalists had been involved in the abuse of young boys at Kincora." CAIN: Chronology of the Conflict 1982
The following is taken from UTV:
http://www.utvlive.com/newsroom/indepth.asp?id=68362&pt=n
In a dramatic twist, Mr Donaldson, Sinn Fein`s former head of administration at Stormont, was expelled from the party as he owned up to working for British intelligence and the Royal Ulster Constabulary/Police Service of Northern Ireland Special Branch.
The 55-year-old echoed Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams and said he did not believe there was a republican spy ring at Stormont.
"I was not involved in any republican spy ring in Stormont. The so-called Stormontgate affair was a scam and a fiction, it never existed, it was created by Special Branch," he said in a statement last night."I deeply regret my activities with British intelligence and RUC/PSNI special branch. I apologise to anyone who has suffered as a result of my activities as well as to my former comrades and especially to my family who have become victims in all of this."
Mr Donaldson approached a senior Sinn Fein official yesterday after being warned by the PSNI he was going to be exposed publicly as an agent and his life was in danger.
After the latest twist to the controversy over a spy ring, Mr Donaldson abandoned his home in Belfast for Dublin amid concerns about his safety.
In the statement he issued from a Dublin hotel, he said: "I was recruited in the 1980s after compromising myself during a vulnerable time in my life.
"Since then I have worked for British intelligence and the RUC/PSNI Special Branch. Over that period I was paid money."
His sensational expulsion from the party followed the controversial decision last week by the Public Prosecution Service in Northern Ireland to withdraw a case against Mr Donaldson and two other men who were accused of being part of a spy ring at Stormont which led to the collapse of the power sharing executive three years ago.
In October 2002, he was arrested and charged with having documents likely to be of use to terrorists.His arrest, along with that of his son-in-law and a civil servant, became known as Stormontgate - a republican spy ring at the heart of government.
After the searches and allegations, the Northern Ireland Secretary moved to suspend devolution to stave off a unionist walkout on power sharing.
After the Public Prosecution Service dropped the case nine days ago, Mr Donaldson and Mr Adams moved to insist there was no republican spy ring at Stormont.
However, last night party leader Mr Adams admitted a different spying operation had gone on within the ranks of his own party.
Unionists have been calling for British Prime Minister Blair and Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain to issue a statement explaining why the Public Prosecution Service withdrew the court case involving Mr Donaldson.
Nationalist SDLP deputy leader Dr Alasdair McDonnell said: "We suspected that the public interest argument was a way of covering up for an informer. We don`t know whether Denis Donaldson was that particular informer.There is the distinct possibility, like so many cases in the past, that he is being used as a scapegoat to cover someone else."
Mr Adams revealed he suspected there had been an informer within Sinn Fein`s ranks after the offices were raided in the police operation at Stormont.He claimed his suspicions heightened when the British failed to prosecute the three men arrested.
Down through the years republicans have been unmasked as agents. Many died - their bodies dumped on the border with an IRA bullet in the head.However, the last one survived. Freddie Scappaticci, deputy head of the IRA`s internal security unit, was unmasked as an alleged British agent - accused of being Stakeknife - in 2003. He denied the claim before he left Northern Ireland amid fears for his life.
~~
http://www.sbpost.ie/post/pages/p/story.aspx-qqqid=10526-qqqx=1.asp
There was speculation yesterday that Donaldson's exposure as a police agent may have been planned to give cover to someone more useful to British Intelligence...
One of the tasks facing Adams and McGuinness in the coming days will be to reassure republicans and ease tensions within the ranks.
~~
"The Kincora Scandal first broke on 3 April 1980 when three staff members of the Kincora Boys Home, Belfast, were charged with acts of gross indecency. Allegations continued to be made that elements of the security service, civil servants and a number of Loyalists had been involved in the abuse of young boys at Kincora." CAIN: Chronology of the Conflict 1982
The following is taken from UTV:
http://www.utvlive.com/newsroom/indepth.asp?id=68362&pt=n
In a dramatic twist, Mr Donaldson, Sinn Fein`s former head of administration at Stormont, was expelled from the party as he owned up to working for British intelligence and the Royal Ulster Constabulary/Police Service of Northern Ireland Special Branch.
The 55-year-old echoed Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams and said he did not believe there was a republican spy ring at Stormont.
"I was not involved in any republican spy ring in Stormont. The so-called Stormontgate affair was a scam and a fiction, it never existed, it was created by Special Branch," he said in a statement last night."I deeply regret my activities with British intelligence and RUC/PSNI special branch. I apologise to anyone who has suffered as a result of my activities as well as to my former comrades and especially to my family who have become victims in all of this."
Mr Donaldson approached a senior Sinn Fein official yesterday after being warned by the PSNI he was going to be exposed publicly as an agent and his life was in danger.
After the latest twist to the controversy over a spy ring, Mr Donaldson abandoned his home in Belfast for Dublin amid concerns about his safety.
In the statement he issued from a Dublin hotel, he said: "I was recruited in the 1980s after compromising myself during a vulnerable time in my life.
"Since then I have worked for British intelligence and the RUC/PSNI Special Branch. Over that period I was paid money."
His sensational expulsion from the party followed the controversial decision last week by the Public Prosecution Service in Northern Ireland to withdraw a case against Mr Donaldson and two other men who were accused of being part of a spy ring at Stormont which led to the collapse of the power sharing executive three years ago.
In October 2002, he was arrested and charged with having documents likely to be of use to terrorists.His arrest, along with that of his son-in-law and a civil servant, became known as Stormontgate - a republican spy ring at the heart of government.
After the searches and allegations, the Northern Ireland Secretary moved to suspend devolution to stave off a unionist walkout on power sharing.
After the Public Prosecution Service dropped the case nine days ago, Mr Donaldson and Mr Adams moved to insist there was no republican spy ring at Stormont.
However, last night party leader Mr Adams admitted a different spying operation had gone on within the ranks of his own party.
Unionists have been calling for British Prime Minister Blair and Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain to issue a statement explaining why the Public Prosecution Service withdrew the court case involving Mr Donaldson.
Nationalist SDLP deputy leader Dr Alasdair McDonnell said: "We suspected that the public interest argument was a way of covering up for an informer. We don`t know whether Denis Donaldson was that particular informer.There is the distinct possibility, like so many cases in the past, that he is being used as a scapegoat to cover someone else."
Mr Adams revealed he suspected there had been an informer within Sinn Fein`s ranks after the offices were raided in the police operation at Stormont.He claimed his suspicions heightened when the British failed to prosecute the three men arrested.
Down through the years republicans have been unmasked as agents. Many died - their bodies dumped on the border with an IRA bullet in the head.However, the last one survived. Freddie Scappaticci, deputy head of the IRA`s internal security unit, was unmasked as an alleged British agent - accused of being Stakeknife - in 2003. He denied the claim before he left Northern Ireland amid fears for his life.
~~
http://www.sbpost.ie/post/pages/p/story.aspx-qqqid=10526-qqqx=1.asp
There was speculation yesterday that Donaldson's exposure as a police agent may have been planned to give cover to someone more useful to British Intelligence...
One of the tasks facing Adams and McGuinness in the coming days will be to reassure republicans and ease tensions within the ranks.
~~
Friday, December 16, 2005
Do the oligarchs want Mark Oaten as Liberal-Democrat leader in the UK?
(Update 5 January 2006; Charles Kennedy admits he has struggled against alcohol)
In his Online Diary , The Closed Circle » Politics, Dave Briggs wrote:
"A ‘rising star’ in the party, Mark Oaten, is more right wing than Michael Howard, and professes not to have had a political philosophy until after he had already been an MP for some years."
According to an article in The Telegraph, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/12/16/npoll216.xml , Oaten believes "His party must not... move to the Left of Labour."
According to The Telegraph, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/12/15/nlib115.xml "Moderniser Mark Oaten, 41, is courted as a voice of the future at Westminster but needs to bolster his image among the Left-leaning activists who make up the bulk of the party. Former parliamentary aide to Mr Kennedy, his supporters are widely blamed for rumours undermining the leader, who he has pledged never to stand against. Currently home affairs spokesman, the affable Mr Oaten is known to feel he needs more time to develop his leadership ambitions. Key player in the Orange Book group of MPs who want the party to take a more economically-liberal, Right-wing direction."
The following is from The Liberal Dissenter: January 2005
Things had looked more promising last November when Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy attacked David Blunkett's use of a "climate of fear" to introduce some "extremely repressive measures". His home affairs spokesman Mark Oaten has now undermined that position.
On BBC Radio 4's The Week in Westminster on Saturday morning, listeners heard the government's proposals being attacked by Labour MP Bob Marshall-Andrews but were also treated to the shameful spectacle of these proposals being given a fair wind by Mark Oaten. To the extent that Oaten opposed the government, his criticism was muted. (You can hear the programme online for the next seven days - fast-forward 9 minutes 35 seconds into the broadcast to find the relevant report).Marshall-Andrews made the right points and Oaten didn't, as these extracts from Saturday's radio broadcast show:
OATEN: "I welcomed what Charles Clarke said in the sense that at least we were now having a debate and the politicians were able to get into some of the detail, and there may very well be some measures that he is putting forward that the Lib Dems can support."
MARSHALL-ANDREWS: "I'm actually very disappointed to hear that the Liberal Democrats are giving any support at all to measures which are in fact infinitely worse than those that we have at the moment... For the first time for 300 years, what is being proposed here is executive arrest and detention without trial and indefinitely of British subjects... External threat has been the excuse used by authoritarian governments throughout history... The worst thing that terrorism does to you is not the threat that terrorists pose to us, it's what they induce us to do to ourselves."
OATEN: "What I've got to do as a politician and a Liberal is to try and juggle this complicated equation over making sure that on the one hand I defend those civil liberties but on the other hand that I am responsible and listen to the security threats. I think that the last Home Secretary had the balance completely wrong. What I'm indicating is that there may be a way in which we can redress that balance with this new Home Secretary but obviously there's a range of control orders that he's suggesting. Now there may be some of those which do not require a derogation [from the EU human rights convention], which we can live with. There may be other of those control orders, such as house detention, which if they do require a derogation we would have serious concerns about."
MARSHALL-ANDREWS: "The last Home Secretary, whose record on civil liberties was deplorable, probably the worst in modern memory, even the last Home Secretary never brought through proposals for the executive detention without trial of British citizens indefinitely. Now this is what it is. The fact that's it's not in Belmarsh and it happens to be in a bungalow is neither here nor there... One thing that I am absolutely certain about is that we did not have [during Blunkett's time as Home Secretary] an absence of terrorist attacks because of the erosion of civil liberty... Now if it is going to be suggested that those twelve people in Belmarsh are the effective reason why we have had no terrorist attacks, I simply do not accept it and I don't know anybody who has put that forward. But we were threatened by the IRA for effectively half a century. We never, never introduced measures of this kind."
OATEN: "What I have to do is to listen carefully to this change of announcements and that's got nothing to with general elections, it's got to do with sensible grown-up politics, to find a good way forward which can balance the civil liberty beliefs I have and I must take note of the security implications at the same time."
This was not simply a matter of a difference of opinion. Marshall-Andrews was not only logical but also expressed moral clarity and passion. Oaten, in contrast, expressed his views in mostly dessicated, administrative terms, as if this were nothing more than a question of weighing up some technical details.
His talk of "on the one hand" and "on the other hand" betrayed a belief that fundamental values are tradeable. He then had the nerve to co-opt the language of responsibility with his tendentious reference to "sensible grown-up politics".
Oaten's problem, as his reference to a "complicated equation" showed, is that he has accepted the false premise of authoritarianism, that civil liberty and security exist in inverse proportion to one another.
Consequently, his argument with the government has become a matter of degree rather than a principled disagreement.What distinguishes a liberal political party should, above all, be its liberalism.
The government's proposals are not about administrative efficiency or our security but instead strike at the heart of our political values and our liberties.
Any Liberal Democrat MP who does not understand this fundamental point is unfit to serve as a frontbench spokesperson.
When a Law Lord and a Labour MP can demonstrate a better grasp of liberalism and express it in forthright terms, while our parliamentary spokesman ends up batting for the opposition, what hope is there?
A Jewish blogger referred to an article in The Independent
http://jewssansfrontieres.blogspot.com/2005_07_01_jewssansfrontieres_archive.html
Kennedy assassinated
Here's a nice little job on Charles Kennedy by a former Deputy Chair of the Lib Dems. http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article298483.ece
I first realised Mr Kennedy's unfitness to lead when the party had to campaign against the illegal Iraqi invasion, despite Mr Kennedy rather than because of him. For months prior to the invasion, we urged him to lead the opposition to the war but he refused, stating he was not against the war but in favour of the UN.
Anything else?
When the party voted to end the corrupt practice of Liberal Democrat peers working as political lobbyists, he threatened legal action against those who complained about the continuing practice. Indeed, Lord Clement-Jones, who was employed as a political lobbyist by the notorious Cayman Islands tax haven, has just been made the party's federal treasurer, and Lord Razzall was put in charge of the general election campaign which called for fairer taxation, despite his being a director of a company in the Channel Islands tax haven.
But where would you say he stands on the political spectrum?
Whilst unbelievably downplaying the war in the run-up to the general election, his lieutenants, instead of building on the successful centre-left progressive coalition that had won so many Tory seats, embarked on a policy of "sounding more Tory", which ended in total failure at the election. This lurch to the right was heralded by the publication of the infamous Orange Book, which, despite Kennedy's written introduction, was derided across the party as a right-wing Blairite manifesto. Nevertheless, Kennedy placed the core Orange Book authors Vince Cable, David Laws and Mark Oaten into key positions of power. Britain does not need or deserve three centre-right parties.
What about the vision thing?
Finally, there is Mr Kennedy's unwillingness to take a clear position on most issues. Indeed, this was claimed to be an advantage by his aides, who said it meant voters from both sides of issues ended up supporting him. This is political nonsense. Constructive politics is about advocating policies that will benefit the wider good. A party has to campaign on its policies if it is to persuade the public of their value. The party has a range of crucial progressive liberal policies such as a renewable energy economy, creating a fairer democracy, an effective drugs strategy and so on, yet the leadership refuses to encourage grassroots campaigning on these.
But he won votes, surely?
After the general election, Kennedy distracted attention from his failure to make a major breakthrough by launching a profoundly dishonest attack on his own party activists who had just worked their hearts out. He blamed them for foisting unpopular policies on the party which had been attacked by our opponents in the election. The real truth was that these policies were included in papers submitted by Mr Kennedy's own Federal Policy Committee.
And the future?
Unless the leadership passes to people with political integrity and campaigning talent, the Liberal Democrat Party will miss the enormous opportunity that it currently has to lead Britain to a better future.So here lies Charles Kennedy.
~~
In his Online Diary , The Closed Circle » Politics, Dave Briggs wrote:
"A ‘rising star’ in the party, Mark Oaten, is more right wing than Michael Howard, and professes not to have had a political philosophy until after he had already been an MP for some years."
According to an article in The Telegraph, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/12/16/npoll216.xml , Oaten believes "His party must not... move to the Left of Labour."
According to The Telegraph, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/12/15/nlib115.xml "Moderniser Mark Oaten, 41, is courted as a voice of the future at Westminster but needs to bolster his image among the Left-leaning activists who make up the bulk of the party. Former parliamentary aide to Mr Kennedy, his supporters are widely blamed for rumours undermining the leader, who he has pledged never to stand against. Currently home affairs spokesman, the affable Mr Oaten is known to feel he needs more time to develop his leadership ambitions. Key player in the Orange Book group of MPs who want the party to take a more economically-liberal, Right-wing direction."
The following is from The Liberal Dissenter: January 2005
Things had looked more promising last November when Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy attacked David Blunkett's use of a "climate of fear" to introduce some "extremely repressive measures". His home affairs spokesman Mark Oaten has now undermined that position.
On BBC Radio 4's The Week in Westminster on Saturday morning, listeners heard the government's proposals being attacked by Labour MP Bob Marshall-Andrews but were also treated to the shameful spectacle of these proposals being given a fair wind by Mark Oaten. To the extent that Oaten opposed the government, his criticism was muted. (You can hear the programme online for the next seven days - fast-forward 9 minutes 35 seconds into the broadcast to find the relevant report).Marshall-Andrews made the right points and Oaten didn't, as these extracts from Saturday's radio broadcast show:
OATEN: "I welcomed what Charles Clarke said in the sense that at least we were now having a debate and the politicians were able to get into some of the detail, and there may very well be some measures that he is putting forward that the Lib Dems can support."
MARSHALL-ANDREWS: "I'm actually very disappointed to hear that the Liberal Democrats are giving any support at all to measures which are in fact infinitely worse than those that we have at the moment... For the first time for 300 years, what is being proposed here is executive arrest and detention without trial and indefinitely of British subjects... External threat has been the excuse used by authoritarian governments throughout history... The worst thing that terrorism does to you is not the threat that terrorists pose to us, it's what they induce us to do to ourselves."
OATEN: "What I've got to do as a politician and a Liberal is to try and juggle this complicated equation over making sure that on the one hand I defend those civil liberties but on the other hand that I am responsible and listen to the security threats. I think that the last Home Secretary had the balance completely wrong. What I'm indicating is that there may be a way in which we can redress that balance with this new Home Secretary but obviously there's a range of control orders that he's suggesting. Now there may be some of those which do not require a derogation [from the EU human rights convention], which we can live with. There may be other of those control orders, such as house detention, which if they do require a derogation we would have serious concerns about."
MARSHALL-ANDREWS: "The last Home Secretary, whose record on civil liberties was deplorable, probably the worst in modern memory, even the last Home Secretary never brought through proposals for the executive detention without trial of British citizens indefinitely. Now this is what it is. The fact that's it's not in Belmarsh and it happens to be in a bungalow is neither here nor there... One thing that I am absolutely certain about is that we did not have [during Blunkett's time as Home Secretary] an absence of terrorist attacks because of the erosion of civil liberty... Now if it is going to be suggested that those twelve people in Belmarsh are the effective reason why we have had no terrorist attacks, I simply do not accept it and I don't know anybody who has put that forward. But we were threatened by the IRA for effectively half a century. We never, never introduced measures of this kind."
OATEN: "What I have to do is to listen carefully to this change of announcements and that's got nothing to with general elections, it's got to do with sensible grown-up politics, to find a good way forward which can balance the civil liberty beliefs I have and I must take note of the security implications at the same time."
This was not simply a matter of a difference of opinion. Marshall-Andrews was not only logical but also expressed moral clarity and passion. Oaten, in contrast, expressed his views in mostly dessicated, administrative terms, as if this were nothing more than a question of weighing up some technical details.
His talk of "on the one hand" and "on the other hand" betrayed a belief that fundamental values are tradeable. He then had the nerve to co-opt the language of responsibility with his tendentious reference to "sensible grown-up politics".
Oaten's problem, as his reference to a "complicated equation" showed, is that he has accepted the false premise of authoritarianism, that civil liberty and security exist in inverse proportion to one another.
Consequently, his argument with the government has become a matter of degree rather than a principled disagreement.What distinguishes a liberal political party should, above all, be its liberalism.
The government's proposals are not about administrative efficiency or our security but instead strike at the heart of our political values and our liberties.
Any Liberal Democrat MP who does not understand this fundamental point is unfit to serve as a frontbench spokesperson.
When a Law Lord and a Labour MP can demonstrate a better grasp of liberalism and express it in forthright terms, while our parliamentary spokesman ends up batting for the opposition, what hope is there?
A Jewish blogger referred to an article in The Independent
http://jewssansfrontieres.blogspot.com/2005_07_01_jewssansfrontieres_archive.html
Kennedy assassinated
Here's a nice little job on Charles Kennedy by a former Deputy Chair of the Lib Dems. http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article298483.ece
I first realised Mr Kennedy's unfitness to lead when the party had to campaign against the illegal Iraqi invasion, despite Mr Kennedy rather than because of him. For months prior to the invasion, we urged him to lead the opposition to the war but he refused, stating he was not against the war but in favour of the UN.
Anything else?
When the party voted to end the corrupt practice of Liberal Democrat peers working as political lobbyists, he threatened legal action against those who complained about the continuing practice. Indeed, Lord Clement-Jones, who was employed as a political lobbyist by the notorious Cayman Islands tax haven, has just been made the party's federal treasurer, and Lord Razzall was put in charge of the general election campaign which called for fairer taxation, despite his being a director of a company in the Channel Islands tax haven.
But where would you say he stands on the political spectrum?
Whilst unbelievably downplaying the war in the run-up to the general election, his lieutenants, instead of building on the successful centre-left progressive coalition that had won so many Tory seats, embarked on a policy of "sounding more Tory", which ended in total failure at the election. This lurch to the right was heralded by the publication of the infamous Orange Book, which, despite Kennedy's written introduction, was derided across the party as a right-wing Blairite manifesto. Nevertheless, Kennedy placed the core Orange Book authors Vince Cable, David Laws and Mark Oaten into key positions of power. Britain does not need or deserve three centre-right parties.
What about the vision thing?
Finally, there is Mr Kennedy's unwillingness to take a clear position on most issues. Indeed, this was claimed to be an advantage by his aides, who said it meant voters from both sides of issues ended up supporting him. This is political nonsense. Constructive politics is about advocating policies that will benefit the wider good. A party has to campaign on its policies if it is to persuade the public of their value. The party has a range of crucial progressive liberal policies such as a renewable energy economy, creating a fairer democracy, an effective drugs strategy and so on, yet the leadership refuses to encourage grassroots campaigning on these.
But he won votes, surely?
After the general election, Kennedy distracted attention from his failure to make a major breakthrough by launching a profoundly dishonest attack on his own party activists who had just worked their hearts out. He blamed them for foisting unpopular policies on the party which had been attacked by our opponents in the election. The real truth was that these policies were included in papers submitted by Mr Kennedy's own Federal Policy Committee.
And the future?
Unless the leadership passes to people with political integrity and campaigning talent, the Liberal Democrat Party will miss the enormous opportunity that it currently has to lead Britain to a better future.So here lies Charles Kennedy.
~~
Thursday, December 15, 2005
Philippines, Cheney and a coming military coup?
The following is taken from
http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/
December 13, 2005 -- Halliburton's connection to low wage slave trading in the Middle East and espionage inside the Vice President of the United States' White House office.
Vice President Dick Cheney's old company, Halliburton, has some interesting partners in its work in occupied Iraq. On Dec. 11, WMR reported on links between Halliburton/Kellogg, Brown & Root and a Viktor Bout-owned airline based in Moldova, Aerocom/Air Mero. Bout's airlines have also reportedly been involved in flying low wage earners from East Asia to Dubai and on to Iraq where they work for paltry salaries in sub-standard living conditions. Halliburton/KBR has sub-contracted to a shadowy Dubai-based firm, Prime Projects International Trading LLC (PPI), which "trades" mainly in workers from Thailand, the Philippines, Nepal, India, Pakistan, and other poor Asian nations.
In 2004, after a Filipino PPI worker was killed in a mortar attack on Camp Anaconda in Iraq, the Philippines government of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo ordered PPI, which is based at P.O. Box 42252, Dubai, UAE, to send overseas Filipino workers OFWs) home from Iraq and Kuwait and banned it from further recruiting in the Philippines. Some of PPI's recruiting included running ads on the Internet. In addition to the other south Asian employees, the Philippine workers were employed by PPI under a Pentagon sweetheart umbrella contract let to KBR under the LOGCAP (Logistics Civil Augmentation Program) III program.
Although little is known about PPI, it reportedly has been linked to Halliburton/KBR for a number of years and has been associated with Halliburton contracts in the Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the Balkans during the time when Dick Cheney headed the firm. PPI has also been involved in operations at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where Filipino workers were involved in building the prison housing suspected "Al Qaeda" prisoners.
Inside sources report that PPI has some high level financial partners, including the al Nahayan royal family of the United Arab Emirates and Vice President Cheney. And there are connections to President Macapagal-Arroyo's ordering the repatriation of hundreds of Filipino workers home from Iraq and Kuwait and the discovery that U.S. Marine Corps and FBI spy Leandro Aragoncillo, a Filipino-American who worked as a Marine security aide inside Cheney's office until early 2002 and who was arrested by the FBI this past October, had stolen dossiers from Cheney's office that were considered damaging to Mrs. Macapagal-Arroyo. Macapagal-Arroyo was sworn in as President on January 20, 2001 (the same day George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were sworn in) after a popular revolution ousted Joseph Estrada. Macapagal-Arroyo, the daughter of past Philippine President Diosdado Macapagal.
Aragoncillo passed Cheney's reports on Macapagal-Arroyo, some of which were obtained from National Security Agency intercepts, to Estrada, a political opponent of Macapagal-Arroyo and an ally of former Philippine First Lady Imelda Marcos. Estrada was planning a coup against Macapagal-Arroyo with U.S. support. Aragoncillo was linked to another U.S.-based Filipino spy -- former Philippine National Police officer Michael Ray Aquino -- who was also involved in passing Cheney's classified documents to Estrada. Aquino, who is wanted in the Philippines for involvement in murder, kidnapping, and drug trafficking, was also arrested by the FBI.
More importantly, Aquino's close friend, Estrada, is also a business associate of indicted GOP lobbyist/reputed gangster Jack Abramoff. Another high-level Filipino-American in the White House, Karl Rove's Assistant and Assistant to the President, Susan Bonzon Ralston, also served as Abramoff's personal assistant at the law firms Preston Gates & Ellis and Greenberg Traurig. Ralston has been called to testify before the grand jury and special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who is investigating Karl Rove's involvement in leaking the name of CIA covert agent Valerie Plame Wilson to the media.
Aragoncillo allegedly passed over 100 documents from a classified FBI computer system at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey while working there as an intelligence analyst for the FBI after he left the Marine Corps. It is significant that Aragoncillo admitted to spying while only working as an aide to Cheney and not when he worked for Vice President Al Gore during 1999 and 2000.
It now seems apparent that Aragoncillo and Aquino were part of an illegal Cheney covert operation to topple Macapagal-Arroyo in retaliation for her stopping PPI's recruiting efforts in the Philippines. That decision by Manila dealt a severe financial blow to the Halliburton/KBR LOGCAP profits in Iraq. It is also of note that Aragoncillo worked with national Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.
What was not anticipated by Cheney was that the FBI would step in and arrest Aragoncillo for culling classified information from the FBI's computers at Fort Monmouth. This case, like the AIPAC espionage case involving top Pentagon officials, has been largely ignored by the media. However, along with the Plame case and AIPACgate, all roads lead back to Cheney's office at the White House.
December 14, 2005 -- Yesterday, WMR reported on Vice President Dick Cheney's involvement with a Philippine espionage ring operating out of his White House office that provided Philippine opposition figures with damaging classified information on President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo gleaned from U.S. intelligence sources, including communications intercepts. Cheney was miffed that a company tied to his old firm Halliburton was prevented by Macapagal-Arroyo from employing and recruiting thousands of low wage slaves from the Philippines for dangerous work in Iraq.
Today, there are reports from Manila that a retired general, Fortunato Abat, has illegally named a "transition government" to replace that of Macapagal-Arroyo.
Arroyo-Macapagal was in Kuala Lumpur attending an Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit at the time of the coup attempt. Last week, the building housing the offices of Macapagal-Arroyo's husband was strafed by gunfire and the leader of a 2003 attempted coup against Macapagal-Arroyo, Marine Captain Nicanor Faeldon, was allowed by his military guards to escape from prison and join Abat's forces. Last May, there was yet another military uprising against Macapagal-Arroyo.
U.S.-influenced media in the Philippines is calling for the President to step down, citing dubious opinion polls. It appears that even revelations that Mr. Cheney's "work up" on Macapagal-Arroyo and provision of sensitive U.S. intelligence to Philippine opposition forces did not dissuade him from continuing his plan to topple Macapagal-Arroyo and replace her with a client willing to send Filipino workers back to Iraq. That plan is currently underway in the Philippines and a military government is looming on the horizon.
~~~
http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/
December 13, 2005 -- Halliburton's connection to low wage slave trading in the Middle East and espionage inside the Vice President of the United States' White House office.
Vice President Dick Cheney's old company, Halliburton, has some interesting partners in its work in occupied Iraq. On Dec. 11, WMR reported on links between Halliburton/Kellogg, Brown & Root and a Viktor Bout-owned airline based in Moldova, Aerocom/Air Mero. Bout's airlines have also reportedly been involved in flying low wage earners from East Asia to Dubai and on to Iraq where they work for paltry salaries in sub-standard living conditions. Halliburton/KBR has sub-contracted to a shadowy Dubai-based firm, Prime Projects International Trading LLC (PPI), which "trades" mainly in workers from Thailand, the Philippines, Nepal, India, Pakistan, and other poor Asian nations.
In 2004, after a Filipino PPI worker was killed in a mortar attack on Camp Anaconda in Iraq, the Philippines government of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo ordered PPI, which is based at P.O. Box 42252, Dubai, UAE, to send overseas Filipino workers OFWs) home from Iraq and Kuwait and banned it from further recruiting in the Philippines. Some of PPI's recruiting included running ads on the Internet. In addition to the other south Asian employees, the Philippine workers were employed by PPI under a Pentagon sweetheart umbrella contract let to KBR under the LOGCAP (Logistics Civil Augmentation Program) III program.
Although little is known about PPI, it reportedly has been linked to Halliburton/KBR for a number of years and has been associated with Halliburton contracts in the Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the Balkans during the time when Dick Cheney headed the firm. PPI has also been involved in operations at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where Filipino workers were involved in building the prison housing suspected "Al Qaeda" prisoners.
Inside sources report that PPI has some high level financial partners, including the al Nahayan royal family of the United Arab Emirates and Vice President Cheney. And there are connections to President Macapagal-Arroyo's ordering the repatriation of hundreds of Filipino workers home from Iraq and Kuwait and the discovery that U.S. Marine Corps and FBI spy Leandro Aragoncillo, a Filipino-American who worked as a Marine security aide inside Cheney's office until early 2002 and who was arrested by the FBI this past October, had stolen dossiers from Cheney's office that were considered damaging to Mrs. Macapagal-Arroyo. Macapagal-Arroyo was sworn in as President on January 20, 2001 (the same day George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were sworn in) after a popular revolution ousted Joseph Estrada. Macapagal-Arroyo, the daughter of past Philippine President Diosdado Macapagal.
Aragoncillo passed Cheney's reports on Macapagal-Arroyo, some of which were obtained from National Security Agency intercepts, to Estrada, a political opponent of Macapagal-Arroyo and an ally of former Philippine First Lady Imelda Marcos. Estrada was planning a coup against Macapagal-Arroyo with U.S. support. Aragoncillo was linked to another U.S.-based Filipino spy -- former Philippine National Police officer Michael Ray Aquino -- who was also involved in passing Cheney's classified documents to Estrada. Aquino, who is wanted in the Philippines for involvement in murder, kidnapping, and drug trafficking, was also arrested by the FBI.
More importantly, Aquino's close friend, Estrada, is also a business associate of indicted GOP lobbyist/reputed gangster Jack Abramoff. Another high-level Filipino-American in the White House, Karl Rove's Assistant and Assistant to the President, Susan Bonzon Ralston, also served as Abramoff's personal assistant at the law firms Preston Gates & Ellis and Greenberg Traurig. Ralston has been called to testify before the grand jury and special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who is investigating Karl Rove's involvement in leaking the name of CIA covert agent Valerie Plame Wilson to the media.
Aragoncillo allegedly passed over 100 documents from a classified FBI computer system at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey while working there as an intelligence analyst for the FBI after he left the Marine Corps. It is significant that Aragoncillo admitted to spying while only working as an aide to Cheney and not when he worked for Vice President Al Gore during 1999 and 2000.
It now seems apparent that Aragoncillo and Aquino were part of an illegal Cheney covert operation to topple Macapagal-Arroyo in retaliation for her stopping PPI's recruiting efforts in the Philippines. That decision by Manila dealt a severe financial blow to the Halliburton/KBR LOGCAP profits in Iraq. It is also of note that Aragoncillo worked with national Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.
What was not anticipated by Cheney was that the FBI would step in and arrest Aragoncillo for culling classified information from the FBI's computers at Fort Monmouth. This case, like the AIPAC espionage case involving top Pentagon officials, has been largely ignored by the media. However, along with the Plame case and AIPACgate, all roads lead back to Cheney's office at the White House.
December 14, 2005 -- Yesterday, WMR reported on Vice President Dick Cheney's involvement with a Philippine espionage ring operating out of his White House office that provided Philippine opposition figures with damaging classified information on President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo gleaned from U.S. intelligence sources, including communications intercepts. Cheney was miffed that a company tied to his old firm Halliburton was prevented by Macapagal-Arroyo from employing and recruiting thousands of low wage slaves from the Philippines for dangerous work in Iraq.
Today, there are reports from Manila that a retired general, Fortunato Abat, has illegally named a "transition government" to replace that of Macapagal-Arroyo.
Arroyo-Macapagal was in Kuala Lumpur attending an Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit at the time of the coup attempt. Last week, the building housing the offices of Macapagal-Arroyo's husband was strafed by gunfire and the leader of a 2003 attempted coup against Macapagal-Arroyo, Marine Captain Nicanor Faeldon, was allowed by his military guards to escape from prison and join Abat's forces. Last May, there was yet another military uprising against Macapagal-Arroyo.
U.S.-influenced media in the Philippines is calling for the President to step down, citing dubious opinion polls. It appears that even revelations that Mr. Cheney's "work up" on Macapagal-Arroyo and provision of sensitive U.S. intelligence to Philippine opposition forces did not dissuade him from continuing his plan to topple Macapagal-Arroyo and replace her with a client willing to send Filipino workers back to Iraq. That plan is currently underway in the Philippines and a military government is looming on the horizon.
~~~
Gambia -HQ of the Mafia World?
http://www.allgambian.net/news-stories_361.html
Scary Tales of Tiny Gambia Being the Headquarters of the Mafia World
By Bubacarr Ceesay
December 13, 2005 The Gambia is the international limelight again as the center of an international mafia ring. In a masterpiece investigative report, The Wayne Madsen Report unraveled a network of weapons smugglers and mobsters operating in the heart of the Gambian Capital, working hand in hand with the Gambian leader, President Yahya Jammeh.
In reference to the Gambia, the report stated thus:
"There is also now interest in the activities of Richard T. Hines, the head of the powerful Republican lobbying firm RTH Consulting, Inc. Hines, a South Carolina native and a protege of the late GOP dirty trickmeister Lee Atwater, was one of the architects of the dirty tricks campaign by Bush against John McCain in the 2000 South Carolina primary.
A confederate of Abramoff in the 1980s Reagan administration's covert support network for the Nicaraguan contras, Angolan UNITA guerrillas, and Afghan mujaheddin, Hines is active in various Confederacy resurgence organizations, many of which have clear racist agendas.
However, that has not prevented Hines from becoming the lobbyist for Gambian dictator Yahya Jammeh, a military officer who overthrew Gambia's democratically-elected President Sir Dawda K. Jawara in a 1994 military coup supported by the United States Navy.
Hines inherited the lobbying contract for Gambia from the eclectic Washington lobbyist Edward von Kloberg III, an individual who represented Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, Liberia's Samuel K. Doe, Nicolae Ceausescu of Romania, Congolese leader Laurent Kabila, the exiled King Kigeli V of Rwanda, and Saddam Hussein. Last May, von Kloberg took a swan dive off of a castle in Rome, allegedly committing suicide after a spat with a gay partner.
The connections between Hines and Gambia are important since the small narrow West African country is also a major base of operations for notorious Russian international arms smuggler Viktor Bout.
The Gambia is the headquarters for one of many of Bout's front companies -- companies that are used to smuggle everything from weapons to diamonds and mercenaries to international relief supplies.
In fact, Bout was the character on whom fictional arms smuggler Yuri Orlov, played by Nicolas Cage in the movie Lord of War, was largely based.
Bout's connections with the Christian Right do not end with Gambia.
Bout was Liberian dictator Charles Taylor's primary arms and diamond smuggler.
Bout and his associates were given Liberian diplomatic passports and, with Taylor's blessing and protection, they registered a number of their front companies in Monrovia, the Liberian capital.
Taylor, who is now in exile in Nigeria, was a business partner with Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson.
Robertson's organization mentored both Ralph Reed and Richard Hines.
According to British and Israeli intelligence sources, Taylor also enabled Al Qaeda to launder blood diamonds for cash through Liberia.
Liberia and neighboring Sierra Leone were where Israeli mobsters engaged in business with Israeli gangsters who operated under the full protection of the Israeli Likud government.
Before Likud began purging Mossad of experienced intelligence officers with ties to the Israeli Labor Party, the Israeli-Al Qaeda diamond financial connection in West Africa was being pointed out by those officers as suicidal for Israeli interests.
However, Taylor and Bout had powerful interests in the United States: a combination of the Christian Right and pro-Likud organizations like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), both of which ignored and continue to ignore Israeli organized crime connections to Al Qaeda and terrorism.
Robertson and Taylor were business partners in a Cayman Islands front company called Freedom Gold, Ltd.
In fact, Freedom Gold bas headquartered at Robertson's CBN offices in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Robertson's African interests also crossed paths with Bout's in another country -- the former Zaire.
Robertson's African Development Company used the cover of Robertson's tax-exempt "Operation Blessing" to ferry conflict diamonds out of civil war-ravaged Zaire (now Congo).
A UN Security Council report dated November 30, 2005, lists Bout's Gambia New Millennium Air Company as having its address at the residence of Hines' client Jammeh: State House, Banjul, Gambia.
The UN report states, "The Director of this firm is Baba Jobe, who is already listed on the Liberia Sanctions Committee's assets freeze list. According to a commercial aviation database, the firm acted as a cover for Victor Bout's operations.
Its one aircraft, a Russian-made passenger jet, was acquired from Centrafrican Airlines." It is noteworthy that Hines's client, President Jammeh, just took possession of the Russian-made VIP presidential passenger jet, an Ilyushin IL-62 (C5-GNM) [Gambia] (formerly CCCP-86511 [USSR], RA-86511 [Russia], 3D-RTI [Swaziland], TL-ACL [Central African Republic]).
And also of interest is the owner of the presidential aircraft: it is none other than Gambia New Millennium Air, the Bout-owned company listed on the UN Security Council freeze list and which is headquartered at Jammeh's State House in Banjul, the Gambian capital.
In fact, the plane had been previously registered to Bout front companies in Swaziland and the Central African Republic.
The Gambia: Joins Gabon and Swaziland as another African playground for the GOP Mafia Bout, who flew arms and passengers from Dubai and other locations to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan prior to 9-11, is now providing air services in post-Taliban Afghanistan as well as U.S.-occupied Iraq.
Bout's transactions with the Taliban were handled by Vial, Inc., a firm based in Delaware.
One of Bout's closest associates is the Russian-Israeli Odessa-born crime boss Leonid Minin, an Israeli national who, according to the UN Security Council, travels on forged German passports as well as legal Israeli, Russian, Greek, and Bolivian passports under at least ten aliases.
It is also noteworthy that many of Bout's operations are based in Eastern European countries that have been mentioned in association with the rendition and transporting of CIA prisoners.
Bout's numerous Russian-built cargo and passenger planes have been seen at the same airports used by CIA flights.
For example, Bright Aviation, a suspected Bout front, is based at Sofia Airport in Bulgaria.
Bulgaria is believed to be one of the countries used by the CIA to house secret prisoners.
Another Bout front, Moldtransavia SRL, is based in Chisinau, Moldova, another suspected stopover point for CIA flights.
One Chisinau, Moldova-based Bout front company, Aerocom, which also does business as Air Mero, is contracted to fly for Kellogg, Brown & Root in Iraq and elsewhere.
Aerocom has also been cited in UN and DEA reports for being involved in drug smuggling in Belize.
Some law enforcement officials in the United States and Europe believe that the covert flights being operated by CIA contractors and Bout's companies in support of secret prisoner movement are also involved in smuggling drugs.
After being subjected to news reports, Aerocom quickly changed its name last year.
More ties that bind Bush cartel to Russian-Ukrainian-Israeli Mafia: Bush with Yahya Jammeh, dictator of the Gambia, the client of both GOP lobbyist and neo-Confederate Richard Hines and international arms smuggler Viktor Bout."
Please visit the The Wayne Madsen Report for complete story. Highly dependable sources in Banjul also informed AllGambian about recent arms purchase by the Jammeh regime from an undisclosed country, amounting to 4.3 million dalasis. This comes at the heels of a hard-hitting border impasse between the Gambia and Senegal. The stand-off almost paralyzed the Gambian economy and caused untold hardship on the average Gambian. Observers wondered how the Gambia gov can afford to spend on presidential jets and military hardware at this junction when the economy is in shambles.
~~~
Scary Tales of Tiny Gambia Being the Headquarters of the Mafia World
By Bubacarr Ceesay
December 13, 2005 The Gambia is the international limelight again as the center of an international mafia ring. In a masterpiece investigative report, The Wayne Madsen Report unraveled a network of weapons smugglers and mobsters operating in the heart of the Gambian Capital, working hand in hand with the Gambian leader, President Yahya Jammeh.
In reference to the Gambia, the report stated thus:
"There is also now interest in the activities of Richard T. Hines, the head of the powerful Republican lobbying firm RTH Consulting, Inc. Hines, a South Carolina native and a protege of the late GOP dirty trickmeister Lee Atwater, was one of the architects of the dirty tricks campaign by Bush against John McCain in the 2000 South Carolina primary.
A confederate of Abramoff in the 1980s Reagan administration's covert support network for the Nicaraguan contras, Angolan UNITA guerrillas, and Afghan mujaheddin, Hines is active in various Confederacy resurgence organizations, many of which have clear racist agendas.
However, that has not prevented Hines from becoming the lobbyist for Gambian dictator Yahya Jammeh, a military officer who overthrew Gambia's democratically-elected President Sir Dawda K. Jawara in a 1994 military coup supported by the United States Navy.
Hines inherited the lobbying contract for Gambia from the eclectic Washington lobbyist Edward von Kloberg III, an individual who represented Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, Liberia's Samuel K. Doe, Nicolae Ceausescu of Romania, Congolese leader Laurent Kabila, the exiled King Kigeli V of Rwanda, and Saddam Hussein. Last May, von Kloberg took a swan dive off of a castle in Rome, allegedly committing suicide after a spat with a gay partner.
The connections between Hines and Gambia are important since the small narrow West African country is also a major base of operations for notorious Russian international arms smuggler Viktor Bout.
The Gambia is the headquarters for one of many of Bout's front companies -- companies that are used to smuggle everything from weapons to diamonds and mercenaries to international relief supplies.
In fact, Bout was the character on whom fictional arms smuggler Yuri Orlov, played by Nicolas Cage in the movie Lord of War, was largely based.
Bout's connections with the Christian Right do not end with Gambia.
Bout was Liberian dictator Charles Taylor's primary arms and diamond smuggler.
Bout and his associates were given Liberian diplomatic passports and, with Taylor's blessing and protection, they registered a number of their front companies in Monrovia, the Liberian capital.
Taylor, who is now in exile in Nigeria, was a business partner with Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson.
Robertson's organization mentored both Ralph Reed and Richard Hines.
According to British and Israeli intelligence sources, Taylor also enabled Al Qaeda to launder blood diamonds for cash through Liberia.
Liberia and neighboring Sierra Leone were where Israeli mobsters engaged in business with Israeli gangsters who operated under the full protection of the Israeli Likud government.
Before Likud began purging Mossad of experienced intelligence officers with ties to the Israeli Labor Party, the Israeli-Al Qaeda diamond financial connection in West Africa was being pointed out by those officers as suicidal for Israeli interests.
However, Taylor and Bout had powerful interests in the United States: a combination of the Christian Right and pro-Likud organizations like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), both of which ignored and continue to ignore Israeli organized crime connections to Al Qaeda and terrorism.
Robertson and Taylor were business partners in a Cayman Islands front company called Freedom Gold, Ltd.
In fact, Freedom Gold bas headquartered at Robertson's CBN offices in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Robertson's African interests also crossed paths with Bout's in another country -- the former Zaire.
Robertson's African Development Company used the cover of Robertson's tax-exempt "Operation Blessing" to ferry conflict diamonds out of civil war-ravaged Zaire (now Congo).
A UN Security Council report dated November 30, 2005, lists Bout's Gambia New Millennium Air Company as having its address at the residence of Hines' client Jammeh: State House, Banjul, Gambia.
The UN report states, "The Director of this firm is Baba Jobe, who is already listed on the Liberia Sanctions Committee's assets freeze list. According to a commercial aviation database, the firm acted as a cover for Victor Bout's operations.
Its one aircraft, a Russian-made passenger jet, was acquired from Centrafrican Airlines." It is noteworthy that Hines's client, President Jammeh, just took possession of the Russian-made VIP presidential passenger jet, an Ilyushin IL-62 (C5-GNM) [Gambia] (formerly CCCP-86511 [USSR], RA-86511 [Russia], 3D-RTI [Swaziland], TL-ACL [Central African Republic]).
And also of interest is the owner of the presidential aircraft: it is none other than Gambia New Millennium Air, the Bout-owned company listed on the UN Security Council freeze list and which is headquartered at Jammeh's State House in Banjul, the Gambian capital.
In fact, the plane had been previously registered to Bout front companies in Swaziland and the Central African Republic.
The Gambia: Joins Gabon and Swaziland as another African playground for the GOP Mafia Bout, who flew arms and passengers from Dubai and other locations to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan prior to 9-11, is now providing air services in post-Taliban Afghanistan as well as U.S.-occupied Iraq.
Bout's transactions with the Taliban were handled by Vial, Inc., a firm based in Delaware.
One of Bout's closest associates is the Russian-Israeli Odessa-born crime boss Leonid Minin, an Israeli national who, according to the UN Security Council, travels on forged German passports as well as legal Israeli, Russian, Greek, and Bolivian passports under at least ten aliases.
It is also noteworthy that many of Bout's operations are based in Eastern European countries that have been mentioned in association with the rendition and transporting of CIA prisoners.
Bout's numerous Russian-built cargo and passenger planes have been seen at the same airports used by CIA flights.
For example, Bright Aviation, a suspected Bout front, is based at Sofia Airport in Bulgaria.
Bulgaria is believed to be one of the countries used by the CIA to house secret prisoners.
Another Bout front, Moldtransavia SRL, is based in Chisinau, Moldova, another suspected stopover point for CIA flights.
One Chisinau, Moldova-based Bout front company, Aerocom, which also does business as Air Mero, is contracted to fly for Kellogg, Brown & Root in Iraq and elsewhere.
Aerocom has also been cited in UN and DEA reports for being involved in drug smuggling in Belize.
Some law enforcement officials in the United States and Europe believe that the covert flights being operated by CIA contractors and Bout's companies in support of secret prisoner movement are also involved in smuggling drugs.
After being subjected to news reports, Aerocom quickly changed its name last year.
More ties that bind Bush cartel to Russian-Ukrainian-Israeli Mafia: Bush with Yahya Jammeh, dictator of the Gambia, the client of both GOP lobbyist and neo-Confederate Richard Hines and international arms smuggler Viktor Bout."
Please visit the The Wayne Madsen Report for complete story. Highly dependable sources in Banjul also informed AllGambian about recent arms purchase by the Jammeh regime from an undisclosed country, amounting to 4.3 million dalasis. This comes at the heels of a hard-hitting border impasse between the Gambia and Senegal. The stand-off almost paralyzed the Gambian economy and caused untold hardship on the average Gambian. Observers wondered how the Gambia gov can afford to spend on presidential jets and military hardware at this junction when the economy is in shambles.
~~~
A plot by the extreme right against Charles Kennedy?
~
(UPDATE 5 January 2006: Charles Kennedy admits he has struggled against alcohol)
There are two theories about why the anti-war leader of the UK Liberal-Democrats, Charles Kennedy, is being attacked by the media and by some of his own members of parliament.
Theory one is that Charles Kennedy is being attacked because he is seen as not being as effective as his rivals Blair and Cameron.
Theory two is that he is being attacked because he opposed the Iraq war. This theory suggests that agents of the security services within the media and within the Liberal-Democrat party may be gunning for Kennedy.
Among those who opposed the Iraq war were Germany's Schroeder, France's Chirac and the UK's Kennedy. Schroeder has now gone. Chirac has had to face riots which some people think were the work of neo-con agitators. Kennedy is under attack by the media.
~~
Possible successors to Charles Kennedy might include Mark Oaten and Menzies Campbell.
From The Times: Kennedy locked in battle to survive as allies desert
There was ... anger directed at Mark Oaten, who has defended Mr Kennedy but whom MPs accused of planning a series of regional tours and putting a campaign team together in case Mr Kennedy should stand down. He told The Times last night that his tours were visits to police stations and prisons.
Mr Oaten sent a two-page e-mail to Lib Dem activists on Tuesday, the day the crisis erupted, describing his achievements as home affairs spokesman and inviting them to contact him. One Lib Dem said: "He has clearly pushed a green button somewhere."
From The Telegraph : Kennedy fights back but Lib Dem crisis continues
Loose-tongued allies of Mark Oaten, the ambitious home affairs spokesman and arch-moderniser, have whispered against Mr Kennedy before and they got the brunt of the blame from Kennedy loyalists.
Speech by Mark Oaten, House of Commons, 8 February 2005: http://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2005-02-08.1408.0&m=1136
The Liberal Democrats in no way underestimate the seriousness of the threats facing this country. The fact that we differ from the Government on how to tackle those threats does not mean that we do not recognise that the world has changed since 9/11 and that we now face a different problem of international terrorism.
It is worth putting on the record our acknowledgement of the fact that we all owe our intelligence services a enormous debt of respect and gratitude for their achievements in the past three or four years.
Sir Walter Menzies Campbell received a scholarship to Stanford University.
Speech by Menzies Campbell to the Federal Liberal Democrat Conference, Blackpool 19th September 2005: Scottish Lib Dems: News
America, with its founding beliefs in freedom, justice and human rights, is our natural ally...
The Bush Administration denounces the abuse of human rights, but then casts them aside in the process called ‘extraordinary rendition’ in which suspects are removed to states where torture is known to be practised in the hope that they will provide information.
And all the while our government affects to have no interest in reports that aircraft engaged in such rendition regularly land and refuel in the United Kingdom.
We should be ashamed of ourselves.
The pursuit of strategic interest, at the expense of freedom and human rights, carries a heavy price. Supports for repressive governments creates conditions in which extremism thrives. The manifest injustice of Guantanamo buttresses support for terrorism.
Prolonged detention without trial and without due process violates cardinal principles of justice. It is incumbent on Britain, and Europe, to speak out against these injustices.
The transatlantic alliance must be a relationship neither of rivalry, nor subservience, but a partnership of influence.
~~~
(UPDATE 5 January 2006: Charles Kennedy admits he has struggled against alcohol)
There are two theories about why the anti-war leader of the UK Liberal-Democrats, Charles Kennedy, is being attacked by the media and by some of his own members of parliament.
Theory one is that Charles Kennedy is being attacked because he is seen as not being as effective as his rivals Blair and Cameron.
Theory two is that he is being attacked because he opposed the Iraq war. This theory suggests that agents of the security services within the media and within the Liberal-Democrat party may be gunning for Kennedy.
Among those who opposed the Iraq war were Germany's Schroeder, France's Chirac and the UK's Kennedy. Schroeder has now gone. Chirac has had to face riots which some people think were the work of neo-con agitators. Kennedy is under attack by the media.
~~
Possible successors to Charles Kennedy might include Mark Oaten and Menzies Campbell.
From The Times: Kennedy locked in battle to survive as allies desert
There was ... anger directed at Mark Oaten, who has defended Mr Kennedy but whom MPs accused of planning a series of regional tours and putting a campaign team together in case Mr Kennedy should stand down. He told The Times last night that his tours were visits to police stations and prisons.
Mr Oaten sent a two-page e-mail to Lib Dem activists on Tuesday, the day the crisis erupted, describing his achievements as home affairs spokesman and inviting them to contact him. One Lib Dem said: "He has clearly pushed a green button somewhere."
From The Telegraph : Kennedy fights back but Lib Dem crisis continues
Loose-tongued allies of Mark Oaten, the ambitious home affairs spokesman and arch-moderniser, have whispered against Mr Kennedy before and they got the brunt of the blame from Kennedy loyalists.
Speech by Mark Oaten, House of Commons, 8 February 2005: http://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2005-02-08.1408.0&m=1136
The Liberal Democrats in no way underestimate the seriousness of the threats facing this country. The fact that we differ from the Government on how to tackle those threats does not mean that we do not recognise that the world has changed since 9/11 and that we now face a different problem of international terrorism.
It is worth putting on the record our acknowledgement of the fact that we all owe our intelligence services a enormous debt of respect and gratitude for their achievements in the past three or four years.
Sir Walter Menzies Campbell received a scholarship to Stanford University.
Speech by Menzies Campbell to the Federal Liberal Democrat Conference, Blackpool 19th September 2005: Scottish Lib Dems: News
America, with its founding beliefs in freedom, justice and human rights, is our natural ally...
The Bush Administration denounces the abuse of human rights, but then casts them aside in the process called ‘extraordinary rendition’ in which suspects are removed to states where torture is known to be practised in the hope that they will provide information.
And all the while our government affects to have no interest in reports that aircraft engaged in such rendition regularly land and refuel in the United Kingdom.
We should be ashamed of ourselves.
The pursuit of strategic interest, at the expense of freedom and human rights, carries a heavy price. Supports for repressive governments creates conditions in which extremism thrives. The manifest injustice of Guantanamo buttresses support for terrorism.
Prolonged detention without trial and without due process violates cardinal principles of justice. It is incumbent on Britain, and Europe, to speak out against these injustices.
The transatlantic alliance must be a relationship neither of rivalry, nor subservience, but a partnership of influence.
~~~
The London Bombs and Lt. Col. Crispin Black
~
At Mathaba.net, http://mathaba.net/0_index.shtml?x=496234, Dr. Sahib Mustaqim Bleher
reviews the book by Crispin Black “7-7 The London Bombs – What went wrong?”, published by Gibson Square.
Lt. Col. Crispin Black MBE worked as an intelligence expert for the Ministry of Defence until 2002. His responsibilities included briefing No 10, work for COBRA, the government’s emergency committee, and long-term strategic analysis for the Joint Intelligence Committee.
He currently works for a private intelligence company.
Dr Bleher writes:
"The book is an interesting insight into the intelligence community in that his analysis is as flawed and shabby as the intelligence strategy he criticises. If people like him are our celebrated experts I hate to think what the competence level of the ordinary government or ministry of defence staff might be like...
"Black’s analysis in his book is best characterised by what it leaves out."
"He bemoans that Hussain Osman, one of the alleged 21 July bombers, “was able to escape from the country a few days later on the Eurostar after walking past his own wanted poster in Waterloo Station”.
"He makes no mention at all of Haroon Rashid Aswat, a suspected mastermind of the 7 July bombings, who left the UK unhindered and whom the British security services protected from being apprehended by their US counterparts because of his having been an MI6 informant. He resurfaced after being arrested in Zambia, but the trail has since gone cold again.
"When Black also wonders that “there must, for example, have been something about the profile of Siddique Khan [one of the alleged London bombers] that turned off the natural and often aggressive inquisitiveness of MI5 and Special Branch – despite the fact that his name had emerged out of an investigation into a potential Islamist extremist activity”, maybe he should enquire with MI6 whether this was for the same reasons."
Dr Behar writes: "We are told that four suicide bombers detonated explosives in London. Because they are all dead nobody has been charged with this crime and there will be no trial. We have to take the word of the intelligence services for it – the same intelligence services who lied to us over Iraq – or the police – the same police who lied to us about the Brazilian they shot on 22 July."
De Menezes.
"Black mentions him briefly, blaming it all on the high stress levels amongst the police at the time but contradicts himself by on the one hand acknowledging that “members of a police firearms unit shot eleven bullets at close range (three missed) while restraining and pushing Mr de Menezes to the ground”, whilst claiming a page later: “You need to kill him so convincingly and quickly so that no twitching in his body could possibly depress the switch (this is the reason behind what looked like overkill at Stockwell tube station).” The key words are “while restraining and pushing” – you can’t have it both ways."
Dr Behar writes that Black is helping to obscure the facts and muddy the waters.
http://www.mathaba.net/newsThe short URL for the Mathaba article is: http://mathaba.net/news/?x=496234
~~
At Mathaba.net, http://mathaba.net/0_index.shtml?x=496234, Dr. Sahib Mustaqim Bleher
reviews the book by Crispin Black “7-7 The London Bombs – What went wrong?”, published by Gibson Square.
Lt. Col. Crispin Black MBE worked as an intelligence expert for the Ministry of Defence until 2002. His responsibilities included briefing No 10, work for COBRA, the government’s emergency committee, and long-term strategic analysis for the Joint Intelligence Committee.
He currently works for a private intelligence company.
Dr Bleher writes:
"The book is an interesting insight into the intelligence community in that his analysis is as flawed and shabby as the intelligence strategy he criticises. If people like him are our celebrated experts I hate to think what the competence level of the ordinary government or ministry of defence staff might be like...
"Black’s analysis in his book is best characterised by what it leaves out."
"He bemoans that Hussain Osman, one of the alleged 21 July bombers, “was able to escape from the country a few days later on the Eurostar after walking past his own wanted poster in Waterloo Station”.
"He makes no mention at all of Haroon Rashid Aswat, a suspected mastermind of the 7 July bombings, who left the UK unhindered and whom the British security services protected from being apprehended by their US counterparts because of his having been an MI6 informant. He resurfaced after being arrested in Zambia, but the trail has since gone cold again.
"When Black also wonders that “there must, for example, have been something about the profile of Siddique Khan [one of the alleged London bombers] that turned off the natural and often aggressive inquisitiveness of MI5 and Special Branch – despite the fact that his name had emerged out of an investigation into a potential Islamist extremist activity”, maybe he should enquire with MI6 whether this was for the same reasons."
Dr Behar writes: "We are told that four suicide bombers detonated explosives in London. Because they are all dead nobody has been charged with this crime and there will be no trial. We have to take the word of the intelligence services for it – the same intelligence services who lied to us over Iraq – or the police – the same police who lied to us about the Brazilian they shot on 22 July."
De Menezes.
"Black mentions him briefly, blaming it all on the high stress levels amongst the police at the time but contradicts himself by on the one hand acknowledging that “members of a police firearms unit shot eleven bullets at close range (three missed) while restraining and pushing Mr de Menezes to the ground”, whilst claiming a page later: “You need to kill him so convincingly and quickly so that no twitching in his body could possibly depress the switch (this is the reason behind what looked like overkill at Stockwell tube station).” The key words are “while restraining and pushing” – you can’t have it both ways."
Dr Behar writes that Black is helping to obscure the facts and muddy the waters.
http://www.mathaba.net/newsThe short URL for the Mathaba article is: http://mathaba.net/news/?x=496234
~~
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Rich Jewish people or the Chinese or al Qaeda or the Pentagon
Jonathan Freedland http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,1666871,00.html
14 December 2005, in The Guardian, wrote about anti-semitism.
Freedland writes: "I was interviewing a group of Muslim voters in Edinburgh, asking how the Iraq war had unsettled their political allegiances. One older man began telling me that he did not blame Tony Blair or even George Bush for the way things had turned out, because they were mere dupes of a more powerful force. The calamity of 9/11 was not all it seemed: the authors of that event were not the 19 hijackers, but more shadowy players, unknown even to Bush. Later, as he gave me a lift to the station, I asked who these secret powers might be. The answer was "rich Jewish people"....
Freedland refers to "Egyptian television's Ramadan treat in 2002: Horseman without a Horse, whose central theme was the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the century-old forgery concocted by the Tsarist secret police which alleged a Jewish plot to take over the world."
So, who are the masterminds behind the terror?
Who was behind the terror in Europe in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s? Reportedly, it was the Pentagon.
It was the CIA that was behind the Greek colonels. It was reportedly friends of the CIA who were behind the bomb blasts in Italy.
Operation Gladio: the idea was for the security services of the West to kill innocent people and then blame this on others.
Gladio was about keeping the right-wing elite in power.
Gladio agent Vincenzo Vinciguerra stated, in sworn testimony:
'You had to attack civilians, the people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple: to force ... the public to turn to the state to ask for greater security."
Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti revealed the existence of Gladio in 1991.
Parliamentary investigations in Italy, Switzerland and Belgium have given us a little of the truth.
The book "NATO's Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe," by Daniele Ganser documents some of what we know so far.
Run by NATO and Washington, right-wing militias carried out acts of terrorism and electoral subversion states such as Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Turkey and West Germany.
A Pentagon document, Field Manual FM 30-31B, details the methods for launching terrorist attacks.
85 people were killed on Aug. 2, 1980 in the bombing of the Bologna train station.
According to the Italian Senate, after its investigation in 2000, the bombers were later discovered to be "men inside Italian state institutions and ... men linked to the structures of United States intelligence."
The Bologna bomb was part of Gladio's "the strategy of tension" - fomenting fear to keep populations in thrall to "strong leaders" who will protect the nation from the ever-present terrorist threat.
The strategy of tension was also used by the CIA and its allies outside Europe. During the 1980s, right-wing death squads, trained and supplied by the United States, murdered tens of thousands of people in Central America. Indonesia's gestapo regiments were trained by the Pentagon...
From http://www.threemonkeysonline.com/threemon_article_nato_gladio_terrorism_strategy_of_tension.htm
In Belgium, in 1984 a bizarre operation occurred around Vielsalm in the Ardennes region. A squad of US Marines were parachuted into Belgium, and met by a member of the Belgian military intelligence. They hid for a fortnight before attacking the police station of Vielsalm, in a so-called Oesling exercise, killing a Belgian officer. One marine was injured during the operation, losing an eye. Initially the attack was passed off as terrorism, but was later proven to be the work of the American and Belgian military - as confirmed by the Senate investigations of 1991.
Other attacks occured, where, as was the case in Vielsalm, arms and ammunition were taken. Arms that found their way subsequently to extremist groups.
One central question in the Belgian Senate investigation into the stay-behind network was whether it had been involved in the so-called Brabant Massacres of the 1980s. These were a group of attacks that occured in the area around Brussels called Brabant over a period of two years. Jewellers, restaurants, and in a number of cases supermarkets were attacked by a gang of heavily armed and ruthless men. In all the attacks very small amounts of money were taken, while "at the same time massive brutality and professionalism was employed" [NATO's Secret Armies pg 139].
For example, on November 9th 1985 on a busy Saturday, three armed hooded men entered a supermarket and started shooting. Eight people were killed, some while trying to escape. The money taken from the raid amounted to a couple of thousand pounds, and was found dumped in a canal in an unopened sack... An official report published on the Brabant Massacres in 1990, before the discovery of the secret army network, had concluded that the killers had official links: “According to the report, the killers were members or former members of the security forces – extreme right-wingers who enjoyed high-level protection and were preparing a right-wing coup” [NATO’s Secret Armies, pg 145]
It is dangerous to think that one particular group is ruling the world. In Asia, it is the Chinese oligarchs who are accused of having too much economic power - whether in Indonesia, Malaysia or Thailand. In the USA, half of the top 100 richest people are said to be Jewish. Many oligarchs are Arab and some are South American.
If there was a mysterious group behind 9 11, they were not necessarily all of the same race or religion. There could be alliances among fascists from many countries, such as the USA, Britain, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan....
Who might be the top people in this mysterious group?
Who was behind Operation Northwoods?
The Pentagon.
Have 'friends of Israel' increased their influence within the Pentagon and the US government?
42% of the members of President Clinton's cabinet were Jewish, according to : http://www.jewwatch.com/jew-occupiedgovernments-usa-clinton-cabinet.html
The following 'supporters of Israel' have been influential in the government of President W Bush http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=639:
1). Richard Perle
2). Paul Wolfowitz
3). Douglas Feith
4). Edward Luttwak
5). Henry Kissinger
6). Dov Zakheim
7). Kenneth Adelman
8). I. Lewis Libby
9). Robert Satloff
10). Elliott Abrams
11). Marc Grossman
12). Richard Haass
13). Robert Zoellick
14). Ari Fleischer
15). James Schlesinger
16). David Frum
17). Joshua Bolten
18). John Bolton
19). David Wurmser
20). Eliot Cohen
21). Mel Sembler
22). Michael Chertoff
23). Steve Goldsmith
24). Adam Goldman
25). Joseph Gildenhorn
26). Christopher Gersten
27). Mark Weinberger
28). Samuel Bodman
29). Bonnie Cohen
30). Ruth Davis
31). Lincoln Bloomfield
32). Jay Lefkowitz
33). Ken Melman
34). Brad Blakeman
~~
14 December 2005, in The Guardian, wrote about anti-semitism.
Freedland writes: "I was interviewing a group of Muslim voters in Edinburgh, asking how the Iraq war had unsettled their political allegiances. One older man began telling me that he did not blame Tony Blair or even George Bush for the way things had turned out, because they were mere dupes of a more powerful force. The calamity of 9/11 was not all it seemed: the authors of that event were not the 19 hijackers, but more shadowy players, unknown even to Bush. Later, as he gave me a lift to the station, I asked who these secret powers might be. The answer was "rich Jewish people"....
Freedland refers to "Egyptian television's Ramadan treat in 2002: Horseman without a Horse, whose central theme was the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the century-old forgery concocted by the Tsarist secret police which alleged a Jewish plot to take over the world."
So, who are the masterminds behind the terror?
Who was behind the terror in Europe in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s? Reportedly, it was the Pentagon.
It was the CIA that was behind the Greek colonels. It was reportedly friends of the CIA who were behind the bomb blasts in Italy.
Operation Gladio: the idea was for the security services of the West to kill innocent people and then blame this on others.
Gladio was about keeping the right-wing elite in power.
Gladio agent Vincenzo Vinciguerra stated, in sworn testimony:
'You had to attack civilians, the people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple: to force ... the public to turn to the state to ask for greater security."
Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti revealed the existence of Gladio in 1991.
Parliamentary investigations in Italy, Switzerland and Belgium have given us a little of the truth.
The book "NATO's Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe," by Daniele Ganser documents some of what we know so far.
Run by NATO and Washington, right-wing militias carried out acts of terrorism and electoral subversion states such as Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Turkey and West Germany.
A Pentagon document, Field Manual FM 30-31B, details the methods for launching terrorist attacks.
85 people were killed on Aug. 2, 1980 in the bombing of the Bologna train station.
According to the Italian Senate, after its investigation in 2000, the bombers were later discovered to be "men inside Italian state institutions and ... men linked to the structures of United States intelligence."
The Bologna bomb was part of Gladio's "the strategy of tension" - fomenting fear to keep populations in thrall to "strong leaders" who will protect the nation from the ever-present terrorist threat.
The strategy of tension was also used by the CIA and its allies outside Europe. During the 1980s, right-wing death squads, trained and supplied by the United States, murdered tens of thousands of people in Central America. Indonesia's gestapo regiments were trained by the Pentagon...
From http://www.threemonkeysonline.com/threemon_article_nato_gladio_terrorism_strategy_of_tension.htm
In Belgium, in 1984 a bizarre operation occurred around Vielsalm in the Ardennes region. A squad of US Marines were parachuted into Belgium, and met by a member of the Belgian military intelligence. They hid for a fortnight before attacking the police station of Vielsalm, in a so-called Oesling exercise, killing a Belgian officer. One marine was injured during the operation, losing an eye. Initially the attack was passed off as terrorism, but was later proven to be the work of the American and Belgian military - as confirmed by the Senate investigations of 1991.
Other attacks occured, where, as was the case in Vielsalm, arms and ammunition were taken. Arms that found their way subsequently to extremist groups.
One central question in the Belgian Senate investigation into the stay-behind network was whether it had been involved in the so-called Brabant Massacres of the 1980s. These were a group of attacks that occured in the area around Brussels called Brabant over a period of two years. Jewellers, restaurants, and in a number of cases supermarkets were attacked by a gang of heavily armed and ruthless men. In all the attacks very small amounts of money were taken, while "at the same time massive brutality and professionalism was employed" [NATO's Secret Armies pg 139].
For example, on November 9th 1985 on a busy Saturday, three armed hooded men entered a supermarket and started shooting. Eight people were killed, some while trying to escape. The money taken from the raid amounted to a couple of thousand pounds, and was found dumped in a canal in an unopened sack... An official report published on the Brabant Massacres in 1990, before the discovery of the secret army network, had concluded that the killers had official links: “According to the report, the killers were members or former members of the security forces – extreme right-wingers who enjoyed high-level protection and were preparing a right-wing coup” [NATO’s Secret Armies, pg 145]
It is dangerous to think that one particular group is ruling the world. In Asia, it is the Chinese oligarchs who are accused of having too much economic power - whether in Indonesia, Malaysia or Thailand. In the USA, half of the top 100 richest people are said to be Jewish. Many oligarchs are Arab and some are South American.
If there was a mysterious group behind 9 11, they were not necessarily all of the same race or religion. There could be alliances among fascists from many countries, such as the USA, Britain, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan....
Who might be the top people in this mysterious group?
Who was behind Operation Northwoods?
The Pentagon.
Have 'friends of Israel' increased their influence within the Pentagon and the US government?
42% of the members of President Clinton's cabinet were Jewish, according to : http://www.jewwatch.com/jew-occupiedgovernments-usa-clinton-cabinet.html
The following 'supporters of Israel' have been influential in the government of President W Bush http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=639:
1). Richard Perle
2). Paul Wolfowitz
3). Douglas Feith
4). Edward Luttwak
5). Henry Kissinger
6). Dov Zakheim
7). Kenneth Adelman
8). I. Lewis Libby
9). Robert Satloff
10). Elliott Abrams
11). Marc Grossman
12). Richard Haass
13). Robert Zoellick
14). Ari Fleischer
15). James Schlesinger
16). David Frum
17). Joshua Bolten
18). John Bolton
19). David Wurmser
20). Eliot Cohen
21). Mel Sembler
22). Michael Chertoff
23). Steve Goldsmith
24). Adam Goldman
25). Joseph Gildenhorn
26). Christopher Gersten
27). Mark Weinberger
28). Samuel Bodman
29). Bonnie Cohen
30). Ruth Davis
31). Lincoln Bloomfield
32). Jay Lefkowitz
33). Ken Melman
34). Brad Blakeman
~~
Share of world exports - top 7 countries
Ranked by share of world exports:
1. Germany
2. USA
3. China
4. Japan
5. France
6. Netherlands
7. Italy
What happened to Tony Blair's United Kingdom?
~~
Source: Guardian, 14 December 2005
1. Germany
2. USA
3. China
4. Japan
5. France
6. Netherlands
7. Italy
What happened to Tony Blair's United Kingdom?
~~
Source: Guardian, 14 December 2005
The Tories are doomed
Is this why the oligarchs are deperate to attack the UK Liberal-Democrats and Charles Kennedy their anti-war leader? The oligarchs do not want the Liberal Democrats to replace David Cameron's pro-war Conservative Party as Britain's main opposition party.
The Conservatives (the Tories) do not look in a strong position and some of the wiser journalists think that they are doomed.
~~
The Tories are doomed.
By Peter Hitchens
14 December 2005
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1666735,00.html
...David Cameron's Conservative party is empty of oppositional ideas and organisationally hollow. The Grim Reaper gently escorts many thousands of Tories off the electoral roll each year. Few are replaced. Outside the tiny layer of professional political careerists typified by David Cameron, young Tories are rare and eccentric. There are now only 450 active associations, and nearly half of them have fewer than 100 members.
In Wales and Scotland Toryism is more a memory than a movement. In England the parliamentary boundaries are heavily biased against it... The tiny Tory "revival" of last May resulted mainly from Labour defections to the Liberal Democrats...
Labour and the Tories are like a pair of corpses, stiff with rigor mortis, propping each other up. They no longer represent the true divisions in British society, which is why Labour can win only 22% of the popular vote, and the Tories a mere 20%. It is astonishing to think that neither of the major parties opposed the Iraq war...
Had it not been for pressure and ridicule from conservative journalists, the Tory party would even now support identity cards and all the accompanying repressive rubbish pursued in the name of the "war on terror"...
The word that sums up the Cameron Tories is vacancy - a great sky-blue-pink gap where the government's adversary ought to be, an emptiness deliberately created so as to offend nobody but the thoughtful and independent of mind.
· Peter Hitchens is a columnist for the Mail on Sunday
The Conservatives (the Tories) do not look in a strong position and some of the wiser journalists think that they are doomed.
~~
The Tories are doomed.
By Peter Hitchens
14 December 2005
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1666735,00.html
...David Cameron's Conservative party is empty of oppositional ideas and organisationally hollow. The Grim Reaper gently escorts many thousands of Tories off the electoral roll each year. Few are replaced. Outside the tiny layer of professional political careerists typified by David Cameron, young Tories are rare and eccentric. There are now only 450 active associations, and nearly half of them have fewer than 100 members.
In Wales and Scotland Toryism is more a memory than a movement. In England the parliamentary boundaries are heavily biased against it... The tiny Tory "revival" of last May resulted mainly from Labour defections to the Liberal Democrats...
Labour and the Tories are like a pair of corpses, stiff with rigor mortis, propping each other up. They no longer represent the true divisions in British society, which is why Labour can win only 22% of the popular vote, and the Tories a mere 20%. It is astonishing to think that neither of the major parties opposed the Iraq war...
Had it not been for pressure and ridicule from conservative journalists, the Tory party would even now support identity cards and all the accompanying repressive rubbish pursued in the name of the "war on terror"...
The word that sums up the Cameron Tories is vacancy - a great sky-blue-pink gap where the government's adversary ought to be, an emptiness deliberately created so as to offend nobody but the thoughtful and independent of mind.
· Peter Hitchens is a columnist for the Mail on Sunday
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
Violent Video Games - New Scientist - Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
Violent video games alter brain's response to violence
New Scientist/Helen Phillips December 12 2005
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/december2005/121205gamesalter.htm
A brain mechanism that may link violent computer games with aggression has been discovered by researchers in the US. The work goes some way towards demonstrating a causal link between the two - rather than a simple association.
Many studies have concluded that people who play violent video games are more aggressive, more likely to commit violent crimes, and less likely to help others. But critics argue these correlations merely prove that violent people gravitate towards violent games, not that games can change behaviour.
Now psychologist Bruce Bartholow from the University of Missouri-Columbia and colleagues have found that people who play violent video games show diminished brain responses to images of real-life violence, such as gun attacks, but not to other emotionally disturbing pictures, such as those of dead animals, or sick children. And the reduction in response is correlated with aggressive behaviour.
The brain activity they measured, called the P300 response, is a characteristic signal seen in an EEG (electroencephalogram) recording of brain waves as we register an image. The P300 reflects an evaluation of the emotional content of an image says Bartholow, being larger if people are surprised or disturbed by an image, or if something is novel.
Violent scenes
The team recruited 39 experienced gamers, and used questionnaires to assess the amount of violent games they played. They then showed them real-life images, mostly of neutral scenes, but interspersed with violent or negative (but non-violent) scenes, while recording EEGs.
In subjects with the most experience of violent games, the P300 response to the violent images was smaller and delayed. “People who play a lot of violent video games didn’t see them as much different from neutral,” says Bartholow. They become desensitised. However, their responses are still normal for the non-violent negative scenes.
This may not be surprising - video games have been used to desensitise soldiers to scenes of war. But when the players were subsequently given the opportunity to “punish” a fake opponent in another game, those with the greatest reduction in P300 brain responses meted out the most severe punishments.
Even when the team controlled for the subjects’ natural hostility, assessed by standard questionnaires, the violent games experience and P300 response were still strongly correlated with aggressiveness. “As far as I’m aware, this is the first study to show that exposure to violent games has effects on the brain that predict aggressive behaviour,” says Bartholow...
Craig Anderson of Iowa State University in Ames, who has studied the effect, says: “These brain studies corroborate the many behavioural and cognitive studies showing that violent video games lead to increases in aggression.”
The work will appear early in 2006 in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.
~~
New Scientist/Helen Phillips December 12 2005
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/december2005/121205gamesalter.htm
A brain mechanism that may link violent computer games with aggression has been discovered by researchers in the US. The work goes some way towards demonstrating a causal link between the two - rather than a simple association.
Many studies have concluded that people who play violent video games are more aggressive, more likely to commit violent crimes, and less likely to help others. But critics argue these correlations merely prove that violent people gravitate towards violent games, not that games can change behaviour.
Now psychologist Bruce Bartholow from the University of Missouri-Columbia and colleagues have found that people who play violent video games show diminished brain responses to images of real-life violence, such as gun attacks, but not to other emotionally disturbing pictures, such as those of dead animals, or sick children. And the reduction in response is correlated with aggressive behaviour.
The brain activity they measured, called the P300 response, is a characteristic signal seen in an EEG (electroencephalogram) recording of brain waves as we register an image. The P300 reflects an evaluation of the emotional content of an image says Bartholow, being larger if people are surprised or disturbed by an image, or if something is novel.
Violent scenes
The team recruited 39 experienced gamers, and used questionnaires to assess the amount of violent games they played. They then showed them real-life images, mostly of neutral scenes, but interspersed with violent or negative (but non-violent) scenes, while recording EEGs.
In subjects with the most experience of violent games, the P300 response to the violent images was smaller and delayed. “People who play a lot of violent video games didn’t see them as much different from neutral,” says Bartholow. They become desensitised. However, their responses are still normal for the non-violent negative scenes.
This may not be surprising - video games have been used to desensitise soldiers to scenes of war. But when the players were subsequently given the opportunity to “punish” a fake opponent in another game, those with the greatest reduction in P300 brain responses meted out the most severe punishments.
Even when the team controlled for the subjects’ natural hostility, assessed by standard questionnaires, the violent games experience and P300 response were still strongly correlated with aggressiveness. “As far as I’m aware, this is the first study to show that exposure to violent games has effects on the brain that predict aggressive behaviour,” says Bartholow...
Craig Anderson of Iowa State University in Ames, who has studied the effect, says: “These brain studies corroborate the many behavioural and cognitive studies showing that violent video games lead to increases in aggression.”
The work will appear early in 2006 in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.
~~
Sunday, December 11, 2005
MI6 and CIA torture produced false confession?
Souks you, Sir Why stay at home with the wife and family when you can jet off to sunny Morocco
MI6 and CIA 'sent student to Morocco to be tortured'
An Ethiopian claims that his confession to al-Qaeda bomb plot was signed after beatings, reports David Rose in New York
Sunday December 11, 2005
The Observer
An Ethiopian student who lived in London claims that he was brutally tortured with the involvement of British and US intelligence agencies.
Binyam Mohammed, 27, says he spent nearly three years in the CIA's network of 'black sites'.
In Morocco he claims he underwent the strappado torture of being hung for hours from his wrists, and scalpel cuts to his chest and penis and that a CIA officer was a regular interrogator.
After his capture in Pakistan, Mohammed says British officials warned him that he would be sent to a country where torture was used. Moroccans also asked him detailed questions about his seven years in London, which his lawyers believe came from British sources.
Western agencies believed that he was part of a plot to buy uranium in Asia, bring it to the US and build a 'dirty bomb' in league with Jose Padilla, a US citizen. Mohammed signed a confession but told his lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, he had never met Padilla, or anyone in al-Qaeda.
Padilla spent almost four years in American custody, accused of the plot. Last month, after allegations of the torture used against Mohammed emerged, the claims against Padilla were dropped. He now faces a civil charge of supporting al-Qaeda financially.
A senior US intelligence official told The Observer that the CIA is now in 'deep crisis' following last week's international political storm over the agency's practice of 'extraordinary rendition' - transporting suspects to countries where they face torture. 'The smarter people in the Directorate of Operations [the CIA's clandestine operational arm] know that one day, if they do this stuff, they are going to face indictment,' he said. 'They are simply refusing to participate in these operations, and if they don't have big mortgage or tuition fees to pay they're thinking about trying to resign altogether.'
Already 22 CIA officers have been charged in absentia in Italy for alleged roles in the rendition of a radical cleric, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, seized - without the knowledge of the Italian government - on a Milan street in February 2003.
The intense pressure on US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice last week, coupled with Friday's condemnation of the use of evidence extracted under torture by the House of Lords, has intensified concerns within the CIA. The official said: 'Renditions and torture aren't just wrong, they also expose CIA personnel and diplomats abroad to enormous future risk.'
Mohammed arrived in Britain in 1994. He lived in Wornington Road, North Kensington, and studied at Paddington Green College. For most of this time, said his brother, he rarely went to a mosque. However, in early 2001 he became more religious.
The Observer has obtained fresh details of his case which was first publicised last summer. He went to Pakistan in June 2001 because, he says, he had a drug problem and wanted to kick the habit. He was arrested on 10 April at the airport on his way back to England because of an alleged passport irregularity. Initially interrogated by Pakistani and British officials, he told Stafford Smith: 'The British checked out my story and said they knew I was a nobody. They said they would tell the Americans.'
He was questioned by the FBI and began to hear accusations of terror involvement. He says he also met two MI6 officers. One told him he would be tortured in an Arab country.
The interrogations intensified and he says he was taken to Islamabad; then, in July 2002, on a CIA flight to Morocco. His description of the process matches independent reports. Masked officers wore black. They stripped him, subjected him to a full body search and shackled him to his seat wearing a nappy.
In Morocco he was told he had plotted with Padilla and had dinner in Pakistan with Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the planner of 9/11, and other al-Qaeda chiefs. 'I've never met anyone like these people,' Mohammed told Stafford Smith. 'How could I? I speak no Arabic... I never heard Padilla's name until they told me.'
During almost 18 months of regular beatings in Morocco, Mohammed says he frequently met a blonde woman in her thirties who told him she was Canadian. The US intelligence officer told The Observer this was an 'amateurish' CIA cover. 'The only Americans who historically pretended to be Canadian were backpackers travelling in Europe during the Vietnam war. Apart from the moral issues, what disturbs me is that, as an attempt to create plausible deniability, this is so damn transparent.'
According to Mohammed, he was threatened with electrocution and rape. On one occasion, he was handcuffed when three men entered his cell wearing black masks. 'That day I ceased really knowing I was alive. One stood on each of my shoulders and a third punched me in the stomach. It seemed to go on for hours. I was meant to stand, but I was in so much pain I'd fall to my knees. They'd pull me back up and hit me again. They'd kick me in the thighs as I got up. I could see the hands that were hitting me... like the hands of someone who'd worked as a mechanic or chopped with an axe.'
Later he was confronted with details of his London life - such as the name of his kickboxing teacher - and met a Moroccan calling himself Marwan, who ordered him to be hung by his wrists. 'They hit me in the chest, the stomach, and they knocked my feet from under me. I have a shoulder pain to this day from the wrenching as my arms were almost pulled out of their sockets.'
Another time, he told Stafford Smith: 'They took a scalpel to my right chest. It was only a small cut. Then they cut my left chest. One of them took my penis in his hand and began to make cuts. He did it once, and they stood still for maybe a minute watching. I was in agony, crying, trying desperately to suppress myself, but I was screaming... They must have done this 20 to 30 times in maybe two hours. There was blood all over.'
In September he was taken to Guantanamo Bay where he has been charged with involvement in al-Qaeda plots and faces trial there by military commission. Stafford Smith said: 'I am unaware of any evidence against him other than that extracted under torture.'
The Foreign Office, the Moroccan Embassy and the CIA refused to comment yesterday.
~~
The master minds behind the terrorism are the fascists and mafia-types within the security services of certain western and pro-western countries. Their aim is to keep certain elites in power.
Al Qaeda is Al CIA-da.
The media works for the CIA
Operation Gladio
Fake terror in Algeria; the US military in Algeria; oil in Algeria.
The use of the Muslim Brotherhood by MI6 and the CIA in Egypt, Syria and Iran
MI6 and the bombing of Rainbow Warrior
http://www.politicos.co.uk/item.jsp?ID=5388Amazon.com: 9/11 Revealed : The Unanswered Questions: Books ...
Security services reportedly involved in carrying out bombings in Turkey
Turkey, terror bombs, the CIA and Mossad
Updated - Jordanian security forces evacuated Israelis from hotel before the bombing - according to Haaretz.
Schoolgirls beheaded by ninjas - Updated
Bali bomb 'mastermind' al-Farouq allowed to escape?
Lord Fraser: my Lockerbie trial doubts
Christian gangsters, the American-trained military and terror
German TV exposes CIA, Mossad links to 1986 Berlin disco bombinghttp://www.wsws.org/news/1998/aug1998/bomb1-a27.shtml
Police chief- Lockerbie evidence was faked
Bush, Bin Laden, Drugs....
Tony Blair, bin Laden, Carlyle Group, Halliburton.
David Lange says US threatened to kill him.
LOCKERBIE BOMB - LONDON BOMBS
Lockerbie Bomb and Ecuador and New Zealand
THE BALI BOMB AND THE MILITARY
The police and the Madrid Bombs
9 11
9 11
9 11 Revealed - The Daily Mail
Egypt - Operation Suzannah, John Darling, Sharm el-Sheikh
~~
MI6 and CIA 'sent student to Morocco to be tortured'
An Ethiopian claims that his confession to al-Qaeda bomb plot was signed after beatings, reports David Rose in New York
Sunday December 11, 2005
The Observer
An Ethiopian student who lived in London claims that he was brutally tortured with the involvement of British and US intelligence agencies.
Binyam Mohammed, 27, says he spent nearly three years in the CIA's network of 'black sites'.
In Morocco he claims he underwent the strappado torture of being hung for hours from his wrists, and scalpel cuts to his chest and penis and that a CIA officer was a regular interrogator.
After his capture in Pakistan, Mohammed says British officials warned him that he would be sent to a country where torture was used. Moroccans also asked him detailed questions about his seven years in London, which his lawyers believe came from British sources.
Western agencies believed that he was part of a plot to buy uranium in Asia, bring it to the US and build a 'dirty bomb' in league with Jose Padilla, a US citizen. Mohammed signed a confession but told his lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, he had never met Padilla, or anyone in al-Qaeda.
Padilla spent almost four years in American custody, accused of the plot. Last month, after allegations of the torture used against Mohammed emerged, the claims against Padilla were dropped. He now faces a civil charge of supporting al-Qaeda financially.
A senior US intelligence official told The Observer that the CIA is now in 'deep crisis' following last week's international political storm over the agency's practice of 'extraordinary rendition' - transporting suspects to countries where they face torture. 'The smarter people in the Directorate of Operations [the CIA's clandestine operational arm] know that one day, if they do this stuff, they are going to face indictment,' he said. 'They are simply refusing to participate in these operations, and if they don't have big mortgage or tuition fees to pay they're thinking about trying to resign altogether.'
Already 22 CIA officers have been charged in absentia in Italy for alleged roles in the rendition of a radical cleric, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, seized - without the knowledge of the Italian government - on a Milan street in February 2003.
The intense pressure on US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice last week, coupled with Friday's condemnation of the use of evidence extracted under torture by the House of Lords, has intensified concerns within the CIA. The official said: 'Renditions and torture aren't just wrong, they also expose CIA personnel and diplomats abroad to enormous future risk.'
Mohammed arrived in Britain in 1994. He lived in Wornington Road, North Kensington, and studied at Paddington Green College. For most of this time, said his brother, he rarely went to a mosque. However, in early 2001 he became more religious.
The Observer has obtained fresh details of his case which was first publicised last summer. He went to Pakistan in June 2001 because, he says, he had a drug problem and wanted to kick the habit. He was arrested on 10 April at the airport on his way back to England because of an alleged passport irregularity. Initially interrogated by Pakistani and British officials, he told Stafford Smith: 'The British checked out my story and said they knew I was a nobody. They said they would tell the Americans.'
He was questioned by the FBI and began to hear accusations of terror involvement. He says he also met two MI6 officers. One told him he would be tortured in an Arab country.
The interrogations intensified and he says he was taken to Islamabad; then, in July 2002, on a CIA flight to Morocco. His description of the process matches independent reports. Masked officers wore black. They stripped him, subjected him to a full body search and shackled him to his seat wearing a nappy.
In Morocco he was told he had plotted with Padilla and had dinner in Pakistan with Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the planner of 9/11, and other al-Qaeda chiefs. 'I've never met anyone like these people,' Mohammed told Stafford Smith. 'How could I? I speak no Arabic... I never heard Padilla's name until they told me.'
During almost 18 months of regular beatings in Morocco, Mohammed says he frequently met a blonde woman in her thirties who told him she was Canadian. The US intelligence officer told The Observer this was an 'amateurish' CIA cover. 'The only Americans who historically pretended to be Canadian were backpackers travelling in Europe during the Vietnam war. Apart from the moral issues, what disturbs me is that, as an attempt to create plausible deniability, this is so damn transparent.'
According to Mohammed, he was threatened with electrocution and rape. On one occasion, he was handcuffed when three men entered his cell wearing black masks. 'That day I ceased really knowing I was alive. One stood on each of my shoulders and a third punched me in the stomach. It seemed to go on for hours. I was meant to stand, but I was in so much pain I'd fall to my knees. They'd pull me back up and hit me again. They'd kick me in the thighs as I got up. I could see the hands that were hitting me... like the hands of someone who'd worked as a mechanic or chopped with an axe.'
Later he was confronted with details of his London life - such as the name of his kickboxing teacher - and met a Moroccan calling himself Marwan, who ordered him to be hung by his wrists. 'They hit me in the chest, the stomach, and they knocked my feet from under me. I have a shoulder pain to this day from the wrenching as my arms were almost pulled out of their sockets.'
Another time, he told Stafford Smith: 'They took a scalpel to my right chest. It was only a small cut. Then they cut my left chest. One of them took my penis in his hand and began to make cuts. He did it once, and they stood still for maybe a minute watching. I was in agony, crying, trying desperately to suppress myself, but I was screaming... They must have done this 20 to 30 times in maybe two hours. There was blood all over.'
In September he was taken to Guantanamo Bay where he has been charged with involvement in al-Qaeda plots and faces trial there by military commission. Stafford Smith said: 'I am unaware of any evidence against him other than that extracted under torture.'
The Foreign Office, the Moroccan Embassy and the CIA refused to comment yesterday.
~~
The master minds behind the terrorism are the fascists and mafia-types within the security services of certain western and pro-western countries. Their aim is to keep certain elites in power.
Al Qaeda is Al CIA-da.
The media works for the CIA
Operation Gladio
Fake terror in Algeria; the US military in Algeria; oil in Algeria.
The use of the Muslim Brotherhood by MI6 and the CIA in Egypt, Syria and Iran
MI6 and the bombing of Rainbow Warrior
http://www.politicos.co.uk/item.jsp?ID=5388Amazon.com: 9/11 Revealed : The Unanswered Questions: Books ...
Security services reportedly involved in carrying out bombings in Turkey
Turkey, terror bombs, the CIA and Mossad
Updated - Jordanian security forces evacuated Israelis from hotel before the bombing - according to Haaretz.
Schoolgirls beheaded by ninjas - Updated
Bali bomb 'mastermind' al-Farouq allowed to escape?
Lord Fraser: my Lockerbie trial doubts
Christian gangsters, the American-trained military and terror
German TV exposes CIA, Mossad links to 1986 Berlin disco bombinghttp://www.wsws.org/news/1998/aug1998/bomb1-a27.shtml
Police chief- Lockerbie evidence was faked
Bush, Bin Laden, Drugs....
Tony Blair, bin Laden, Carlyle Group, Halliburton.
David Lange says US threatened to kill him.
LOCKERBIE BOMB - LONDON BOMBS
Lockerbie Bomb and Ecuador and New Zealand
THE BALI BOMB AND THE MILITARY
The police and the Madrid Bombs
9 11
9 11
9 11 Revealed - The Daily Mail
Egypt - Operation Suzannah, John Darling, Sharm el-Sheikh
~~
Explosions: Hemel Hempstead, Flixborough, Chernobyl
Large explosions at fuel depot north of London
11 December 2005: A series of explosions and a massive fire erupted at a fuel depot north of London before dawn on 11 December and sent a large column of black smoke into the sky, witnesses said.
"There was an explosion in the vicinity of Buncefield depot at about 6:04 a.m. British time, a Hertfordshire police spokeswoman said.
The Buncefield oil depot supplies petrol and fuel oils for a large part of southeast England. Oil is brought to the depot, near the town of Hemel Hempstead, in an underground pipeline from tankers unloading on Britain's east coast.
Several other witnesses reported a series of explosions.
~~
1974 Flixborough UK.
The Flixborough disaster was an explosion at a chemical plant next to Flixborough near Scunthorpe, North Lincolnshire, in the UK, on 1 June 1974. 28 people were killed.
The chemical plant was owned by Nypro.
Two months before the explosion, a leak was discovered in a reactor. A temporary pipe was installed to bypass the faulty reactor. This allowed continued operation of the plant while repairs were made.
The temporary pipe broke. The bypass had been designed by engineers who were not experienced in high-pressure pipework. The bypass was inadequately tested. The bypass was mounted on temporary scaffolding poles that allowed the pipe to twist under pressure.
~
In 1986 the World's worst nuclear power accident occurred at Chernobyl in the Ukraine. The Chernobyl nuclear power plant had 4 reactors and whilst testing reactor number 4 numerous safety procedures were disregarded.
Scottish farms still contaminated by Chernobyl fallout - [Sunday ...
NEARLY 20 years after the Chernobyl reactor in Ukraine exploded and showered Europe with radioactivity, farms in Scotland are still paying the price.
Eleven farms covering 11,300 hectares in Ayrshire and the central belt are still so contaminated by the accident that their sheep are considered unsafe to eat.
The concentrations of caesium-137 from Chernobyl in the animals exceed the safety limit of 1000 becquerels of radioactivity per kilogram. Farmers have to mark radioactive sheep with indelible paint, and can’t have them slaughtered for food until they fall below the limit.
The revelation came in response to questions asked in the Scottish parliament by the Scottish National Party chairman, Bruce Crawford MSP. “After all these years, Scotland is still suffering the after-effects of Chernobyl,” he told the Sunday Herald.
“In these circumstances it is utterly ludicrous that the Blair government seems intent on foisting a new generation of nuclear power stations on this country. We must learn the lessons of last century and must not repeat past mistakes.
“No matter how much technology might have improved, radioactive waste is still produced, leaving a deadly inheritance for hundreds of thousands of years,” he said.
~~
11 December 2005: A series of explosions and a massive fire erupted at a fuel depot north of London before dawn on 11 December and sent a large column of black smoke into the sky, witnesses said.
"There was an explosion in the vicinity of Buncefield depot at about 6:04 a.m. British time, a Hertfordshire police spokeswoman said.
The Buncefield oil depot supplies petrol and fuel oils for a large part of southeast England. Oil is brought to the depot, near the town of Hemel Hempstead, in an underground pipeline from tankers unloading on Britain's east coast.
Several other witnesses reported a series of explosions.
~~
1974 Flixborough UK.
The Flixborough disaster was an explosion at a chemical plant next to Flixborough near Scunthorpe, North Lincolnshire, in the UK, on 1 June 1974. 28 people were killed.
The chemical plant was owned by Nypro.
Two months before the explosion, a leak was discovered in a reactor. A temporary pipe was installed to bypass the faulty reactor. This allowed continued operation of the plant while repairs were made.
The temporary pipe broke. The bypass had been designed by engineers who were not experienced in high-pressure pipework. The bypass was inadequately tested. The bypass was mounted on temporary scaffolding poles that allowed the pipe to twist under pressure.
~
In 1986 the World's worst nuclear power accident occurred at Chernobyl in the Ukraine. The Chernobyl nuclear power plant had 4 reactors and whilst testing reactor number 4 numerous safety procedures were disregarded.
Scottish farms still contaminated by Chernobyl fallout - [Sunday ...
NEARLY 20 years after the Chernobyl reactor in Ukraine exploded and showered Europe with radioactivity, farms in Scotland are still paying the price.
Eleven farms covering 11,300 hectares in Ayrshire and the central belt are still so contaminated by the accident that their sheep are considered unsafe to eat.
The concentrations of caesium-137 from Chernobyl in the animals exceed the safety limit of 1000 becquerels of radioactivity per kilogram. Farmers have to mark radioactive sheep with indelible paint, and can’t have them slaughtered for food until they fall below the limit.
The revelation came in response to questions asked in the Scottish parliament by the Scottish National Party chairman, Bruce Crawford MSP. “After all these years, Scotland is still suffering the after-effects of Chernobyl,” he told the Sunday Herald.
“In these circumstances it is utterly ludicrous that the Blair government seems intent on foisting a new generation of nuclear power stations on this country. We must learn the lessons of last century and must not repeat past mistakes.
“No matter how much technology might have improved, radioactive waste is still produced, leaving a deadly inheritance for hundreds of thousands of years,” he said.
~~
Friday, December 09, 2005
Torture in the United Kingdom
~
CIA torture technique, as referred to in 'a classified CIA Inspector General's report':
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Investigation/story?id=1322866&page=1
Water Boarding: The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner's face and water is poured over him.
Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt.
"The person believes they are being killed, and as such, it really amounts to a mock execution, which is illegal under international law," said John Sifton of Human Rights Watch.
~~
In the United Kingdom, the number of scientific experiments on animals rose by 63,000 last year to just over 2.85m, according to data released by the Home Office yesterday. http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,3605,1663418,00.html
~~
From The Guardian 8 May 2004, http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1212197,00.html
The sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison was not an invention of maverick guards, but part of a system of ill-treatment and degradation used by special forces soldiers...
One former British special forces officer ... said British and US military intelligence soldiers were trained in these techniques, which were taught at the joint services interrogation centre in Ashford, Kent, now transferred to the former US base at Chicksands.
~~~
CIA torture technique, as referred to in 'a classified CIA Inspector General's report':
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Investigation/story?id=1322866&page=1
Water Boarding: The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner's face and water is poured over him.
Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt.
"The person believes they are being killed, and as such, it really amounts to a mock execution, which is illegal under international law," said John Sifton of Human Rights Watch.
~~
In the United Kingdom, the number of scientific experiments on animals rose by 63,000 last year to just over 2.85m, according to data released by the Home Office yesterday. http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,3605,1663418,00.html
~~
From The Guardian 8 May 2004, http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1212197,00.html
The sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison was not an invention of maverick guards, but part of a system of ill-treatment and degradation used by special forces soldiers...
One former British special forces officer ... said British and US military intelligence soldiers were trained in these techniques, which were taught at the joint services interrogation centre in Ashford, Kent, now transferred to the former US base at Chicksands.
~~~
Jewish Godfather Boris Berezovsky and the failed revolution in Ukraine
BBC2 has a series on Russian Godfathers which began on 8 December 2005. The first programme told us about Boris Berezovsky pouring millions into the orange revolution in the Ukraine.
From an article in http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v17/v17n6p13_Michaels.html
Most Russians have suffered terribly during the Yeltsin years. According to Harvard University scholar Graham Allison, who is also a former US assistant Secretary of Defense, ordinary Russians have experienced, on average, a 75 percent plunge in living standards since 1991 -- almost twice the decline in Americans' income during the Great Depression of the 1930s. But in the midst of this widespread economic misery, a small minority has grown fabulously wealthy since the end of the Soviet era.
Although Jews make up no more than three or four percent of Russia's population, they wield enormous economic and political power in that vast and troubled country. "At least half of the powerful 'oligarchs' who control a significant percentage of the economy are Jewish," the Los Angeles Times has cautiously noted. (See also: D. Michaels, "Capitalism in the New Russia," May-June 1997 Journal, pp. 21-27.)
Almost certainly the most important of the "oligarchs" is Boris A. Berezovsky
From the Scotsman review of the BBC2 programme on Berezovsky http://news.scotsman.com/features.cfm?id=2374152005
BORIS Berezovsky became a billionaire in Yeltsin's chaotic Russia (shot of mob waving little McDonald's flags). He invited ordinary folk to invest in a privatised car factory he was buying. He got his factory, they allegedly got nothing back in return.
That, according to Russian Godfathers, was how he got started. He ended up in Yeltsin's cabinet but got the heave when Putin took over. Accused of corruption, he sought asylum in Britain and, here, butlers bring him beverage as he sits plotting Putin's downfall. In the home counties, he owns big posh hooses, guarded by Foreign Legion veterans.
He also owns Russia's equivalent of the *Financial Times, which is edited by a man in a black polo-neck. He told a man in a sweatshirt, who edits Russia's main opposition paper, that he'd only been behind protests in Ukraine "in spirit". But, in secret, he'd poured material millions into the opposition...
Boris stirred things up in Latvia by calling a press conference to denounce Putin. The Russians went doolally and threatened to cut off Latvia's energy supplies, which plunged the government into chaos. Another day another dollar for Boris. He left in his private jet.
For a few dollars more, he soon returned, this time with a new software business partner: Neil Bush, brother of George.
~
According to http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=1380456
Yushchenko campaigned partly on a promise to pull Ukraine's troops out of the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq, but the Bush administration quickly adopted him as a democratic darling. The Ukrainian leader visited the White House in April.
Many Ukrainians now express disappointment at their nation's failure to improve living standards and battle corruption since the dramatic days of the street protests.
There have been no demonstrable improvements in poverty rates, and Yushchenko's approval ratings have plunged.
~~~
From an article in http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v17/v17n6p13_Michaels.html
Most Russians have suffered terribly during the Yeltsin years. According to Harvard University scholar Graham Allison, who is also a former US assistant Secretary of Defense, ordinary Russians have experienced, on average, a 75 percent plunge in living standards since 1991 -- almost twice the decline in Americans' income during the Great Depression of the 1930s. But in the midst of this widespread economic misery, a small minority has grown fabulously wealthy since the end of the Soviet era.
Although Jews make up no more than three or four percent of Russia's population, they wield enormous economic and political power in that vast and troubled country. "At least half of the powerful 'oligarchs' who control a significant percentage of the economy are Jewish," the Los Angeles Times has cautiously noted. (See also: D. Michaels, "Capitalism in the New Russia," May-June 1997 Journal, pp. 21-27.)
Almost certainly the most important of the "oligarchs" is Boris A. Berezovsky
From the Scotsman review of the BBC2 programme on Berezovsky http://news.scotsman.com/features.cfm?id=2374152005
BORIS Berezovsky became a billionaire in Yeltsin's chaotic Russia (shot of mob waving little McDonald's flags). He invited ordinary folk to invest in a privatised car factory he was buying. He got his factory, they allegedly got nothing back in return.
That, according to Russian Godfathers, was how he got started. He ended up in Yeltsin's cabinet but got the heave when Putin took over. Accused of corruption, he sought asylum in Britain and, here, butlers bring him beverage as he sits plotting Putin's downfall. In the home counties, he owns big posh hooses, guarded by Foreign Legion veterans.
He also owns Russia's equivalent of the *Financial Times, which is edited by a man in a black polo-neck. He told a man in a sweatshirt, who edits Russia's main opposition paper, that he'd only been behind protests in Ukraine "in spirit". But, in secret, he'd poured material millions into the opposition...
Boris stirred things up in Latvia by calling a press conference to denounce Putin. The Russians went doolally and threatened to cut off Latvia's energy supplies, which plunged the government into chaos. Another day another dollar for Boris. He left in his private jet.
For a few dollars more, he soon returned, this time with a new software business partner: Neil Bush, brother of George.
~
According to http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=1380456
Yushchenko campaigned partly on a promise to pull Ukraine's troops out of the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq, but the Bush administration quickly adopted him as a democratic darling. The Ukrainian leader visited the White House in April.
Many Ukrainians now express disappointment at their nation's failure to improve living standards and battle corruption since the dramatic days of the street protests.
There have been no demonstrable improvements in poverty rates, and Yushchenko's approval ratings have plunged.
~~~
Thursday, December 08, 2005
Stormont spy ring a concoction of the police?
Stormont spy case collapses... The following is taken from the blog by Slugger O'Toole, Ireland
http://www.sluggerotoole.com/index.php/weblog/comments/4268/
Thursday, December 08, 2005
Stormont spy case collapses...
Bad news for the PSNI. The case against the so-called Stormont spy ring, the impetus for the collapse of the local devolved Assembly, has itself collapsed in court. See the BBC News site for the latest details.
Mick Fealty
~
How strange!! All the Unionist furore all the psni statements and private briefing to damage these mens creditibility all for nothing.
And the TV directed raid by heavily armed PSNI men and their 20-30 landrovers, all for what.
How can anyone expect Nationalists to truely believe that the PSNI works in an impartial fashion.
Maybe now the Psni should listen to one of the few within the Nationalist community who gaves credence to this force, Alastair McDonnell who recently stated that the Psni was starting to lose the support from the Nationalist quarter which supports it.
Political policing, it hasn`t gone away you know.
Now remind me who robbed the Northern Bank!!!!!
Posted by Eloot O` Regguls on Dec 08, 2005 @ 12:43 PM
~~
Ahh, yes,...that would be the good ol’ PSNI that we are all to put our trust in.
So, there was no Stormont spy ring.
It was all a concoction of the police and media?
My ,my, whoever would have thunk it? Should we ask for an apology that they have been engaged in blatant political policing? Should all those unionist politicians and others who so happily bleated about republican guilt come out now and apologise? Will they now admit that the basis of them pulling out of Stormont was fallacious?
The PSNI tried to save David Trimble’s bacon. It’s as simple as that. It didn’t work. We now have had years of political stagnation as a result as well as the DUP crowned as the largest unionist party. So, all in all, I’d say the raid was a success… Public relations as policing, the 6 county way…
Are we still to believe that the PSNI has reformed? This just adds more weight to the argument that policing and justice powers be transferred immediately to local control.
I see also that this story is tucked away from public view...a bit different from the media circus that appeared at Stormont on the day. Funny that…
seabhac siulach on Dec 08, 2005 @ 12:46 PM
~~~
After several years of “over-hype” by the media regarding the “acheivements” of the Chief Constable, it will be interesting to see how this farce will re-define media and public perceptions of Hugh Orde. Let’s not forget it was Orde who admitted afterwards that the public ‘storming’ of Stormont by the PSNI during their searches had been a mistake. Well that is but small fry compared to the collapse of this entire enquiry. This is an enquiry that brought down a government. Somebody will have to pay for this.
Posted by macswiney on Dec 08, 2005 @ 02:08 PM
~~~
http://www.sluggerotoole.com/index.php/weblog/comments/4268/
Thursday, December 08, 2005
Stormont spy case collapses...
Bad news for the PSNI. The case against the so-called Stormont spy ring, the impetus for the collapse of the local devolved Assembly, has itself collapsed in court. See the BBC News site for the latest details.
Mick Fealty
~
How strange!! All the Unionist furore all the psni statements and private briefing to damage these mens creditibility all for nothing.
And the TV directed raid by heavily armed PSNI men and their 20-30 landrovers, all for what.
How can anyone expect Nationalists to truely believe that the PSNI works in an impartial fashion.
Maybe now the Psni should listen to one of the few within the Nationalist community who gaves credence to this force, Alastair McDonnell who recently stated that the Psni was starting to lose the support from the Nationalist quarter which supports it.
Political policing, it hasn`t gone away you know.
Now remind me who robbed the Northern Bank!!!!!
Posted by Eloot O` Regguls on Dec 08, 2005 @ 12:43 PM
~~
Ahh, yes,...that would be the good ol’ PSNI that we are all to put our trust in.
So, there was no Stormont spy ring.
It was all a concoction of the police and media?
My ,my, whoever would have thunk it? Should we ask for an apology that they have been engaged in blatant political policing? Should all those unionist politicians and others who so happily bleated about republican guilt come out now and apologise? Will they now admit that the basis of them pulling out of Stormont was fallacious?
The PSNI tried to save David Trimble’s bacon. It’s as simple as that. It didn’t work. We now have had years of political stagnation as a result as well as the DUP crowned as the largest unionist party. So, all in all, I’d say the raid was a success… Public relations as policing, the 6 county way…
Are we still to believe that the PSNI has reformed? This just adds more weight to the argument that policing and justice powers be transferred immediately to local control.
I see also that this story is tucked away from public view...a bit different from the media circus that appeared at Stormont on the day. Funny that…
seabhac siulach on Dec 08, 2005 @ 12:46 PM
~~~
After several years of “over-hype” by the media regarding the “acheivements” of the Chief Constable, it will be interesting to see how this farce will re-define media and public perceptions of Hugh Orde. Let’s not forget it was Orde who admitted afterwards that the public ‘storming’ of Stormont by the PSNI during their searches had been a mistake. Well that is but small fry compared to the collapse of this entire enquiry. This is an enquiry that brought down a government. Somebody will have to pay for this.
Posted by macswiney on Dec 08, 2005 @ 02:08 PM
~~~
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
American wars and UK job opportunities?
According to Private Eye (UK), August 2005:
Sir Robert Walmsley, former head of UK defence procurement, procured himself a job as director of US arms firm the EDO Corporation.
Admiral lord Boyce, the chief of the UK defence staff who retired in 2003, became an adviser to the American Computer Sciences Corporation in 2004. Boyce told Private Eye that he advised CSC on its bid for a £6 billion defence contract.
~~
Sir Robert Walmsley, former head of UK defence procurement, procured himself a job as director of US arms firm the EDO Corporation.
Admiral lord Boyce, the chief of the UK defence staff who retired in 2003, became an adviser to the American Computer Sciences Corporation in 2004. Boyce told Private Eye that he advised CSC on its bid for a £6 billion defence contract.
~~
CIA, Wilkes, Cunningham, Abramoff, cocaine, Iran-Contra, Clinton, Bush, Money Laundering....
The following is taken from http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/
CUNNINGHAM SCANDAL FIGURE LINKED TO IRAN CONTRA COCAINE TRAFFICKING
San Diego businessman Brent Wilkes, a key figure in the Randy “Duke” Cunningham bribery scandal—as well as the Justice Department investigation of Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff—worked in Honduras during the 1980’s for a company accused by federal prosecutors of deep involvement in cocaine trafficking.
Over the weekend the San Diego Union-Tribune, Cunningham’s hometown paper, reported that Brent Wilkes has a two decade long history of close links with the CIA. Posted Dec 7, 2005 07:53 AM PSTCategory: POLITICS/CORRUPTION
The Iran-Contra scandal shaped current American politics. Run out of the Reagan/Bush White House, the US end of the pipeline was originally in Mena, Arkansas, protected by then governor Bill Clinton. After Eugene Hassenfuss' plane went down and the lid was ripped off the scandal, Bush Sr. had to leave the White House after just one term, but arranged for Governor Clinton to succeed him in order to keep the lid on the really darker parts of the scandal, which was government sanctioned drug running and money laundering/growing using the S&L debacle.
Here is how the scam worked. First President Bush (Sr) raised the insurable deposit limit from $10,000 to $100,000 for S&Ls. Cash from CIA cocaine smuggling was mixed with the cash proceeds from legitimate cash based businesses such as convenience stores, multi-screen cinemas, office supply stores, etc. then after taxes were paid, brokered into individual accounts, all under $100,000, in a targeted S&L.
A phony business front would be set up by the CIA drug smugglers, and would approach the S&L for a loan, using overvalued (flipped) real estate as collateral. Since proceeds from a loan are non-taxable, the money could be sent anywhere in the world, laundered, ready to use for anything. The phony business front would collapse, and the S&L would find itself holding land that was worth far less than had been loaned on it, and collapse.
BUT, the CIA operatives were still on the books for their original deposit, even though they had already "borrowed" it out of the S&L. So, Bush (Sr.) set up the Resolution Trust Company that went around with a checkbook writing checks to the original depositors; again money that was clean and could be spent anywhere.
This little scan would not only launder the CIA's drug money, but almost double it at the same time, all inside the US, with no risk, and all on the backs of the US Taxpayers.
Sounds pretty wild, right? And here is what is wilder. Its happening again. We just got our of a round of land flipping that artificially inflated land prices, and Bloomberg is already reporting that the bubble is starting to burst. And here we have one of the original Iran-Contra CIA operatives, clearly involved in illegal activity, and running a string of phony PO Box phony business fronts.
~~
CUNNINGHAM SCANDAL FIGURE LINKED TO IRAN CONTRA COCAINE TRAFFICKING
San Diego businessman Brent Wilkes, a key figure in the Randy “Duke” Cunningham bribery scandal—as well as the Justice Department investigation of Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff—worked in Honduras during the 1980’s for a company accused by federal prosecutors of deep involvement in cocaine trafficking.
Over the weekend the San Diego Union-Tribune, Cunningham’s hometown paper, reported that Brent Wilkes has a two decade long history of close links with the CIA. Posted Dec 7, 2005 07:53 AM PSTCategory: POLITICS/CORRUPTION
The Iran-Contra scandal shaped current American politics. Run out of the Reagan/Bush White House, the US end of the pipeline was originally in Mena, Arkansas, protected by then governor Bill Clinton. After Eugene Hassenfuss' plane went down and the lid was ripped off the scandal, Bush Sr. had to leave the White House after just one term, but arranged for Governor Clinton to succeed him in order to keep the lid on the really darker parts of the scandal, which was government sanctioned drug running and money laundering/growing using the S&L debacle.
Here is how the scam worked. First President Bush (Sr) raised the insurable deposit limit from $10,000 to $100,000 for S&Ls. Cash from CIA cocaine smuggling was mixed with the cash proceeds from legitimate cash based businesses such as convenience stores, multi-screen cinemas, office supply stores, etc. then after taxes were paid, brokered into individual accounts, all under $100,000, in a targeted S&L.
A phony business front would be set up by the CIA drug smugglers, and would approach the S&L for a loan, using overvalued (flipped) real estate as collateral. Since proceeds from a loan are non-taxable, the money could be sent anywhere in the world, laundered, ready to use for anything. The phony business front would collapse, and the S&L would find itself holding land that was worth far less than had been loaned on it, and collapse.
BUT, the CIA operatives were still on the books for their original deposit, even though they had already "borrowed" it out of the S&L. So, Bush (Sr.) set up the Resolution Trust Company that went around with a checkbook writing checks to the original depositors; again money that was clean and could be spent anywhere.
This little scan would not only launder the CIA's drug money, but almost double it at the same time, all inside the US, with no risk, and all on the backs of the US Taxpayers.
Sounds pretty wild, right? And here is what is wilder. Its happening again. We just got our of a round of land flipping that artificially inflated land prices, and Bloomberg is already reporting that the bubble is starting to burst. And here we have one of the original Iran-Contra CIA operatives, clearly involved in illegal activity, and running a string of phony PO Box phony business fronts.
~~
Monday, December 05, 2005
Severe poverty in the UK - no improvement in recent years.
Tony Blair was allegedly a right wing agent of the security services whose job was to spy on the Labour party. The Truth Seeker - Tony Blair – Former MI5 Informant?
David Cameron's policy coordinator may be Oliver Letwin, who has worked for the Rothschilds.
New Statesman: Oliver Letwin, the shadow chancellor, cannot expect ...
Neither is likely to help the one million British children living in dire poverty.
From The Daily Mail, 5th December 2005:
British children without 'hot meal or warmth' this winter
One in ten children in England, Scotland and Wales live in homes so poor they will go without a coat, a pair of shoes or even a hot meal this winter, a major children's charity has revealed.
Save the Children has found no real improvement in the number of children living in severe and long-term poverty since they reported in 2003 that up to a million were in dire need.
And unless urgent action is taken the government is on course to miss its target of ending child poverty by 2020, claims the report out today.
Families in severe long term poverty are getting by on about £132 a week sometimes for years on end, said the charity.
They are less likely to afford new clothes, replace worn out furniture, and eat meat or fish every other day, the report found.
The poorest families find it very difficult to save more than £8 a month and two-thirds of children in long-term poverty had parents who were unable to save anything in a year.
Save the Children Chief Executive Jasmine Whitbread said: "People find it difficult to accept there is poverty in Britain. But the reality is one in ten children are experiencing severe poverty - that means going without a winter coat, a pair of shoes or a hot meal and with little hope of doing well at school."
The report, Britain's Poorest Children Revisited, calls on the government to get an accurate picture of how many people need help by measuring severe poverty.
It needs to help young families take up work and escape the poverty trap by assisting with the cost of childcare and increasing Child Tax Credit for large families, says the report
The report also recommends the setting up of an independent minimum income commission by the end of 2010 to set a bottom threshold below which no family should fall.
~~
In parts of Britain, poverty can mean a father earning around £5 per hour.
But, poverty can also mean violent schools, violent streets, violent homes and violence on BBC TV.
Poverty can mean people being brainwashed and controlled by fear.
What is the answer? Never ever vote for the deluded fools, or the secret fascists, in either the New Labour Party or the Conservative Party.
~~
I wonder if it was Oliver Letwin who once said to me that it was a pity about the poor, but, there wasn't much one could do about them?
That was said to me by a Conservative Party candidate in Hampstead, London, some time in the 1980s.
~~
The Scots would be as rich as the Swiss if they became independent. But, so many of the Scots have sold their souls to New Labour.
~~
David Cameron's policy coordinator may be Oliver Letwin, who has worked for the Rothschilds.
New Statesman: Oliver Letwin, the shadow chancellor, cannot expect ...
Neither is likely to help the one million British children living in dire poverty.
From The Daily Mail, 5th December 2005:
British children without 'hot meal or warmth' this winter
One in ten children in England, Scotland and Wales live in homes so poor they will go without a coat, a pair of shoes or even a hot meal this winter, a major children's charity has revealed.
Save the Children has found no real improvement in the number of children living in severe and long-term poverty since they reported in 2003 that up to a million were in dire need.
And unless urgent action is taken the government is on course to miss its target of ending child poverty by 2020, claims the report out today.
Families in severe long term poverty are getting by on about £132 a week sometimes for years on end, said the charity.
They are less likely to afford new clothes, replace worn out furniture, and eat meat or fish every other day, the report found.
The poorest families find it very difficult to save more than £8 a month and two-thirds of children in long-term poverty had parents who were unable to save anything in a year.
Save the Children Chief Executive Jasmine Whitbread said: "People find it difficult to accept there is poverty in Britain. But the reality is one in ten children are experiencing severe poverty - that means going without a winter coat, a pair of shoes or a hot meal and with little hope of doing well at school."
The report, Britain's Poorest Children Revisited, calls on the government to get an accurate picture of how many people need help by measuring severe poverty.
It needs to help young families take up work and escape the poverty trap by assisting with the cost of childcare and increasing Child Tax Credit for large families, says the report
The report also recommends the setting up of an independent minimum income commission by the end of 2010 to set a bottom threshold below which no family should fall.
~~
In parts of Britain, poverty can mean a father earning around £5 per hour.
But, poverty can also mean violent schools, violent streets, violent homes and violence on BBC TV.
Poverty can mean people being brainwashed and controlled by fear.
What is the answer? Never ever vote for the deluded fools, or the secret fascists, in either the New Labour Party or the Conservative Party.
~~
I wonder if it was Oliver Letwin who once said to me that it was a pity about the poor, but, there wasn't much one could do about them?
That was said to me by a Conservative Party candidate in Hampstead, London, some time in the 1980s.
~~
The Scots would be as rich as the Swiss if they became independent. But, so many of the Scots have sold their souls to New Labour.
~~
Israelis killed Zia, suspects ex-US ambassador
Israelis killed Zia, suspects ex-US ambassador
Taken from The Daily Times Monitor, 3 December 2005:
The Israeli secret agency Mossad most probably killed Gen Zia ul Haq, suspects John Gunther Dean, who was the American ambassador to India in 1988, according to an article in the latest issue of World Policy Journal by Barbara Crossette, who was the South Asia Bureau Chief of the New York Times from 1988 to 1991.
When Mr Dean expressed his views to the State Department at the time and insisted on a thorough investigation of the Israeli-Indian axis, he was accused of mental imbalance and relieved of his duties.
Dean was a distinguished diplomat who has garnered more ambassadorships than most envoys. He had strong opinions and years of valuable experience. As an independent thinker, he often had problems being a good “diplomat”.
Dean believes that the Israelis wanted to stop Pakistan’s military from making nuclear weapons. They had attacked Iraq’s nuclear facilities at Osirak in 1981 and believed Gen Zia when he declared in 1987 that Pakistan was a “screwdriver’s turn away from the bomb”.
Dean, now 80, has remained silent for nearly 20 years but is now collecting his papers and is ready to share his thoughts.
He was declared mentally unfit for demanding an investigation into the crash. He lost his medical clearance and security clearance because of his views and was forced to seek retirement in 1988.
After he made the charge following the air crash in which the then US ambassador to Pakistan, Arnie Raphel was also killed, he was sent to Switzerland to “rest” for six weeks and only then allowed to return to New Delhi to pack his bags and quit.
He is now opening the case because he wants to clear the charge of “mental imbalance” and ask the questions that have long remained buried about the aircrash that killed Gen Zia.
Dean says that when he was ambassador to India, various pro-Israel Congressmen and other US policy makers constantly asked him why he wasn’t cooperating with the Israelis to thwart Pakistan’s nuclear programme and demonise Pakistan. He says he was asked to persuade the Indians to be more pro-Israel too.
He is on record as having alleged that the Israelis tried to kill him in 1980 when he was US ambassador to the Lebanon because he disagreed with Israeli policies.
He was accused of being “pro-Palestinian” in the Israeli Knesset (parliament).
The US did not allow the FBI or any other agency to carry out a full-fledged investigation into the crash.
~~
Taken from The Daily Times Monitor, 3 December 2005:
The Israeli secret agency Mossad most probably killed Gen Zia ul Haq, suspects John Gunther Dean, who was the American ambassador to India in 1988, according to an article in the latest issue of World Policy Journal by Barbara Crossette, who was the South Asia Bureau Chief of the New York Times from 1988 to 1991.
When Mr Dean expressed his views to the State Department at the time and insisted on a thorough investigation of the Israeli-Indian axis, he was accused of mental imbalance and relieved of his duties.
Dean was a distinguished diplomat who has garnered more ambassadorships than most envoys. He had strong opinions and years of valuable experience. As an independent thinker, he often had problems being a good “diplomat”.
Dean believes that the Israelis wanted to stop Pakistan’s military from making nuclear weapons. They had attacked Iraq’s nuclear facilities at Osirak in 1981 and believed Gen Zia when he declared in 1987 that Pakistan was a “screwdriver’s turn away from the bomb”.
Dean, now 80, has remained silent for nearly 20 years but is now collecting his papers and is ready to share his thoughts.
He was declared mentally unfit for demanding an investigation into the crash. He lost his medical clearance and security clearance because of his views and was forced to seek retirement in 1988.
After he made the charge following the air crash in which the then US ambassador to Pakistan, Arnie Raphel was also killed, he was sent to Switzerland to “rest” for six weeks and only then allowed to return to New Delhi to pack his bags and quit.
He is now opening the case because he wants to clear the charge of “mental imbalance” and ask the questions that have long remained buried about the aircrash that killed Gen Zia.
Dean says that when he was ambassador to India, various pro-Israel Congressmen and other US policy makers constantly asked him why he wasn’t cooperating with the Israelis to thwart Pakistan’s nuclear programme and demonise Pakistan. He says he was asked to persuade the Indians to be more pro-Israel too.
He is on record as having alleged that the Israelis tried to kill him in 1980 when he was US ambassador to the Lebanon because he disagreed with Israeli policies.
He was accused of being “pro-Palestinian” in the Israeli Knesset (parliament).
The US did not allow the FBI or any other agency to carry out a full-fledged investigation into the crash.
~~
Sunday, December 04, 2005
David Brooks, flawed body armour and a bat Mitzvah
DAVID BROOKS
Tycoon spends £6m on daughter's party David Brooks, the New York body armour tycoon has spent £6 million on his 12-year-old daughter's coming-of-age party, flying in Tom Petty, Aerosmith and the rapper 50 Cent for the evening.
50 Cent, the War Profiteer and the $10 million Bat Mitzvah
According to United for a Fair Economy, Brooks and Co. have made a tidy profit outfitting our nation’s fighting men and women in body armor that allegedly can’t take a hit from a 9mm round.
Taken from http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/
In 1999, Point Blank was losing millions for its parent company DHB Industries. Things didn't get much better until the events of 9/11 sent the United States to war.
In 2001 and 2002 the lucrative DOD contracts provided to the Florida-based company boosted its profits to $10.1 million and $16 million respectively on a combined $228.3 million in revenue, according to industry sources. Soon after the company received another $9.2 million contract in 2002 to produce body armor for Army engineers charged with disposing of landmines a labor dispute revealed that company was allegedly putting profits before quality.
In all, the Marine Corps accepted about 19,000 Interceptor outer tactical vests from Point Blank Body Armor Inc. that failed government tests due to “multiple complete penetrations” of 9mm pistol rounds, failing scores on other ballistic or quality-assurance tests, or a combination of the two.
For workers at Point Blank Body Armor’s unionized factory here, there is not much controversy surrounding the sale of what the U.S. military has labeled as faulty protective equipment. Most oppose what they describe as company profiteering that has resulted in production of thousands of bulletproof vests sent to GIs in Iraq and Afghanistan that were recalled earlier this year. The U.S. Marines returned about 5,000 of these vests after the media reported they had failed government tests.Posted Dec 4, 2005 07:24 AM PST
The Pentagon’s body armor scandal
http://www.navyseals.com/community/articles/article.cfm?id=8278
http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-832873.php
~~
Tycoon spends £6m on daughter's party David Brooks, the New York body armour tycoon has spent £6 million on his 12-year-old daughter's coming-of-age party, flying in Tom Petty, Aerosmith and the rapper 50 Cent for the evening.
50 Cent, the War Profiteer and the $10 million Bat Mitzvah
According to United for a Fair Economy, Brooks and Co. have made a tidy profit outfitting our nation’s fighting men and women in body armor that allegedly can’t take a hit from a 9mm round.
Taken from http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/
In 1999, Point Blank was losing millions for its parent company DHB Industries. Things didn't get much better until the events of 9/11 sent the United States to war.
In 2001 and 2002 the lucrative DOD contracts provided to the Florida-based company boosted its profits to $10.1 million and $16 million respectively on a combined $228.3 million in revenue, according to industry sources. Soon after the company received another $9.2 million contract in 2002 to produce body armor for Army engineers charged with disposing of landmines a labor dispute revealed that company was allegedly putting profits before quality.
In all, the Marine Corps accepted about 19,000 Interceptor outer tactical vests from Point Blank Body Armor Inc. that failed government tests due to “multiple complete penetrations” of 9mm pistol rounds, failing scores on other ballistic or quality-assurance tests, or a combination of the two.
For workers at Point Blank Body Armor’s unionized factory here, there is not much controversy surrounding the sale of what the U.S. military has labeled as faulty protective equipment. Most oppose what they describe as company profiteering that has resulted in production of thousands of bulletproof vests sent to GIs in Iraq and Afghanistan that were recalled earlier this year. The U.S. Marines returned about 5,000 of these vests after the media reported they had failed government tests.Posted Dec 4, 2005 07:24 AM PST
The Pentagon’s body armor scandal
http://www.navyseals.com/community/articles/article.cfm?id=8278
http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-832873.php
~~
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