A smug New York Times, the virulent enemy of Trump and of the deplorable people who elected him, clucked its patronizing approval of his speech to the leaders of over 50 Muslim-majority countries – pointedly excluding Iran and Syria – as a repudiation of his earlier views:

«President Trump on Sunday pivoted away from his strident assessment of Islam as a religion of hatred as he sought to redefine US leadership in the Mideast and rally the Muslim world to join him in a renewed campaign against extremism…

«The president’s overall tone in Saudi Arabia was a far cry from his incendiary language on the campaign trail last year, when he said that ‘Islam hates us’ and called for a ‘total and complete shutdown’ of Muslims entering the United States.

«Throughout his visit here, a less volatile president emerged, disciplined and on message in a way he is often not at home».

The centerpiece of the Saudi leg of Trump’s maiden foreign voyage as president was the joint U.S.-Saudi inauguration of a «Global Center for Combating Extremist Ideology», to be located in Riyadh. The selection of venue and partner is nothing less than surreal. Where better to plant a center devoted to combating violent Islamic ideology than in the capital of the country where that very ideology is officially established by the state?

A «European Center for Combating Genocidal Ideology» just as well might have been set up in 1942 in Berlin. Or Zagreb. Just think how much work it would have had!

It’s possible there’s simply been a misunderstanding. Perhaps Trump’s Saudi hosts thought he meant a center for promoting extremist ideology. No doubt it will all be cleared up soon.

It hardly needs to be detailed what Trump and his advisers are well aware of: that in terms of promoting, not combating, jihad ideology, Saudi Arabia is the global epicenter. The Islamic State, al-Qaeda and its many offshoots and affiliates (such as the Imam Shamil Battalion, which claimed «credit» for the April 2017 St. Petersburg Metro bombing, which western media ignore on lists of terror attacks since the victims were only Russians, not real human beings), al-Shabaab, Boko Haram, the Taliban, Abu Sayyaf – all profess Wahhabist doctrines care of the so-called «Kingdom». Tens if not hundreds of thousands of little boys in madrassas around the world, including in areas of Syria and Iraq controlled by the Islamic State, study their homicidal catechism from Saudi official textbooks. Funding and weaponry to these groups would dry up without benefactors from Saudi Arabia and Gulf states.

For the umpteenth time, our Wahhabist «allies» have promised an American president they will get serious about cracking down on supposedly unauthorized terror-funding by private parties. For the umpteenth time, an American president pretends to believe them.

In an inversion of reality, Trump assigned the blame for global terrorism explicitly on Iran and Syria – and implicitly on Russia – which are fighting against al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. He also announced over $100 billion in arms sales to the Saudis to counter Iran in places like Yemen, where the Iranians have no presence and little influence but where the Saudis are committing genocide in collaboration with al-Qaeda.

Turning a blind eye to the real sponsors of jihad in order to destroy countries targeted by Riyadh’s Wahhabists doesn’t only mean inflicting atrocities on those countries – it comes back to bite us here at home too. Consider the recent Manchester bombing that killed 22 people and wounded scores of others. As pointed out by Daniel McAdams of the Ron Paul Institute, it would not have happened if the Saudis, American, and British governments had not turned Libya and Syria into jihadist playpens for the likes of mass murderer Salman Abedi:

«According to the London Telegraph, Abedi, a son of Libyan immigrants living in a radicalized Muslim neighborhood in Manchester had returned to Libya several times after the overthrow of Muamar Gaddafi, most recently just weeks ago. After the US/UK and allied ‘liberation’ of Libya, all manner of previously outlawed and fiercely suppressed radical jihadist groups suddenly found they had free rein to operate in Libya. This is the Libya that Abedi returned to and where he likely prepared for his suicide attack on pop concert attendees. Before the US-led attack on Libya in 2011, there was no al-Qaeda, ISIS, or any other related terrorist organization operating (at least with impunity) on Libyan soil. 

«Gaddafi himself warned Europe in January 2011 that if they overthrew his government the result would be radical Islamist attacks on Europe, but European governments paid no heed to the warnings. Post-Gaddafi Libya became an incubator of Islamist terrorists and terrorism, including prime recruiting ground for extremists to fight jihad in Syria against the also-secular Bashar Assad. 

«In Salman Abedi we have the convergence of both these disastrous US/UK and allied interventions, however: it turns out that not only did Abedi make trips to Libya to radicalize and train for terror, but he also travelled to Syria to become one of the «Syria rebels» fighting on the same side as the US and UK to overthrow the Assad government. Was he perhaps even trained in a CIA program? We don't know, but it certainly is possible».

Britons should hold David Cameron guilty of the innocent blood staining Manchester. No less guilty are Nicolas Sarkozy and Barack Obama. Likewise Hillary Clinton of «We came, we saw, he died» infamy, who reportedly was the driving force for America’s role, without which regime change in Libya would not have occurred. Let that self-anointed champion of women and girls answer for Manchester.

When on the Last Day the books are opened and all accounts settled, Salman Abedi will have to face the judgment he escaped in this life. But add to that reckoning before the Dread Judge the names of those who helped the Saudis and their confederates do their dirty work.

Donald Trump needs to think long and hard before going further down the same path.

When a UK Prime Minister, such as the Conservative David Cameron, does the work of a foreign power, working for that foreign power and against UK’s democratic ideals, and also against the interests and values (such as equal-rights, and UK’s sovereign independence) which are held by the UK public, then that UK Prime Minister is perpetrating treason, whatever else it might also be called. This has happened, and yet no one pays attention to it: no one is even pointing out that it is treason. (Whether it is, in every sense of the word, we’ll get to, after the story here has been told, but that story must come first; only afterward can it be discussed.)

Following are highlights from the shocking and uncontested (though confusingly written) original Al Jazeera investigative news report published on January 8th, which had mentioned this treachery only in passing (but without calling it that). These excerpts will make clear the severity of what has actually been happening here — and of what is continuing to happen.

I shall add [in brackets] clarificatory adjectives etc., so as to help make instantly clear who is who, in this confusingly written story, and thus speed and ease a reader’s comprehension of the stunning narrative that’s being told here:

8 January 2017, Al Jazeera Investigative Unit

Israel apology after plot against UK politicians

Al Jazeera reveals discussions of Israeli diplomat and UK civil servant to ‘take down’ anti-settlement politicians.

The Israeli embassy has apologised to UK deputy foreign secretary [Conservative] Sir Alan Duncan for comments made by one of its staff members [Mr. Shai Masot] on plans “to take [him [Duncan]] down” due to his [Duncan’s] criticism of Israel’s settlement activity in the occupied [Palestinian] West Bank.

The comments, made by a senior political officer at the Israeli embassy [Mr.] Shai Masot, were secretly captured on film during a six-month undercover operation by Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit, which reveals plots by the Israeli diplomat [Masot] and a British civil servant [Duncan] to destroy the careers of senior politicians [whom Israel wanted to be downed].

In a conversation with Maria Strizzolo, who was then chief of staff to MP [Member of Parliament] Robert Halfon, the deputy chairman of the ruling Conservative Party, [Israel’s Mr.] Masot asked her [the Conservative Strizzolo] if he [Masot] could give her some names of MPs [whom] he [Masot] would suggest she “take down” [on behalf of Israel].

[See it at 2:14 in this video, where his actual phrase was “Can I give you some MPs that I would suggest you take down?”]

Masot named [recommended to Strizzolo] Duncan, who in 2014 said that while he fully supports Israel’s right to exist, he believes [Jewish] settlements on occupied Palestinian land represent an “ever-deepening stain on the face of the globe”. He [Duncan] also likened the situation in Hebron in the occupied West Bank to apartheid…

Strizzolo… revealed that she had a strategy of manipulation to ensure Israel remains at the top of the UK’s foreign policy agenda.

“If at least you can get a small group of MPs that you know you can always rely on, when there is something coming to parliament and you know you brief them, you say: ‘You don’t have to do anything, we are going to give you the speech, we are going to give you all the information, we [the office of MP Robert Halfon] are going to do everything for you’,” she said.

She also advised trying to infiltrate Prime Minister’s Questions, a weekly session in which the leader of the country answers questions from MPs. The debate is televised live.

“If they already have the question to table for PMQs [Prime Minister’s Questions], it’s harder to say: ‘No, no, no, I won’t do it’,” she said.

Strizzolo then boasted how her own efforts once made an immediate effect on the national debate. …

In 2014, she [had] persuaded MP Halfon to question the prime minister in public over three missing teenagers believed to have been kidnapped and murdered “to get a response from the government”, Strizzolo said.

Halfon took the request and called on former prime minister David Cameron to support the Israeli government. …

In response, Cameron promised that Britain would “stand by Israel”.

Cameron there was a pushover for Halfon, who clearly was an agent for Israel. But was this treason only by Halfon, and not also by his boss and fellow-Conservative, Cameron?

To say that Cameron, as the principal decision-maker, who was a pushover for a foreign power’s stooge — the traitor who was acting on behalf of a foreign power — wasn’t himself acting treasonously here, would be to say that, for example, there is no such thing as criminal negligence, which is a criminal liability for failure to have done due diligence in carrying out one’s duties to the public as the nation’s chief of state.

Cameron, not Halfon, was the actual decision-maker here, the responsible party in the matter: as Harry Truman had said of the U.S. Presidency, “The buck stops here.”

This is comparable to the Inspector General of the TARP bailout of the megabanks, Christy Goldsmith Romero, recommending (and the U.S. government ignoring):

A PROPOSAL TO BRING ACCOUNTABILITY TO THE “INSULATED CEO”

I propose that Congress remove the insulation around Wall Street CEOs and other high-level officials by requiring the CEO, CFO and certain other senior executives to sign an annual certification that they have conducted due diligence within their organization and can certify that that there is no criminal conduct or civil fraud in their organization.

But, in the case of a head-of-state — a nation’s CEO — the obligation to do due diligence and to take full responsibility, for everything that one does and says that actually affects the public, and responsibility for the nation’s relationships with other nations: this due-diligence obligation for a head-of-state, is even more severe than it is for a private CEO.

A country that tolerates such negligence or worse (evil intent) from its rulers, cannot be a democracy, because that country’s international relations are being manipulated by a foreign power — placing another nation’s leadership above one’s own. That’s subversion, of the given nation. It is treason, for any public official.

In the United States, the aristocracy are trying to fool the public into believing that the incoming President Donald Trump is such a traitor (‘Russian agent’) (and no evidence has been presented to the public for that, except ‘evidence’ concocted by a former British spy); but in this case involving Israel and the Prime Minister of UK, there is even video of the Israeli agent Masot communicating to Strizzolo, who then communicates to MP Halfon, and who brags that she had formerly communicated to Halfon who then communicated to the Prime Minister, who then acted in accord with the Israeli government’s back-channel instruction. Was it really an “instruction,” though — or was it instead some type of international deal, a trading-of-favors between allied countries? Precisely what favors are being performed by Israel, to UK? Really? And would that secret international agreement — without any democratic approval by the domestic public — be something that a democracy would allow?

In any case, even if there was some secret deal that induced Cameron to fulfill upon Israel’s instruction, that secret treaty (the deal) had not been entered into by the Constitutionally authorized process. This alone would be violation of oath-of-office — on behalf of a foreign power. It would be treason.

Secret deals, unauthorized treaties (in effect), ended up producing World War I. They are exceedingly dangerous. Doing international relations this way is inconsistent with democracy.

But that’s what happened here in UK’s Party on the ‘right’, the Conservatives. However, Israeli attempts at subversion of the UK government happen also in UK’s Party of the ‘left’, Labour; and, the video that was linked-to is devoted primarily to that — to the Labour Party.

Like happens in the United States, the main Party on the ‘left’ is being torn between viewing things mainly in terms of tribal conflicts (‘Palestinians’ versus ‘Jews’), or else viewing things mainly in terms of conflicts between the government and the public — the rulers versus the ruled (irrespective of their ‘tribe’). In Israel, the rulers are, essentially, only the Jews who hold power; and the ruled include many people (the “Palestinians”) who are excluded from many rights that all “Jews” in Israel enjoy. The current leader of Britain’s Labour Party, Jeremy Corben, rejects the Jewish state’s tribal values; and, consequently, he is being called ‘anti-Semitic’ by his opponents, both within and outside his Party. In today’s Israel, to oppose racism is to be ‘anti-Semitic’. A certain type of racism is policy in today’s Israel. Adolf Hitler, a supreme European tribalist, is thus now retrospectively a paragon of Israeli values: tribalism (racism). The current Israeli government is in Hitler’s image, only less consistently, and choosing a different tribe to reward, and a different tribe to punish (and, of course, far less certain than he was of the ultimate morality of their cause, and thus also far less intense about their application of the resulting punishment than he was, in his blinding hatred; but, after all, he was the paragon of bigotry) — differing with him, on those things. The current Israeli government equates nazism (the ideology, not Germany’s particular nazi party) with good, and equality with bad: they say that to be opposed to the current state of Israel is to be an ‘anti-Semite’. And this type of value-system is being worked secretly upon the UK’s government, in Britain’s back rooms, with alien (in particular, Israeli) lobbyists.

That video, which I linked to at its 2:14, continues on for a full 26 minutes, and mainly presents there the conflict within UK’s Labour Party, over these two mutually incompatible views of Israel and the Palestinians: one view, championed by the anti-Tony-Blair and anti-Iraq-War, progressive, new leader of the Labour Party, Corben, is a view which refuses to take sides with Israel against its Palestinians; and the other view, the one which is championed by Israel’s apartheid government, identifies that equalitarian position with “anti-Zionism,” and then promptly identifies ‘anti-Zionism = anti-Semitism’, meaning that every Jew (or at least ones who aren’t themselves ‘anti-Semitic’) endorses the current apartheid Israeli government. This ridiculous lie, equating equalitarianism with ‘anti-Semitism’, assumes that any Israeli who rejects Israel’s current, apartheid, government, hates Jews, instead of hates racists. It’s “Big Brother” thinking: a conviction that bad is good, white is black, up is down, peace is war, etc.

Israel works secretly in America’s back rooms, too. Some people worry that President Trump will be a Russian agent. Some people worry more realistically that he will be an Israeli agent. And some people worry that he will be a Saudi agent (because the royal Saud family hate Iran, and Trump seems to believe that the Saudi royal family, who are Saudi Arabia’s government, are allies not enemies of America, and that Iran is America’s eternal enemy). Others worry whether Trump will be intelligent enough, or even honorable enough, to avoid being any foreign agent at all. But whereas there is strong reason to consider Britain’s David Cameron to have been an Israeli agent, there is no reason, yet, to think that Trump is any foreign agent at all. Only time will tell.

In UK, time already has told the reality on this; and another and much briefer al-Jazeera video, which was posted on January 7th by UK’s Guardian, presents a conversation between Masot and Strizollo, in which Masot tells Strizollo that the Israeli government isn’t satisfied with the extent to which UK’s Conservative Party has silenced the Conservative Foreign Minister Boris Johnson’s insistence upon a “two-state solution”: his insistence upon a situation in which Palestinians will be freed from domination by Israel’s ‘Jews’ — freed from the aristocrats (many of whom live in America, actually) who, in reality, control and determine Israel’s apartheid government.

Yet another brief al-Jazeera video shows that Strizzolo’s immediate response when Masot asked her “Can I give you some MPs that I would suggest you take down?” might have been to think of that assertion — the question he posed — as being an attractive invitation by Israel to, perhaps, help her boss by blackmailing some of his opponents: she said, “Well, I know that if you look hard enough, I’m sure that there is something that they’re trying to hide.” But, whether she was thinking there, of that question as representing Israel’s Mossad, intelligence agency, and what help it might be able to offer to the Conservative cause, isn’t entirely clear. However, this video opened with Masot’s telling Strizzolo that his career-aspiration “is to be the head of the Foreign Affairs Department of the Intelligence Department in Israel — I’m not a career diplomat.” So, maybe it’s in the context of his being an aspiring spy, that she was considering the ways in which she might be able to be of help to both her boss, and also the young and rising Israeli agent who was, perhaps, propositioning her.

Such statecraft, in the seedy real world, was repeatedly condemned by the people who wrote America’s Constitution. They thought of it as being the type of international relations that the nation they were starting should avoid, at all costs. They could hardly imagine that “it comes with the territory” (as the vernacular might phrase the matter).

It’s dangerous to democracy in any country.

countercurrents.org

With the unedifying spectacle of «trousergate» shedding a light on how petty, thin skinned and juvenile the current Tory Prime Minister is (as well as her aides such as the former football journalist Fiona Hill and the Tory MP Nicky Morgan) one yearns for the days of substantive «big beast» intellectual heavy weight politicians with real gravitas such as the former Chancellor Ken Clarke. I recall having a conversation many years ago with a former Deputy Director of the Conservative Party’s «Research» Department (which in fact is not exactly a research department more of a propaganda outfit) who described Mrs. May as a «lightweight». The spectacle of the Prime Minister spending nearly 1000 pounds on a pair of leather trousers, which for all the money involved looked rather tacky, and then another Tory MP, the former Education Secretary Nicky Morgan, making remarks about it was bad enough. Mrs. May to then show such a thin skin and dis-invite Ms. Morgan from a meeting was playground politics at its worst and reveals worrying insecurities in the Prime Minister over such frivolous matters. As too was the manner in which it was carried out by her equally lightweight, insecure and obnoxious Joint Chief of Staff Fiona Hill.

The spectacle of three women politicians acting like cats over a pair of trousers has sadly reinforced all the worst stereotypes about female politicians. It has also reinforced the vacuum of gravitas at the top of British politics. In many ways British Government would be so better off if it was led by a political figure such as Ken Clarke. I first met Ken Clarke when I was debating on the same team as him alongside the former Foreign Secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind at the Cambridge Union back in January 2007. We were debating a motion regarding the use of force in world affairs and we were up against the former diplomat Craig Murray and Mick Jagger’s ex-wife Bianca. We won the debate. I was extremely impressed with Ken Clarke, and indeed Malcolm Rifkind. I found Mr. Clarke to be an extremely warm, down to earth and charismatic politician with a great manner and temperament. No airs, no graces, no pretentious nonsense. And also a brilliant debater and clearly an intellectually substantive individual with deep knowledge and a super brain. 

Ken Clarke first entered the House of Commons in 1970. He has always been in the centre ground of British politics, a moderate «One Nation» Tory committed to market economics but not enthralled with the more extreme and wilder aspects of free-market Thatcherism. He has also been a passionate and committed pro-European, believing strongly in the cause of European unity and of Britain leading in the European Union. He has had the strength of his convictions and has always stood by them, even when it would have been expedient for his own political advancement to jettison them. On foreign affairs he is a sensible, pragmatic, realist who has never embraced the wacko doctrine of neoconservatism. Indeed, he was one of only a handful of Tory MPs to vigorously oppose the Iraq War. It is this deep common sense and rejection of ideology in favour of pragmatism which sets him apart from some many of his more extreme Tory colleagues. 

Clarke enjoyed a stellar Cabinet career serving as Margaret Thatcher’s Health Secretary and Education Secretary and then John Major’s Home Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer. After the Tory wipe-out in the General Election of 1997 at the hands of Tony Blair’s New Labour Party, which resulted in a massive Labour landslide with an astonishing majority of 179 in the House of Commons, Ken Clarke put himself forward for the leadership of the Tory Party. Sadly and stupidly the Conservatives were blinded by their prejudice and hostility regarding all things European including Clarke’s support for Britain joining the European single currency, the Euro. Instead of going with the «big beast» of the Conservative Party with a huge amount of political and Government experience and an endearing personality personified in his love of jazz and hush puppy shoes, the Tories opted for the 39 year old William Hague. Hague’s only Cabinet position before he became leader of the Tory Party was Secretary of State for Wales. He had only been an MP for 8 years or so. He also was the ultimate caricature of the Tory boy having given an excruciatingly cringe-worthy speech at the Tory Party conference of 1977

He was also not extremely adept at public relations deciding the best way to present himself to the public after his election was to go to Alton Towers wearing a baseball cap with his surname emblazoned on it. Hague would go on to run an extremely Europhobic and homophobic regime. He took anti-Europeanism and xenophobia to new levels. Hague made opposition to all things European including further European integration and the Euro the single issue of his General Election campaign of 2001. He also unleashed a campaign of demonising asylum seekers and refugees and campaigned to keep Section 28, an extremely nasty and bigoted piece of homophobic legislation introduced by the Conservative Government in 1986 and rightly repealed by the Blair Government. Hague made an infamous and truly vile speech in the run up to the 2001 General Election in which he said Britain had become a «foreign land». Hague’s leadership of the Tory Party which reached its ugly climax in 2001 was a forerunner for the campaign that Donald Trump would run. 

The Tories went down to another crushing defeat under Hague and Tony Blair was re-elected with another huge majority of 166 in the Commons. The Conservatives were then offered once more a great choice in the form of Ken Clarke. But yet again they rejected him in favour of the deeply objectionable Iain Duncan Smith. The less said about that appalling individual the better. As John Stuart Mill once remarked: «Not all conservatives are stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives». Duncan Smith was one of the most disastrous leaders of the Tory Party in its history, lasting only 2 years. Under his leadership the Tories supported Tony Blair over Iraq while Ken Clarke opposed it passionately. If the Conservatives had elected Clarke over Duncan Smith in 2001 and opposed the Iraq War they could very well have won in 2005 defeating Tony Blair. And then again they rejected Clarke in 2005 after another massive defeat at the hands of Tony Blair’s Labour Party and went instead for David Cameron who was unable to deliver them a full majority in the 2010 General Election despite the economy being in its deepest recession since the Second World War and facing a deeply unpopular Labour leader in the form of Gordon Brown. Clarke went on to become a elder statesman in the administration of David Cameron and became Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary, fitting for a Cambridge trained Queen’s Counsel barrister. 

Ken Clarke has once again shown his political strength and conviction by being the only Conservative MP to oppose the Government’s timetable for triggering Article 50 for withdrawal from the EU in a recent Commons vote on Britain’s doomed expedition out of the European Union. It is a tragedy for the country that it has no leadership equivalent to a Ken Clarke to guide it through these precarious and tumultuous times. Theresa May, like her successor David Cameron, is clearly out of her depth. If Ken Clarke had of been prime Minister in 2003 Britain would never have gone to war in Iraq. If Ken Clarke had been prime Minister in 2016 there would never have been this nightmare of referendum of Brexit in the first place. So, Ken Clarke will go down in British political history as one of the greatest Tory Prime Ministers that never was. 

Johnson has a certain juvenile attractiveness for some people because his private life is colourful and chaotic while he has a certain facility with words and gives the impression that he could be all things to all men and to a certain number of women.

He is also a proven liar.

When he was a reporter for the UK’s Times newspaper he fabricated a quotation and was sacked for his dishonesty, although it is intriguing that he was dismissed by a newspaper owned Rupert Murdoch, who had gone ahead with publication of the ‘Hitler Diaries’ that he knew to be forged on the basis that «after all, we are in the entertainment business». And then Boris showed that he, too, was entertaining. Mr Murdoch’s Sunday Times revealed in 2004 that «Boris Johnson, the Tory MP and editor of the Spectator magazine, was last night sacked as a frontbench spokesman by [Conservative Party leader] Michael Howard for lying about his private life».

According to the Times, «his fate was sealed by the mother of his alleged mistress, Petronella Wyatt, who said her daughter had become pregnant by him and had an abortion last month.

Johnson, who is married with four children, had categorically dismissed the allegations as an ‘inverted pyramid of piffle’ … [and] the episode brings an end to an unlikely but uniquely engaging political career. Johnson… became one of the few modern Tories able to capture the public imagination, even provoking speculation he could be a future leader».

The trouble for Britain is that although Johnson is a twofaced, devious, posturing piece of slime whom an ordinary person would not trust to tell the time of day, he was most effective in capturing the public’s attention and helping persuade a majority to vote to leave the European Union.

He achieved this in spite of telling a barefaced lie about how much the UK contributes financially to the EU, described in detail in the Guardian newspaper, and his behaviour during the campaign he waged against those who wished to remain in the EU was deceitful and dishonourable. He wasn’t particularly anti-Europe – but he desperately wanted to be Prime Minister of Britain and put himself forward as the ideal leader when he back-stabbed his old friend Prime Minister David Cameron, who took the honourable course of action and resigned after the Brexit vote.

But then Boris himself was stabbed in the back by a fellow conspirator called Michael Gove whose countenance might inspire a casual observer to imagine a facial amalgam of tortoise and ferret. The Gove aura is also unpleasant, and although he had supported Boris during the Brexit campaign, he scented power after the vote to leave and announced that although «I have repeatedly said that I do not want to be prime minister… I have come, reluctantly, to the conclusion that Boris cannot provide the leadership… for the task ahead». So in the vulgar, dishonourable and increasingly absurd struggle to be leader of the British government it was exit devious disloyal Boris and enter devious disloyal Gove.

But not for long: because Gove, too, got his comeuppance and was defeated when the governing Conservative Party’s Members of Parliament belatedly realised he was too much of a joke to consider as leader of a country that was becoming a laughing-stock around the world. They decided to have a final choice between two apparently sane people. Two women, as it happens; but that’s irrelevant in the circumstances, although the winner, Theresa May, appears intent on continuing to beggar the country by continuing vast expenditure on military posturing in support of the US-NATO anti-Russia confrontation campaign.

What is unpleasant and distressing is that Britain looks foolish and has lost credibility, all because of a bunch of liars. Further, in an appalling example of the horrendous divisions deliberately encouraged in the country by Brexit Boris and his fellow fabricators, the number of incidents in Britain of «hate crime» – in plain words, the number of incidents of insult, harassment and physical assault of racial minorities, black, brown and Eastern European – increased to over 3,000 in the week before and the week after the referendum. Boris helped to direct Britain’s racists to a sewer down which to discharge their filthy prejudices.

And then came further revelations about world-class liars.

On July 6, the 70th birthday of former US president George W Bush, a document was published in London confirming that he was a lying, scheming, unprincipled gobbet of filth. The paper, known as the Chilcot Report, also indicted Tony Blair who was British prime minister at the time of the illegal and catastrophic invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The compiler of the report about the US-UK war on Iraq, Sir John Chilcot, refrained from bluntness in his description of the boastful shenanigans of these evil men, but his observation that in Britain there has resulted «a damaging legacy, including undermining trust and confidence in Government statements» is an indication that there was no reason, during the war-stirring intrigues before the invasion, that UK Government statements could be believed at that time, either, because Blair was a lying, strutting, would-be macho copy of GW Bush.

The lies told by British politicians and their scheming acolytes before the disastrous war on Iraq were neither worse nor less excusable than those spouted by the liars who deliberately misled so many British citizens during the debate before they voted by a narrow margin to quit the European Union.

The effects of Britain’s Brexit vote are quite as unpredictable as in 2003 were the forthcoming international consequences of the calamitous war on Iraq. That insane military foray resulted in the killing of hundreds of thousands of innocent people, the forcing of a million refugees into hellish destitution, and creation of generations of barbaric religious fanatics who are intent on revenge for the devastation wrought by Western powers. Such are the results of lies.

And lies continue to be told in the exciting march to war, as in the case of US-NATO’s last Supreme Allied Commander Europe, General Breedlove, who testified to the US Congress that Russia was intending to invade Ukraine with a force of 80,000 troops. Der Spiegel reported him as saying that President Putin had «upped the ante» in eastern Ukraine – with «well over a thousand combat vehicles, Russian combat forces, some of their most sophisticated air defence, battalions of artillery» having been sent to the Donbass. «What is clear», Breedlove said, «is that right now, it is not getting better. It is getting worse every day». His lies were contradicted by such as General Petr Pavel, current Chairman of the NATO Military Committee, who said bluntly that Russia’s supposed «aggression is not on the agenda and no intelligence assessment suggests such a thing», but few people pay attention to dull, boring honesty.

As we’ve seen with the Brexit shambles and the US-NATO wars in Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan, liars and their lies have more influence than common-sense and truth. Hatred of foreigners in Britain was spurred by the slick rhetoric of ‘Britain First’ xenophobes like Boris Johnson, just as hatred of Russia is being stimulated by the confrontational oratory of the leaders of the US-NATO alliance.

Britain has made its Brexit bed and now must lie on it, but there might be a chance for rapprochement between Russia and US-NATO if the liars can be called off. Dedicated diplomacy is the way ahead, but Britain’s new prime minister would do well to remember that her foreign secretary may not be the most desirable mediator in this or any other diplomatic venture. He has said that Hillary Clinton has «a steely blue stare, like a sadistic nurse in a mental hospital» while President Obama is «downright hypocritical» and President Putin is «a ruthless and manipulative tyrant».

Lies and dishonour lead to disaster. And they are generally helped on their way by insults.

Prime Minister Cameron has announced his resignation effective in October, a new Conservative Prime minister is to appointed following the Conservative Party conference.

Among the contenders for the Conservative Party leadership are former London Mayor Boris Johnson and Justice Secretary Michael Gove, both of whom were firm supporters of the Brexit campaign. Home Secretary Theresa May is also a potential contender.

At this stage, there is, however, no assurance that the Brexit proposal will be ratified by Parliament. (read Lendman’s analysis below)

Moreover, Cameron’s decision to resign in October contributes to delaying the process.

Michel Chossudovsky. GR Editor, June 24, 2016

* * *

All the fuss and bother about Brexit largely ignores its non-binding status – parliament, not voters deciding if Britain stays or leaves the EU, the latter extremely unlikely.

Writing in the Financial Times, British lawyer David Allen Green explained Brexit voting is “advisory,” not “mandatory.” Parliament has final say.

MPs can legally disregard the public’s will either way, they alone empowered to decide the path Britain chooses.

What happens ahead is “a matter of politics not law. It will come down to what is politically expedient and practicable,” said Green.

Various options exist, including supporting Thursday’s outcome, ignoring it, or “re-negotiating another deal and put(ting) that to another referendum” – repeating the process “until voters eventually vote the ‘right’ way,” what’s best for monied interests, not them.

Invoking Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty is another matter entirely, legally binding, unlike Thursday’s vote. It states as follows:

“1. Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements.

2. A Member State which decides to withdraw shall notify the European Council of its intention. In the light of the guidelines provided by the European Council, the Union shall negotiate and conclude an agreement with that State, setting out the arrangements for its withdrawal, taking account of the framework for its future relationship with the Union.

That agreement shall be negotiated in accordance with Article 218(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. It shall be concluded on behalf of the Union by the Council, acting by a qualified majority, after obtaining the consent of the European Parliament.

3. The Treaties shall cease to apply to the State in question from the date of entry into force of the withdrawal agreement or, failing that, two years after the notification referred to in paragraph 2, unless the European Council, in agreement with the Member State concerned, unanimously decides to extend this period.

4. For the purposes of paragraphs 2 and 3, the member of the European Council or of the Council representing the withdrawing Member State shall not participate in the discussions of the European Council or Council or in decisions concerning it.

A qualified majority shall be defined in accordance with Article 238(3)(b) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.

5. If a State which has withdrawn from the Union asks to rejoin, its request shall be subject to the procedure referred to in Article 49.”

Green highlighted key points. Member states can choose how to vote on withdrawal – by referendum, parliament or other means.

The withdrawal process begins with formal notification. Once “given, the member state and the EU are stuck with it.”

Member states wishing to withdraw have up to two years maximum to complete the process “unless this period is extended by unanimous agreement.”

Once withdrawal intentions are announced and initiated, there’s no going back. At the same time, what’s “created by international agreement can be undone” the same way.

Brussels could “come up with some muddling fudge which holds off the two year deadline,” or a new treaty amendment could be adopted.

Politics alone will drive what happens ahead, not the will of the people. Britain is no more democratic than America – nor are any other EU countries.

Special interests decide things. Whatever they want they get. However voting turns out, government policy “is to remain in the EU,” said Green.

Leaving would require Prime Minister David Cameron invoking Article 50, unlikely given his vocal opposition to Brexit.

Global Research

A crestfallen British Prime Minister David Cameron handed in his resignation only hours after the result showing the majority of Britons had voted for their nation to leave the EU – after 43 years of membership.

The victory for the «Leave» campaign was decisive. Some 52 per cent of British citizens voted against 48 per cent who wanted to «Remain» within the 28-nation bloc. Conservative Party premier Cameron and the leaders of the other main political parties – Labour, Scottish Nationalists, Liberal Democrats – had joined ranks to campaign for Britain to stay in the EU.

But in the end the popular vote rejected their pleas and instead backed the anti-EU stance of Boris Johnston, the former mayor of London who led Conservatives opposed to membership, in league with the more stridently Eurosceptic and anti-immigration United Kingdom Independence Party, led by Nigel Farage. The flamboyant Johnson is now tipped to take over as leader of the Conservatives and maybe future prime minister.

The repercussions of the so-called Brexit are multifaceted. British and international reactions struggled to assimilate the ramifications. This is partly due to a sense of astonishment that the United Kingdom had actually voted to leave. Not only did the result defy all the main political parties, it also repudiated a massive campaign endorsing continued EU membership, with what Leave campaigners decried as a «project of fear».

Cameron’s government had issued dire warnings of economic and financial mayhem if the country opted out of the EU. That call was backed by top British companies, City of London financial executives, and an array of international institutions, including the IMF and OECD. Days before the referendum was held, billionaire financial speculator George Soros predicted disaster for the British economy in the event of a Brexit.

European governments openly urged a Remain vote, while American President Barack Obama said that Britain would no longer be given «special rights» as a trading partner if it left the EU.

In the same week of the referendum, the US-led NATO military alliance also weighed in with grave warnings of increased security risks for Britain if it quit the European bloc.

In spite of this wall of pressure, if not blatant intimidation, the British electorate rejected EU membership. And in the early media coverage of the result, there was a palpable sense of disbelief among the chattering classes that the ordinary British people had gone their own way.

Apart from Cameron tendering his resignation, other British constitutional cracks split wide open on news of the Brexit.

The Leave result was driven mainly by English and Welsh voters, in contrast to Scotland and Northern Ireland. In Scotland, where a majority had voted to remain within the EU, the nationalist dominated regional assembly led by First Minister Nicola Sturgeon vowed that a second independence referendum was now on the table. In the previous independence plebiscite, in September 2014, the Scots voted then to stay within the United Kingdom largely as a way of securing continued EU membership by remaining an integral part of the UK. And with most Scots wanting to remain within the EU, the likelihood is that they would now reject the union with a «Brexited» England.

Similarly, in Northern Ireland the EU Remain vote carried the day. Nationalist Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams said that London had hence lost its mandate to rule Northern Ireland, and he called for a referendum on Irish unity, which could lead to Britain relinquishing its centuries-old jurisdiction on the island of Ireland.

In short, the Brexit vote has not only severed Britain’s union with the rest of Europe, it has also unleashed secessionist forces presaging the dissolution of the United Kingdom’s own internal union.

Across Europe, the stunning British vote to leave was met with euphoric applause from similar anti-EU movements. In France, the National Front leader Marine Le Pen hailed the result as a «blow for freedom» and she demanded that the French nation be immediately given the right to have a referendum on EU membership.

Le Pen’s declaration for an EU referendum was echoed in Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden.

Several recent polls in these countries have shown growing – if not majority – support for a similar Brexit-style rejection of the EU. That is certainly alarming for the incumbent governments given that these countries represent founding members of the European project, which began nearly 70 years ago following the Second World War.

The EU establishment, represented by the Brussels administrative centre and pro-EU governments, is reeling from the Brexit shock.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker reportedly held emergency meetings with European Parliament leader Martin Schulz and European Council chief Donald Tusk; while EU foreign ministers convened in Berlin to discuss the permutations and how to stabilize the remaining 27-member bloc. Britain is the second biggest economy in the EU after Germany, so its negotiated departure over the next two years is a formidable challenge.

Over the next days, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is to hold crisis talks with French President Francois Hollande and Italian premier Matteo Renzi.

What these leaders fear most is that the Brexit will unleash a «domino effect» right across the whole of Europe. In virtually every country, including the foundational members, anti-EU parties are on the rise and flourishing. There is a veritable popular revolt against the EU establishment, which has come to be seen as undemocratic, autocratic and unresponsive to pressing social needs of employment, public services and general civic welfare.

European governments have got no-one else to blame but themselves. Whether they are nominally right, left or center, all conventional political parties – and the EU establishment that reflects them – have become ossified and inflexibly subordinate to neoliberal capitalist dictate. This has, in turn, engendered widespread poverty, unemployment and economic austerity, while the profits accrue to a tiny elite. The EU has become a cage of locked-in capitalist globalization, seemingly with no escape, as with much of the Westernized world.

Alternative opposition parties may not always express critique in such an anti-capitalist way, but they are united in their repudiation of what they see as a centralized oligarchy that operates out of Brussels. This has led to a counter-movement towards nationally controlled economies, as opposed to globalized form.

It is doubtful that many of the anti-EU parties can deliver remedial policies to what is the stagnancy of capitalist economics in the 21^st Century. But one thing is sure: their supporters want to reject the failures of the status quo that is embodied in the contemporary EU.

An equally important form of inflexibility seen in the EU bloc is in foreign policy. The EU seems to have become a passive replica of the US-led NATO military alliance and under the thumb of Washington’s decree. Granted, most of the membership overlaps between the two organizations. But for many of the EU’s 500 million citizens, the EU’s lack of independence in foreign policy from Washington is a source of consternation.

The dangerous and economically damaging stand-off between Europe and Russia, largely at the behest of Washington, is a classic illustration of the problem.

The kowtowing by European governments and the Brussels administration to Washington’s policy of hostility towards Moscow is emblematic of the unaccountable and undemocratic nature of the EU bloc.

So too is the refugee crisis assailing European countries, which can be traced directly back to criminal US-led wars in North Africa and the Middle East, which the EU has colluded in or acquiesced to. And now is bearing the brunt of due to its servility towards Washington.

The popular revolt against the EU is far from homogenous. Some elements are impelled by reactionary, xenophobic nationalism. Some by chauvinism and romanticized notions of «traditional capitalism». Among some elements, there may even be fervent support for NATO militarism and pro-American hostility towards Russia.

But with Britain’s departure from the EU, Washington and the NATO alliance has lost one its most ardent supporters within the bloc. The Cameron government, after all, was the major proponent of tough sanctions on Russia over the Ukraine crisis, and London’s Atlanticist bias had preponderant leverage on the overall EU foreign policy position.

Britain leaving the EU can be seen as a blow to undermine the sway of Washington and NATO over Europe. And this progressive end was also a factor in support for the Brexit, as it is in the wider social revolt across Europe. The European revolt is not all about rightwing reactionaries; it is also about creating more democratic, independent European states, even if that necessitates the seemingly retrograde step of breaking up the EU under its present form.

The Brexit thus heralds much more than the shattering of the EU. On a national level, the United Kingdom is also prone to fracturing, while at the international level the Atlanticist bond with which Washington has dominated the EU is another fracture point.

Like the proverbial pane of glass, inflexible structures are always susceptible – at some stage – to fragmentation. The EU appears to have reached that critical pressure point.

Britain's prime minister announced he was quitting, the head of the opposition faces a challenge to his leadership, and employers and financial institutions warned of an economic crisis after the British public voted to leave the European Union after 43 years of membership. 

David Cameron announced on Friday that he would stand down by October, hours after results showed 52 percent of the public had voted in defiance of his predictions of economic disaster and isolation.

Sterling plunged to a 31-year low and markets around the globe went into a tailspin as business reacted to a historic decision, which UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage described as Britain's "independence day".

Standing outside 10 Downing Street, Cameron said: "The British people have voted to leave the European Union and their will must be respected. 

"I fought this campaign in the only way I know how which is to say directly and passionately what I think and feel – head, heart and soul.

"I held nothing back. I was absolutely clear about my belief that Britain was better and safer inside the EU."

After the result, however, Cameron said: "I do not think it would be right for me to try to be the captain who steers our country to our next destination."

Cameron, whose voice choked as he concluded, said he would leave it the next prime minister to trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon treaty, which represents formal notification of the UK's decision to leave. 

He would leave his job before his Conservative Party holds its annual conference in October.

But pressure was already mounting for immediate action, as a stunned EU urged Britain to leave as "soon as possible" amid fears of a chain reaction of further referendums.

In a sign that the bloc wants to move on swiftly, EU chiefs told Britain in a strongly-wordedjoint statement to "give effect to this decision of the British people as soon as possible, however painful that process may be."

The statement was signed by Donald Tusk, the European Council president, Martin Schulz, the European Parliament's president, Mark Rutte, the president of the Council of the EU, and Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission.

Juncker separately said he was "very sad" that Britain had voted to leave, but repeated that there would be "no renegotiation" of Britain's membership.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she would host Tusk, French president Francois Hollande and Matteo Renzi, the Italian prime minister, in Berlin on Monday to chart a reform plan.

Divided Kingdom

The referendum split the United Kingdom down the middle. Leave was strongly supported in Wales, the northeast of England and the Midlands, while London, Scotland and Northern Ireland voted overwhelmingly to remain.

It has also prompted a motion, put forward by Labour MPs Margaret Hodge and Ann Coffey, for a vote of no confidence in party leader, Jeremy Corbyn.

Under the motion, Corbyn's leadership will be discussed at the party's next meeting on Monday and could be followed by a secret ballot as soon as the following day.

Around the world, Investors scrambled to sell the pound, oil and stocks as Britain took a lurch into the unknown, becoming the first country to quit in the EU's 60-year history, a culmination of decades of suspicion over European aims of creating an ever-closer political union.

Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England, sought to reassure the world's traders in a statement shortly after Cameron's, saying that he would make £250bn extra available to steady banks as needed.

Farage heralded the results as a "victory for real people".

"Let June 23 go down in our history as our independence day," he said, who had promised the British people the chance to retake power from Brussels and rein in high immigration.

"If the predictions now are right, this will be a victory for real people, a victory for ordinary people, a victory for decent people," he told supporters.

A joyous crowd chanted back to him: "Out! Out! Out!"

Going it alone

The result means the world's fifth-largest economy must now go it alone in the global economy, launching lengthy exit negotiations with the EU and brokering new deals with all the countries it now trades with under the bloc's umbrella.

European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker has warned the EU will "not be bending over backwards" to help Britain in those negotiations.

Analysts say it could take the island nation a decade to secure new trade accords worldwide.

In a worst-case scenario, the International Monetary Fund has warned that the British economy could sink into recession next year and overall economic output would be 5.6 percent lower than otherwise forecast by 2019, with unemployment rising back above six percent.

Thousands of jobs in the City could be transferred to Frankfurt or Paris, top companies have warned. 

The Brexit camp argued that the business world will adapt quickly, however, with Britain's flexible and dynamic economy buoyed by new economic partners and selective immigration.

The campaign has left Britain riven in two, marked by the brutal murder of pro-"Remain" MP Jo Cox, a mother of two who was stabbed, shot and left bleeding to death on the pavement a week ahead of the vote.

The vote also threatens the unity of the United Kingdom.

Two years after Scotland voted in a referendum to remain in the United Kingdom, its political leader First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has said a new independence vote is "definitely on the table" after Britain voted against the majority will expressed by Scots.

"Scotland sees its future as part of the EU," Sturgeon told Sky News after the vote.

Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK, is now faced with the prospect of customs barriers for trade with EU-member the Republic of Ireland. Irish republicans Sinn Fein called for a vote on Irish unity following the referendum.

Messages from the Middle East

What little reaction came from countries in the Middle East included taunts from Iran and Turkey over the UK's past and claims of an end to the EU.

Massoud Jazayeri, a senior commander in Iran's Revolutionary Guard, described Britain's decision as payback for "years of colonialism and crimes against humanity".

An official in President Hassan Rouhani's office, Hamid Aboutalebi, called the vote a "big earthquake" that would be part of the "domino" collapse of the EU. 

Turkey's deputy prime minister, Nurettin Canikli, also said it was the beginning of the end for the EU.

"The period of the disintegration of the European Union has begun. And the first vessel to have departed is Britain," he said.

Turkey has been trying to gain membership of the EU for decades.

middleeasteye.net

Take the cries of protest in parliament and the media regarding the offshore shenanigans of Prime Minister David Cameron, for example. Are they not the referee’s whistle?

And what about the prime minister? Head hanging down, he admitted what had happened, he’d been offside. But only a little and, if truth be told, he’s not really guilty of anything, because the whole business was passed to him by way of inheritance. It’s a hereditary disease, so to speak. It was his father, Ian Cameron, who had shares in the disreputable company Blairmore Holdings, which made its money in tax havens. And then David came onto the field and began to manage these shares himself.

«Why didn’t he admit it? Why didn’t he get rid of the shares when he became prime minister?» the fans yell.

«As if it’s all that simple», Cameron murmurs under his breath. «There’s so much to do, so much to think about. I got carried away with the game and didn’t notice I had strayed into forbidden territory».

«Aha!» exclaims the British public, which loves a scandal and rejoices over the misfortune of others. «We’re going to check your tax returns now and everything will be revealed next week. Get ready for a fair British trial». 

Cameron quietened down while waiting for the check to take place. You wouldn’t have recognised the brave prime minister who, in the style of a speedy British striker, collided with rival teams, choosing Russia as the main target of his attack. He didn’t let up. From the standpoint of his moral integrity, he tried to score goals between Moscow’s goalposts, although with little success. Rebukes about human rights violations, corruption, preparations to seize defenceless neighbours and all that sort of thing flew towards the goal, and all these decoy moves were invented by experienced British coaches. 

And what rotten luck! After taking possession of the ball in the offside position, David Cameron somehow managed to turn badly and the ball ricocheted off a goalpost and hit him right in the forehead. 

A mistake like that can cost you dearly and British football does not easily forgive such errors. 

There are serious grounds to assume that British diplomats and intelligence agencies have a direct bearing on the Panama offshore scandal or, more precisely, on the mystery of its origin. There has never been a time in history when a major international story emanating from the US has not involved London. It is considered the cradle of imperialism after all and is particularly inventive in developing the most improbable and ingenious political dodges. And no-one is any doubt that the latest ‘Panama’ is political. 

This time around, David Cameron is really rather upset, since it looks like he has been caught in his own trap. Perhaps it’s worth being slightly less cunning and playing a more honest game? 

And here we are again on Britain’s double standards! It’s a waste of time even talking about them. The referees will confer and, in accordance with these standards, not only will political footballer Cameron go unpunished, he will probably also be awarded some kind of prize. In British political football, there are a huge number of rewards for every occasion. The prestige of a nation is at stake after all.

Putin the «new Hitler»; Putin the «downer of civilian airliners»; Putin the «gunslinger»; and now Putin «the money launderer».

But the smear has since turned into a political banana skin for Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron, who has been forced into admitting that he benefitted from offshore tax-free funds. He is now being assailed with accusations of «hypocrisy» and even calls for his resignation.

From the point of view of those who tried to smear Putin, how did it go wrong?

When the hacked data started to be published earlier this week, the Western news media ran lurid headlines implicating Putin in massive financial impropriety. This was despite the glaring anomaly that neither Putin nor any of his family were even mentioned in the leaked information. In short, it was another exercise by ropey Western journalism of inculpation by assertion, prejudice and innuendo.

The fact that one of the main sources of the Panama Papers information – the Washington DC-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) – is funded by CIA-linked organizations immediately raised suspicion that the implications made against Putin were a politically motivated propaganda stunt.

It seems highly likely that the CIA and related anti-Putin groups like the George Soros-supported Open Societies Foundations were involved in at least trying to orchestrate the Putin smear. But how these shadowy entities became involved remains a curious question.

Several days after the so-called Panama Papers took global media by storm, it now appears that key US allies are coming under more serious scrutiny that Putin. The Kremlin has dismissed the allegations as «more fibs» and that aspect of the story appears to have died a death.

Not so for Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron. He is struggling to fend off media queries about his own personal connections to tax dodging as a result of information disclosed in the leaked files.

Other world leaders allied to the US who have been fingered in the financial scandal include Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, Saudi Arabia’s King Salman and the newly elected rightwing president of Argentina, Mauricio Macri, whom President Barack Obama showered with praise during a state visit only last month.

There are many other world leaders and public officials who have reportedly been identified as having stakes in notorious offshore tax havens. Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson was forced out of office this week after his name became linked to tax avoidance schemes.

The broad range of incriminated targets therefore raises questions about who is behind the leak. If it were simply a CIA-inspired dirty tricks operation to undermine Putin, then why have close political allies to Washington also been embroiled, and to a much more politically damaging extent?

Britain’s premier David Cameron is «dangerously exposed» reported the Guardian after it emerged that his late father, Ian, was the director of an investment firm that set up shell companies in the British Virgin Islands. For over 30 years, Ian Cameron did not pay a penny in tax to the British exchequer even though he made millions by doing business in the British controlled Caribbean territory.

Strictly speaking, such tax evasion is not illegal under law. But for the British prime minister it is a huge political scandal, given that he has made such high-flown claims since he was first elected in 2010 to clamp down on offshore capital havens.

When Cameron’s father died in 2010, he inherited the equivalent of $500,000. As a student at the elitist Eton school and Oxford university, Cameron’s education would have been funded by proceeds from his father’s offshore funny money.

Downing Street this week has been roiled by awkward media questions and obliged to issue unconvincing denials that Cameron is a beneficiary of corporate tax avoidance. Notably one statement claimed that neither the prime minister nor his family would gain any benefits «in the future» from offshore funds. Which has only further whetted media queries about «the past».

Cameron, under duress, finally admitted that he had profited six years ago from the sale of shares in his father’s offshore company to the tune of $50,000. Opposition politicians are now calling for his resignation on grounds that he has not been transparent with the public.

Ironically, therefore, the British Conservative leader has ended up in much more hot water about financial impropriety than the Russian leader.

That makes the chain of this damaging media leak a curious conundrum.

What we know is that the deluge of information on offshore tax havens was obtained surreptitiously from Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca. The firm is said to be the fourth biggest international entity that specializes in setting up companies in tax havens for wealthy clients, such as business executives and banks based in Europe, the US and elsewhere. The angry reaction by Mossack Fonseca over its privacy being breached indicates it was a genuine leak. The information contained in 11 million files is said to implicate over 200,000 client companies and 14,000 individuals, including «politicians, dictators, criminals, billionaires and celebrities», according to the New York Times.

Who actually carried out the initial breach is not known. The Washington Post reports that the trove of information was first delivered to two journalists at the prominent German publication Suddeutsche Zeitung. That was more than a year ago. The two German journalists to this day say they do not know the identity of the person or persons who handed them the leaked data. They said that no money was sought for the transfer and the only instruction given to them was to «publicize the crimes».

Bastian Obermayer and his colleague Frederik Obermaier, the two reporters at Suddeutsche Zeitung, then began sharing the vast information with the US-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. That step seems plausible enough because the parties had already a working relationship on previous money-laundering investigations. Also, the data in the so-called Panama Papers – enough to reportedly fill 38,000 medium-sized books – was clearly an overwhelming task for two individuals to dissect and disseminate.

The ICIJ is affiliated to the Center for Public Integrity and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project. All three are based in Washington DC and are all sponsored by the Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers, and the Soros-linked Open Societies Foundation, among many others. Those sponsors have well documented working relations with the American Central Intelligence Agency in some cases going back to the agency’s inception in 1948.

For over a year, the ICIJ claims that its journalists and an international network of over 350 affiliated media colleagues in more than 70 countries worked on the Panama Papers to parse the many facets for public interest. Among the affiliated journalists were those belonging to Britain’s Guardian newspaper and state-owned BBC. McClatchy News in Washington is said to be another media collaborator in the project.

By no means can we say that all the journalists involved in preparing the Panama Papers for publication are in the pay of the CIA or its tentacle organizations. Nor does it seem that the original point of the data leak was a CIA-inspired political attack on Vladimir Putin.

If the latter were the case, then one would expect the leak to focus solely on trying to implicate Putin through citing Russian associates linked to offshore financial transactions.

However, the fact that the leaked information has turned out to be much more damaging to British Prime Minister David Cameron and other US allies – with specific details, not merely speculation – suggests that the leak was originally intended as a genuine whistleblower action.

Subsequently, CIA-linked organizations and politically friendly Western media outlets appear to have tried to deflect the information towards smearing Putin. But the smear bid has not gained traction against Putin because the claims are not supported by the actual information contained in the leaks.

The same cannot be said for David Cameron and several other world leaders aligned with Washington. They are seriously implicated in white collar crime, along with bank robbers, drug dealers and money-launders. And the Western media cannot but fail to report on this «real story» despite their initial willingness to go along with the trumped-up Putin hatchet job.

How the smear bid against Putin from the Panama Papers has played out – and indeed now badly rebounded – has perhaps provided this unintended revelation. It shows just how malleable and serviceable Western news organizations are in the hands of the CIA.

The recent interview that President Obama gave to The Atlantic magazine brought into the open the frustrations, disappointment and mild contempt felt in the White House for the British specifically over the Libya intervention of 2011 and the subsequent mess which has developed in the country. The Atlantic interview was unusual for a sitting US President to deliver while in office, due to its direct and pointed criticism of key foreign allies, specifically the British Prime Minister David Cameron. President Obama correctly analyzed that the military intervention in Libya triggered by the impending blood bath in Benghazi in the spring of 2011 was driven by the Europeans in the form of the British and French Governments and that in the ensuing aftermath of the fall of Colonel Gaddafi not enough investment was put in place by London and Paris to contain and quell the chaos, even though they had promised they would take care of this.

In many respects the Libya intervention by the West was the last hurrah of the neo-conservatives, this time however their number where to be found more in Downing Street than the White House. One of the central tenants of neoconservative foreign policy, first given full license during the Bush administration of 2001-2005, was that America with Britain by her side, should set out to remake the world in the political image of the United States and United Kingdom by exercising military power to invade countries, remove their dictatorial governments and then depending on how hard core a neocon one was, either make a huge commitment to occupy the invaded country and «nation build» adding to further strain on public expenditure back home, or cut and run leaving behind the mess for the locals to clear up.

What was so striking about President Obama’s Atlantic interview was the amount of blame he apportioned, almost exclusively, on David Cameron rather than the former French President Nicholas Sarkozy. Indeed, the historical symbolism of heavily criticizing such a supposedly close ally as Britain during the 70^th anniversary of Winston Churchill’s speech when he first introduced the term «Special Relationship» into diplomatic lexicon is significant. The US-UK «Special Relationship» has always been more special to the British than the United States. As the British Empire went into inexorable decline during World War II, the United States emerged as the new dominant superpower alongside the USSR. While the British began to grapple with their reduced global status and power, one feature of international relations allowed them to delude themselves that they still possessed the influence and power they had enjoyed throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, the alliance with the burgeoning superpower of Washington DC. However, as the former European Commission President Roy Jenkins has pointed out, a great deal of the so-called «Special Relationship» is a delusion successive British Governments have clung to in order to aggrandize themselves.

The criticism that President Obama meted out against David Cameron is entirely justified. After the dangerous ideological madness and carnage wrought by the neoconservative cabal around President George W Bush, Mr Obama rightly wanted to restore sanity and return American foreign policy to the mainstream. The Obama Doctrine in foreign affairs emerged as a traditional Democratic foreign policy in the mold of the liberal, humanitarian internationalism of the Carter and Clinton administrations with a dash of Nixonian realism. There would be none of the neoconservative inspired military unilaterism and wars of choice to make the world «safe for democracy» along the lines of Woodrow Wilson and while the United States would still remain the leader of the Western Atlantic Alliance and the «free world» it would expect greater burden sharing and action from its European and to a lesser extent Middle Eastern allies in dealing with regional security challenges, hence the phrase «leading from behind».

After the deeply damaging and draining experience of the botched Iraq intervention of 2003, President Obama wanted to avoid further entanglements in foreign countries through direct military intervention preferring to emphasize multi-lateral diplomacy and international problem solving coalitions rather than regime change. However, in Mr Cameron the President found an ally rather like George W Bush in the sense that Cameron knew little of foreign affairs and foreign policy before he became Prime Minister and was considered a lightweight by much of the foreign and national security policy community in Britain and around the world. Cameron was viewed by the US State Department as being very much a domestic politician.

Thus, having little understanding of international relations and Global Power Politics and little experience of foreign affairs Cameron was susceptible to the influence of those who set out to mold him in their foreign policy image. One such Cabinet Minister – who was a Trustee of the Henry Jackson Society – which was set up to defend the 2003 invasion of Iraq and promote a British neoconservative foreign policy akin to that pursued by George W Bush, went by the name of Michael Gove, who the Prime Minister has allegedly described as «nuts». Gove, a staunch defender of the Iraq War and all things neoconservative, was a leading advocate for intervening in Libya just as he had been for invading Iraq and now today is campaigning for Britain to leave the European Union and with it cause massive international instability and disruption during one of the most challenging times in post-war European history.

Despite warnings from his then Chief of the Defence Staff General Sir David Richards and the former Head of MI6 that toppling Gaddafi was not in the British national interest and could lead to even greater chaos in the region, Cameron proceeded gung ho on waging a military campaign in Libya and along with then French President Nicholas Sarkozy persuaded President Obama to engage American military might along with other NATO allies. The caveat which sold the whole venture to the Obama administration was that it would be the British and French who would stabilize the country in the aftermath. Unfortunately for the Libyan people the British never made good on that pledge whether through lack of ability or political expediency. Curiously the British Government spent £320 million on bombing Libya but only £25 million on stabilizing the country. For President Obama this failure to uphold the terms of post-war reconstruction and stabilization in Libya perhaps has only served to confirm and reinforce his coolness towards the British.

President Obama is no Anglophile. One of his first acts upon assuming command of the Oval Office was to have removed the bust of Winston Churchill given by Tony Blair to George W Bush. This is entirely understandable given the fact the British during the Churchill Government of the early 1950s tortured Mr Obama’s grandfather in Kenya during their suppression of the Mau Mau rebellion. Then when Gordon Brown made his first visit to the Obama White House he was given in the official diplomatic exchange of gifts an insulting set of DVDs which did not even work in the UK. In his memoirs Mr Obama discussed his aversion to a British businessman he was unluckily sat next to on a plane. It would seem a pattern has emerged of mild disdain for the UK on the part of President Obama which finally burst full throttle from the President’s mouth in his Atlantic magazine interview.

One criticism of Cameron made by the President in the interview is also a point I have been consistently making over the last few years which is that David Cameron is no strategist, rather a mere tactician. As President Obama said of Cameron regarding Libya «he [Cameron] seemed to become distracted by a range of other things». Strategists do not become distracted by other issues. That is the hallmark of a tactician who has no over-arching, strategic vision. A tactician will flail around moving from one issue to the next with no consistent focus on the «big picture» as they do not have a sense or vision of a strategic «big picture». The criticism of Cameron and by extension British foreign policy has not been solely limited to outsiders. Even top ranking UK military officials such as the former Chief of the Defence staff General Sir David Richards when advising the PM during the build up to the Libya campaign is reported to have told the Prime Minister that: «being in the Combined Cadet Force at Eton» did not qualify him to decide complex military operations.

I think after this experience and with the outcome of the EU referendum in the UK, the next US President would be wise to conduct a full scale re-evaluation of the US-UK partnership, dispensing once and for all with the notion of a «special relationship» and making it quite clear to the British they have got to up their game and get their house in order if they want to be taken seriously as a professional international political partner. Many Americans I have met who have had experience of working with the British in Whitehall have found it to be a deeply frustrating and bizarre situation.

They find the working culture in Whitehall unprofessional, lazy, incompetent and inefficient, run along the lines of the old boys’ network and a stuffy gentlemen’s club, something out of the 19th century rather than the 21st. They despair at the lack of proper HR structures and the lack of joined-up communication, dynamism, and the strange communication quirks of the British which include a lack of directness, talking in riddles and codes constantly, an inability to express themselves directly instead retreating into passive aggressive behavior rather than being up front and open.

Take for example the Royal United Services Institute, founded by the Duke of Wellington in 1831 which has Her Majesty The Queen as it’s Patron and lists various former Heads of MI5, MI6, GCHQ and other UK national security and defence policy officials and military brass among its leadership network and which purports to be an «independent» think tank located in front of the Ministry of Defence and across the road from Downing Street and the Foreign Office, but in reality is an intelligence front and extension of the British security and military State. For the first time in the 185 year history of the Institute a non-British citizen, an American, formerly of the US State Department and Pentagon, has been appointed Director-General of RUSI.

This appointment almost certainly had been signed off at some level within the British Government given RUSI’s sensitive role within Whitehall and access to classified information. Clearly the Americans are taking a much closer and active involvement in the running, on the ground, of British security, foreign policy and military matters and clearly it takes an American to clean house and put an organization like RUSI on a more professional footing with sounder finances given the worrying and embarrassing level of extremely high debts and unstable finances of RUSI which is even more concerning given the fact it is a Royal Institute.