Every once in a while an iconic image appears on our television screens.
For me, such an image appeared on January 25 in the form of a clown, a member of CIRCA, the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army
...who turned out to be a police infiltrator
New footage obtained by Channel 4 News shows a woman, believed to be an undercover police officer, taking part in anti war protests dressed as a clown.
...
The news comes against a backdrop of Britain's most senior public order police officer apologising to MPs after providing them with false information when he denied having plain-clothes officers in the crowd at the G20 demonstrations two years ago.
Her fellow clowns said they felt “betrayed”. I know how they feel. Just over a year ago I had an article published under the heading ‘Klaŭnokratio’ [Clownocracy] in what I suppose is the Esperanto equivalent of Private Eye, in which I described various crazy goings on in London, where it seemed as if someone had sent in the clowns. That was to do both with Esperanto meetings and truth movement meetings, some of which I reported in my September 2009 newsletter, in connection with the book launch for ‘Terror on the Tube’.
On seeing that iconic image of the police clown, I realised that it would at least give me some credibility in what I had been trying to tell people who didn’t want to hear. Sure enough, the following morning I received an email from a long-lost Esperanto friend, who no longer thought I was crazy.
It turned out that the operation in CIRCA had been carried out by a secretive unit belonging to the Association of Chief Police Officers.
But hang on, aren’t they a private company limited by guarantee? According to their website:
“The Association of Chief Police Officers is responsible for defining national standards and professional practice in key areas of policing”.
So professional policing standards are defined by a private company limited by guarantee, which infiltrates legitimate civilian protest groups? I think that sums it up,
Except that they don’t state that they are limited by guarantee on their website as they are required to do by law.
The Guardian report continued: “Today the acting commissioner of the Metropolitan police, Tim Godwin, said his force would take over the spy agency - the National Public Order Intelligence Unit - on Monday. It will come under the Met's counter-terrorism command”.
Erm, counterterrorism? Infiltrating legitimate demonstrations against the Iraq war is counterterrorism?
This sounds reminiscent of the arrest of Walter Wolfgang, the Labour Party member who called out “Nonsense” when Jack Straw said they were bringing democracy to Iraq, under the Prevention of Terrorism Act.
Such police undercover operations were not limited to anti-war protest groups. On January 10, a trial collapsed of six environmental protesters accused of conspiring to shut down the coal-fired Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station in Nottinghamshire in 2009, when one of those arrested, though not charged, turned out to be a police undercover agent.
The defence lawyer stated: “On Easter Monday 2009 over 400 police officers were involved in a raid on Iona School in Nottingham which led to 114 arrests. I represented 113 of those arrested. The 114th we now know was PC Kennedy, an undercover police officer. Six of my clients were due to face a long trial starting today. However the Prosecution told the defence just last Friday, just before the trial was due to begin, 20 months after the investigation had begun, that: ‘Previously unavailable material that significantly undermined the prosecution case came to light on Wednesday 5th January’. The discovery of this material came at a time when the prosecution were informed that we planned disclosure of the evidence relating to PC Kennedy before the trial judge”.
In other words, it looks like a very expensive police setup. He also said
the case raised concerns over the role of an officer as 'agent provocateur', called for an inquiry into 'murky' police tactics, and questioned the need to spend vast amounts of money and resources infiltrating a 'peaceful, accountable and democratic' group.
The BBC’s Newsnight programme gave a feel of what it was like for fellow environmental campaigners on finding how they have been betrayed. They also interviewed an environmental protestor and a former undercover police officer, who spoke of “fractured lives”, and said that there are also people in the private security sector involved in undercover operations. The environmental campaigner said “The police police politically”. “There’s all sorts of political policing happening here in the UK, and it’s really damaging and it undermines democracy”, she said.
It turned out that PC Mark Kennedy was present also at the G20 demonstration in London when bystander Ian Tomlinson died, having been assaulted by a police officer:
Broadhurst, who was in charge of policing the G20 protests, had erroneously told the home affairs select committee in May 2009 that no plain-clothes officers were present at the demonstrations, saying it would have been too dangerous to have deployed them.
Today he apologised several times to the committee, saying that his denial was "true to the best of my knowledge at the time". He admitted that numerous City of London police officers had been present at the demonstration, along with more than one Met officer, including PC Mark Kennedy.
In 2008, MP George Galloway accused London Metropolitan Police of engaging in "a deliberate conspiracy to bring about scenes of violent disorder" during President Bush's visit to the UK, naming a senior police officer thought to have been operating as an undercover agent provocateur", writing:
You will be aware by now of an article in the Mail on Sunday of 22 June by Yasmin Whittaker-Khan in which she recounts her shock at meeting a man, whom she knew to be a policeman from a previous encounter, who seemed determined to bring about a confrontation between the demonstrators and the police.
“Are environmental activists really a spying priority?”, asks former MI5 officer Annie Machon turned truth campaigner:
“Acpo set up the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU). This first focused primarily on animal rights activists, but mission creep rapidly set in and the unit's role expanded into peaceful protest groups. When this unaccountable, Stasi-like unit was revealed it rightly caused an outcry, especially as the term ‘domestic extremist’ is not recognised under UK law, and cannot legally be used as justification to aggressively invade an individual's privacy because of their legitimate political beliefs and activism.”
On the secret services she writes:
“Also, MI5 and MI6 operate outside any realistic democratic oversight and control. . . . The spooks are effectively above the law, while at the same time protected by the draconian Official Secrets Act”.
She replied to her own headline question with: “A group of well-meaning environmental protesters should not even be on the radar”.
We saw in my recent newsletters how the term ‘extremism’ was being used by the clowns of DEMOS to justify government infiltration into groups which questioned the government’s version of events. They were recommending ‘open infiltration’, suggesting that it wasn’t even necessary to do these things covertly any more.
Annie Machon’s reference to “the draconian Official Secrets Act” makes me think of an interesting blog that I came across the other day on the website of the Butler Esperanto Library. It goes under the title “el la senato de Liliputo” [From the senate of Liliput] and is about what the libarian overheard during a meeting of the Management Committee of the Esperanto Association in July 2005, which was being held in the next room. It was about a resolution which I was later to refer to as the “Esperanto Official Secrets Act”, under which any member of the committee who revealed anything about the discussions other than minuted decisions could be denounced to the members and to the Charity Commission. It makes fascinating reading, if you can read the language, especially when the Vice-President asks where the Librarian got the information from, and then himself suffers from selective amnesia.
The clownocratic wording of that resolution could only have been produced by a high-level civil servant, though the person in question just gave me a blank stare when I asked who wrote it. Yes, I was at the meeting, and the resolution was brought in just after I had started my research.
So on seeing that blog the other day I added a comment giving the background.
I followed the reappearance of Tony Blair before the Chilcot commission on January 21st on the guardian website(as ‘iafantomo’) of which the video, transcript and related documents are archived on the Iraq Inquiry website.
Tony Blair seemed to me to be having some difficulty in reconciling what he had been telling President Bush and the House of Commons with the legal advice that he had been given. The day before going to see President Bush, he was sent a letter by Lord Goldsmith, saying,
"I remain of the view that the correct legal interpretation of Resolution 1441 is that it does not authorise the use of military force without a further determination by the Security Council."
Having received that advice, what he actually told the President was that he repeated his strong commitment to do what it took to disarm Saddam. “Did you not feel constrained in making that commitment by the advice that the Attorney General was continuing to give you?”, asked Sir Roderic Lyne. Tony Blair explained that he didn’t.
Earlier (15 January, 2003) Tony Blair had told the Commons:
“There are circumstances in which a UN resolution is not necessary, because it is necessary to be able to say in circumstances where an unreasonable veto is put down that we would still act." Lord Goldsmith has stated said that these words were not compatible with the advice that he had given to him the day before.
Tony Blair explained: “…I was saying it not in a sense as a lawyer, but politically”. Yet Tony Blair’s case for invading Iraq was shifting more and more towards 9/11, and indeed there had been talk in the aftermath of 9/11 of a possible invasion of Iraq. If that was the case, then Tony Blair should again be recalled, to explain the sequence of events which led from 9/11 to the invasion of Iraq.
Chilcot should go back to the statements made to the House of Commons on the two recalls of Parliament following 9/11, and in television interviews around that time. Tony Blair was claiming that he had seen “incontrovertible evidence” that Osama bin Laden had been responsible for 9/11. As with the claimed evidence for weapons of mass destruction, the Chilcot commission should now be examining whether such “incontrovertible evidence” existed. Who else saw such “incontrovertivble evidence”?
The leaders of the other main political parties should be interviewed by Chilcot, because it was said that that “incontrovertible evidence” had been shown to them. The leader of the Conservative Party confirmed in the House of Commons that he had seen such incontrovertible evidence, but the leader of the Liberal Democrat Party did not. Had they, or had they not? And what about NATO? Had Lord Robertson, as Secretary General of NATO seen such incontrovertible evidence, and could his involvement in the New Labour Group have possibly coloured his judgement? If such incontrovertible evidence existed, but still has to be kept secret, then Chilcot should enquire on what grounds it would need to be kept secret a decade after the event.
What possible reason could there be for keeping that incontrovertible evidence secret even from the FBI, who are still telling us that they have no such evidence
Perhaps the FBI should be interviewed by Chilcot, too.
Then what was the role of British ambassadors abroad? Former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, informs us that the UK ambassador in Moscow “was active in trying to mitigate Russian opposition to the War”. “He personally outlined to the Russian foreign minister the lies on Iraqi WMD. There was never the slightest private indication that Lyne had any misgivings about the war”, Craig Murray added. Perhaps Sir Roderic Lyne should be questioned by the Chilcot Commission.
But there might just be a slight problem with that: he may first have to clone himself, since he himself sits on the commission.
Sir John Chilcot was just ten minutes in to the first public session of the Iraq Inquiry when he told the first big lie – and a lie which, when examined, exposes the entire charade.
"My colleagues and I come to this inquiry with an open mind."
That is demonstrably untrue. Three of the five members – Rod Lyne, Martin Gilbert and Lawrence Freedman – are prominent proponents of the Iraq war. By contrast, nobody on the committee was in public against the invasion of Iraq. How can it be fine to pack the committee with supporters of the invasion, when anyone against the invasion was excluded?
It seems Tony Blair missed a trick or two there. He could have personally taken charge of the whole inquiry, to ensure that the whole matter was in a safe pair of hands.
Perhaps also diplomatic contacts with Iraq around that time should be investigated. According to a new book by former CIA asset Susan Lindauer, Iraq offered to help the US in its investigation of 9/11. “He [Saddam] was more harsh on terrorists than we were”, she told Kevin Barret on No Lies Radio, “They were offering us everything we wanted”.
The book is "Extreme Prejudice: The Terrifying Story of the Patriot Act and the Cover Ups of 9/11 and Iraq"
The story needs to be checked out, but if true, Tony Blair definitely needs to be recalled by Chilcot.
During Tony Blair’s session with Chilcot, the nation’s attention was deflected by the resignation of the Prime Minister’s director of communications, Andy Coulson, over the phone hacking allegations from the time that he was editor of the News of the World.
It appears that the London Metropolitan Police had been turning a blind eye to much of this, and there have been suggestions of possible collusion.
Things have to be getting bad when a former Deputy Prime Minister seeks to sue the London Metropolitan Police and <
a former minister warns that British democracy risks becoming a "laughing stock" around the world unless allegations about the phone hacking are fully investigated
Even discussion of sensitive issues such as these can be difficult, which is the reason I produce these newsletters.
At last year’s Euston seminar on 9/11 Professor Jim Fetzer spoke about the difficulties in even arranging such a meeting. Videos of the talks have been posted on the Internet by Pentos Films (http://vimeo.com/user4693310/videos), together with interesting interviews with Ken O’Keefe, who chaired the meeting, and who had been abord the Mavi Mara relief boat to Gaza.
We used to have regular monthly meetings in London of that size, but no longer. To understand what happened, one should study how the clownocratic system works.
I notice that the forum for the trial of Anthony John Hill, otherwise known by his pseudonym Muad’Dib, author of The Ripple Effect, has been suspended, “due to people using the forum in non-constructive ways it was never meant to be used for”.
I have to say that this is perfectly normal. I have taken part in a fair number of discussion groups and forums on things that the Establishment may wish us to keep quiet on, and every single one of them has run into similar problems.
George Orwell was right when he wrote in his censored preface to Animal Farm, “Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness”.
John Hill has been silenced over 7/7, at least for the duration of the inquest, on what appears to be a bogus charge. He is still languishing in Wandsworth Prison in London, protesting the innocence of the four Muslim lads who were declared guilty at the beginning of the inquest. The Friends of Muad’Dib are now asking people to distribute The Ripple Effect as widely as possible. Despite everything, people still say that they prefer to live in this country than anywhere else. Well let’s keep it that way. The rights we have were hard fought-over by our forefathers, not by us.
What are we going to hand over to the next generation? A problem with globalisation is that financial oligarchies from various parts of the world are coming together, sometimes in competition and sometimes in co-operation, and pulling the strings in governments across the world. Who has been pulling the strings in Egypt for thirty years? Perhaps it’s the same people that have been pulling the strings in Britain and other countries.
Who runs Russia? I recently saw an interview with President Karzai of Afghanistan on Russia Today during his visit to Moscow:
He came across much more sympathetically than he does in the West. Yet whichever propaganda image is nearer the truth, he does have a credible point that Afghan farmers turn to poppies out of desperation, and there’s a market in the West where the opium is processed. I should have thought that the way to solve that would have been for the occupying powers to subsidise Afghan farmers in producing real crops for the Afghan people – unless, of course they are under the control of clownocrats whose strings are being pulled by the oligarchs of the narcotics industry.
The Great Game continues. At least in an autocracy you know what the rules are: you either shut up or you have a revolution. But how do you deal with a clownocracy? I suppose you just have to laugh and keep talking.
No comments:
Post a Comment