It’s election time and the silly season is upon us again.
The Labour Party manifesto was launched under the title “A future fair for all”,which is I suppose a better prospect than the current circus for all. The Conservatives issued an “Invitation to Join the Government of Britain”. It’s falling apart and needs joining, but who is the government of Britain, and will we get expenses for trips to Washington or Brussels? The Liberal Democrats want a “Change that Works for You”,which curiously changes its meaning when you read it back to them. It seems that they all have one policy in common: Don’t mention the war.
In my three ‘election specials’ I advocated tapping into a range of issues of concern which directly or indirectly have arisen post-9/11. I circulated a letter which I had written to my own candidates asking whether they would commit to inquiries into CCTV, 7/7, the Afghan War and the collapse of language-learning in our schools, all of which are likely to relate to 9/11 and the expansionist designs of our hidden government.
Following that, however, I came across information which made me think that it might be best now to go for the jugular: 9/11 and the origins of the Afghan war.
I came across a confidential CIA report into shoring up Afghan war support in Western Europe, published on the website http://wikileaks.org. It was headed: “Afghanistan: Sustaining Western European Support forthe NATO-led Mission – Why Counting on Apathy Might Not Be Enough”, and was produced by the CIA Red Cell – an advanced strategy unit of the CIA.It was marked NOFORN - ‘No Foreign Nationals’.
The gist of it was that some NATO states, had counted on public apathy about Afghanistan to increase their contributions to the mission, but that indifference “might turn into active hostility if spring and summer fighting result in an upsurge in military or Afghan civilian casualties and if Dutch-style debate spills over into other states contributing troops”. They were particularly worried about the positions of France and Germany, which were due for elections. Much of the report was concerned with “tailoring the messaging” in order to forestall or at least contain backlash. So now we know: the “Don’t mention the war” policy was being encouraged by the CIA. The putting out of diversionary messages to gain compliance of the publics was being encouraged by the CIA, too. It would be surprising if such tactics were not being applied in the UK now, during the present general election campaign.
We have been at war in Afghanistan for over eight years. So far, 281 body bags have been brought home. The war is believed to have cost £12bn so far(http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/revealed-16312bn-hidden-costs-of-afghan-war-1761469.html), and it is highly unpopular, with an opinion poll taken in February reporting that
63% of Britons want their next government to commit to removing their country’s armed forces from Afghanistan by the end of the year.
Yet when I wrote to my parliamentary candidates on this, I received just two replies, and only one, the Green Party candidate, would commit to a public parliamentary inquiry into war. Clearly, those with something to hide would want to avoid a repeat ofthe Chilcott Inquiry into the Iraq War. Such an inquiry into the Afghan War would inevitably touch on the dangerous grounds of the justification of the invasion of Afghanistan. The perceived falsehoods in relation to the Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq will have softened public opinion regarding the possibility that the Afghan invasion, too, could have been based on false claims.
A quick look at the FBI’s website would reveal that Osama bin Laden was not wanted specifically in connection with the attacks of 9/11. Journalists who phoned up the FBI to ask about that were told: “I’m afraid we just don’t have the evidence”.
But how could the country’s politicians and their national press bemanipulated into such a conspiracy of silence? How can it be that eight and a half years after the attacks of 9/11 we are no nearer to understanding what happened on that fateful day than we were when President Bush declared that he wanted Osama bin Laden dead or alive? How is it that there has been no significant questioning of the role of Osama bin Laden in the mainstream media?
Whatever the mechanics of this, it is a phenomenon observed by George Orwell in 1945. In the unpublished preface to the first edition of Animal Farm he wrote: “The sinister fact about literary censorship in England is that it is largely voluntary. Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban. … At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is 'not done' to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was 'not done' to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either inthe popular press or in the highbrow periodicals.”
In 2007 Australian journalist John Pilger addressed the Chicago Socialism Conference with a talk titled ‘Freedom this Time’, which was the title of his latest book, and the book was meant as an “antidote to the propaganda that is so often disguised as journalism”.
He pointed out that the BBC gave just two percent of its coverage of Iraq to antiwar dissent, and that 90 percent of the BBC’s references to weapons of mass destruction suggested that Saddam Hussein actually possessed them, and that by clear implication Bush and Blair were right.
“We now know”, he continued, “that the BBC and other British media were used by the British secret intelligence service MI-6. In what they called Operation Mass Appeal, MI-6 agents planted stories about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, such as weapons hidden in his palaces and in secret underground bunkers. All of these stories were fake.”
“But that’s not the point”, he added, “The point is that the work of MI-6 was unnecessary, because professional journalism on its own would have produced the same result.” Like George Orwell sixty-two years earlier, he was pointing out that unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban. I know there are dangers in speaking out against generally accepted views, propagated by the establishment.
Michael Meacher MP spoke out on 9/11 and announced the showing of the film Loose Change in Parliament. At the last moment that showing was withdrawn without explanation. Afterwards it was revealed that he had phoned up the UK distributer saying that it was too dangerous.
I recently came across a report on the website of the Surrey Advertiser on the inquest into Mark Mockler, a mathematician who had worked for the Ministry of Defence in the missile technology department, and who disappeared in June 2008. His body was later found under bushes in Guildford, and an inquest was held on April 12, 2010, which recorded an open verdict.
His uncle stated that his mental health had deteriorated after the attacks on New York’s World Trade Center and The Pentagon on September 11, 2001.
Shortly after that he became known to mental healthworkers in Guildford, where he was put under psychiatric medication. “He was increasingly paranoid and ruminating a lot about events of the past”, said his case worker shortly before his death.
But did no-one check out his story on 9/11? That would have been easy to do. Was it just assumed that because he did not accept the government story on 9/11, an orthodoxy which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question, that he was in need of psychiatric medication? If that story is reasonably accurate, then it means that we need some sort of inquiry into psychiatric practice in the UK as well. If it is untrue, then we need a public inquiry into political propaganda by the media.
Even writing these news letters has not been without some pain. Following my newsletter of September 2009, in which I dealt with the hypersensitive issue of 7/7 for the first time, I received some abusive emails, suggesting I was a Nazi sympathiser. So did two colleagues of mine. I was not even vulnerable to such allegations. I simply held my ground and dealt with the issue in general terms in my October Newsletter. We need new leadership in the London 9/11 truth movement.
There seems to be tenacious suppression of the truth also in connection with the case of Holly Greig in Scotland. The website is suggesting a widespread cover-upof a paedophilic ring by people in high places.
As horrific as the individual abuses may be, my main concern here is to see the bigger picture; why should people in high places cover up such a network? Would they personally be involved, or could there be other motives, such as intimidation or other implications? Would revealing a high level criminal ring in one activity open up a can of worms in other areas, possibly involving state crime? I was expecting a national story to break on this, but instead a similar story broke concerning the Vatican. We need to understand better how this conspiracy of silence works in our society, and to give encouragement to those who are prepared to go someway in speaking the truth.
As I was writing this, I came across an article in The Independent by Johann Hari under the title ‘The shameful,bloody silence at the heart of the election’. It begins:
“In this election campaign, there is a big blood-splattered hole we are all supposed to ignore. We are at war. It is a war that 64per cent of Brits believe is "unwinnable" and should end now. It is a war that has killed 281 British people and an untold, uncounted number of Afghan civilians. It is a war that costs £4.5bn a year”.
At last, the story is starting to break. But even when big lies do start to break, journalists quite freely, and probably unknowingly, repeat other big lies from the complex network of deception. “Al-Qa'ida's attacks don't originate in these ‘bases’, and don't require them: 9/11 was plotted in Hamburg and Florida; 7/7 was planned in Yorkshire” writes Johann Hari. I don’t think so. We don’t know where 9/11 was plotted, but we do know that there were certain people inW ashington who wanted some catastrophic event like Pearl Harbor to give them an excuse for starting a war.
As for 7/7, the terrorists caught a train that didn’t run that day, and unless the CCTV images weremanipulated, a later or an earlier train would have resulted in an impossible journey. He does, however, get to the point, by quoting an Israeli politician assaying: "public opinion does not influence foreign policy in Britain.Foreign policy is an elite issue", and gives a passing reference to the leaked CIA report on European public opinion, in which they say they are "counting on public apathy about Afghanistan" and boast that so far leaders have been "enabled... to ignore voters". Yet we have to rely on foreign leaders to get bits of the truth out on what didn’t happen on 9/11.
President Ahmadinejad of Iran has just called on the United Nations to launch an inquiry into the event, saying that it was “a big fabrication”,
but whether that will help influence Western public opinion in favour or against the idea that 9/11 wasn’t as it seemed is a debatable issue. The Western reporting of this isn’t exactly objective. If 64 per cent of Brits believe that the war is unwinnable and should end now, then this is a story waiting to break. We should now go for the jugular: a public inquiry into the origins of the invasion of Afghanistan, including the credibility of the official story of 9/11. To get there, we should be questioning the conspiracy of silence, and bringing attention to it by comments to blogs and newspaper articles, letters to newspapers, talking to friends, and even writing to our parliamentary candidates, who seem so keen on ignoring the issue. Feel free to forward this newsletter to any interested parties. So far, I have received just two replies from my candidates. David Rendell of the Liberal Democrats agrees that all my points are important, but won’t commit to doing anything specific about them. I replied that his party headquarters must be aware of the 9/11 issue, and he agreed to forward my information on to them. Adrian Hollister of the Greens did commit to a public inquiry into all of the issues I raised, except for the language issue, which he promised to brief himself on at a later stage. I hope a lot of people do.
The more we do so, the more politicians will realise that they should mention the war, and why the CIA thinks we shouldn’t mention the war. We should constantly remind them of that.
There’s a lot of cynicism out there. Over half of young people between the ages of 17and 24 haven’t even registered to vote, according to the Electoral Commission. Writing to candidates is out of fashion amongst an increasing percentage of the population who have latched on to the fact that politicians have little say on big issues of state policy. But it’s worth doing, because it’s this sort of activity that in the end influences public opinion. That’s what we’re really targeting.
Like John Cleese, we should now be constantly getting the message to as many people as possible during this election campaign: Don’t mention the war:
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