Berkshire 911 blog

Governments should have nothing to hide

2012-02-12T10:41:00.010Z

January 2012

January has passed, and we still don't know who we are going to wage war on this year. The Establishment is trying very hard to fix something up, but it seems they are having problems.

I saw on Russia Today demonstrations outside the US Embassy in London with banners saying 'Don't attack Iran' (28 January).

The Anti-War Coalition held a 'Don't attack Iran' conference at which former MP George Galloway gave a dire warning of the consequences of going to war with Iran:

Link

Michel Chossudovsky, Director of the Center for Research on Globalization, told Russia Today that suggestions that Iran's leaders had been involved in 9/11 was nothing but a ploy

They tried to implicate Saddam Hussain in 9/11, too, but that turned out to be just war propaganda. As with Iraq, they are now talking of weapons of mass destruction in Iran, when the main proliferation of nuclear weapons seems to have been in US bases in non-nuclear countries. On 30 January Michel Chossudovsky gave a further interview, saying that an invasion of Iran had been on the cards since 1995, and warning of an 'unthinkable outcome', a possible World War III scenario, if an attack were to take place (rt.com/ news/us-iran-ww3-chossudovsky-025).

"Almost the entire senior hierarchy of Israel's military and security establishment is worried about a premature attack on Iran and apprehensive about the possible repercussions, a former chief of the country's defence forces told The Independent yesterday".

Things are hotting up in Syria, too, but it is becoming more and more clear that things aren't as they appear in the mainstream media. The Guardian has now broken ranks, with a blog by Jonathan Steele on 17 January on its 'Comment is Free' site, with a headline: ' Most Syrians back President Assad, but you'd never know from western media'.

According to an opinion poll commissioned from Qatar, 55% of Syrians want Assad to stay, they say. "The pity is that it was ignored by almost all media outlets in every western country whose government has called for Assad to go", writes the blogger.

When news of that blog circulated in the UK truth movement, US researcher and writer Webster Tarpley wrote: "During my own trip to Syria last November, I estimated 65%. In any case, Assad has the support of an overwhelming landslide majority".

He also gave a link to an interview on France 24 with the Archbishop of Aleppo in Syria, Jean-Clément Jeanbart. The Archbishop estimated that about 70% of Syrians back Assad.

He also told listeners that most of Syria was in fact peaceful, a very different impression from the one one gets from the Western mainstream media.

And now, a leaked copy of the Observers' Mission Report of the League of Arab States to Syria has just appeared on the Internet.

Michel Chossudovsky concludes: "While the Mission does not identify the foreign powers behind 'the armed entity', the report dispels the mainstream media lies and fabrications. It largely confirms independent media reports including Global Research's coverage of the armed insurrection since April 2011".

A United Nations human rights panel expressed alarm at reports claiming that Syrian security forces were torturing children. Writing in Alex Jones' Prison Planet, Kurt Nimmo compares this with disinformation about Saddam Hussain's people throwing babies out of incubators in Kuwait following the Iraqi invasion of 1991 Link.

It turned out not to be true. But why would it be necessary to unleash such mendacious war propaganda on the US public when Saddam had just invaded a sovereign nation? That, in turn, is reminiscent of what historian monk Robert of Reims wrote some twenty years after the call to arms by Pope Urban II which led to the First Crusade: "They circumcise the Christians, and the blood of the circumcision they either spread upon the altars or pour into the vases of the baptismal font. When they wish to torture people by a base death, they perforate their navels, and dragging forth the extremity of the intestines, bind it to a stake; then with flogging they lead the victim around until the viscera having gushed forth the victim falls prostrate upon the ground. ..."

I doubt whether the pope actually said those words, but it was all part of the war machine. Isn't it about time, after nearly a thousand years, that we stopped believing them? Nick Kollerstrom wrote in Terror on the Tube: "Deep in the Anglo-Saxon psyche, one finds a collective reassurance, a togetherness, that is gained from that hate-and-fear image. People have been reared on films in which the enemy threatens our whole way of life, and has to be blasted to bits in the last reel, and ordinary citizens are actually grateful to their leader for telling them who to hate and fear - just as George Orwell predicted"

I think Anglo-Saxon acceptance of the ruling elite goes back to 1066, when the Normans became the ruling class. They were propagandist French-speaking Vikings who had overseas expansionism in their blood. Not much has changed since the days of Guillaume le Conquerant, and the crusading adventures of his great great grandson Richard Coer de Leon, who lived in the South West of France and spoke langue d'oil. Whilst we in state schools were learning "An Englishman's word is his bond", the ruling elite were earning the epithet "La perfide Albion".

So what happens if there's another event like 7/7 in London during the Olympic Games? With 13 000 troops in the capital it sounds as if there'd be a military clamp-down, like that following the burning of the Reichstag in 1933. Or what happens if they start bombing Syria or Iran or Pakistan, or Somalia? It will not only be an excellent opportunity for burying bad news, but an opporunity to ban demonstrations in London. People could be thrown into jail as terrorists for merely opposing the government in its latter-day Viking quest for conquest. Perhaps the same could be said of anyone protesting about the sponsorship by Dow Chemical, the company which shirked its responsibility in Bhopal for compensating the human beings whose lives they wrecked in 1984. I think with knowledge of all this if I were involved with the Olympic Games by now I'd have withdrawn.

This isn't just speculation. Banning demonstrations during the Olympic Games has been on the agenda since last year, when The Independent reported: "Ministers are planning legal action to restrict public protests during the Olympics, amid fears that Britain could be disrupted by lengthy and high-profile demonstrations".

"The coalition appears to be abandoning any attempt to behave like a democratic government", said one protester at the Occupy London Stock Exchange protest outside St Paul's.

Protesters were reported to be infuriated by a police memo which put the London Occupy movement in the same context as Al Qaeda. "We are clearly nothing to do with extremists or terrorists, we are a peaceful group and we do use direct action to raise our point but definitely not terrorism", said one protester.

The police document mentions a forthcoming 'Bank of Ideas' meeting, suggesting that that may lead to an increase in "urban exploration activity". The opening of the Bank of Ideas was reported in The Independent: "The Occupy London group, who have also occupied space outside St Paul's Cathedral and Finsbury Square in Islington, north London, have organised a series of events to mark the opening".

"We have raised one important issue, which is that the financial system is corrupt.", says the video, "It's about bringing people together; it's about solidarity". Now I know one or two people who went to the Bank of Ideas meeting and did some filming. Mark Windows showed the video at the January meeting of Keep Talking in London, and then posted it on the Internet as 'INSIDE OCCUPY AND BANK OF IDEAS with land of the free uk'.

"We just ask questions", says the video. The process used was the Delphi Technique, but what they seemed to be finding was an "invisible hierarchy". The first question that cropped up was on how the Climate Camp was associated with the action, and why the finances were going into their bank account. Later in the video they go to the camp outside St Paul's, where one of the protesters says, "Well when I first came down here it was a real grass-roots movement … since the GA's have moved in and started to take control over the camp a lot has changed, and the way they did it was very stealthily … they began to enforce rules …". Mark Windows then states: "There's no reason why we can't film here now, but they've gone to get their Tranquility Team now. This is how it's turned out at St Paul's. It seems it's no longer the 99%".

One guy in the video offers a possible explanation: "There are some people who are travelling around this planet, who are training people in countries all over the world, and train people on how to hold these revolutions that are democratic - new democracy revolutions - and what we're experiencing on the ground, inside of this thing, is it's basically the government that's pushing a New Age agenda". So are government agent provocateurs taking over the Occupy movement in London in time for the Olympics?

Meanwhile, BBC's Newsnight has been figuring out what British troops were doing in the Libyan campaign last year. Despite a UN resolution, Newsnight found that UK forces were on the ground in Libya, alongside the anti-Gaddafi forces.

An analysis appeared in The Daily Bell, a free-market alternative news site based in Liechtenstein, under the heading 'BBC admits anglosphere destabilised Libya'

Well, it's not quite the BBC itself; the BBC is not yet a homogenous beaurocracy headed by a Stalinist clique, though since the coup of 2004 when their Director General, Greg Dyke, was forced to resign because he let out a bit of truth about the Weapons of Mass Destruction deception, it does seem to be going in that direction.

The BBC's best-known journalist, Jeremy Paxman, giving a lecture about Newsnight in August 2007, stated about the BBC: "Working for it has always been a bit like living in Stalin's Russia, with one five-year-plan, one resoundingly empty slogan after another. One BBC, Making it Happen, Creative Futures, they all blur into one great vacuous blur. I can't even recall what the current one is. Rather like Stalin's Russia, they express a belief that the system will go on forever".

Whilst some programmes, such as their 'Consipracy Files', could be mistaken for, if not Stalinist propaganda, Nazi-type propaganda, there are still investigative journalists there who are doing what they can under difficult circumstances. Jeremy Paxman does an excellent job in trying to squeeze drips of truth out of politicians, but often he's interviewing the wrong people. Here's what he said in the same lecture: "When we learned a few weeks ago that 'tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime' meant that thousands of prisoners were going to be released early, it was an opportunity to have a sensible, grown-up discussion about why we lock so many people up in this country, what we do with them while they're there, and whether releasing them a few weeks early makes any difference. That discussion might have involved people who know about penal policy, maybe a prison governor, and perhaps a thoughtful ex-con. Instead of which what did we end up with on Newsnight (and elsewhere)? The latest prison minister and his conservative shadow. Why do we do that? Because we're too close to Westminster politics, and because when the production desk is being run ragged, looking for guests, the one thing you can be sure about is a politician's willingness to spout confidently". So there's hope yet!

Of even greater concern now is freedom of speech over the Internet. On Wednesday, 18th January Wikipedia shut down access to its English-language pages for the day, in protest against new legislation being talked about in Washington, which could bring to an end the Internet as we know it.

"SOPA and PIPA represent two bills in the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate respectively", they explain, "SOPA is short for the 'Stop Online Piracy Act,' and PIPA is an acronym for the 'Protect IP Act.' ('IP' stands for 'intellectual property.') In short, these bills are efforts to stop copyright infringement committed by foreign web sites, but, in our opinion, they do so in a way that actually infringes free expression while harming the Internet". They add that, the bill would give the US government extraordinary, ambiguous, and loosely-defined powers to take control over content and information on the free web".

But it gets worse. There have been large-scale demonstrations in Poland in protest at the signing by their government of an international copyright agreement ACTA in Poznan. The Western media have been rather quiet about this, but Russia Today reported: "In Poland, the cyber-offensive has sparked massive protests since Tuesday. On Thursday, tens of thousands flooded onto the streets, with demonstrators clashing with police in Kielche. With public anger still high, the demos are expected to continue". Activists are saying that the ACTA treaty amounts to Internet censorship and gross violation of human rights.

I found a page of explanations about ACTA headed: 'ACTA = Global Internet Censorship - Now Even Foreign Governments Will Be Able To Have Your Website Shut Down'.

So why should the Poles be holding widespread demonstrations, in temperatures of -15C, when others are remaining quiet? When I was in Poznan recently I got the impression that the Poles were good at interpreting old Soviet-style propaganda but rather unsuspecting when it came to more subtle Western propaganda. Perhaps I didn't speak with enough people there, or perhaps the honeymoon with Western democracy is now over. Poland has throughout history been caught between the East and the West, which is why the idea of Esperanto started there. Perhaps the Poles are waking up. I see this as a positive development, one that is essential if the truth movement is to survive. Let us join together in a spirit of solidarnosc.

I wrote at the beginning of this newsletter that we still don't know who we are going to wage war on this year. David Cameron keeps telling us, "We are all in this together". He's right; they are all in this together. As the late US comedian George Carlyn pointed out, "It's a big club, and you ain't in it". We aren't waging war; they are. 'They' includes Hillary Clinton, who in March 2011 declared that they are losing the information war.

SOPA, PIPA and ACTA clearly form part of their new offensive for 2012 to regain control in the dissemination of untruths, and malicious war propaganda that will enable them to expand the anglosphere empire. As George Carlyn concluded in the same speech, "It's called the American dream cause you have to be asleep to believe it".

If governments and corporations have to resort to such crude devices to suppress the truth, rather than the more traditional and subtle manipulation from within, then they must really be feeling under pressure. It gives the truth movement the moral highground. As Gandhi said: "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win". One more step to go!

We need to bring governments to account. Why are they quietly signing such draconian legislation in our name? What do they have to hide? Wherever you do that, whether in the streets, in the pub, at your Internet terminal, or in your MPs surgery, do keep talking.

Hegemonic NWO or peaceful coexistence

2011-12-31T15:12:00.017Z

November and December 2011

I wish the season of goodwill was at the beginning of the year rather than the end, tagged on merely as an afterthought. We will have a short break (a good time to bury bad news), then everything will be back to normal. The wars will continue, and so will the belligerence which could so easily lead to new wars. Not so long ago there was talk of bombing Iran, then the focus moved to Pakistan, until China warned the US that an attack on Pakistan would be considered an attack on China. Then it was Syria, and still is, though Russia has now placed two warships off the coast of Syria.

And then it was back to Iran. And in the meantime there was the matter of regime change in Libya, which had little to do with bringing democracy to the country, and everything to do with control of an area with huge oil assets and an independent banking system.

Suddenly the Werritty Affair blew up, as questions were asked why defence minister Liam Fox was being accompanied by his friend Adam Werritty in diplomatic meetings. Craig Murray, the whistleblowing former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, has been investigating. Under the heading ' Liam Fox, Adam Werritty, and the curious case of Our Man in Tel Aviv' the Independent reported

on the involvement of the UK ambassador to Israel, and secret meetings between the three of them. Yet it has been left to the former UK ambassador Craig Murray to uncover four more similar meetings, they reported.

"I have no doubt that there is a 'separate policy' on Israel and Iran, different to that acknowledged in public. I have no doubt that the Fox/Gould/Werritty meetings – and the blanket cover-up of them from scrutiny in parliament, documents or the media – afford a key way into it".

But now we have disturbing reports of US troop activity in and around Syria. A report appeared on Russia Today's website headed 'US troops surround Syria on the eve of invasion?' stating:

"A former official from within the ranks of the Federal Bureau of Investigation is reporting that US and NATO forces have landed outside of Syria and are training militants to overthrow the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds, formerly a translator with the FBI, wrote over the weekend that American soldiers are among the NATO troops that have mysteriously and suddenly landed on the Jordanian and Syrian border. … Additionally, Edmonds says that American and NATO forces are training Turkish troops as well, to possibly launch a strike from the north of Syria".

Further details are given on her 'Boiling Frogs' website, which also contains an article reminding us that not long ago the US was sending people to Syria for torture.

But perhaps it won't be Syria after all. Or perhaps it will be Syria, and after that London. It's just been announced that 13 500 troops will occupy part of London for the Olympic Games, with the support of two warships, military helicopters, fighter jets and ground-to-air missiles.

Britain will provide up to 13,500 troops to protect next summer's London Olympics -- more than it has in Afghanistan -- after organisers said international uncertainty meant security for the event needed to be doubled.

Defence Secretary Philip Hammond said the military support would provide back-up for police and private staff already hired to secure the perimeters of the Olympic and Paralympic venues in what will be Britain's largest peacetime security operation.

The military presence will also include special forces and specialist bomb disposal units as well as a 1,000-strong contingency force "in the event of an Olympics-related civil emergency".

So perhaps when we've had a short break (a good time to bury bad news), we'll be told after the season of goodwill has ended, who we're going to be at war with in the new year. It's all supposed to be about bringing democracy to these countries, but democracy itself is the most easily undermined and destabilised form of government there is. With the best will in the world, how do run a democracy when you know how easily it can be usurped by a foreign power, especially if you're Iranian and have vivid memories of the overthrow of Prime Minister Mohamad Mosadeq? Is the fighting in Syria just a local rebellion, as we in the West are led to believe, or is it civil war fueled by a foreign power, as the Russians seem to believe?

There is now a war of words over the recent Russian elections between the US and Russia. Was Russia being destabilised by the CIA, as the Putin and Co seem to think, or were the protests merely internally generated amongst the Russian people, as Hilary Clinton seems to be suggesting? The best way to encourage a fledgling democracy is not to intervene subversively, but to let the people of the country get on with it. Otherwise clamp-downs become inevitable. Unfortunately, not everyone has the best will in the world, and constant destabilising foreign interventions will sooner or later lead to a return of Stalin and Hitler.

In the EU itself democracy seems to be being extinguished. Elected governments are being replaced by financial technocrats. In the UK we have a dramatically growing scepticism over the EU, starting with the Euro, which was clearly a project destined to failure.

The UKIP MEP Nigel Farage, who wants the UK to withdraw completely from the EU, is now becoming incredibly popular with the mainstream media.

I suspect, though, that some of the big-wigs in Government want to return EU powers not to Westminster, but to The City, and so to the financial institutions that seem to be running this country. Others want to make the EU more democratic, but they are losing the battle. The 17 Eurozone countries have now accepted fiscal union. So who will now be running the Eurozone if not the financial institutions? These changes were not brought about my normal democratic processes, but by a project destined to failure, whose objective could only have been to consolidate power at the heart of Europe. Can the fiscal union work? In the short term it probably can, but in the long term I should have thought there would be a backlash from the far right, in particular in France, when they see themselves being taken over by German corporate interests. How will the union respond to that? Probably by a clamp-down, thus further consolidating power in the hands of the few; otherwise the whole union could break up.

I was amazed to see the film 'Inside Job' on BBC Four.

This film is the financial equivalent of 'ZERO: an investigation into 9/11', which has never been broadcast on mainstream television in the UK. That's why I was amazed that the BBC would broadcast it. Public interest into the economic meltdown is now so intense, that even the BBC must be under great pressure to admit that the whole thing was a set-up. That set-up was enabled by the 'light touch' of the regulators in the US and the UK. I would like to know what pressures the politicians were under to bring about that 'light touch'. Since this was international, it seems likely that those pressures would have been coming from financial corporate interests.

In the UK the government's Financial Services Authority has published a report into the failure of the Royal Bank of Scotland. Their press release reports that "RBS’s failure amid the systemic crisis ultimately resulted from poor decisions made by the RBS management and Board. But deficiencies in the global capital regime and liquidity regulations made the crisis much more likely". In addition, the press release says, "flaws in the FSA’s supervisory approach provided insufficient challenge to RBS".

However Craig Woodhouse in The London Evening Standard writing under the heading ' FSA blames Blair, Brown and Balls for RBS collapse' digs a little deeper, and states: "Labour's light-touch regulation of the City was a key factor in the near-collapse of Royal Bank of Scotland, a report by the financial watchdog found today. The Financial Services Authority said it came under 'sustained' political pressure to spare the Square Mile from red tape in the years before the banking crisis"

It seems that a 'light touch' has been the policy also in the regulation of the education system in the UK.

The Daily Telegraph carried out an investigation into the practices of school examination boards in the UK following commercialisation initiated by the Blair government.

They found that exam boards were secretly coaching teachers on how to increase pupils’ marks in GCSEs and A-Levels. They also found evidence that exam boards are actively boasting about the ease of their courses in an apparent attempt to try to secure valuable business. "The increasing commercialisation of exams has coincided with a sharp rise in the number of children achieving top grades", they stated. This survey led to concerns that exam boards are driving down standards by aggressively competing with one another to persuade schools to take their tests. A senior official of one board stated in a covert recording that she didn't know how they got their syllabus through the official regulation system that is supposed to ensure high standards in GCSEs and A-Levels.

As a result, the education secretary has ordered an inquiry

Could this have just been due to criminal neglect? Or could it be that politicians like to falsify reality if that makes things look good for them? Or could it be that somone is trying to dumb down the education of our kids in order to make them politically more compliant? From a sociopath's point of view, the purpose of the education system would be merely to provide skilled people for employment in the industries that would build up the strength of the corporations. Beyond that, education could be dangerous. Having trained physicists specialising in physics is fine, but the last thing you want is trained physicists enquiring too much into social issues and the power structures of the country. That would, as I discovered, be dangerous. In the UK, knowledge of foreign languages could undermine the push for linguistic hegemony, and we saw how Baroness Catherine Ashton, then an unelected politician under Tony Blair, brought about the collapse of an already faltering language teaching programme in England's schools. So could all this be part of an intentional dumbing down process?

Shortly before reading about the Telegraph's research, I had come across an Alex Jones video, called 'Charlotte Iserbyt: The Miseducation of America'. Charlotte Iserbyt served as the head of policy at the Department of Education during the first administration of Ronald Reagan. While working there she discovered a long-term strategic plan to transform America from a nation of individualists and problem solvers to a country of servile, brainwashed minions who simply regurgitate whatever they're told.

She explains how conditioning and training under a corporate agenda has replaced traditional education, leading to a deliberate dumbing down of Americans.

She linked her own experiences to the financial and militaristic ambitions of those behind the New World Order, which she had read about in a book published in 1970 called 'None dare call it conspiracy'

Link to Amazon

which put together how financial institutions had been involved in political propaganda in controlling populations, even to the extent of initiating wars, in which they would finance both sides, so that when the wars came to and end both sides would be indebted to the banks that they had borrowed from. She had been sent that book by a friend, and by chance, I had been sent a copy by a friend and was reading it when I came across the video. Much of the book is based on the writings of Professor Carroll Quigley, who revealed much of the workings of the 'insiders'.

Then a story broke about a row in the City of Stoke-on-Trent. The Council had published a proposed budget for the following year, which included quite severe cuts, and had announced a consultation period, to end on 23 December.

However, a local independent news website published an article under the heading 'Are We Really Being Consulted On The 2012 Budget?' It stated:

"It seems that the decision to close the Wedgwood Memorial College has already been taken and just needs to be rubber-stamped by the Cabinet at their meeting on 15 December which is a day before the last public consultation event and over a week before the consultation closes on 23 December".

The Wedgwood Memorial College is an adult residential college offering short courses. I had understood that the college had, until some time in the 1990s been run by the Workers' Education Association, and that the Principal was in their employ. When it was taken over by Stoke-on-Trent Council, the Council became his new employer. Following his retirement the new Principal managed to make the College pay its own way, but then in 2007 she resigned, and was not replaced. The Friends of the College believed that there was an intent to close the college down, but since it was breaking even, they concluded that the motive could not have been to save money, but to gain money by selling the assets off. They campaigned to save the college. An inquiry by Staffordshire County Council concluded that the college was viable. Stoke-on-Trent Council reacted by changing its use so that it wasn't viable, and is now proposing to close the college to save money. So here we have a viable educational establishment being taken over by a local authority which is now attempting to close it down.

The Wedgwood College is also the location of the headquarters of Esperanto Association of Britain, which moved there in 2002, following a grand opening of Esperanto House.That building had been payed for and built on the college premises by the Esperanto Association for the College, and so for the City of Stoke-on-Trent Council. Members were led to believe that the association had a 99 year lease on the property, whereas in fact they had a lease only for one room of the house, used as their office, with separate arrangements for the use of other parts of college property and the hire of an office administrator from the City of Stoke-on-Trent Council. The long-standing Principal of the College had not been an Esperantist, but learned Esperanto and entered the Management Committee of Esperanto Association of Britain in 2000, taking on a leading role in the negotiations to relocate to the college.

Members had in 1999 voted for the sale of their London premises on the basis of three factors put to them by the Management Committee:

(1) the falling capital of the association
(2) the decrepit state of their own property
(3) professional advice received

I have to say that in my studies I could not substantiate any of those claims. Furthermore, I found that the capital had actually been rising dramatically over that period. It took more than five years for the treasurer to finally admit that my figures were correct (See my October newsletter). The current treasurer has now acknowledged that the association did not have exclusive occupancy of the whole house, and that they took legal advice on the situation which would arise if the college were to close. She reported that the association would receive occupancy of the whole house, but would have to pay more for the maintenance costs. Taking legal advice would of course not have been necessary had the association simply had a lease for the whole house as they had led members to believe.

A letter of mine, calling for a public inquiry, appeared in the Staffordshire Newsletter.

It seems that in one foul swoop, antidemocratic forces in Stoke-on-Trent were dumbing down the educational activities of two registered charities.

Next year should be an interesting year (A medical practitioner once told me what 'interesting' meant!). It is the year for which I had in 2005 forecast the demise of the Esperanto association. My colleague thought that they would keep it running as a token group, in order to block anyone else who might want to set up a new national association. Perhaps we were both right. I was amazed later to find that 2012 was being forecast as the year in which the New World Order takes over. All sorts of justifications were being put forward, ranging from astrology to the Book of Revelations. Looking back on that, it now looks quite simple; it looks as if there may have been a twenty-year programme starting in 1992, the year after the fall of Communism, which comes to completion in 2012. It was around that time that we saw the appearance of Demos, the New Labour group in the Labour Party, Common Purpose, which according to Brian Gerrish's researches has been 'messing up' in local government and other institutions, and Academic Cooperation Association, which looks as if it may may be a front for pushing for the hegemony of English in the EU. It was also the year of an otherwise unexplained sudden linear decline in membership of Esperanto Association of Britain.

Next year will also see the centenary of the sinking of the Titanic, and with it the extinction of a leading light in investigative journalism, as well as founder of the then 'Stop the War' campaign. William T Stead was the most famous passenger on the Titanic, and he had acquired a phenominal reputation in the UK for his highlighting of social injustices. He also had ideas of bringing peace to the world by benevolent use of capital raised by entrepreneurs.

There was a television programme on BBC2 on 22 November called 'When bankers were good' (Youtube link) narrated by Ian Hislop who explained about the growth of the banking industry following the industrial revolution, and how some of those leading bankers, being members of religious communities, left huge fortunes in trust for the public good. He finished by explaining the ideas of nineteenth century Oxford don John Ruskin, who developed the idea, distinguishing between what he called 'wealth' and 'illth'.

I had just finished reading the book 'None dare call it conspiracy', which explains how John Ruskin's ideas were subsequently developed, I think not quite in the direction that John Ruskin would have hoped.

Before reading that, I had just read a more recent book, also based largely on the writings of Carroll Quigley, called 'Brotherhood of Darkness' by Stanley Monteith.

This book, too, had just been sent to me by a friend. It concentrated more on the personalities involved, and how they operated internally.

One student at the time of John Ruskin was Cecil Rhodes, who was so taken with Ruskin's idea of using huge fortunes to bring peace to the world, that he himself gained huge fortunes in Southern Africa, and became a strong force in colonisation. In the name of peace, he recruited two other very influential people. In 'The Anglo-American Establishment ' Carroll Quigley writes: "One wintry afternoon in 1891, three men were engaged in earnest conversation in London. From that conversation were to flow consequences of the greatest importance to the British Empire and to the world as a whole. For these men were organizing a secret society that was, for more than 50 years, to be one of the most important forces in the formulation and execution of British imperial and foreign policy. "The three men thus engaged were already well known in England. The leader was Cecil Rhodes, fabulously wealthy empire builder and the most important person in South Africa. The second was William T. Stead, the most famous, and probably also the most sensational, journalist of the day. The third was Reginald Baliol Brett, later known as Lord Esher, friend and confidant of Queen Victoria, and later to be the most influential adviser of King Edward VII and King George V." It emerged that Rhodes' idea of bringing peace to the world included further colonisation. Of course, the main military opposition would come not from the natives, but from other Europeans. When Rhodes used his position to provoke the Boer War, Stead objected. Rhodes insisted on absolute loyalty, and that caused a bitter schism in the movement for a New World Order. Stead was marginalised, but campaigned hard against the Boer War. In 1904 he suffered a nervous breakdown, which I can well understand. He wanted to pursue the way of co-operation between ethnic groups, rather than to impose hegemony on them. As part of that, he supported the idea of an easily learned auxiliary language, and in 1904 became the first President of the newly formed British Esperantists Association (Inc).

That schism still exists today. Carroll Quigley was one of Bill Clinton's professors at Georgetown University, before Bill Clinton became a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. He paid homage to Carroll Quigley in his 1992 nomination acceptance speech for the US Presidency. Quigley wrote in 'The Anglo-American Establishment': "The Rhodes scholarship established by the terms of Cecil Rhodes’ seventh will are known to everyone. What is not so widely known is that Rhodes, in five previous wills, left his fortune to form a secret society, which was to devote itself to the preservation and expansion of the British Empire". In another book, 'Tragedy and Hope' Quigley wrote that the aim of this secret society was “…nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole".

Carroll Quigley wrote that he knew of the operation of this network because he had been permitted to study it for two years in the 1960s, to examine its papers and secret records. "I have no aversion to it or to most of its aims and have for much of my life been close to it and to many of its instruments", he wrote, "In general my chief difference of opinion is that it wishes to remain unknown". That sounds to me a bit like the Demos people, who have been advocating 'open infiltration', presumably because people have become so accepting of what is going on that the public would just become acquiescent. So we can trace Rhodes' ideas on a militaristic hegemonic New World Order through Carroll Quigley, Bill Clinton, George W Bush and Tony Blair, and through to the present-day wars. The Stead side of the schism was marginalised. A strong pacifist movement grew up. I knew one or two pacifists from the First World War, including the concert pianist Frank Merrick, whom I interviewed on his 90th birthday in 1976 when he was Honorary President of The London Esperanto Club. Belatedly, I now find I can understand their pacifism. I still think we have the right to defend ourselves, but this wasn't about defence, unless, of course, 'defence' is interpreted in the Orwellian sense. Since 9/11, these values have been revived. There is now a huge truth movement throughout the Western world, consisting of thousands of individuals who want to know the truth about the real sources of terrorism in all its forms, including financial terrorism and the use of 'illth'. But governments and the mainstream media are overwhelmingly controlled by corporate interests, to such an extent, as George Orwell put it in his introduction to 'Animal Farm' that "anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness".

The world has to decide which way to go. Will it take the route of Cecil Rhodes, Carroll Quigley, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Tony Blair, towards a hegemonic New World Order controlled by huge corporate financial interests, or will it take the route of democratic peaceful co-existence, respecting each others' human rights, their cultures and their languages, and turning the huge financial resources available into wealth rather than illth?

We need to spread that question far and wide. Whatever language you do it in, keep talking.

Its Democracy, Jim, but not as we know it

2011-11-13T11:16:00.008Z

It seems the revolution has begun. The Occupy demonstrations have taken place in over 95 cities across 82 countries but it's no longer just about 'the economy, stupid' (to use Bill Clinton's famous phrase), but about the corporate state. The economic crisis was caused by large financial institutions which had more power than elected governments. It was the economy that moved people into activism, but a bigger picture is now emerging.

Mussolini talked of the "Corporate State of Fascism". That's exactly what's developing now. It's been a hidden Fascism, with a democratic veneer, but since the turn of the century people in the US and the UK – 'Oceania', as George Orwell described it in '1984' – have been increasingly frustrated at their lack of a voice in big decisions of state. In the UK we had no voice in the invasion of Iraq in 2003, despite there being two million people out on the streets; Parliament voted on the basis of a lie. In 2001 Parliament had no vote at all, since decisions on waging war could at that stage be taken only by the Prime Minister in conjunction with the Monarch. So who did take these decisions? There is a growing feeling throughout the Western world that such decisions are taken not by elected politicians, but by gigantic financial institutions which in the end will profit from these wars.

So what would one expect from a corporate society? We may not expect the same brutality that one would have in an openly tyrannical regime, and, indeed, I am grateful to my opponents for not pulling my fingernails out, but in principle we would expect something similar. A corporate society does not uphold democratic values, even if it pretends to. Any troublesome group will be infiltrated by the corporate state, to neutralise its activities, or at least to keep them within certain limits.

This is exactly what has been emerging over the past year. On 20 October Newsnight broadcast a further revelation about an undercover policeman having infiltrated a civilian group with the purpose of subverting it:

"So far this year there have been no fewer than eight inquiries set up, after the discovery that undercover police have been used to infiltrate political organisations. There may be a ninth soon, because Newsnight has evidence of another operation, in which undercover policemen may have given false evidence in court. The officer became an activist in the Reclaim the Streets campaign, and was arrested after a group from the campaign occupied an office".

'Reclaim the Streets' is a direct action group which is concerned about the increasing takeover of urban streets by the corporate state. Their video documentary does show law-breaking, and indeed this is to be expected in a society which is more and more sceptical of the democratic processes in the country. "It turns the street into a road …", says their video, " the street can be much more about community, about social interaction … the road is a means of getting from A to B". The police do have a responsibility to keep the traffic flowing, but are their methods appropriate, and is it acceptable for the police to incite the very law-breaking which they are supposed to prevent, by means of agent provocateurs?

The Newsnight programme was about a cyclists demonstration of August 1996 in Central Lonon, in which a splinter group went to the headquarters of London Underground to unfurl protest banners. The incident led to the false arrest of one protestor, and false testimony in court by the undercover cop, who had played a leading role. The officer concerned was Jim Boyling, known in 'Reclaim the Streets' as Jim Sutton.

The Metropolitan Police were due to publish a report on an internal inquiry the following day, but at the last moment that report was delayed

It transpired that the alternative news source Indymedia had first become aware of the issue of undercover cops in protest movements and had passed information to The Guardian and BBC's Newsnight team, who worked together on their investigations. Again, the agenda is being driven by the alternative media rather than by paid investigative journalists

Since this is not just a British issue – some of these British cops had also been subverting groups abroad - Indymedia is now asking people to translate a statement on this into various languages.

I reported previously on Mark Kennedy, who had been posing as Mark (Flash) Stone in an environmental group, and whose actions had nearly led to the imprisonment of at least twenty innocent campaigners,

Lynn Watson (real name unknown), the police officer dressed as a clown in the Rebel Clown Army, a tiny group protesting against the Iraq war,

Other undercover police officers unmasked were Bob Lambert, posing as Bob Robinson,

Mark (Marco) Jacobs, whose real name is unknown,

Peter Black

and

Simon Wellings.

Groups infected were a variety of protest groups, such as anarchist, animal rights, anti-fascist, anti-globalisation, anti-racist, environmental and left-wing political groups. Those groups included: 2008 Camp For Climate Action, 2008 demo against the planned military academy at St Athan, Aldermaston Women’s Peace Camp, Animal Liberation Front, anti-EDL, Cardiff Anarchist Network (CAN), Cardiff Radical Socialist Forum, Climate Camp, The Common Place (Leeds anarchist centre), Dissent! (the network mobilising protesters for the G8 summit at Gleneagles), Globalise Resistance, London Greenpeace, No Border campaigns, Rebel Clown Army, Reclaim the Streets, Rising Tide Network, and Trident Ploughshares direct action network.

The lengths some of these undercover cops will go to in gaining credibility in the groups they have infiltrated are extraordinary. Kennedy provoked fellow officers to beat him up in a Climate Camp. Jim Boyling lied under oath in a criminal trial to protect his identity. Bob Lambert appeared in court under a fictional name. Several of them had sexual relationships with some of their victims, sometimes long-term relationships.

Jim Boyling even married one of his victims and had two children with her, now aged 5 and 7. How do you explain that one to the children, even when they are older, and how will they feel when they realise how they were brought into the world? Does the state have liabilities for their maintenance and for compensation for possible psychological trauma?

So if all this is going on with the police force in groups taking part in street activism, then what is going on with the security services in other groups that the corporate state disapproves of? I have already dealt with reports from former MI5 officers of large-scale infiltration in political parties, even "tiny organisations which pose no threat to national security". The purpose would be to turn these groups into controlled opposition, or to dismantle them, or at least make them ineffectual. It appears that the Communist Party of Great Britain and the Socialist Workers Party had around a thousand members each at the time the Berlin Wall fell, and each had, I understand 20 to 40 agents, whose job it was to cause quarreling and to demolish the organisations. How extensive is this, and how far will they go in 'gaining credence of the committee', to use a phrase from an email to me from the Director of Development of Esperanto Association of Britain shortly after he had left, admitting that that was all he had been doing for the two years in which he was being paid to develop the association.

Most people's reaction to anything like this is to pretend it isn't happening, and to try to shut others up when they talk about it. They'll tell you you're putting people off joining. I take the opposite view. I'm pleased to see that Cardiff Anarchists Network put out a statement on this:

But he [Marco Jacobs] also deliberately and systematically set out to damage a movement, and we think it is important that knowledge of what he did, and how he did it, is shared and discussed as widely as possible". They also wrote that many members were reeling with anger, resentment and guilt. "Marco worked hard to sow distrust, dislike and suspicion amongst us, and it was allowing him to do [that] that was perhaps our biggest mistake", they wrote.

Yet after all this, no-one, it seems, is capable of uttering the words 'the British secret police', even though it is patently obvious that such a thing exists. Yet the police now have a problem, because if they carry on behaving like SS thugs more cases will be uncovered. It will be in their interests to keep their noses clean until the whole issue has passed over. Perhaps that is why there was so little violence in the Occupy demonstrations in London this month. It is generally believed by many of the regulars who demonstrate for various causes in Central London that the police regularly use such tactics.

The late Brian Haw complained bitterly about such things and former MP George Galloway made allegations about agent provocateurs during some demonstrations. I myself would not have believed that such things could happen until I started taking part in truth and anti-war demonstrations only a few years ago, and started seeing things for myself.

We need more people to speak out. Most people who know things won't, and those who do will get criticised for their 'methods'. Some people, such as those in the South Yorkshire Police in the Tony Farrell case, see themselves as 'footsoldiers of the Government' and are therefore consciously complicit in the cover-ups. Others, like many I know, are simply in denial, or are suffering from Cognitive Dissonance or doublethink. Even those who recognise what is going on remain silent. Yet a few, like Tony Farrell have the courage to speak out.

During my researches into the Esperanto association in 2005, I would have loved to have come across a report somewhere of subversion in some other membership association which was being taken over by an inner clique, so that I could see how that may work, and so that I would have a base for comparison. Surely someone, somewhere would have been carrying out some investigation into their own association. Did no-one in the Labour Party compile membership statistics and link them to what was recorded in the minutes and the accounts? I could find nothing. If anyone knows of any such work, I would love to receive information on it. We need this information in order to build up the bigger picture, which is now looking very ominous indeed.

I can say that at long last we have a response from the Esperanto association to my financial chart, which I eventually managed to publish in EAB Update (pp 12-13) and, in the following issue, the treasurer accepted that my figures were correct. That issue of the periodical has now appeared on the Internet for all to see (p19).

That means that she should now explain why she told the Management Committee that the capital was being eaten up when at the time it was growing. Instead of doing that, she demonstrated how she had also given the same impression to members, by producing a rival chart showing a decreasing capital. She can be sure that few members will read the text, because they have such confidence in the treasurer, that they would refuse to believe that such a contradiction would be possible, rather than looking at the evidence, so they would not notice that that was a forecast for November 1994! Why produce the forecast figures when you have the real figures, unless the intent was to deceive? The other chart gives the impression of annual losses, which obviously could not have been the case if the capital was in fact increasing.

Yet members will not speak out, but will criticise me for doing so. In the same issue (page 17) a former Honorary Secretary expresses that he could not see the point in publishing my article, even though he says I have a point. He also wrote that my chart raises the question of why they sold the shop in London. Fine, but that's his point, not mine. I could have made a case out on that, but I didn't. That letter had actually been written before my article appeared, though it was presented as a reaction to it. Criticism of the President, with which I wholeheartedly agreed, had been cut out by the editor, who also rejected my reply, saying that the matter of the capital was a 'non-issue'.

A second letter in the same issue, from a former President, criticises me for virtually everything under the sun, including my work for the 9/11 truth movement, but avoids the issue which I had raised in my article (pp 17-18). There was nothing provocative about my article, and in no way was it critical of the committee, since that had been an explicit condition imposed by the editor. The problem of waking people up in a membership association is a small-scale example of waking up the masses in the case of hidden tyranny. The solution that I see is two-fold: (1) engage with the small minority who will be prepared to engage with you, and (2) take the issue outside the brainwashed community. Then things can start to happen. The statement by the Cardiff Anarchists Network may help to encourage others to speak out.

I also found an article by comedian Mark Thomas, who had had to come to terms with the fact that a close friend and trusted co-worker had been found to be spying on his activities. That turned out to be industrial espionage, which takes us back to consider the whole lot as different aspects of the corporate state. If that causes such soul-searching, imaging what it's like if there are five, ten or twenty of them whom you've known for as many years.

I found an interesting video called 'Psychologists help 9/11 truth deniers' which describes how people react when their fundamental beliefs are challenged. This is well-worth watching by anyone who understands English. It applies not only to 9/11 but to any situation in which people may react by saying "I refuse to believe ...", rather than looking at the evidence.

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I've received a couple of messages from Esperantists, saying that they were interested to hear of the infiltration of the cyclist group or the environmental group, but that I should keep quiet about the Esperanto case. Eventually they will realise that by the same logic some in the cyclist group, the enviromental group, the 9/11 truth movement, and many other groups, may be interested in the Esperanto case for the same reason. The common issue for all these groups, even though they may be working for different causes and may not agree with each other, is the defence of democracy. For undemocratic methods to be brought to light, people need to speak out in public. It's not necessary to be able to prove who has infiltrated an organisation and with what purpose; it's only necessary to demonstrate behaviour. My crime was to produce hard facts, with no allegations or interpretation. It was then for others to interpret those facts, and we have just seen examples of that in the magazine. On the other hand, members should have been more alert to undemocratic methods being used by people of influence. This is essentially the point being made by former accountant for the European Commission Martha Andreasson, who is now an MEP for my area. The accounts had not been audited, and that in itself should be good reason to replace the people in charge. Concealment in itself should be sufficient reason to remove people's representatives from office whether at governmental level or in a tiny membership association.

My idea of advancing this issue at about the same rate as the general truth movement seems to be paying off. I reported in my last newsletter about the Guardian report of a 9/11 conference in the US.

Since then we have seen a blog in the Daily Telegraph, usually one of the most establishment of the national newspapers, with the title 'The 9/11 conspiracy theories aren't as irrational as you might think'.The rest of the article was critical of the truth movement, but at least here we have a grudging acceptance that we may actually have a point. Keep them coming! Encourage them to keep slagging us off, as long as there is a grudging admission that we may be right!

There are also big issues arising in the mainstream media. The Murder of Muammar Gadaffi may have been an uncontrolled revenge killing by soldiers on the ground, or it may have been allowed to happen by those higher up. Gadaffi would have realised that they couldn't send him to the International Criminal Court for trial because of the incriminating evidence he may provide against some of the NATO governments. His murder had actually been attempted by a group in the 1990s by what is now known as Al Qaeda, paid for by MI6, but it was bungled. That was what eventually made David Shayler decide to leave MI5 and blow the whistle.

As regards the Euro crisis, was it not all inevitable from the start? I kept quiet when the Euro was about to be introduced because I regarded myself as an ignoramus on economic affairs, when the experts were telling us all that it would be alright. Are we really to believe that no-one in the higher echelons of the EU spotted the flaw? Many in the financial markets below them would have been fooling themselves rather than accepting the obvious. So was this a project destined to failure? Was the objective to force the EU countries into a United States of Europe similar to the United States of America? Fine if they want to form such a union, but only if such a decision is taken by democratic means. So what happens if we in the UK have a referendum on leaving the EU? It's quite simple, really. If the vote goes against, we stay in, and if it goes in favour, we have another referendum. But if we were really to withdraw, what would be the consequences? Is it not time someone produced a proper analysis? Are those who want power to return to Westminster deluding themselves? Who has the power now, and who would have it if we were to withdraw? It sounds to me like the gigantic financial corporations in both cases. It's just a question of which financial corporations.

So where do we go from here? I think we are on the right track. We need to maintain an awareness of the bigger picture regarding corporate control of our society, the way in which we are manipulated by hidden propaganda, financial dealing, fear-mongering, and infiltration even in tiny membership association which pose no threat to national security. There will be more revelations. When the Occupy movement starts putting up placards relating to 9/11 truth, then the whole issue of who controls our society will come to a head.

But the danger is, as always, some false-flag terror event, which could bring everyone back into line, in supporting the next war, and persuading the population that they really do love Big Brother. At the October meeting of the Keep Talking group in London we had a guest speaker from Oslo, Torstein Viddal, who is the key researcher in the truth movement into the Norwegian attacks of 22/7. He lives only a couple of minutes away from where the Oslo bomb exploded, and despite a building between there and his flat, his window was blown open. He grabbed his camera and rushed out. At the Keep Talking meeting he showed a short video of how the International Criminal Court works, and suggested that we call for an investigation by the ICC with a view to prosecuting for war crimes. That's worth thinking about. His text can be read on the Norwegian 9/11 Truth site

Also worth thinking about is the issue of corporate government, and how to bring all these issues together in the current rebellion, and how to cope with the next terrorist event, which may well be intended to derail the rebellion and give an excuse for going in with truncheons, tasers, jack-boots and worse. Keep thinking. And keep talking.

Take Charlie's advice: Begin your own cognitive infiltration

2011-10-02T17:34:00.014+01:00

September 2011

I think everyone's now suffering from 9/11 fatigue, following the bombardment from the mainstream media over the period of the tenth anniversary. Some of it wasn't too bad, and some was even revealing, but of course virtually none of it questioned the official conspiracy theory (a summary of which can be watched HERE and the ridiculous assertions put out relentlessly by governments and the mainstream media over the past ten years. I see reasons for hope, though.

After the showing of the BBC's Conspiracy Files programme '9/11 Ten Years on' on 29 August someone asked me "How was it?" The falsifications were so blatant that I could honestly reply that it was encouraging, because many people would now be able to see through the propaganda who couldn't have seen through it in their previous programmes. I thought it signaled a break-through.

It was just as described by John Pilger in his Chicago address, when he reported an anecdote from visiting Soviet journalists in the US. Their spokesman said: “I have to tell you, that we were astonished to find after reading all the newspapers and watching TV day after day that all the opinions on all the vital issues are the same. To get that result in our country we send journalists to the gulag. We even tear out their fingernails. Here you don’t have to do any of that. What is the secret?"

And yet it was surreal. Throughout the blogs of the mainstream media the comments from the public were overwhelmingly critical of the official story, and of the press's reporting of it. I had expected that we would be swamped with all sorts of weirdos doing their usual stuff to ridicule anyone who wasn't towing the official line and to disrupt intelligent discussion. Dealing with this had become a way of life. But where were they now? Had they given up? I contributed some comments myself in various places, and even complimented BBC Newsnight's team on revealing the plight of many first responders who were now dying of cancer. I suggested that it was now OK for journalists to let a little bit of the truth out, because now they would have the support of the public. I think we're winning, folks.

On 12 September, an amazing blog appeared on the The Guardian's website 'How the world changed after 9/11'. "On the day of September 11, Charlie Skelton attends a symposium of critical thinkers in New York", ran the subheading. Yes, it was a proper journalistic report of a conference of leading critical thinkers on the 9/11 attacks. The blog mentioned Webster Tarpley and CIA analyst Ray McGovern.

Charlie Skelton concludes by saying:

"We have to do something. Even if that something is simply to Google 'Cass Sunstein' and start from there. Begin your own cognitive infiltration. Google 'Vigilant Guardian' or 'Able Danger'. Crosscheck 'Abdel Hakim Belhadj' and 'Al-Qaida'. Begin digging. Begin thinking. And stop believing." I see that as a break-through. Mr Skelton has also blogged on New York activists and the 9/11 demonstration outside the BBC in 2009 but primarily on the Bilderberg group.

For the first time as far as I am aware, an article has appeared in the mainstream media in the UK raising serious questions on the official conspiracy theory on 9/11. The significance of this is not just in the effect of that article as a one-off, but that it signals to other journalists that it's now OK to raise such issues in the national press. I hope it doesn't get Charlie Skelton into trouble, since George Monbiot, Polly Toynbee and David Aaronovitch all write for The Guardian. Unless the authorities find some way of silencing people over that Guardian article, other journalists will get the message, and the cracks in the facade will widen.

So I was interested to see an article by Guardian journalist Nicolaus Mills on 15 September in The Guardian's 'Comment is Free' headed 'The anthrax scare: not a germ of truth', and subheaded 'Ten years on, the anthrax attacks seem a footnote to 9/11, but we forget how George Bush used them to push for war in Iraq'. The breakthrough is real.

During the run-up to the tenth anniversary we would discuss what we could do to mark the event. Anything I could think of, and any ideas from others, all seemed like a drop in the ocean compared with the expected onslaught. I remembered the tactic of the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War, when they would await enemy fire, count a certain number of seconds, then all pop up from their underground hideouts and return fire when the enemy had run out of ammunition. However, shortly before the 9/11 anniversary Belinda, who used to organise the 9/11 Truth meetings in London, had a bit of inspiration, and organised a public meeting at the Indian YMCA for the Keep Talking group. The speaker was Ian Crane, who had been the first chairman of the London 9/11 Truth movement before I was around, and who now organises the Alternative View conferences. At the time, he was planning a lecture tour around the UK. Belinda has the magic touch, and so does Ian Crane. I was getting nervous about a low turnout, which could make the event look ridiculous in such a large hall, so I sent out a press release using various freeby services. The Keep Talking group put a couple of classified advertisements in London newspapers (one of which didn't appear). But I think it was Ian Crane's own publicity machine that got the people there. On the evening itself some of us initially put out about fifty chairs. About 170 people turned up. The issue is very much alive, and the authorities could hardly have done better in helping us keeping it alive.

Earlier the same day, some members of Keep Talking were driving down from Sheffield, where they had been attending the employment tribunal hearing for Tony Farrell, the former Principal Intelligence Analyst for South Yorkshire Police, who had been sacked for his assessment of terrorist risks in the area, even though his bosses recognised that he may be right, as I reported in my August newsletter. By chance, Ian Crane had been due to speak in Sheffield on 9/11 and related issues. In the event, following his talk, Ian Crane ended up representing Tony Farrell at the tribunal. That evening, just as Ian Crane was about to speak at the London Indian YMCA, Tony Farrell unexpectedly turned up, looking in high spirits, despite having lost the case. He told us he intended to appeal. He got an enthusiastic round of applause after Ian Crane had outlined his story.

I've just been speaking to someone I don't know over the phone, who was telling me all about Tony Farrell's mistakes, and why he can't be right. But for me, the case shouldn't rest on whether or not he is right, because no-one challenged him on that. In fact, he reported that his bosses had admitted that he may be right. So what was he fired for? It's quite simple. As his bosses in South Yorkshire Police put it: "We are footsoldiers of the Government". So, I sometimes think, are the courts.

Petition to reinstate Tony Farrell

I wasn't at the hearing myself, though initially I had planned to be. I thought it better to follow events on the Internet, and post the occasional comment. I also got a couple of press releases out and tried to catch up on other urgent work, like preparing for an Interlinquistics Symposium at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, where I had been invited to present a paper on the cause of the stagnation of the Esperanto movement. The university runs a course on Interlinquistics, and one of the organisers, a professor of sociology had sent me a paper of his titled 'Esperanto-movado: Ĉu perdita komunumo?' [The Esperanto movement: Is it a lost community?]

In that paper he contrasts two tendencies in sociological research: the common sense approach and the science-based approach, arguing that there was a dearth of science-based sociological research on the Esperanto movement. I had been doing science-based research work into the Esperanto movement in the UK, and this had caught his attention. They wanted at the Symposium to identify the present-day challenges to the Esperanto movement. In my presentation, I brought it all down to one single factor, the same as I would for the whole of the truth movement: coping with Cognitive Dissonance.

Cognitive Dissonance is the uncomfortable feeling that people sometimes get when they are confronted with facts that are in contradiction to deeply held beliefs. This can lead to them making all sorts of silly statements and incoherent explanations, in order to avoid having to admit that their beliefs could be mistaken. I linked this to George Orwell's 'voluntary censureship', which he wrote about in the preface to Animal Farm, though this was censured out during his lifetime

As long as this Cognitive Dissonance reigns, mass deception will be successful, but as soon as it is overcome, mass deception will be seen for what it is. The fundamental problem is not that an association or a government may be taken over by fraudsters, but that if it's done with a smile, most of the voters will let them do it. Look at Tony Blair. How is it possible to believe that someone with such charm could have so many conflicts of interest whilst working as a peace envoy in the Middle East? 0A Channel 4 Dispatches programme on 27 September presented an amazing story. But will there be consequences?

The way to break through Cognitive Dissonance I think is to introduce the issues in the abstract, and then show the bigger picture when the person has accepted the simple facts or the logic. The best example of that that I can think of is the Dutch television interview with demolition expert Danny Jowenko:

Since he was an expert, he may have recognised it as controlled demolition anyway, but I think many of the viewers would have been coloured by previous knowledge. After the interview he was prepared to speak out on Building 7. I was saddened, on looking up the link for the video, to find that he died in a car crash.

Similarly, in a talk at the London Esperanto Club, I had asked members whether any of them knew about the matter of Dermod Quirke and the library. As expected, they looked perplexed. I then told them that I didn't either. I read out a short text which had appeared in the national association's periodical, saying that no-one on the Management Committee knew anything about it either, and neither did whoever wrote the text. They looked bewildered. I then told them that I had asked Dermod Quirke about it and he couldn't tell me. So who did know anything about it? Whether or not it happened to be true, the whole thing was a concoction. Only when members were sufficiently mystified did I reveal the context. It was part of a statement by the President, and presented an example of my 'mischievous and possibly defamatory' allegations against the Management Committee. It was their way of silencing me when I had revealed information which members were entitled to know. Members were being kept in the dark over a campaign to save the college in which the association's own headquarters were housed. The President's deception had worked.

As I flew back from Poznan, some of the Keep Talking members were attending a 'Conspiracy Theory Day' conference in London. Speakers were to include the two authors of the Demos report on 'conspiracy theories' whom we met on 25 October 2010, when we in the Keep Talking group challenged them to demonstrate their ideas on 'open infiltration'. Also billed to speak was their friend David Aaronovitch, known for his anti-truth-movement campaign. It was clear that this was to be a propaganda event for the conspiracy deniers. My eye was particularly drawn to the name of Robert Brotherton, said to be doing a PhD on conspiracy theories at Goldsmith's College. Now that's interesting; our confrontation with Demos took place at Goldsmith's College by the invitation from another PhD student in conspiracy theories.

I was expecting the whole thing to be stage-managed. Demos had not responded to my challenge for a return match, and we had not been invited to present our case at their 'conspiracy theory' meeting. But at the last moment something weird happened. David Aaronovitch pulled out, and he was replaced by Ian Crane. Some of the Keep Talking group attended as members of the public, including Kevin Boyle, who wrote the meeting up on his blog and reproduced in the Sovereign Independent. From his description of the event, it sounds as if it was far from walking into the lion's den, as I had expected. He wrote that Ian Crane's presentation was "clear and powerful and punctuated with regular applause". Ian Crane also handed the stage over to Tony Farrell for five minutes, "and here was the whole confrontation of the day personified in one man", Kevin wrote.

It sounded like a rout, so I sought a report from the other side, and found one, of all places in the CiF Watch website, which describes itself as "Monitoring and exposing antisemitism on the Guardian's newspaper's 'Comment is Free' blog" guest written by "Mitnaged".

What the relevance of that is I haven't yet figured out, but Jamie Bartlett did try to tell me that the antisemites were having a go at Carl Miller because of his Jewish name. Don't try to make sense of it. In any case, is the idea that there could be criminals in the Knesset as well as in Westminster and the Capitol antisemitism? If it is, that can only be because 'anti-semitism' lost its hyphen long ago.

The CiF Watch report stated that nothing in Ian Crane's presentation constituted "what could be called rigorous scientific evidence let alone proof". Yet Carl Miller had admitted to us that their own statistical results linking conspiracy theory groups with terrorism was not based on any statistical analysis, and Jamie Barlett admitted that the Demos report was "not a scientific report". However, CiF Watch did inform us that "The 'troofers' also set up a stall at the back of the hall from which they sold copies of DVDs which purported to tell us the real story about the events of 9/11 and 7/7". Great! The intention had been to hand them out outside the conference, but they ended up selling the packs at £1 each. They reported back to Keep Talking: "DVDs and flyers went like hot cakes at yesterday's Conspiracy Theories Conference. A great day for our side".

As for the psychologists, I found a documentary on YouTube, broadcast on Channel 4 three years ago, featuring Professor French and his co-worker Patrick Leman. Dr Leman stated: "As psychologists, we're not principally interested in whether one particular conspiracy theory is true or another one isn't" 'Conspiracy – Who really runs the world?'. Exactly. I wonder whether anyone has researched the reasons some people become witch doctors, voodoo practitioners, psychologists etc.

One could turn the question around, and ask why some people believe what they are told by authority. My colleague David Bowman has put up an analysis of this on the Berkshire 9/11 Truth blogsite, under the title 'See No Truth, Hear No Truth, Speak No Truth'. This is an excellent analysis, and again it comes down to tackling Cognitive Dissonance. The remaining practical problem that I see is tackling the opposition, the propagandists who know all the psychological stuff and have been applying it more effectively than we were, but to mislead and discredit. As always, I think the main part of solving the problem is understanding it, and David's analysis is very welcome in furthering that aim.

I found it interesting that former head of MI5, Eliza Manningham-Buller, giving a BBC 2011 Reith Lecture on 20 September, asserted: "The terrorist now has at his disposal tools which were once the sole preserve of the state".

Really? Hydrogen peroxide and black pepper? That's what we were told the 7/7 Four used to blow up three trains and a bus. Hydrogen peroxide has been used in hair dye since about 1860, and black pepper goes back at least as far as Rameses II, and was available in Europe in the Middle Ages. So what is Eliza Manningham-Buller suggesting? I don't know, but if in the past only states had the facilities to commit such terrorist atrocities, then perhaps that's still the case. Well, actually, in her first lecture on 6 September, she stated:

"But I do not expect terrorism as a tool, often used by states in earlier decades, now used largely by groups, to disappear"

So who sponsors these groups? Yet there was no consideration of such issues; she stated that they came to an immediate conclusion that al-Qaeda was responsible.

See Ian's comment"It's amazing that MI5 could come to an immediate conclusion that al-Qaeda was responsible, and the following day they and those in Washington could have no doubt about their atrocities, before carrying out any forensic analysis or collecting any evidence."

These partial admissions are interesting. These people seem to be positioning themselves; it's now only a matter of time before the mainstream media start asking them what they knew and when they knew it.

Yet as the national press is starting to admit reality, Liverpool Football Club is considering disciplinary action against striker Nathan Eccleston for tweeting: "I ain't going to say attack don't let the media make u believe that was terrorist that did it. #OTIS.".

'OTIS is presumed to stand for 'Only The Illuminati Succeed'. This is reminiscent of the American footballer Rashard Mendenhall, who got into trouble for Twitter remarks questioning the public celebrations of Osama bin Laden's death, and whether the World Trade Center towers were really brought down on September 11 only by crashing two hijacked airliners into the buildings.

Joey Barton, a footballer who has a notorious bad-boy persona, has stated: "People should embrace the fact they're individual," Barton tells me. "I can't think of anything more morose than being the same as everybody else. What would we get out of that? I embrace that I'm peculiar and refuse to conform.

This is a breath of fresh air.

These people need our support, if only because others who may wish to speak out should not feel intimidated.

The antidote is to keep talking.

"Belief amongst senior officers that it's better to cover up than own up", says former Met Police Officer

2011-09-02T14:59:00.004+01:00

August 2011

"It's just horrible, and I myself have been crying a lot", wrote my correspondent in Oslo. I had just arrived in Copenhagen for the Universal Congress of Esperanto when I heard of the attacks. It felt so close. It could have happened in Copenhagen, and the conference at which the massacre took place could just as easily have been the Esperanto Congress. We did, after all, suffer attacks of vandalism in 2009 when it was held in Bialystok, Poland, a place where such vandalism is rare. I was relying mainly on the BBC World Service to keep me informed, though I did sometimes watch Danish Television, straining to make sense of the subtitles, the body language and the tone.

One of the first public statements on the attacks came from President Obama of the US, who said that the events in Oslo were a reminder that the world has a role in stopping acts of terrorism

Twelve minutes later a BBC correspondent put out that he believed an al-Qaeda influenced group was most likely to be behind the attacks. Then one minute after that the Norwegian Prime Minister urged Norwegians not to cave in to fear caused by the bombing. "But it's important that we don't let ourselves be scared, because the purpose of that kind of violence is to create fear", he added. Forty-three minutes later the BBC reports that the Norwegian government has not yet pointed the finger toward groups who could be responsible. I saw a press conference with a police representative, who was very correct, stating that all options had to be considered. How very different that was from Tony Blair's reaction to 7/7, when he stated: "We know those who did this did so in the name of Islam". Yet after the Oslo bombing the government line remained firm. "You will not destroy our democracy or our ideals for a better world", declared the Norwegian Prime Minister.

But who did he have in mind? Was it a message directed at the the US and NATO to keep out, in response to President Obama's suggestion? Or was it aimed at someone else? Or was it aimed just at the people of Norway? They were right to keep their options open. The man arrested at Utøya was ethnic Norwegian, and no Islamic links were in evidence.

At the opening ceremony of the Esperanto congress we held a minute's silence in memory of the victims. During the week it wasn't difficult to lapse into conversation on the Norwegian attacks, or on the bigger picture, with people from a whole range of nationalities across the world. How the climate of opinion has changed from five years ago when I started talking to people about the 9/11 truth movement, the false flag attacks, state intervention in civilian groups and the subversion of democracy at all levels in Western societies. No-one at the Copenhagen congress thought I was crazy. I could talk freely about topics which only five years ago would have brought about cynical responses or ridicule, or would be ignored altogether. Everyone I spoke with in Copenhagen was positive and interested.

When I got home I looked up the Norwegian 9/11 truth website (http://www.911truth.no/2011/07/oslo-zionist-terror-not-a-false-flag-op/) and found that they man they had arrested had written a 1516 page manifesto, '2083 – A European Declaration of Independence' (http://911truth.no/oslo-j22-abb-terror-manifesto.pdf). under the anglised name of Andrew Berwick. I skimmed through about two thirds of that manifesto, and it was a detailed treatise on multiculturalism and why he was against it. The final part was about militancy and weird stuff about the Knights Templar. So why, if he was protesting against multiculturalism would he be bombing ethnic Norwegians? The Norwegian 9/11 truth website quoted a passage on page 1167 of his book: "So let us fight together with Israel, with our Zionist brothers against all anti-Zionists, against all cultural Marxists/multiculturalists".

In the meantime, my colleague Nick Kollerstrom had been writing up events on his website: "Was Anders Breivik a Zionist, who massacred the children in response to Norway's anti-Israeli stance? Or did he do it for the reason he stated, namely that too many Muslims were flooding into Norway?", he asked. The media have taken the latter view, he stated, whilst some had taken the former.

Norway's Labour Party had passed resolutions just a day or two before the youth gathering on Utøya Island, and the day before the attacks, Norway's Foreign Minister told the youth meeting that the Palestinians must have their own state, the occupation must end, the wall must be demolished and it must happen now. If we go to the Norwegian 9/11 site we see a photo of the Foreign Minister with the young people on Utøya Island, who are holding up a banner 'Boikott Israel'. The website also points out that the attack came on the 65th anniversary of Irgun's attack on the King David Hotel in Jerusalem.

This is very much ongoing work. Nick has already included much analysis on his website. The Oslo article points out that the mainstream media have failed to mention the link to the Jerusalem bombing. "Zionism – obviously – is still very much a taboo subject in Norway", the article states. The author explains in reply to one of the comments, that the word 'Zionist' relates to Jew just like 'Nazi' relates to German. I've always thought that the word 'Zionist' is bandied about too easily. In this context it refers to Zionist militants, rather than those who emigrated to Israel for a more peaceful life, by buying up land from willing arabs.

One thing that still puzzles me is why Breivik should have added to the end of his treatise a number of quality press photos, ready for immediate use by the press when he was arrested. It seems that he wanted to be arrested and to become the focus of the investigation, presenting himself as a lone nutter. Why would he do that? Was he a decoy for a larger operation? Does he have an escape route? Was he told he had an escape route and did he believe it?

Another thing is that, whilst reading his document, I couldn't help but think of that other report against multiculturalism issued by the Conservative Party think tank Policy Exchange on 29 January 2007. It was headed 'Living Apart Together: British Muslims and the paradox of multiculturalism'

I carried out a study of that and gave a talk on it to our London Keep Talking group in February. That was after the Prime Minister had stated that multiculturalism had failed in a speech in Munich on terrorism. It seemed to me self-evident that his speech was based on that document. The report was 90 pages long and used the same sort of twisted logic that Anders Breivik seemed capable of. The gist of the argument in the Policy Exchange report was that terrorists in the UK were normal Muslims, rather than extremists, and so there was a paradox. It therefore followed that the root source of terrorism in the UK was multiculturalism. Shortly after issuing that report, Policy Exchange issued a further report about terrorist literature in mosques. That was widely reported in the press, until Newsnight discovered that some of their receipts had been falsified.

Then came the August riots in England. So who was behind them? What has been emerging is that in London alone there were 200 gangs which were normally fighting each other, but which suddenly called a truce in order to wreck selected areas in London. When the rioting began, the Metropolitan police held back, letting them get on with it. The social networking sites Facebook and Blackberry were blamed, and the secure encoding of the Blackberry phones meant that the police didn't know what was going on, and so were taken by surprise. They arrived unprepared for criminal activity, just expecting some sort of peaceful demonstration. Is that credible?

One man who doesn't think so is Brian Paddick, former Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the London Metropolitan Police, and now a high profile member of the Liberal Democratic Party. In a special session of the BBC Television's Question Time (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/question_time/9562804.stm) on Thursday, August 11, he said there was no excuse for not having sufficient officers on duty in Tottenham on the Saturday night, and that if they had had that, and if the officers had acted rather than standing back, then he didn't think that they would have had the copy-cat violence in Clapham Junction or anywhere else. He also said: " ... these crowds were organising themselves using social networks, using Twitter, using Blackberry messaging. Well, why weren't the police on Twitter, on Facebook, on Blackberry messaging, getting one step ahead of the crowd?".

Another panel member, David Davis, MP, pointed the finger at ACPO, the Association of Chief Police Officers, saying: "The place where this is discussed broadly is ACPO ... and they're the ones bluntly who made the mistake on this".

So what is really going on? Who was behind the August riots? In any investigation you start off with three basic questions: 1: Cui bono? (Who benefits?), 2: Who has the means, and 3: Who has done it before? The third question is easy to answer.

There is a thuggish gang based in London which has been found to be engaged in infiltrating peaceful civilian groups and inciting people to break the law and wreck other people's property. In one instance, one of their agent provocateurs was found to be inciting to riot abroad. The Germans I spoke with in Copenhagen were generally aware that a British undercover police officer had been sent in as an agent provocateur to incite riotous behaviour in their country. His name was Mark Kennedy, and I wrote about that case in my newsletters of May and June/July this year. The gang for which he was working was ACPO, the Association of Chief Police Officers, which had set up a secret police force in the UK, operating not for national security but against our own people. This, it appears, was done in collusion with the Crown Prosecution Service. The only substantial difference I can see between the Mark Kennedy case and the August rioting is a matter of scale.

Why were there no prosecutions of members of this gang? Instead, the police force merely announced that responsibility for infiltration had been transferred to the London Metropolitan Police. Do we believe them? We have no means of checking. One of the high-profile police officers – probably the most high profile police officer in the mainstream media – appearing during this period on national radio and television was Sir Hugh Orde, President of the Association of Chief Police Officers. So not only does ACPO have the means of inciting rioting, they have the means of covering up, even if their cover-up of the Mark Kennedy case, in collusion with the Crown Prosecution Service, did eventually break down after seven years of betrayal.

Another thuggish gang which I have reported on in previously is one that the Prime Minister, David Cameron, was a member of in his youth, together with the current Mayor of London, Boris Johnson. Other former members include the current Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, and former Prime Minister Tony Blair. The gang is called the Bullingdon Club, which had a reputation for being awfully polite and respectable, arrogant and snobbish, and smashing up high-class restaurants. They would get away with that because they had more money than sense, and would pay off the restaurant owners in hard cash to keep them quiet. On one occasion, when the restaurant owner complained to the police, the police just held them overnight for questioning, then let them go free. The film 'When Boris met Dave', which I reported on in my October 2009 newsletter, is well worth watching for anyone who is interested in understanding how elitist cliques take control, not only in government but at all levels of society. The Bullingdon Club clearly provides excellent training for going into politics, where graduates can put into practice the art of charm, arrogance, and selective aggression, as in smashing up civilian life in Afghanistan and Iraq, and probably many other places, including the UK.

There was no suggestion that Cameron and Co were themselves responsible for smashing up restaurants, but they were members of a gang which had that reputation. If I had been invited to join such a group when I was a student I would have said "No, thank you". I wouldn't have been invited, though, because I wasn't at Oxford University, and I hadn't been to a training camp within a stone-throw of Windsor Castle, known as Eton College. But there are plenty of thuggish groups willing to smash things up at all levels of society, and I just wasn't interested in that sort of thing. Mere membership of such a group from a top politician who is condemning similar behaviour from others is sheer hipocracy. What signals does that send out when leading members of the political establishment and the police force itself are members of such gangs? If we are really interested in stamping out such behaviour, then we have to seriously consider what the root cause could be, and what measures have to be taken.

The BBC television programme Newsnight sometimes presents some excellent investigation into possible criminal activity by the state, but in a special edition on August 12 about the August riots, they invited historian Professor David Starkey to take part in an ill-informed discussion.

David Starkey is well known for his arrogant and uncompromising views. He appeared to be blaming the August riots on immigrant groups from the West Indies, even though most of them weren't from the West Indies. His justification was that some of the white English rioters used some West Indian dialect. His absolutely uncompromising manner was a complete distraction from the real issues. Although he lacked the subtlety of expression, the version of English which he was using was that used by elite English bankers.

The Cameron-Blair formula is to turn the whole situation into abstract nouns. Just as Blair put it about that 9/11 was due to mindless terrorism, justifying his 'war on terror', Cameron has attributed the August riots to 'criminality'. Of course, that doesn't apply to the Bullingdon Club or to ACPO, because they seem to have some sort of immunity to prosecution. Most of these gangs no doubt do have a thuggish mentality, but is that enough to make them all suddenly declare a truce and start attacking shops in the high street? Of course not. It is enough, though, together with a widespread sense of grievance against a racist and unjust establishment, for unthinking people to be incited into action that they would not normally be involved in as individuals. The ground would be fertile for the secret police and their agent provocateurs.

So, cui bono? The London Metropolitan police force had been itself coming under pressure, with talk of criminal collusion with people in the Murdoch empire. A national scandal was developing, in which the police were being discredited, and public confidence in them was evaporating. Suddenly all that changed. With the August riots, the police were suddenly held in high esteem. The public suddenly realised they needed the police to enforce law and order. Their sins were forgiven. New, and more repressive laws were talked of by senior politicians, in addition to the current draconian legislation that has been introduced since the attacks of 9/11. Many in the truth movement are very aware that all the legislation they need to turn the UK into an overtly fascist state is already in place. All it would take would be some sort of false flag attack, and an enactment of the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006, alternatively known as the Abolition of Parliament Act.

It may not even take that:

There has been some apprehension that the 2012 Olympic Games in London could provide the background for such an excuse. There could be a repeat of the Munich Olympics massacre of 1972. The police force would be overstretched, and so the army would be called in to keep order on the streets of Britain, whilst their own agent provocateurs incite rioting to give them the excuse. Perhaps the August riots were a trial run for this. It's not a nice prospect, but the one thing that makes such things possible is that the public still believe such things to be impossible, because we're British.

We need urgently to sort out these thuggish gangs, and we need to start at the top. Members of such gangs in leading positions in the police force or in Government, should be removed. There should then be a proper inquiry into the August riots, and any investigation should start by asking the standard questions: (1) Cui bono? (2) Who has the means? and (3) Who has done it before?

As part of this, we need to establish and maintain standards of honesty and decency within the police force itself. The job of the police is to solve crime, not to cover it up, and not to avoid rocking the boat when inconvenient evidence crops up. The Guardian contained an interview with Brian Paddick on Saturday, August 11. The article states that Brian Paddick's rise in the London Metropolitan Police was halted when he revealed, five hours after Jean Charles de Menezes was shot dead by armed police at Stockwell tube in 2005, that senior officers had known he was carrying a Brazilian passport, and was therefore unlikely to have been a suicide bomber.

"The police's release of misleading information to the media following the death of an innocent man has become a familiar pattern", writes The Guardian, "It was repeated when newspaper seller Ian Tomlinson died after being shoved to the ground by a police officer during the 2009 G20 protests. Then, nine days later, when Mark Duggan was shot dead by police in Tottenham, police accounts told of a shootout with Duggan and an officer's life freakishly saved when a bullet lodged in his police radio". It was later revealed that the bullet in the radio was police issue, and a non-police weapon retrieved from the scene had not been fired. "There is still this belief amongst senior officers that it's better to cover up than own up", said Brian Paddick.

A strong desire not to rock the boat was reported at a meeting of the Keep Talking group in London on 5 July when a former Principal Intelligence Analyst for South Yorkshire Police narrated how he had been sacked, after having come to the conclusion that the biggest single threat to terrorism to the UK was now coming from internal tyranny and in his opinion far exceeded any threat from Islamic terrorism. It was his job to produce an annual 'Strategic Threat Assessment Matrix', giving probabilities of threats to public order in the area. His assessment for 2010 was due on 8 July, but a week earlier he stumbled upon information on 9/11, which led him on to further information on 7/7. Like many of us, he was shocked at what he found, but he had only one week to digest the information and decide what to do. He told us of the reactions of his bosses when he told them of his findings. "Tony, you and I will never get to the truth – we are mere footsoldiers of the government", he was told.

As a result, he rewrote his Strategic Threat Assessment Matrix as a brief document, stating that the real threat to society was almost entirely of the state-sponsored kind, and that other threats were insignificant by comparison. On being dismissed, he was told by the Director of Finance: "Your beliefs are very sincere, and you may be right, but it is I'm afraid incompatible at the moment with where we are". Why the Director of Finance?

We discussed going public on this at the Keep Talking meeting, but we agreed for the moment to treat the issue with discretion. Otherwise, we would have had a national scoop.

Later, Tony decided to go public, and a report appeared in The Sun and the Mirror

It was, of course, the sort of thing you'd expect, but, as Gandhi said, "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win". I was actually quite encouraged. Then a similar report appeared in the Sheffield Star on 19 July

Tony took the matter to an employment tribunal for unfair dismissal, and his appear hearing will begin on 7 September. Nick Kollerstrom did an excellent write-up of this story on his Terror on the Tube website, with links and comments

Best of luck to Tony, who has shown outstanding courage. If the hearing goes against him, that will confirm that the primary objective is not to rock the boat, even in a case in which the police have admitted that he may be right.

This brings us up to the tenth anniversary of 9/11 and the onslaught of repeated lies that will hit us through the mainstream media. That has already started with the BBC's television programme '9/11 Ten Years On', broadcast on 29 August produced by (Mike Rudin's discredited 'Conspiracy Files' team.

It's encouraging to see that they are being pushed further and further into a defensive position, broadcasting material that couldn't have been shown just a few years ago, even if they are still countering good science with bad science, and telling us that the 'conspiracy theorists' are wrong. Perhaps that's because the BBC's own opinion poll shows that one in seven people in the UK believe that the US government staged the 9/11 attacks, and that the equivalent figure for 16-24 year-olds is one in four. So how many would have answered 'No' to a straight question 'Do you believe the government is telling the truth about 9/11?'.

One in seven people are convinced that the U.S. government was involved in a conspiracy to stage the September 11 attacks which killed nearly 3,000 people.

A survey, which interviewed 1,000 people in the UK and the same number in the U.S., found that 14 per cent of Britons 15 per cent of Americans think the past administration was involved in the tragedy.

They were asked: 'It is generally accepted that these attacks were carried out by Al Qaeda. However some people have suggested there was a wider conspiracy that included the American government. Do you, yourself, believe that there was a wider conspiracy, or not?'

See No Truth, Hear No Truth, Speak No Truth

2011-08-29T19:10:00.025+01:00

“You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, they will fight to protect it.” - Morpheus, The Matrix

Preface

The author of this blog has a degree in Psychology and Statistics and a postgraduate degree in Applied, Social and Market Research. Although I don't use psychology on a professional basis, I have retained a strong interest in social psychology and am offering how research may be used more effectively.

"conspiracy theorist" label

The ‘conspiracy theory’ label is being increasingly used in society and by the media as a pejorative and derogatory label, yet the Oxford dictionary defines a conspiracy as “1. A secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful. 2 the action of conspiring.”

Since 19 hijackers allegedly conspired to attack civilians and cause death and harm this would be defined as a conspiracy, yet to what extent it is theory or fact would be determined by an open and independent investigation, something that has not yet been carried out.

As those in the community know, US Government officials involved in the 9/11 Commission, as well as others, have themselves admitted the investigation did not involve full transparency and accountability from important agencies.

9/11 arouses strong emotions and the use of the "conspiracy theory" label implies a person who dismisses such ‘theories’ are threatened by information they do not want to understand and because it involves implications they are too frightened of to contemplate.

The "conspiracy theory" label is used for three reasons. First, it is used as a term of censorship and exclusion of individuals from a group, second, it is a method of deflecting awkward questions about important issues and, third, it is a way of attacking the competence of the person who has the courage to raise disturbing questions, rather than the attacker being able to investigate those very issues for themselves (i.e. being derogatory or condescending).

Bush famously declared, “Let us never tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories regarding the attacks of September 11” and further said, “You are either with us or you are with the terrorists”. Discussion and the examination of the evidence to understand who perpetrated 9/11 was forbidden. Even Obama said in a speech in Egypt on the 4th June 2009 that 9/11 is something to be dealt with, not opinions to be debated. What kind of Government would threaten the entire world into fear and emotional submission in order to proceed with its own global agenda?

A reluctance to investigate

The evidence, anomalies and the serious questions that have arisen and remained unanswered since the attacks of September 2001 and, similarly since the London bombings in July 2005, should convince any open-minded individual that a new investigation is required, indeed, should be demanded for both. Yet why are people so reluctant to look into either of these for themselves? The continuing obstacle of the truth movement is how to engage with the public more effectively.

Solomon Asch and the need to be liked

At heart, we are social animals, we want to have friends and we want to be liked but, under some circumstances, there can be an unfortunate trade-off. Our desire to be liked by others means we may not always want to express an honest opinion. Our behaviour is influenced by forces, some of which we are not even aware. We assume others see the world in the same way as we do, but we do not. We are influenced by what we hear, see, read, what kind of values we grow up with, what we consider to be important in society and how we relate to family, friends, work colleagues and other individuals in our own personally important social groups. Laurie Manwell stated the following in a lecture:

“On the first day of one of my social psychology classes, the professor got up in front of the class and said, ‘I can sum up human behaviour in these three things, and that’s people like to be liked, they like to be right and they like to be free and its in that order. Being liked is number one and they will trade with being right and being free with being liked.’ … The thing about being liked is that the pressure to not violate a social norm is a lot stronger than you think it is”.

Part 1 of Laurie Manwell's lecture

Despite belonging to various social groups, We like to think we are independent in nature and we like to think we are totally in control over how we feel, how we respond to others and what we say. In some circumstances there is a powerful need to conform or we don't like to say things because we don't want to appear foolish. This was demonstrated by Solomon Asch in his classic experiment on what was ostensibly a line-length comparison task in which he presented participants with a test line (x) and to choose a line from a set of options which they thought was the closest in length (A, B, C):

But there was a catch. The initial experiment consisted of only one genuine participant. The rest were confederates in on the ruse. The experiment was set up to look at the power of conformity by testing how a lone genuine participant would respond to deliberate wrong answers given by the confederates. As Manwell stated in the lecture, once a person gives up the need to be right in order to be liked they automatically give up the right to be free. If you are knowingly giving wrong answers, then you are not free. But people don't want to give a wrong answer, so they stay silent.

Demolishing the iconic psychological barriers of 9/11 truth

Laurie Manwell (2007) explains how individuals may find it difficult to investigate 9/11 and how we might engage with others more constructively. She states that the purpose of the first article is to

“review relevant scientific studies of the cognitive, emotional and behavioural processes that arise in response to information that contradicts the deep-seated beliefs that people have about 9/11”.

Given the nature of the attack and the horrific images presented by the world’s media, such as trapped individuals in the towers and others having the courage to jump. The collapses were shown live on TV and the deaths of almost 3000 individuals resulted in personal trauma. The 9/11 attack was intended to appeal to a person’s emotional state including anger and revenge.

We are deeply affected by our own mortality and fragility as humans. This is something we need to protect so we try to bolster our self-image by having a greater sense of patriotism or direct our anger at others. Any information that contradicts a person’s beliefs about their world view will prompt an emotional reaction which will trigger psychological defence mechanisms that will, in turn, hinder any discussion of the evidence. Among many people, even after ten years, this influence remains deeply ingrained and is possibly the reason why very little significant progress has been made in demanding a new investigation. Personal self-censorship has major consequences for society.

One of the issues is how we, as campaigners, set out to reduce or eliminate these mechanisms and to try to get people to be more open-minded. As it states in the article, “reminders of 9/11 can activate the attitudes that people already hold, and that the stronger they hold them, the more resistant they are to change”.

Manwell explains in the second article (Rebuilding the Road to Freedom of Reason) about how campaigners have gone through a period of openness and transformation. There is an acknowledgement that campaigners had believed the official account of 9/11 for various lengths of time. There is likely to have been a period of cognitive dissonance: do we ignore the evidence at our peril or overcome the defensive safety net and come out stronger and wiser? The conscience is activated and the moral compass is strengthened in favour of identifying with the victim’s families as well as with truth, justice, accountability and social responsibility.

Media

A person can either re-examine their beliefs or retreat into the fabricated media-controlled world. Manwell states that people who rely on the corporate media for information "may falsely believe that they are being presented with all sides of the debate … An important foundation for questioning the official story of 9/11 is the challenge to people’s beliefs about the role of the media in supporting or questioning the Government.”

Although mainstream news organisations have reported on various strands of the evidence surrounding 9/11 in the first two or three years after the attack (probably because they were reporting on important stories out of a genuine need), there appeared to have been no ability or motivation to connect the pieces together in any kind of coherent form. Indeed, since then the mainstream media has slowly ignored those early reports and turned to derogatory hit-pieces. It is the mainstream news and reporting record in the early years that matter most, just like when Dan Rather stated on 9/11 that, "for the third time today", WTC7 looked like a controlled demolition.

Collating and organising mainstream media reports has been a massive undertaking that Paul Thompson started in the early years, which still continues, in the form of the History Commons timeline that consists of hundreds of mainstream news stories.

Coincidences and discoveries

Another important area that Manwell raises is how independent events that occur at the same may lead to a subsequent re-interpretation and re-questioning of events. When we tell someone that there was a live hijacking exercise at the same time as the attacks and that inside trading occurred just prior to the attacks (to name just two), they are considered unusual but would be brushed away without a second thought. This is likely because accepting such odd coincidences will lead to a discovery that has disturbing implications a person would rather not think about.

This blog

In an attempt to expand on these articles by making further suggestions, based on other areas of research.

Self-affirmation theory

Depending on the culture, group or situation in which we find ourselves, we like to think we are law-abiding citizens with some level of social and lawful integrity. Self-affirmation theory suggests that a goal of the self is to protect and maintain that self-integrity. People are very vigilant to information that could call their integrity into question both for themselves and in the eyes of others. Whereas cognitive dissonance suggests a person will directly accommodate or reject a threat, self-affirmation involves reflecting on salient life values that are irrelevant to the threat in question, i.e. being engaged on the subject of 9/11.

Self-affirmation is about feeling positive on important issues irrelevant to what is at stake or to engage in activities that remind us of who we are. The experimental research used this idea to test how information lost its capacity to threaten self-integrity. The research paradigm involves getting participants to specify what they felt was personally important to them and write a short essay prior to the experiment on what they chose and explain why and how it made them feel good about themselves. The researchers would then ask the participants to take part in the experiment. The conceptual framework for the research is that a person would feel so good about themselves after doing the exercise that any information in the experiment that would otherwise be perceived to be threatening would lose that capacity. It is all about heightening self-esteem.

Research shows this to be the case. A study looking at US patriotism after 9/11 used an essay critical of American foreign policy ostensibly written by a person with an Arabic sounding name. The results showed that patriotic Americans were less critical of the essay if they had gone through the self-affirmation process. Another study using a mortality salience manipulation (as Manwell described in her first article, a defence mechanism which can lead to feelings of nationalism) showed that participants who had gone through the self-affirmation process eliminated this salience.

The results generally showed that participants who were self-affirmed prior to a study were less critical, could lead to greater attitude change and be more responsive to the intrinsic strengths of an argument rather than how those arguments were associated with prior beliefs. When a person feels their integrity is secure, they are far more likely to engage in a more open manner, increase openness to strong evidence against one’s position. This kind of result could be useful in attempting to persuade the public to look at the 9/11 evidence for themselves.

There are two additional areas of self-affirmation theory which could demonstrate some usefulness. There might be a motive to maintain, rather than improve, a feeling of self-worth and integrity. This can lead to the prejudice and stereotyping of others. A study on self-affirmation involving the perception of Jewish and Italian candidates for a job showed that participants who were not affirmed were more likely to be more negative, even more so toward the Jewish candidate than the Italian. Self-affirmed participants did not discriminate. The 9/11 truth movement, being in a minority, in conjunction with the common use of the phrase ‘conspiracy theorist’, means our campaign is more than likely to subject to stereotyped views if a person feels threatened (the third reason for the use of the label). They are more likely to activate stereotyped views if they are confronted by campaigners in a negative way or receive information they might perceive to be threatening to their own world view.

It is in my opinion that this is what we need to think about as campaigners. When engaging with individuals on 9/11, we need to ensure their self-esteem isn't damaged or threatened in any way.

It has taken different individuals different amounts of time to question 9/11 depending on the circumstances. I consider the word “sheeple” or describing the general uninformed population as “sheep” to be derogatory. Up until we questioned the 9/11 attack, we were once “sheep”. So describing others in that way is hypocritical, and belittling others who are not “yet awake” will only provoke a negative, hostile or defensive reaction. It is divisive and does not help our cause. Like going to see a clinical psychologist for therapy, what you should really do is allow the person to retain their integrity as much as you can. Then the chance that person will seriously consider and think about what you tell them is likely to increase considerably.

Conflict of interest and social dilemmas

There are a number of critical issues in the world we live in which could be considered as dilemmas. Whereas experimental research is carried out in artificially contrived conditions, dilemmas on the scale of 9/11 affects an entire heterogenous population where group identification is difficult and individuals are anonymous. When it comes to 9/11 we, as campaigners, would say there is no dilemma. A new investigation, while extremely painful emotionally, would quickly end the wars and likely to permanently change the way we live. For those who still accept the official story, they would rather not face the dilemma of looking at the evidence for themselves because of the fear of the consequences.

Manwell introduced automatic processing and its impact on attitudes in her first article. Something she did not introduce is how these different processes can influence our decision-making in situations where a conflict of interest may arise, “Self interest is automatic, viscerally compelling and often unconscious. Understanding one’s ethical and professional obligations to others, in contrast, often involves a more thorough process.”

In psychology, an automatic process is considered to be effortless and, since this will occur outside of awareness, the consequence is that self-interest tends to prevail. In contrast, controlled processing is likely to be evoked when we encounter unexpected information, such as being given a flyer of information about the attack. Information that is inconsistent with an automatic judgement is subject to an extra level of scrutiny. Or it may even be the opposite reaction and is immediately ripped up and thrown in the nearest bin.

Research has shown that these two different types of processes can come into conflict and involves contradictory motives which lead back to cognitive dissonance. When we give someone a flyer on 9/11 we are, in fact, subjecting them to a conflict of interest. The dilemma is to ask the question: Which is more important? My personal self-interest in how I am perceived by others or the long term interests of society? We are trying to persuade someone we are engaging with to look at the evidence. For most, it would create a conflict between what is socially good in the long term for a population and the private self-interest in the short term.

Campaigners would not consider the 9/11 issue to be a social dilemma or a conflict of interest. An individual’s short-term self interest over-rides their responsibilities towards questioning their world view probably because, as Morpheus states in The Matrix, people are so dependent on the system they will do anything to protect it. But does that really have to be the case? Is there any way in which we can engage with the public on 9/11 and not make it sound like a conflict of interest? We have to persuade an individual that it is in their interests and their responsibility that they look at the evidence and ask questions about the attack.

Majority and minority influence

It is obviously the case that the 9/11 truth movement is in the minority though, among the general population, what that percentage might be is unclear.

A recent poll reported by the UK Daily mail states that 1 in 7 (or about 15%) believe the US Government were involved, increasing to 25% among 16 to 24 year olds.

A poll carried out on behalf of Reinvestigate 9/11 suggests there might be an agreement that the official account of what happened might turn out to be wrong in important respects.

Washington has listed the trend in poll results on 9/11 in the last five years. The trend isn't from questioning the official theory to accepting it. It is the opposite. When the official account is questioned, there is no going back to accepting the official account

From poll results, attitudes towards the 9/11 campaign movement can be taken in another direction of research that also has relevance: minority versus majority arguments. People are affected differently when receiving messages from those who are perceived to be in a majority compared to those who are perceived to be in the minority.

Some Dutch investigators looked into this which I will explain in some detail. They wrote: "Attitude change on the focal issue implies (unwanted) identification with the (aversive) minority, leading recipients to suppress change on focal issues in the case of minority influence."

Conformity and the need to be popular again raises its head. In order to be liked, people are unwilling to “stand out from the crowd” (or as the Japanese like to say, “the nail that sticks out is hammered down”) and more reluctant to be perceived to be associated with others who are deemed to be in a minority group. Because 9/11 campaigners are in a minority, most individuals won’t risk being associated with the 9/11 truth campaign, because we are likely to be considered "fringe" or "extremist".

Or as Mark Twain so eloquently put it, "In the beginning of a change, the patriot is a scarce man, brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot."

The researchers state in their paper that persuasive arguments from a majority elicit attitudes on the focal issue … while identical arguments attributed to a minority (1) have less effect in general and (2) influences attitudes on related issues more than attitudes on the focal issue.

So what are the implications for campaigning on 9/11? The obvious question the research raises is: should we make 9/11 the focal issue at all? Instead, should we be educating people about other historical events far more explicitly that may nudge individuals towards questioning 9/11 for themselves such as the Reichstag fire, Pearl Harbour, Gulf on Tonkin and Operation Northwoods? Given the mention of trying to get individuals to question the role of the mainstream media, should we be emphasising the role of the CIA and how it has been used for propaganda purposes?

The effects of prior theories on subsequent evidence

9/11 is an issue which is likely to induce sharp disagreements even among highly concerned and intelligent citizens (people who consider themselves intelligent don't like to admit they have been fooled, like Noam Chomsky).

People who hold strong opinions are likely to examine the relevant evidence in a biased manner and that data relevant to a belief are not processed impartially. In other words, judgements are based on the apparent consistency with the perceiver’s prior theories and expectations i.e. their world view and beliefs.

People tend to interpret subsequent evidence in order to maintain official beliefs by remembering the strengths, relevance and reliability of confirming evidence as well as accepting such evidence at face value.

Lord, Ross and Lepper (1979) found that proponents of capital punishment regarded a pro-deterrence study, including the quality of the research, to be more convincing. In addition, their position on capital punishment and its deterrence was more entrenched than it was at the start of the study.

Subject’s decisions about whether to accept a study’s findings at face value or to search for flaws and consider other interpretations appeared to depend on whether the results coincided with their pre-existing beliefs. When an “objective truth” is known or assumed then studies that reflect this truth may be given credence and not to studies where outcomes do not fit in with that truth.

A person’s shortcoming is their readiness in using evidence already processed in a biased manner to bolster the very theory or belief that justified the bias in the first place. People also expose themselves to be encouraged by patterns of data they should find troubling, but find it too easy to cling to beliefs that are not compatible with the latest evidence. The researchers state that “the mere availability of contradictory evidence rarely seems sufficient to cause us to abandon our prior beliefs or theories”. Is this another reason why progress towards a new investigation has been slow? Giving evidence to someone is not likely to be enough.

Spiral of silence theory

Manwell explains two theories that might be of some help in understanding how people may resist investigating 9/11. The ‘spiral of silence’ theory is a third which may also help.

This particular theory is concerned with the fear that people have of being socially isolated, and is an attempt to explain how public opinion can be treated as a dynamic process. Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann explains that to fear social isolation, like conformity, is the need to agree with other individuals. Noelle-Neumann used Asch’s conformity results to explain not only how people can be nervous in voicing what they may deem to be unpopular opinions, but how a person’s opinion change over time (Asch used a number of experiments to see what extent an individual would say the wrong answer simply in order to be liked).

Hayes et al (2008) looked at the spiral of silence of theory. They state that “knowing the attitudes and opinions of other gives us insight into the sensibility and the social veracity of our own opinions and attitudes.” They further state that “we are willing to expend valuable cognitive fuel to regularly scan the information environment so as to remain appraised of where our own opinions reside in the landscape of public opinion.”

How do we know what opinions and attitudes other people hold without asking them directly? One major source of information from which we generate opinions and attitudes is the mainstream media. Hayes et al found that those with a greater fear of social isolation were more likely to pay attention to public opinion polls, thus consistent with a central idea of the theory – that social isolation will prompt individuals to attend to relevant information about the opinion climate. In another experiment, they also found that a person is more likely to think about what others are thinking, especially family members and close friends, when they are asked to state their own opinion.

Shoemaker et al (2000) also studied the theory. They state that “people constantly observe their environment very closely. They try to find out which opinions and modes of behaviour are prevalent, and which opinions and modes of behaviour are becoming more popular. They behave and express themselves accordingly in public”. They also state that “when a person’s opinion is perceived to be in the majority, the person may speak out in public without fear of losing popularity or self-esteem. If the converse is true, the person may elect to become silent, avoiding situations in which the person will be in a confrontational embarrassing situation, such as when one’s opinion is laughed at or criticised by others.”

As far as 9/11 is concerned, people are strongly involved in self-censorship due to the fear of being public self-conscious.

A suggestion at this point is that we use not just polling results but also the trend over the last few years, on flyers and information sheets to draw attention to the number of individuals, especially the younger generation, who are beginning to question the legitimacy of the official account.

Conclusion

In the process of engaging with individuals, we ought to constantly remind ourselves of the journey we have made from accepting the official story to becoming committed campaigners. We have left the cave. Unfortunately, any attempt to rouse the interest of other prisoners within is met by ridicule or disbelief.

I think the research has raised a few suggestions some of which the movement has been doing but needs to be emphasised:

1) People don't like to admit they have been fooled and certainly don't want to be treated like idiots. It is important for campaigners not be condescending or derogatory and to allow people time and space to think things through for themselves.

2) The 9/11 evidence can be treated as a dilemma for an individual who may be nervous of the implications. I think we need to present the idea that, while emotionally painful, it is for the good of society in the long run. May be present them as a series of questions? Are you tired of people in positions of authority? Do you want to see an end to western imperialism? Do you think future generations should be able to live in a more transparent society? I don't think it is about forcing the evidence down their throats, but ask them the questions that will encourage their own investigating.

3) The truth movement is in the minority so we should emphasise the trend in poll results which indicates that people are becoming increasingly wary of the official story. Since people tend to look at opinion polls, we can use such results to our advantage. Since the minority is less likely to have an effect with the direct evidence, should we concentrate on historical information?

4) Finally, we should encourage how the mainstream media has had a negative effect on society in terms of editorial control and propaganda, and that should help to persuade individuals that information on the internet is not "fringe" or "extremist".

These are suggestions baed on the psychological research. But the only thing we can do as campaigners is to try to remain patient, don't get frustrated, sow the seeds of enlightenment and let others make up their own minds as to whether they have the courage and the conviction to leave the cave.

I hope this has been useful.

“Unfortunately no one can be told what the
Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.”

In the words of my colleague, Ian Fantom (who writes the newsletters), keep talking!!

Brian Haw did what he thought was right when most people fear the light

2011-07-13T19:43:00.021+01:00

July 2011

The revolution has begun. What started as a relatively minor issue of a newspaper hacking into the phones of celebrities has suddenly rocked the nation with a scandal of phone hacking on an industrial scale, including the hacking of phones of victims of crime, and relatives of victims of the London 7/7 bombings, with evidence of criminal payments to officers of the London Metropolitan police for information. Journalist Michael Crick stated on the BBC television programme Newsnight:

“It was a day in which we have seen significant tweaks in the way in which power is distributed in this country,when politicians asserted themselves over the media, with MPs not just crying halt to the practices of tabloid journalists, but also crying halt to the expansion of the Murdoch empire; a day when backbenchers took the initiative rather than the ministers, and also incidentally the day when Ed Milliband finally stamped his mark as Labour Party leader.”

He was referring in particular to an emergency debate in the House of Commons introduced by campaigner Chris Bryant, who began:

“At 8.50 am tomorrow, it will be six years since the London bombings, which saw 52 people murdered and 700 injured. Today we hear that the police are investigating whether the mobile phones of several of those who lost family members in those attacks were hacked by the News of the World”.

Later in the speech, talking about the failure to adequately investigate the affair, he stated: “It pains me to say this as well, but the honest truth is that a lot of lies have been told to a lot of people. When police officers tell lies or at least half-truths to Ministers of the Crown so that Parliament ends up being misled, I think it amounts to a major constitutional issue for us to face. … Did the reason that nothing happened have anything to do with the closeness between the Metropolitan police and the News of the World?”

Further into the speech he turned his attention to the relationship between the Murdoch empire and politicians: “We politicians have colluded for far too long with the media”, he said, “we rely on them, we seek their favour, and we live and we die politically because of what they write and what they show, and sometimes that means we lack the courage or the spine to stand up when wrong has occurred. … Sometimes, we may even have fallen for the threats that have been made when we have spoken out. I know of several Members who have led this debate who have received threats”.

At last, people are talking, and once that happens we can expect further revelations, whistleblowers and arrests. If the phones of families of the victims were hacked into, presumably from some list of phone numbers supplied by the police to the newspaper, then what about the phones of the victims themselves, and what about the four alleged bombers? Does someone somewhere have information on their location around the time of the bombings that would have been useful to the inquest or to further investigations? Were the alleged bombers at the bomb sites, or were they in Canary Wharf? Perhaps someone will now speak out!

I was saddend to hear of the death of Brian Haw, ten years and sixteen days after he had started his peace vigil in Parliament Square, opposite Parliament.

His initial cause was not a popular one: opposing the sanctions against Iraq. But the issue escalated. Three months into his vigil came 9/11 and the subsequent attack on Afghanistan, and nearly two years into his vigil came the invasion of Iraq, bringing further death and destruction. He managed to attract public attention to the inhumanity of those military adventures and focus opposition to them.

I drew some comfort from the fact that I first heard the news of his death on the one o'clock news of BBC Radio 4. That was, I suppose, a recognition that he had become a national institution. The following morning I scanned the front pages at my local newspaper shop, but only The Independent had a front-page splash on him. That was a half-page photo with the caption 'Peace at last'. There was also a full page of reporting on page 5, including a tribute by Mark Wallinger, artist of the Tate Modern 'State Britain' exhibition in 2007, in which Brian Haw's protest display had been recreated.

There was also nearly a whole page of obituary, and a leading article on him, all of which was sympathetic. The leading article called for the placing of a memorial stone at the place where he had his camp for nearly ten years.

In my June 2010 newsletter I called for a permanent monument to be placed there, suggesting that it be called 'The Westminster Haw Memorial'

So I wrote to The Independent in support of a memorial, and my letter appeared on 21 June under the heading 'Ugly memorial'

There have been other calls for a memorial, too.

London Assembly Member Jenny Jones has called on Westminster Council to put up a blue plaque, of the type that one sees on various buildings in London in memory of famous people.

One supporter, holding such a blue plaque, was interviewed by BBC Television.

The following day a group of MPs led by left Jeremy Corbyn called for a permanent memorial to Brian Haw to be placed in the precincts of Parliament. The MPs tabled an early day motion praising the “political inspiration” provided by Mr Haw, who died at the weekend.

Among those putting their name to the motion urging a memorial to Mr Haw’s 10-year Westminster peace vigil were Green MP Caroline Lucas and Labour MPs John McDonnell, Paul Flynn, Kelvin Hopkins, John Cryer and Dennis Skinner.

I think it would be good for as many people as possible to express support for this idea in blogs, newsletters, articles, and in comments sections to relevant web pages.

>And now the Evening Standard has reported that Lord Tyler to give Parliament Square back to the people and transform it into a new Speakers Corner.

Brian Haw, of course, did have his critics. In particular, conspiracy denier Nick Cohen attacked him for saying that 9/11 was an inside job.

"He also ought to know that al-Qaeda was responsible for the slaughter on 9/11 - it's hardly a secret. But in a video for the 'alternative' news site rinf.com, Haw announces that '9/11 was an inside job, yes it was', organised by the American government and Hollywood, apparently"

That was the sort of arrogance that we all have to put up with in the truth movement from elements of the mainstream media. But I thought that a subsequent implied link with 'Holocaust denial' was despicable.

Earlier in 2007 I had been aware that people in the 9/11 truth movement were wondering why Brian Haw had not come out on the issue, so I handed him an English translation of my article which had appeared in MONATO, under the title

‘Why did the three towers of the WTC really collapse?’ [PDF file]

An hour or two later he told me that he'd read it, and that it was a good article. Shortly after that I heard that he had spoken out on 9/11. He compared the 3000 deaths with that of the number of children being killed on a daily basis as a result of world politics:

For me, what Brian Haw succeeded in highlighting most effectively was the police brutality right in the centre of what most English people would regard as the world's greatest democracy. In 2008 I had taken part in a protest march against the SOCPA law, which banned unuathorised protests within a kilometre of Parliament. At the end of the march some people were lying down in the roadway in Whitehall. I didn't agree with that, and was leaving the demonstration when I came across Brian Haw, with blood on his face and holding a broken camera. He was trying to make a complaint to the police for assault.

Brian hadn't actually been taking part in the protest, but had come from his camp just to take photos. His request to make a complaint was refused, and he was told he would have to go to the local police station to make it, he told me. When everything had quietened down I continued on my way home. Later I heard that the police had bundled him into a van and assaulted him. There were stories of screams coming from the van.

I see that as early as 2003 there had been an Early Day Motion in Parliament, stating:

"That this House expresses its deep concern that there have been a number of physical assaults on Mr Brian Haw, the peace campaigner demonstrating in Parliament Square; and calls upon the Metropolitan Police Commissioner to review the policing arrangements for the Square to ensure the safety and security of Mr Haw"

The fact that no police officer has served time for such an assault tells me that we have a militia which is above the law at the heart of our police force.

Ian Tomlinson, too, was an innocent by-stander. He was caught up in the G20 demonstration in London on 1 April 2009, when he was assaulted by a police officer and subsequently died.

An inquest verdict was returned in May 2011 of "unlawful killing"

The jury spokesperson stated:

"Mr Tomlinson was on his way home from work on 1 April 2009, during the G20 demonstrations. He was fatally injured at around 19.20 in Royal Exchange 2 Buildings, the passage, near to the junction with Cornhill, London EC3. This was as a result of a baton strike from behind and a push in the back by a police officer which caused Mr Tomlinson to fall heavily. Both the baton strike and the push were excessive and unreasonable. As a result, Mr Tomlinson suffered internal bleeding which led to his collapse within a few minutes and his subsequent death. At the time of the strike and the push, Mr Tomlinson was walking away from the police line. He was complying with police instructions to leave Royal Exchange Buildings, the passage. He posed no threat."

The jury rejected the post mortem conclusions of the first pathologist to examine Ian Tomlinson's body. Dr Freddy Patel had been under investigation by the General Medical Council since 2005, and faced 26 charges of misconduct

He was found guilty of serious misconduct in March 2011 and suspended for three months
.
This raises a question of what selection criteria the Home Office uses to choose it's own forensic pathologists.

Following this verdict, the police officer concerned, PC Simon Harwood, was charged with manslaughter and is to face trial on 17 October

The Crown Prosecution Service, which had previously refrained from bringing about a prosecution, claimed that there was new evidence by which they could now do so. PC Harwood was working with the Metropolitan Police's Territorial Support Group, which, I understand, is the same group that beat up Brian Haw. PC Harwood had worked for the London Metropolitan Police before, but left a decade ago amid controversy over an alleged off-duty road rage incident. He then got a job with Surrey Police, where he was accused of using excessive force, before returning to the Metropolitan police. His identity was concealed during the G20 protest; his face was partially covered and his number was not displayed.

G20 riots: Policeman who struck Ian Tomlinson faced two previous aggression inquiries

But what about the bite that Ian Tomlinson received from a police dog just before that incident? Is no-one going to be prosecuted for that?

At least there was a post mortem examination for Ian Tomlinson, even if the initial one was eventually overturned and was followed by three more. That's more than can be said of the 52 victims of the 7/7 London bombings. I've just been reading the proofs a forthcoming edition of Nick Kollerstrom's excellent book 'Terror on the Tube'. I had not realised the amazing fact almost casually announced at the inquest that there had been no post-mortem examinations of the bodies. How is it possible for an inquest in what is widely believed to be a case of murder to be held without a post mortem having been carried out on the body? How is it possible for the coroner not even to be questioning this? Well, it's 52 times worse than that. Furthermore, the bodies, we are told, were withheld by the authorities. Those bodies would undoubtedly had carried traces of the explosives used, which would have enabled identification of the explosives. Then we were give a fairy tale about the explosives being hydrogen peroxide and black pepper. This clearly looks like concealment of evidence and possible fabrication. Is this why they needed to bring in someone special, like Lady Justice Hallett? I think there should be some sort of judicial review of the inquest, and that the Crown Prosecution Service should be looking into this concealment of evidence with a view to prosecuting whoever is responsible.

At least the 52 victims had an inquest of sorts, which is more than can be said of the alleged terrorists. Where are their bodies? Were any post mortem examinations carried out on them? Why were the legal processes circumvented? Where is the Crown Prosecution Service here?

The Crown Prosecution Service is responsible to Parliament through the Attorney General. On 9 June the Attorney General announced in the House of Commons that he had decided not to hold an inquest into the death of former government weapons inspector Dr David Kelly.

Dr Kelly had been at the centre of controversy after it had been revealed that he had been the source of a BBC story that the claims concerning weapons of mass destruction in Iraq had been “sexed up”. He was then interrogated in a televised hearing of the parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee on 15 July 2003, and the following day he was interviewed by the Intelligence and Security Committee in a private hearing. On 17 July he went for a walk near his home in south Oxfordshire, and was not seen again until his body was discovered the following morning. The Oxfordshire coroner opened an inquest, as he was obliged to do under English law, but Dr Kelly’s death certificate was signed without awaiting the outcome of the inquest. A government inquiry was also set up, and the functions of the inquest were transferred to the inquiry under a law brought in in 1988. Accordingly, the inquest was adjourned on 14 August.

The Hutton inquiry concluded in January 2004 that Dr Kelly took his own life. The coroner subsequently closed the inquest. However, questions were soon being asked, both about the evidence concerning Dr Kelly’s death, and about the judicial processes, in which a proper inquest had been avoided.

In 2006 a British MP, Dr Norman Baker, took a year out from the Liberal Democrat shadow cabinet whilst he researched Dr Kelly’s death, eventually publishing a book, ‘The Strange Death of David Kelly’. He came to the conclusion that he thought that Dr Kelly had been murdered.

In July 2009 a team of 13 doctors announced that they were planning to mount a legal challenge to the findings of the Hutton inquiry. They had produced a detailed medical dossier, which they planned to send to the forthcoming inquiry by Sir John Chilcot into the Iraq War.

A week later, a US Air Force linguist, Mai Pederson, who served with Dr Kelly’s weapons inspection team called on the then Attorney General to carry out a “formal, independent and complete review” into the “suspicious circumstances” of Dr Kelly’s death, revealing that he had been unable to use his right hand for tasks requiring strength, and that he had a disorder which made it difficult for him to swallow pills, both of which threw into doubt the manner of death described by Hutton:

Now David Kelly’s former Iraq aide joins call for inquiry into his 'suicide'.

Shortly after that, a former coroner called for a proper inquest, and this was backed up by MPs from all parties:

A MEDICAL lawyer last night called on the Government to hold an inquest into the death of controversial biowarfare weapons inspector David Kelly because he believes there is insufficient evidence that he committed suicide.

In January 2010 it was revealed by The Mail on Sunday that following the Hutton inquiry, Lord Hutton had secretly ordered that all medical reports, including the post-mortem findings and photographs of Dr Kelly’s body, remain classified information for 70 years.

In August 2010 a letter appeared in The Times from eight medical experts, calling for a proper inquest. They stated that the inquiry by Lord Hutton was unsatisfactory with regard to the causation of death, that a detailed investigation of all the medical circumstances was now required, and that they supported the call for a proper inquest into the cause of Dr Kelly’s death.

Following this call, Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke on October 22 ordered the release of some of the medical records which Lord Hutton had ordered to be withheld for seventy years.

Then on 25 October 2010 a pharmacologist, Dr Andrew Watt, wrote to the new Attorney General, Dominic Grieve, requesting him to apply to the High Court for an order that a Coroner-led inquest be conducted, quoting the same Coroner’s Act of 1988 that had been used to replace the original inquest by an inquiry

He quoted four grounds for the request: “1. Rejection of evidence 2. Irregularity of proceedings 3. Insufficiency of inquiry and 4. Discovery of new facts or evidence”. The first of the twenty points on ‘insufficiency of inquiry’ was that no evidence had been taken on oath.

Dominic Grieve when in opposition as the shadow justice minister, had told the Mail on Sunday that the investigation into the death of government weapons inspector Dr David Kelly should be reopened because the public had “not been reassured” by the official verdict that he killed himself.

In a letter passed to The Mail on Sunday, he praised the group of doctors who were campaigning for a coroner’s inquest, and questioned the judgment of Lord Hutton, who had chaired the inquiry into the death.

On March 26, 2011, three doctors wrote an open letter to the Prime Minister calling for a proper inquest, headed ‘Subversion of due process and insufficiency of inquiry in the investigation into the death of Dr David Kelly’. They wrote that the laws of the UK, and indeed of Europe, require that the death of any British citizen dying in the manner in which Dr David Kelly is said to have died is investigated at an inquest, at which the Coroner possesses statutory powers. These include the power to hear evidence under oath, the power to subpoena witnesses, the power to have witnesses aggressively cross-examined, and the power to call a jury. Lord Hutton, he stated, possessed none of these powers, but the public was led to believe that Lord Hutton was better equipped to investigate Dr Kelly’s death than was the Coroner. Furthermore, he said, Lord Hutton had heard medical evidence for just one half of one day out of the twenty four days of evidence. No coroner in the land, they stated, would have reached a suicide verdict on the evidence which Lord Hutton had heard.

The statement by Attorney General Dominic Grieve in the House of Commons on 9 June 2011 therefore came as a surprise to many who had been expecting a formal inquest to be announced, though there had been some controversy when, in an answer to a parliamentary question, the Prime Minister had stated that he saw no need for an inquest

This led to allegations of political interference in what should have been a judicial matter. However, Dominic Grieve stated that he had acted in a non-political role as guardian of the public interest, and that he had received no representations of any kind from the Prime Minister or any other ministerial colleague on this decision. He concluded that the evidence that Dr Kelly took his own life was overwhelmingly strong, and that nothing that he had seen would support his making an application to the High Court for an inquest. “There is no possibility that, at an inquest, a verdict other than suicide would be returned”, he stated.

However, the Press Association put out a statement saying that the group of doctors led by Dr Stephen Frost had accused the government of being “complicit in a determined and concerted cover-up”, and that they would now seek a judicial review of Mr Grieve's decision. They denounced the Hutton report as a "whitewash" which "failed adequately to address the cause of death itself and the manner of death". Dr Frost stated that this was “clearly a political decision when it should have been a decision based solely on the law".

He stated that the decision had “no basis in law", and called for Mr Grieve to resign.

This was reported by the Daily Mail, whose website article was headed:

“'A continuing cover-up': Fury as Attorney General refuses full inquest into the death of Dr David Kelly”.

Former assistant coroner Michael Powers was interviewed on Channel 4 television, where he made out the legal case for a proper inquest, irrespective any suspicion of murder.

The previous day the Crown Prosecution Service itself had been under scrutiny when the evening television programme Newsnight revealed evidence that the Crown Prosecution Service, the body responsible for prosecuting criminal cases investigated by the police in England and Wales, did not disclose information in a court of law which it should have disclosed according to its own rules. The television presenter, Jeremy Paxman, known for his persistent interrogation of evasive politicians, announced: “It’s a very serious accusation. Tonight Newsnight returns to the extraordinary story of the undercover cop Mark Kennedy. We have evidence that the Crown Prosecution Service didn’t disclose material which might have saved people from convictions. It’s a demonstration either of serious incompetence or of something tantamount to a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice”:

On January 10, a trial had 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.

I reported on the scathing remarks by their defence lawyer in my January newsletter

It turned out that PC Mark Kennedy was present also at the G20 demonstration in London when bystander Ian Tomlinson died, Mark Kennedy was also identified in a left-wing demonstration in Germany a few days after the collapse of the British trial and and Spiegel-TV Magazin later produced a documentary on Mark Kennedy’s participation in demonstrations in Germany as a British undercover agent.

Journalist Richard Watson explained: “When the trial collapsed this January it was the police who were accused of withholding evidence and the CPS did nothing to disabuse anyone of that impression, writing to the defence and to the court that the new evidence had come to light just two days earlier. But emails held on CPS computers will show this was highly misleading. On the 17th of June 2009 there was a crucial email exchange. A very senior CPS lawyer based in the Special Crime Division in London, called Nick Paul, sent an email to another CPS lawyer based in Nottingham, called Ian Cunningham, who was reviewing the police evidence against the climate campaigners. Mr Paul wrote about the existance of ‘the participating informant’, a reference to the undercover policeman. Of even greater significance is Mr Cunningham’s reply. He wrote about ‘sensitive disclosure issues’ that ‘reinforced the difficulties’ of the case, clear evidence that senior CPS lawyers knew about the sensitivities of the undercover policeman two years before the case was to collapse”.

This was followed by a discussion with a former director of public prosecutions, a former Labour Solicitor General and one of the six defendants in the case that collapsed in January. They were all agreed on the seriousness of the issue, and that there should be an independent inquiry, though the environmental campaigner pointed out that inquiries held so far behind closed doors had not been looking at the bigger questions, such as in whose interest all of this had happened. It's all very well to have public inquiries, but will they lead anywhere? It sounds to me as if they need some prosecutions. But how do you prosecute the Crown Prosecution Service?

If the Crown Prosecution Service is above the law, and the Attorney General is under pressure to abandon inquests, and politicians can avoid inquests by setting up public (i.e. political) inquiries, and coroners can be specially selected to ignore concealment of bodies and the lack of post mortem examinations, then we have a pretty macabre situation. It means that whoever is running this country, and possibly other countries in the West as well, has a licence to kill.

Keep talking. The more people who keep talking the better. Brian Haw aimed to bring a focus to the carnage being brought about abroad by people in Westminster. In fact he achieved more than that; he also brought a focus to the thuggish brutality at the heart of the very institutions that are enabling these military adventures. Now that he is gone, in order to maintain that focus, we need a Westminster Haw Memorial. Brian Haw was a thorn in the side of a corrupt Establishment. Perhaps we should call the coming revolution the ‘Hawthorn Revolution’. Its symbol should be a twig of hawthorn.

1949 - 2011

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us." ~ Marianne Williamson

Keep talking.

So is Bin Laden really dead?

2011-06-08T20:52:00.009+01:00

Fox News reported the following on December 26th 2001:

Usama bin Laden has died a peaceful death due to an untreated lung complication, the Pakistan Observer reported, citing a Taliban leader who allegedly attended the funeral of the Al Qaeda leader.

"The Coalition troops are engaged in a mad search operation but they would never be able to fulfill their cherished goal of getting Usama alive or dead," the source said.

Bin Laden, according to the source, was suffering from a serious lung complication and succumbed to the disease in mid-December, in the vicinity of the Tora Bora mountains. The source claimed that bin Laden was laid to rest honorably in his last abode and his grave was made as per his Wahabi belief.

No wonder Hillary Clinton and her friends are losing the information war. They’ve been doing a marvellous job this month in turning the mainstream media into an Alice in Wonderland circus without the help of 'conspiracy theorists'.

The story on the killing of Osama bin Laden was dutifully reported right across the spectrum, including Channel 4 News, Al Jazeera and Russia Today. It is believed to be the ninth time that Osama bin Laden has died. Hitler and Goebbels knew that if you’re going to tell a lie you make it big. But what happens if that doesn’t work? If you can't eliminate the opposition, I suppose all you can do is to make the big lie even bigger, and bigger, and bigger, until the whole propaganda bubble either implodes in a wave of incredulity, or you start a war. To do that you enrage the population against some irrational monster who’s threatening the very survival of the people you’re trying to brainwash. In this case, though, they’ve just killed him off.

On May 1, President Barack Obama made an announcement in the White House that Osama bin Laden had been killed in a US operation in Abbottabad, Pakistan, and that his body had been taken into custody.

In his nine minute speech, that was all the detail he gave, other than that he himself had given the order, and that he and his team had spoken with their counterparts in Pakistan, who agreed that was a good and historic day for both their nations. The rest was a repetition of previous rhetoric. Some further details were given in a subsequent press briefing, but very few. They said they had received information from 'detainees', which led them to the 'compound' in Abbottabad in August 2010. When they saw the compound, a spokesman said, they were shocked at what they saw: It sat on a large plot of land, relatively secluded when it was built at the end of a narrow dirt road, had 12- to 18-foot walls topped with barbed wire, with internal walls sectioning off different portions of the compound, with two security gates, and the residents burned their rubbish rather than putting it out for collection as their neighbours did! Yeah, we've had complaints from neighbours on that score, too. Furthermore, the three-story building, had few windows facing the outside of the compound, and a terrace on the third floor had a seven-foot privacy wall. I suppose if you lived in a place like Pakistan you might think of taking that precaution. Apart from that, I remember seeing quite a lot of properties like that when I worked in Italy. Nearly all of them had noisy guard dogs barking at the gates!!! Further suspicious aspects of the 'compound' were that it was valued at $1M, that it had no telephone or Internet connection, and that the brothers who were said to occupy it had no explainable source of wealth. That was before they knew of a third family, whose size and makeup matched the bin Laden family members. In fact, they said, everything they saw "was perfectly consistent with what our experts expected bin Laden’s hideout to look like".

So why were they so shocked? They concluded that there was "a strong probability that that person was Osama bin Laden". On the basis of that they sent in their forces, meeting no resistance from local authorities, killing Osama bin Laden, three adult males and one female, who, they said, was being used as a shield by a male combatant. They detonated one of their own helicopters because of mechanical failure. The operation lasted under 40 minutes, and that was all the information the press was given in the briefing. In the subsequent question and answer session very little new information was given. One official denied that they had said that the helicopter failure had been mechanical. Apart from that, they said that Osama bin Laden had been killed in a firefight, and that they would ensure that his body would be handled in accordance with Islamic practice and tradition. They didn't know how long Osama bin Laden had been living at that compound. I would have expected any self-respecting journalist to be cautious over such a tale. There was lack of detail, evasion, and already hints of self-contradiction. There was also undue emphasis on the heroic role of the President. I should have thought that it might have occurred to some journalists that politicians sometimes don't tell the truth, or that in a war the first casualty is truth. Yet I couldn't find a single report in the mainstream media that questioned that Osama bin Laden had been in that 'compound' and had been killed by US forces, not even on Channel 4, Al Jazeera or Russia Today. Whatever the truth is, that is worrying.

The following day saw a further press briefing, mainly by the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, John Brennan. He confirmed that Osama bin Laden had been killed in a firefight, but stated that if they had had the opportunity to take him alive they would have done so.

Later he admitted: "And whether or not he got off any rounds, I quite frankly don’t know". But then he contradicted the previous statement that they didn't know how long Osama bin Laden had been living at the compound, firstly by insinuation. "We are looking right now at how he was able to hold out there for so long, and whether or not there was any type of support system within Pakistan that allowed him to stay there", he stated. Shortly afterwards he stated: "I think it’s inconceivable that bin Laden did not have a support system in the country that allowed him to remain there for an extended period of time". They were now insinuating that Pakistan may have had a hand in hiding Osama bin Laden, using a technique which I well recognise and needs a name. When it happens because of stupidity, people refer to it as 'a storm in a teacup'. The problem is that virtually no-one believes that it can be contrived by intelligent people, however obvious that is. War propaganda needs to be better understood.

A further question was put on a widely published photo of Barack Obama with others watching the events unfold on screen. This picture had appeared widely throughout the press, showing these people watching the killing of Osama bin Laden.

Gathered in the secure Situation Room, deep within the White House, President Barack Obama and his most trusted aides were able to watch the operation unfold in “real time” as US Special Forces stormed the terror chief’s compound in Pakistan and relayed images of the raid back via satellite.

In response to a question of whether they were watching the operation, John Brennan replied: "We were able to monitor the situation in real time and were able to have regular updates and to ensure that we had real-time visibility into the progress of the operation". He later mentioned "seeing that helicopter in a place and in a condition that it wasn’t supposed to be", so the information would presumably have been visual, but he avoided saying so directly. One journalist asked John Brennan: "Bin Laden used women as human shields when American personnel went in?", to which he replied, "There was family at that compound, and there was a female who was in fact in the line of fire that reportedly was used as a shield to shield bin Laden from the incoming fire". Journalists returned to this issue a couple of times later, for clarification. John Brennan stated that his understanding was that one of Osama bin Laden's wives served as a shield. On the question of releasing photos of bin Laden to show the world that he was dead, he said that they were doing everything they could to make sure that nobody had any basis to try to deny that they had got Osama bin Laden, but when pressed he was evasive. He talked at some length about the President personally having taken the decision, and about there having been disagreement, and what the downsides would have been if it hadn't been bin Laden. He stated that they were 99.9% certain that it was Osama bin Laden.

There was a further press briefing the following day by Press Secretary Jay Carney, in which various contradictions were revealed:

One journalist asked: "So Brennan in his briefing yesterday made a couple of I guess misstatements or statements that later appeared to be somewhat incorrect, such as that the wife was shielding bin Laden and it turned out it wasn’t the wife and there may not have been a shield and it wasn’t clear whether or not bin Laden had a gun. Are you guys in a fog of war in this, or what gives?".

Jay Carney gave a new narrative, in which Osama bin Laden had not been armed and had not been shielded, but a wife had been shot in the leg in another room. Later, following further questioning, Jay Carney said, "Even I’m getting confused. In the room with bin Laden was bin Laden’s wife. She rushed one of the U.S. assaulters and was shot in the leg but not killed. A woman on the first floor was killed in the crossfire". He didn't know whether bin Laden's wife was armed. Eventually, he said, " Sorry. Mark, did you have -- let me go –". Another journalist asked, "In the narrative, which of those women was being used a human shield as Mr. Brennan suggested yesterday?", to which he invoked the "fog of war" – he didn't actually know. In answer to a question on how bin Laden resisted, he said that they had worked very hard to declassify information in record speed. On whether enhanced interrogation techniques had been employed he obfuscated.

The contradictions were reported in the mainstream media, as in The Guardian, which reported under the heading 'Osama bin Laden's final moments: America changes its story":

Bin Laden, according to a briefing on Monday, used his wife as a human shield and she was killed. By Tuesday, the White House reversed that: she had not been used as a human shield and she was not dead. The other point of discrepancy was the initial briefings that stated Bin Laden resisted and was killed in a "firefight", which suggests he had been armed. The White House insisted he had resisted, without saying how, but said he had no gun.

Even that was a sanitised version of the utter confusion being generated at those press briefings.

Then on May 4, Barack Obama was interviewed on CBS News. Much of this 30-minute interview was a repetition of previous rhetoric, but some specifics of the operation were discussed. Tentative statements and suspicions reported in previous briefing sessions were now turning into facts.

"We know he was there at least five years", President Obama stated. Shortly afterwards he said "But we know that for five to six years this compound was there, and our belief is that he was there during that time". That's not quite the same thing. He said that before they had done DNA testing on the body they were 95% certain that it was Osama bin Laden. "Did you see the pictures?", Obama was asked. "Yes", he replied. "What was your reaction when you saw them?" – "It was him". "Why haven't you released them?" – "You know, we discussed this internally. Keep in mind that we are absolutely certain this was him. We've done DNA sampling and testing. And so there is no doubt that we killed Osama bin Laden. It is important for us to make sure that very graphic photos of somebody who was shot in the head are not floating around as an incitement to additional violence. As a propaganda tool".

So on the basis of unpublished DNA evidence and the President's assessment of unseen photos, they are 100% sure it was him. It would be interesting to get some comments from DNA experts on this, as every national newspaper reporting this interview should have done. He was asked "There are people in Pakistan, for example, who say, 'Look, this is all a lie. This is another American trick. Osama's not dead', and he replied: "You know, the truth is that - and we're monitoring worldwide reaction -- there's no doubt that bin Laden is dead. Certainly there's no doubt among al Qaeda members that he is dead. And so we don't think that a photograph in and of itself is gonna make any difference. There are gonna be some folks who deny it. The fact of the matter is, you will not see bin Laden walkin' on this earth again". The fact of the matter, actually, is that no-one has seen bin Laden walkin' on this earth since December 2001. On Pakistan, Barack Obama said: "We think that there had to be some sort of support network for bin Laden inside of Pakistan. But we don't know who or what that support network was. We don't know whether there might have been some people inside of government, people outside of government, and that's something that we have to investigate, and more importantly, the Pakistani government has to investigate". We've now come a long way from not knowing how long Osama bin Laden had been in that 'compound'.

That half hour interview was spun out to an hour's programme on CBS news, in which the president's heroic role was hyped up, and the few facts available were developed into a dramatic narrative of how Osama bin Laden had been resident in Pakistan for at least five years, with possible duplicity in Pakistan in keeping his whereabouts quiet for that period (http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20059739-503544.html).

The narrative is presented on the website in three video parts under the title 'Killing Bin Laden: The President's Story'. Part 3 shows the FBI web page for bin Laden, without pointing out that 9/11 was not mentioned on that page, and includes a clip from a video released during the weekend, purporting to show Osama bin Laden watching videos in his 'compound'.

The subsequent White House briefing was vacuous (Link). The presumed Pakistani complicity was hyped up further by one questioner, who said that Osama had been "living and protected by the Pakistani intelligence and military and living like a maharaja". Eventually, one questioner asked: "Can you clarify, has the President indicated to you in any way that he wants you to stop giving out any clarifications or information?" "No", replied Jay Carney. "Or that he wants DOD [the Department of Defense] to stop? Because you’re directing us in that spirit –", continued the questioner. Jay Carney replied that they had provided a great number of details, and that they didn't have any new details provide, shortly afterwards adding that the level of detail and the amount of information had been rather extraordinary. "So can’t we keep doing that?", asked the questioner. "Well, no", came the reply. The questioner tried pursuing details over the burial at sea: "There’s always a written naval record of a burial at sea. Could we have a copy?", he asked. Jay Carney agreed to ask the President, but added that there was no point in trying to tease out all these details on an operation that they had provided a great number of details on. Following up on the use of enhanced interrogation techniques, the same questioner was told that they had multiple ways of gathering information, and different methods of getting information. I'm sure journalists present would have loved to know just what they were, for their own purposes. Although some sense of realism started to creep into the mainstream media, the whole thing was being sanitised. A gang of school kids having beaten someone up in the playground would have to do better than that in explaining their actions, otherwise their parents would be know about it very quickly. The whole thing depends on the projection of authority by arrogant people, and the submissiveness of the public.

The whole narrative provides a fascinating study of how creating of 'a storm in a teacup' can work, at any level. I first came across this in the committee I was in in 2005, when the Treasurer was fishing for some point of trivia that she could seed a quarrel on. She started off by complaining about the amount of paper I had used in photocopying minutes and accounts, when she herself had been in a position to provide years of reports on computer disc if she had wanted to be helpful. Eventually, she complained that she didn't like the tone of a question I had put, and on the basis of that created a narrative that turned me into the Osama bin Laden of the whole association. That's how quarrels are manufactured, and it's how wars begin. The big news in both cases should have been the fact that they were obfuscating, and that perhaps that could indicate that they were covering up for previous lies.

A more convincing account of the death of Osama bin Laden had been provided by Nick Kollerstrom, in his article 'The Last Days of Bin Laden', in which he makes out a case that Osama bin Laden died in December 2001.

On May 5 this year he published a further analysis, under the title 'Bin Laden dies – again!' , in which he analyses the evidence and the contradictions.

What I've attempted in this newsletter is to analyse the propaganda techniques employed. By this stage, virtually everyone other than the Western mainstream media seemed to be recognising that things weren't quite as they had appeared. I retrieved about 70 000 items when I googled "Osama bin Laden Is Dead Again" (in quotes). But we haven't finished yet. A good propagandist will dismiss the likely reactions with a preemptive strike, and that is exactly what happened. It was being put about by some journalists and bloggers that anyone who disbelieved what they were being told about the killing of Osama bin Laden was a 'conspiracy theorist'.

I took particular exception to The Daily Telegraph's Damian Thompson, who wrote a blog headed 'Osama bin Laden dead – but no body. Now for an explosion of conspiracy theories'. It was a sneering and offensive article, which I found particularly objectionable coming from a journalist specialising in religion.

I cannot believe than any genuine Christian would write such stuff, especially not a former editor of the Catholic Herald. I asked in a comment, "How is not believing everything we are told by The Daily Telegraph conspiracy theory?" (Ian Fantom 05/02/2011 04:06 PM), and whether, if The Daily Telegraph had information that the FBI didn't have, did they have links with MI6 or the CIA. Someone replied "You'll have to ask Con Coughlin about that! : - / ", so I looked up Con Coughlin and found lots on reported links with MI6.

I also found that Damian Thompson was author of the book 'Counterknowledge', about "misinformation packaged to look like fact". What a hypocrite.

It sounds like the DEMOS pseudoscience, which we dealt with last year.

As the US war fever against Pakistan was being ramped up, Pakistan's Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, paid an official visit to China:

There he was told that the US had been asked not to violate Islamabad's territorial integrity, following the killing of Osama bin Laden. The Pakistan news agency quoted diplomatic sources as saying that China had "warned in unequivocal terms that any attack on Pakistan would be construed as an attack on China".

According to the report, the warning was formally conveyed by the Chinese foreign minister at last week's China-US strategic dialogue and economic talks in Washington.

At the same time, it was reported that China had agreed to give Pakistan 50 JF-17 fighter jets.

We now have a potential military conflict between two major nuclear powers, over the sovereignty of a third nuclear power, in an operation in a part of the world already involving three nuclear powers, and bordering on a further two. All this has arisen through military rhetoric, based on no publicly verifiable evidence, which remains largely unquestioned by a compliant Western press. By its belligerence, the US is clearly pushing Pakistan into the arms of China. President Zadari has held talks in China on a wide range of areas of cooperation. He said that language was the most potent instrument for promoting people to people contacts and called for elaborate institutional arrangements for teaching Chinese and Urdu languages to the students, workers and people of Pakistan and China.

In the long term this was a most effective way for giving a boost to the existing relations, he said.

Meanwhile, some of the British newspapers were carrying front-page headlines, screaming out that Osama bin Laden had been responsible not only for 9/11, but also for 7/7. The Sun put out a front page headline on May 4: 'BIN LADEN UNARMED – Just like his 9/11 and 7/7 victims'. I wrote a comment for their website: "The verdict of the 7/7 Inquest is not due until Friday. How can The Sun preempt that verdict with a statement on today's front page stating that Osama bin Laden was responsible? Is that not contempt of court?". On checking later I found that my comment was not there, and the headline had been changed.

I can understand The Sun upholding its normal standards of mendacity, but why should the Daily Mail put out such headings? This is the newspaper which has so consistently given prominence to stories pointing to possible state crimes. It was The Mail on Sunday, which first went public with the Shayler Affair. So if even The Daily Mail is screaming at us that Osama bin Laden was responsible for 7/7 when there is not a scrap of evidence that he was, we have to wonder what on earth is going on. They wrote a headline:

"'I've been waiting for this for 10 years': Relatives of Britons killed in 9/11 and 7/7 attacks say Bin Laden's death has finally brought closure", and part of the article featured 7/7, saying "Justice has been done".

I wrote a comment for their web page, but a friend wrote in the Keep Talking group: "It wouldn't at all surprise me if the Daily Mail don't accept any comments for that article". I replied: "Interesting observation. They haven't disabled comments linked to the Daily Mail article, but 23 hours after my comment was submitted, it still hasn't appeared. There's just a note saying: 'No comments have so far been submitted. Why not be the first to send us your thoughts, or debate this issue live on our message boards'.

I sent another comment, saying simply: "The verdict for the 7/7 inquest is not due out until tomorrow. I don't think you should be preempting it". That didn't appear either. Now it says simply that comments are closed, and there are none. These headlines came out days before the verdict was due out for the 7/7 inquest.

I was not aware of Osama bin Laden being even mentioned in the public hearings of the inquest. He was certainly not a feature in the inquest, and when the verdict was published there was not a single mention of Osama bin Laden. There were only two mentions of Al Qaeda, and they were only in passing. There was nothing in the verdict to incriminate either. So when a verdict can be preempted like that, one really has to wonder whose hand is behind the mainstream press.

The 7/7 inquest verdict of 'unlawful killing' came as no surprise to anyone, nor did the pronouncement of guilt on the 7/7 Four, since that was pronounced by the coroner before the hearings began. The verdict was announced on the same day as the results of the UK referendum on the voting system and local government elections, which grabbed most of the press attention. Newsnight was dedicated entirely to the voting, but they did have a Newsnight Special during the day. I saw part of that by chance, when Jeremy Paxman stated that he thought that they had to presume that the bombing hadn't been carried out by the state. He didn't say why they had to presume that, but I should imagine it has something to do with keeping his job.

The full verdict was published on the inquest's website and I followed a running commentary on The Guardian's website.

There was discussion here in the comments section, and various people had been complaining about the moderator taking out legitimate comments. Eventually I found that I was being moderated out when I mentioned '7/7 Ripple Effect'. I had stated that I had previously seen a comment mentioning '7/7 Ripple Effect', but that I couldn't now find it. Instead, what appeared was: "This comment was removed by a moderator because it didn't abide by our community standards …".

Eventually, though, all trace of my comments was being deleted. As a test, I entered a comment with just the words "7/7 Ripple Effect", and that was deleted shortly afterwards. This is The Guardian, which has exposed the News of the World in phone hacking, and sponsored Nick Davies in the publication of Flat Earth News, a book which exposes all sorts of distortions in the mainstream media. There has to be some big reason why '7/7 Ripple Effect' cannot be mentioned. Eventually, the moderator, Guardian journalist Laura Oliver wrote: "As the live blog updates have finished this thread will keep going for a while longer - but will be closed to comments from 7pm (GMT)".

I replied: "It seems that as far as I am concerned you have closed this thread already. Is there a D-notice or a superinjunction on this topic?". That comment stayed.

A devastating analysis of the 7/7 inquest verdict has been provided by Nick Kollerstrom. It was quite clearly a fake inquest, for which Lady Justice Hallett had been specially brought in. She gave no credible reason for abandoning the inquest into the 7/7 Four, or for ignoring evidence that they could not have been present at their own suicides. She was also highly critical of 'conspiracy theories' without specifying what they were and who was proposing them.

I should have thought that was extremely sloppy judicial practice, if not unethical and cowardly. Many people would have known that the main 'conspiracy theory' at the time was the reconstruction presented in the video '7/7 Ripple Effect' by John Anthony Hill, under the pseudonym Muad'Dib. Any person criticised in a court of law should surely have the right to defend himself, and his claims should be subjected to critical analyis. This he could not do, because he had no representation in the inquest, mentions of his video were being censored by the mainstream media, and he himself was being held behind bars on a charge of attempting to pervert the course of justice.

Lady Justice Hallett should be suspended, pending a proper judicial inquiry into her conduct. I am delighted to report that Muad'Dib was acquitted on May 12, just six days after publication of the 7/7 inquest verdict.

A group of up to 25 supporters attended the four days of the trial, including Nick Kollerstrom, who wrote the proceedings up on his website.

I wasn't there myself; I was busy trying to draw attention to it in the mainstream media. Muad'Dib has shown a great deal of courage and composure during his lengthy ordeal, and should be congratulated for that. Had the authorities not arrested him and subjected him to such treatment, then there was little harm that he was likely to have done to them, since he was living quietly, and not seeking publicity as author of the video. His videos sent to the court would simply have been ignored. However, by making such a fuss over him, the authorities have themselves brought this issue to the attention of a lot of people, and brought themselves into disrepute.

During the trial, the Press Association put out a press release saying: " 7/7 bombers 'were innocent patsies'":

A man sent a DVD to bereaved families from the July 7 attacks claiming the four London suicide bombers were "innocent patsies", a court heard.

One of the packages included a letter to John Hyman telling him his daughter Miriam did not die in the Tavistock Square bus blast but was murdered by the security services at Canary Wharf in London, Southwark Crown Court was told.

and this report was reproduced in several regional newspapers.

Later, The Yorkshire Post reported the acquittal under the heading ' Man cleared over ‘7/7 bombers are innocent’ DVD ':

Annabel Darlow, prosecuting, said the “central thrust” of the film was that the four who had been identified as the 7/7 bombers were innocent men who had been set up by the authorities and murdered.

She said: “It was argued in the film that the explosions on the Tube and on the bus in Tavistock Square were not caused by bombs from the rucksacks but, in fact, the Tubes and the bus had been pre-rigged by the powers-that-be with explosives.”

The fact that the video has been shown to a jury in a court of law is a powerful argument for sacking the censors. I managed to publish an article in Le Monde Diplomatique, but only in the Esperanto edition, and that carried a disclaimer at the end from the Paris office!

May 2011 has been an incredible month. I would have had more than enough material without even mentioning Osama bin Laden or Muad'Dib, as story after story hit the headlines. But the end of the month is approaching, and I have to stop. Muad'Dib is now getting his life together again, and still in temporary residence in London, where we hope to meet him again shortly at our next Keep Talking meeting. I was amused by a piece that Al Jazeera put out, showing video clips of television announcers confusing 'Obama' with 'Osama'. I'm surprised no-one yet has talked of 'Obama sin Laden'.

War is nothing more than a business venture

2011-06-08T20:50:00.019+01:00

April 2011

We seem to have got ourselves embroiled in yet another war, leaving us trying to figure out just what happened when it’s too late to do anything about it. For a while, the world faced a dilemma of letting the people of Benghazi be slaughtered or let in NATO under a dark suspicion that their motive may not be humanitarian but oil. Was it really like that?

Analysts are working on it, but there were dire warnings in the UK Parliament against mission creep. It now seems that that is exactly what is happening. Surely, if the mission is to protect the population in an area, the remedy is not to send in the bombers, but to set up a UN protectorate and send in UN peace-keeping troops, under a mandate that allows them to do just that and nothing more.

The President of the Public Banking Institute, which campaigns for banking reform in the US, thinks that the motive may be to do with banking. Writing in Global Research, Ellen Brown reports on

“the odd fact that the Libyan rebels took time out from the rebellion in March to create their own central bank – this before they even had a government”.

It appears that the Central Bank of Libya is state owned, and that it has nearly 144 tons of gold. Retired US General Wesley Clark is reported to have said that after 9/11 there were plans to take out seven countries, including Iraq and Libya.

“What do these countries have in common?” asks Ellen Brown, “In the context of banking, one that sticks out is that none of them is listed among the 56 member banks of the Bank for International Settlements ... The most renegade of the lot could be Libya and Iraq”.

If wars are really manufactured for financial gain, then it makes sense to try to figure out how the rich and powerful operate, and that means looking fundamentally at the banking system.

I’ve been following the development of a group called Positive Money (http://www.positivemoney.org), which is campaigning in the UK for fundamental reform of the banking system.

At first I thought they wouldn’t stand a chance against the gigantic vested interests of the top bankers, so I went to a public meeting at Oxford University on ‘The Future of Banking’ at which Ben Dyson of Positive Money was one of the speakers, in order to hear what the mainstream economic gurus had to say about his ideas.

I was expecting them to say that they had already studied such proposals before, but they didn’t. It was as if it was all new to them, too. I was interested to hear that the Governer of the Bank of England himself is sympathetic to reform. “Of all the ways of organising banking, the worst is the one we have today”, he is quoted as saying. Positive Money have opened up an office in London, and are, or have been, looking for volunteers to man it. They are engaged in research, education, and promotion of ideas on banking reform.

I went to a meeting in London on 5th April, which they were videoing for the purposes of producing a DVD. Ben Dyson explained the problems of the current banking system, and how it is open to abuse.

One statement that amazed me was that most of the mainstream economists, including many financial journalists, don’t understand how the fractional reserve system works. I suspect in many cases it’s just that they don’t want to.

Watch 'Money as Debt'

In the subsequent discussion, I said that I had first had it explained to me by people I happened to meet in Trafalgar Square and Parliament Square on 9/11 truth demonstrations and Iraq war demonstrations. I had been amazed to hear that banks just create money out of thin air whenever a loan is made. They were telling me of the forthcoming economic crisis long before it actually happened. It would be contrived, they said, and that is how it appears to have been.

I recently saw the film ‘Inside Job’ about the financial corruption leading to the economic crisis:

From Academy Award nominated filmmaker, Charles Ferguson (“No End In Sight”), comes INSIDE JOB, the first film to expose the shocking truth behind the economic crisis of 2008. The global financial meltdown, at a cost of over $20 trillion, resulted in millions of people losing their homes and jobs.

Even the credit rating agencies seem to have been corrupted, which is very worrying, considering that the fete of Ireland, Greece, Portugal, Spain, and any other country with a vulnerable economy is largely determined by such agencies.

Positive Money are now asking people to write to their MPs, and one early MP to speak out is 9/11 truther Michael Meacher, who agrees with two reforms:
():

"One is that the bank payments system is separated from risky lending activity" and the other "is that the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) should influence money supply, not by the indirect and uncertain method of setting interest rates, but directly through the creation of new money when necessary, though only within strict constraints to avoid inflationary and deflationary pressure."

It seems that banking reform, because of the high impact that the economic crisis is having on everyday life, is getting reasonable coverage in the mainstream media where other topics, such as what really happened in 9/11 and 7/7 remain taboo (although Mr Meacher did write the foreward to the revised edition of David Griffin's "The New Pearl Harbour"). It seems, though, that the government will be more concerned in appearing to do something than actually doing something.

Positive Money have produced a video response to the government’s Independent Banking Commission’s interim report, saying that it gives a biased and misleading summary of the proposals that they spent three hourse explaining to them.

Just after I had sent out my last newsletter I heard that Muad’Dib, the author of the ‘7/7 Ripple Effect’ video, had been released from Wandsworth prison on bail. This was a surprise, since the previous day he had been refused the right to attend his own bail hearing. So we invited him to an informal meeting of the London ‘9/11 Keep Talking’ group, which we held one afternoon because of a curfew being imposed. We heard how the prison authorities had been making excuses for not taking Muad’Dib to court, but eventually were forced to do so by the judge who “got serious” with them. It was also a good meeting from the point of view of exchanging information on 7/7, even though Muad’Dib had not been able to keep up with the inquest hearings from his prison cell.

Later, he was interviewed on Kevin Barrett’s Truth Jihad Radio, which is run as part of American Freedom Radio. He explained how he had sent a padded envelope of DVDs to the court administrators. On receiving it, they called in the bomb squad, and then the anti-terrorist branch of the police.

“They’re treating me as though I’m a terrorist”, he said, “It’s absolutely ridiculous”.

His trial is set for 9 May, three days after the verdict of the 7/7 inquest is to be announced. I see that there are legal procedures for submitting information to a court of law under ‘amicus curiae’; you can’t just send the material to the court.

But to get a conviction, the prosecution would have to prove intent to pervert the course of justice, which is not proven merely by showing that the accused has not followed proper procedures. I should have thought that common sense would dictate that the court administrators would merely send a copy of the legal procedures to anyone approaching them. It’s not as if he had approached jurors individually. Muad’Dib told us that others had sent the DVDs to the court and had not been arrested, so clearly he was arrested because he was the author. I got a bit concerned at the meeting, when Muad’Dib said that he was going to challenge the jurisdiction of the court on a religious argument concerning the authenticity of the coronation stone. But then he assured us that if that failed, he would have proper legal representation in the court to defend him on the specific charge. The question of the coronation stone doesn’t mean much to me personally, since I don’t believe in divine rights of the monarchy anyway. I see state religion as being a pretext for power rather than an authority for power. But then, if they justify themselves on religious grounds, I suppose they should expect to be challenged on religious grounds. It seems to me that the court will reject Muad’Dib’s argument on the grounds that it is not in their interests to accept it.

The people who really matter in the power structure are the people who control the wealth of the nation. They are now generally believed to be the power behind the monarchy. They are also widely believed to be the people behind the current economic crisis and lots of other things.

Two days before Muad’Dib’s interview on Truth Jihad Radio, I was interviewed on the contents of my previous newsletter, in which I had reported Hillary Clinton’s statement that they, whoever they were, were losing the information war.

Kevin Barratt did a nice write-up on his website before the interview, quoting the relevant text from my newsletter. I felt quite honored to be interviewed on an American radio channel about Hillary Clinton.

Essentially, if they are losing the information war, then we in the truth movement are winning it. But it’s not quite that simple, because here in the UK the truth movement seems to lurch from crisis to crisis, and the truthers seem to be plagued by various types of trolling by enigmatic people.

During the interview I gave an example of how people can be accepting of authority, and not see the obvious, even when it is presented before their own eyes.

The phenomenon, together with the sense of discomfort they experience, is called ‘cognitive dissonance’, and it’s the same whether we’re talking about the collapse of Building 7 of the World Trade Centre on September 11, 2001, or the financial chart of Esperanto Association of Britain, which shows the opposite of what members had been led to believe.

I went to the Annual General Meeting of Esperanto Association of Britain, which was held during the British Esperanto Congress in Eastbourne. I was a presidential candidate, standing on a platform of openness, though few would have known it because my election statement wasn’t published this year. They seem to get everything wrong all the time, then blame it on cock-up theory or play dumb.

Before going to Eastbourne, I sent an email round to the Keep Talking group to ask for their impressions of the description on the congress website. I got just one answer, which stated: “Language buffs should go for it if your web page gets an airing ... I’m not into languages at all though, so my judgement might be marred by a lack of awareness”. Exactly. You wouldn’t think that the Esperanto movement was meant to be a popular movement promoting an easy-to-learn second language for people who aren’t necessarily into languages. They’ve presented it as if it were some sort of deviant Klingon club with a pussy cat on the committee. Their congress theme of ‘Lumturoj, Lumuloj, Lumaĵoj’ wasn’t translated on the English-language page, and if it had been it wouldn’t have thrown much light on the matter. It means: ‘Light houses, luminants, illuminations’. If the topic had had anything to do with what the association existed for I might even have gone to the congress. When I was there for the AGM I told two people that I hadn’t joined the congress because no programme had been published. They both looked non-plussed. One of them was on the organising committee and insisted that you first join, then you get the programme. What’s happened to these people? They would have been amongst the first to insist on common sense until recently.

Now if you look back to how those of us who were organising the ‘Renewal’ congress of 2007 were castigated by the editor of The British Esperantist, you have to wonder what’s going on.

We had at that stage published quite a full programme, focusing on renewal of the Esperanto movement in Britain, yet the Esperanto association itself was putting out that we only had a ‘vague programme’ and that there was little on renewal in it, saying that at the end of January the organisation of the May congress seemed ‘still chaotic’. It was hypocritical negative propaganda undermining the concept of ‘renewal’, and was put out with the backing of the president. If you want a case study to see how brainwashing works, you couldn’t do better than to study the Esperanto movement in Britain. At the AGM the president did, to his credit, allow me to read out my 200 word election statement, but I had prepared a five-minute address as presidential candidate, which I was not allowed to present, because it was “not on the agenda”. No discussion on the candidates was allowed. That idea was introduced in 2002 when there were vigorous protests from members, but the then Director of Development, who chaired the meeting during the voting, insisted that he had strict instructions from the Management Committee. So this year I handed out copies of my election address to members as they were voting. It pointed out that two of the people they were just about to elect to the committee had been openly castigating the objectives of the Esperanto movement. One of them had written obsene stuff about not giving “two f**ks about harassing MPs into accepting Esperanto”, and the other had sabotaged proper discussion about furthering Esperanto in the Yahoo email group esper-brit. I had been trying to warn of negative things going on covertly in the Management Committee, but now they seem to be openly admitting it. This reminds me of the report by the think tank DEMOS, ‘The Power of Unreason’ which I reported on in my newsletters last year. They were essentially saying that the public are now so brainwashed that it is no longer necessary to infiltrate groups covertly when you can do it overtly. That’s exactly what seems to be happening. I had eventually managed to persuade the editor of the association’s newsletter to publish my financial chart, which had brought about the personal attacks and condemnations for ‘behaviour’ by the president, Professor John Wells, after I had delivered it to him in December 2005. It showed that, contrary to popular belief, the capital of the association had not been ‘eaten up’ before the sale of their property in 1999, but had been rising dramatically. I had expected to be ignored again, but this time I was delighted to receive a full page of invective, in which he stated that he would consider publishing an article including the chart if it wasn’t critical of the committee.

So I sent him a purely historical article, and he published it. After the AGM I wrote the whole thing up in the Esperanto web newspaper La Libera Folio.

The new treasurer has added an agressive comment, saying that she was a professional accountant, and “as a trustee of the association, I of course have already studied and, to use Ian’s preferred expression, ‘researched’ the accounts of EAB”, adding that her professional opinion is that everything is in order and that there has been no fraud. I suppose a new treasurer would by the end of her first week, as a matter of course, have checked all the accounts of the association back to about the time she was in nappies. Yet no-one was suggesting that the accounts weren’t in order; I had merely compared them with what members were being led to believe at the time.

Last November, the association’s secretary, Dr David Kelso, disappeared without trace in the hills of Calabria. The President, in his election statement, stated that David Kelso should now be presumed dead.

Yet the statistics from the Missing Persons Bureau give a 90% probability of a missing adult being alive, and a 64% probability of having preplanned his own disappearance, perhaps in order to take on a new identity. So why should the President want members to believe he is dead?

I wrote this up in La Libera Folio, and added in previously published material on the problems of the association. This caused something of a storm. A retired lawyer told me the other day that he thought there was something weird about the Kelso case. Normally, in his experience, you would expect such a disappearence to be widely reported, but in this case it was as if people were uninterested.

Also, he said, you would expect the police to be contacting virtually everyone who knew him. “Would that include me?”, I asked. “Definately”, he replied, “That’s their job”. I suppose from the police’s point of view it could be potentially an investigation of murder, abduction or concealment. Any decent investigation would quickly have revealed that David Kelso had been a top civil servant who took early retirement and then became heavily involved in a voluntary organisation, where he became involved in some sort of major dispute for five years before his disappearance. Of course they would have been contacting people.

This makes me think of the failure of Thames Valley Police to open a murder investigation into the death of Dr David Kelly, on which I have reported in previous newsletters.

I am particularly concerned because Thames Valley Police is the police force for my area. Several years ago I reported to my local police station the apparent theft of a thousand pounds from a charity based in Oxford; I had been following the story as editor of the now defunct news website ‘Esperanto Britain’. The administrator of the charity was reluctant to contact the police herself, but agreed to my doing it. I was amazed that as soon as I mentioned Esperanto they played dumb. So I tried the Oxford police station and they did the same. I had at that stage no thoughts of the possibility that there could be some sort of blacklist of taboo topics. It’s all fascinating stuff when you follow through how it works. And, of course, it can happen in any social movement that is promoting something that the Establishment doesn’t want to happen. It tells us how propaganda works at the microlevel, which is really important to understand if we want to preserve democracy at all levels. There must be something resiliant about Esperanto. “There must be something irresistable about it” said the Polish ambassador to the UK at the opening of Esperanto House in Barlaston in 2002. Indeed, it took over a century to do to the Esperanto movement what it took less than a decade to do to the 9/11 truth movement. The problems of the Esperanto movement and the 9/11 Truth Movement are essentially the same: most people want to believe what they are told by authority, however ridiculous it may be. A hundred years ago, when the Esperantists were complaining of ‘fraud and treachery’, there was no talk of ‘paranoia’ or ‘conspiracy theories’. I first became aware of ‘paranoia’ following the resignation of the president of the Universal Esperanto Association, Professor Ivo Lapenna, in 1974, when John Wells – yes the same John Wells – told me: “Lapenna is paranoid”. I was puzzled about that, but put it out of my mind until Autumn 2004, when I had asked John Wells for a chat, and he went into histrionics saying “You are childish and like Lapenna”. Then in December 2005, on seeing my financial chart, he said: “Ian is paranoid”. Now we all know what ‘paranoid’ means: it says more about the speaker than the accused. It seems that a whole set of psychological vocabulary has been brought into force since the end of the Second World War. Breaking that now seems to me to be of the highest priority in winning the information war. They seem to be succeeding in the US. Can we do that here in the UK?

Your mind is a battlefield

2011-06-07T21:10:00.010+01:00

Sent March 2011

“We are in an information war and we are losing that war.”

This startling admission came on March 2 from US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in a statement to a US Foreign Policy Priorities committee meeting, in which she was defending her departmental budget.

"Al Jazeera is winning”, said Hillary Clinton, “The Chinese have opened up a global English language and multi-language television network, the Russians have opened up an English language network”.

In October last year, the chairman of the US Broadcasting Board of Governors stated that his organisation needs to fight its "enemies":

Yet overwhelmingly I notice that coverage of the US by Russia Today is coming not from Moscow, but from the truth movement and the alternative media in the US itself. On November 17 last year, Alex Jones told Max Keiser that as from about two years ago, people trust alternative media more than they trust mainstream media, and more people now get their news from alternative media than they do from old-line corporate media.

Al Jazeera was quite pleased at Hillary Clinton’s admission that people turn to them to get the “real news”.

So if the US truth movement is making such headway in the US, why can’t we in the UK? As in the US, the UK 9/11 truth movement is a loose network of groups and individuals. At my very first meeting on December 13, 2006, David Shayler explained that it had not been set up as a single membership association because it would – not could – be infiltrated and dismantled. We did, however, have a national coordinating committee, which broke up in quarreling, and we used to have monthly meetings in London with over 50 people present, which now, it seems, is no longer possible. Wherever you look, it’s the same picture, and yet we struggle on.

The point of Western propaganda was summed up by the Labour Party’s late Richard Crossman: “The way to carry out good propaganda is never to appear to be carrying it out at all”.

A US National Security Council Directive in 1950 stated that the most effective kind of propaganda was the kind where “the subject moves in the direction you desire for reasons which he believes to be his own”.

Those quotes come from the introduction of a very revealing book by historan Frances Stonor Saunders called ‘Who paid the piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War’.

The Cultural Cold War was a secret programme of cultural propaganda in Western Europe, a central feature of which was to advance the claim that it did not exist. This was at a time when the British MI5 didn’t officially exist.

I think the reason that the 9/11 truth movement in the UK is kept under control, as well as some other movements I am familiar with, is simple: British propaganda is the best in the world.

So I was interested to see that on 11-12 September last year four hundred people attended a seminar in New York on the topic ‘How the world changed after 9/11’.

There was an impressive array of speakers:

Dr. Katherine Albrecht, talked about tracking individuals and the hugh databases that are being built up. “The fourth ammendent restricts the government’s ability to get into your personal information, but nothing restricts the ability of corporations to get into your personal information”, she stated. She said Stalin understood well how to identify people who were stepping out of the norm, and that in the US they are creating very similar things today. I wasn’t so sure about her claims on RFID, the so-called ‘spychips’. They are, after all, low-power radio frequency chips, which have antennas and can be jammed, or blocked with metal foil, but the overall trend is nevertheless worrying.

The Chinese are planning to track all Beijing citizens by means of their mobile phones. The paper edition of The Times devotes a whole page to that, using the word ‘paranoia’ twice, when refering to the Chinese government, as if it couldn’t happen in London.

If you don’t want your internet searching to be tracked and recorded, an alternative to Google is ‘http://startpage.com’. Their home page does indeed state that they retain no data.

Alex Jones told Max Keiser in his interview on November 17 last year that his Infowars had been blocked by Google the previous week. So perhaps StartPage is good for finding black matter in cyberspace.

The next speaker at the seminar was former MI5 officer Annie Machon, who gave a summary of the UK sitation.

“What are you worrying about, Americans?”, she asked, “At least you have a constitution to shred. We don’t have that in Britain”. MI6 has become a state sponsor of terror, she told the audience, Britain is the CCTV capital of the world, 800 public bodies have power to eavesdrop on our communications, and now the police are acquiring military-style spy drones to be put into force in 2011 on the South Coast. On Fascism, she said it was all in place, and that we were “pretty well there”. We can’t rely on the judges and the courts to protect our basic rights, she said. She explained that some of the measures that were implemented supposedly to protect us from terrorism could have the opposite effect; we could find a situation when terrorists can build a bomb which goes off only when it identifies a US passport. She finished with: “At the rate we’re going we’re not going to have a democracy to fight for soon… Let’s go on and change the world”.

Recently, the Pentagon has developed tiny spy planes which could mimic birds and insects.

“The application of such technology could completely revolutionize warfare and the art of intelligence gathering. Unfortunately, it will also fuel greater suspicion and paranoia regarding government domestic spying efforts. Let’s just hope none of these sorts of devices unexpectedly turn up inside any U.S. home.”

Will hope be enough? In London, the 7/7 inquest completed its public hearing of witnesses, and this was widely reported on various news channels in the UK. They focused on the human tragedy of the aftermath of the bombings rather than evidence of the cause. We were told that we will have to wait for the verdict. I thought the verdict had been declared by Judge Lady Justice Hallett right at the beginning: the 7/7 Four were guilty.

The general impression given is that the event was accompanied by a whole series of cockups, but the main point made by the coroner in the final session seems to have been concerned with linguistics:

“I just think that you people at the top need to say, we have to communicate with people in plain English.", she said.

The transcripts and evidence has been made public via the inquest’s website.

It seems that the government and MI5 want a say in the style of the verdict, arguing that by law only "brief, neutral and factual" verdicts can be recorded:

But the bereaved families said the coroner should be allowed to go into much greater detail about how the deaths came about.

They do not want a "sterile" conclusion that their loved ones were unlawfully killed that fails to rule on whether the security agencies could have prevented the atrocities or whether the emergency services could have saved more lives, their lawyers said.

Lawyers for families of those killed in the London 7/7 bombings are suggesting that MI5 is trying to gag justice by restricting the verdicts of the inquest into the attacks. I’d like to know what business it is of the Government or MI5. They did, after all, choose Lady Justice Hallett because they felt they needed a very senior judge to conduct the inquest, owing to the exceptional circumstances of the case. So why are they now trying to tell her her job?

March 7 saw another bail hearing for A J Hill, or Muad’Dip, the author of ‘7/7 Ripple Effect’. For the third time he was prevented by Wandworth Prison authorities from attending his own bail hearing. I was amazed that this could happen when I first heard about it from Nick, who had just visited John Hill in Wandsworth, after his second bail hearing. It is, however, all written up on John Hill’s trial website (http://mtrial.org/).

Apparently, the judge said that he would not grant him bail without him being in court. I tried to establish who his local MP would be, and found a piece in Hansard on prisoner voting rights (Hansard, House of Commons, 23 Nov 2010 : Column 152), in which Mark Pritchard MP asked the Secretary of State for Justice, Kenneth Clarke:

“But is there not a contradiction at the heart of the Government's policy? Currently, all Members of Parliament represent all prisoners living in prisons within their constituency, yet the Secretary of State has said that they will be represented by Members of the constituencies where they were last registered. That contradiction needs to be resolved if representation of prisoners by prisoners (sic – presumably: by MPs) is to be taken seriously.”

Kenneth Clarke replied:

“I think there is some confusion in the House about the convention that applies, which both I and my hon. Friend should resolve-although it is not my responsibility to resolve it. I take the view that I represent my constituents when they are in prison wherever it is that they are imprisoned, but I know that other MPs take the view that they represent every resident of a prison in their constituency. Perhaps we should resolve the parliamentary conventions on this matter at the same time as we have a look at which prisoners might have voting rights.”

I therefore wrote to the MP for Wandsworth, in order to put the two in contact over the matter, but the MP’s personal assistant phoned me to say that he did not represent prisoners. What a mess! I was wondering whether John Hill would be released now that the public inquest hearings are over, or whether they will hold him until the end of the inquests into the deaths of the 7/7 Four.

The inquest’s website states: “The Coroner has jurisdiction over all 56 inquests which arise from the bombings on 7 July 2005. The Coroner has decided that the inquests into the deaths of the 52 members of the public killed on 7 July 2005 should be resumed and heard together. The inquests into the deaths of Mohammed Sidique Khan, Shehzad Tanweer, Hasib Hussain and Jermaine Lindsay remain adjourned”.

I await the continuation of that inquest with interest. That inquest could be even more interesting than the current 7/7 inquest, in particular because of recent concern over the role of Mohammed Junaid Babar,

a US Muslim who is said to have set up training camps in north-west Pakistan where he taught bomb-making to supposed 7/7 bombing mastermind Mohammed Sidique Khan, but who was in fact a US informant, cooperating with US authorities even before he was arrested in 2004.

where a video is presented of the father of one of the victims, commenting on the implications. Graham Foulkes said that it looked as if the Americans may well have known in detail what Babar was up to in Pakistan, adding that that was a very, very serious matter:

“I'm really horrified and upset. It seems to me that the Americans were tacitly supporting a major international terrorist who set up and ran a training camp which Khan attended”, he explained.

Whether Khan was really a terrorist or just an actor in the 7/7 security exercises, it seems that the security services will have some very serious questions to answer if the inquest on the 7/7 Four goes ahead. Tony Blair tried to introduce detention without trial for up to 90 days. The Muad’Dib case demonstrates that we now have detention without trial for, so far, 150 days. The longer this goes on, the stronger becomes the case for a wide-ranging review of fundamental human rights in this country.

Even if John Hill is found not guilty, 150 days of incarceration would make anyone think twice before sending information to a court of law under amicus curiae.
That effectively quashes a further legal right in the UK.

Then there are legal questions on statements of the guilt of the 7/7 Four to the potential jurors at the Kingston trial, and at the beginning of the inquest into the other 52 who died in the attacks. What happened to John Hill looks to me suspiciously like arbitrary arrest. That in itself should be causing deep concern. Then there is the issue of prisoner representation in Parliament. If they don’t have the vote, then no-one is interested in representing them. This makes a solid case for all prisoners having the vote, because even those who are critical of the powers-that-be have rights. If they can do this to John Hill, then they can do it to any of us.

There is another crazy aspect of this case, involving the right of free speech. According to the website, a condition of his bail in Ireland was that he “shall not communicate with any party in England or Wales save for wholly personal reasons or save for reasons wholly connected with the church and organisation known as The Way”.

This surely has to be an admission that his arrest was political. This should now be an issue to be raised with the Irish authorities and the EU authorities as a matter of human rights.

“In a series of breaking stories this month, more information is coming out exposing the true nature of the false flag attacks in Oklahoma City in 1995, in New York and Washington in 2001, and in London in 2005”.

In the same report they show former US Secretary of State for Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, denying that $2.3 trillion had actually been lost in the defence budget, but claiming that it just couldn’t be tracked by the complex systems. He also denied any knowledge of Building 7:

All this bears out Annie Machon’s statement on Fascism, that we are “pretty well there”, and that we can’t rely on the judges and the courts to protect our basis rights. I used to wonder in my youth how many people around me at work would have been state aparachniks had we been in the Soviet Union rather than London. Now I am getting worried.

The head of the London School of Economics has resigned because of the close links with Muammar Gaddafi, which he developed at the university. An investigation is now to be instigated.

Simon Jenkins, writing now in The Guardian, gives an overview, saying that “The school's association with Libya's leader is just an extreme version of the predicament now facing all UK universities”.

When Tony Blair told the House of Commons after 9/11 that those who carried out the 9/11 attacks were limited not by any sense of morality, and that their limits were only practical and technical (Hansard HoC 14 September 2001, vol 372), what would Tony Blair himself have been doing, had he been born in Libya and had not been limited rules of democracy?

Yet many in the UK who know about the deception of 9/11 and 7/7 react as if nothing had anything to do with them. It has everything to do with them, especially if they are young. If John Hill is correct in his reconstruction of 7/7, then we could be dealing with state murder, as, indeed, we could in the case of weapons expert Dr David Kelly, whose long overdue inquest must be about to be announced any time now. I was once in a discussion with a group of friends, in which one of them mentioned “the excesses of Stalin”. I would have been incredulous if I had known he would turn on me fifteen or so years later, but I thought that was odd at the time. “You mean it’s alright to kill a few people, but not millions?” I thought afterwards. You could almost write a headline: “State murder: not many dead”.

Whenever democracy is subverted, whether at the level of governments or tiny membership associations, it’s important to take a stand. Let’s have the courage to fight for our democracy now. If we don’t, will we have the courage to do it later?

Undercover police are a bunch of clowns

2011-06-06T20:17:00.012+01:00

Originally sent January 2011

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.

Jamie Bartlett says young people should develop critical thinking skills - Who would disagree?

2011-06-06T19:47:00.010+01:00

Originally sent October 2010

For the first time ever in the history of the 9/11 truth movement, as far as I am aware, truth seekers will have an opportunity to be directly confronted by ‘the other side’.

The think-tank DEMOS has accepted an invitation to talk about their recommendations to Government on ‘open infiltration’ in what they call ‘conspiracy theory’ groups. That meeting will take place this coming Monday, under the heading ‘DEMOS v. The Truth Movement’.

The speakers will be the two authors of the DEMOS report ‘the power of unreason: conspiracy theories, extremism and counter-terrorism’, which I wrote about in my September newsletter.

Jamie Bartlett and Carl Miller have agreed to come along and explain the thinking behind their work, and to answer questions from the audience. In my September newsletter I described the recommendations, and gave some background on DEMOS, explaining its importance in Government thinking since 1997. If you don’t have that newsletter, and would like a copy, just email. I can also supply you with my Powerpoint presentation which I used at last month’s meeting of ‘9/11 Keep Talking’, in which I analysed the contents of the report.

In summary, I wrote in the newsletter:

“The report was headed, ‘the power of unreason: conspiracy theories, extremism and counter-terrorism’, and it claims to examine the role of conspiracy theories in extremist groups, arguing that conspiracy theories are linked to violence. It singles out the 9/11 Truth movement as being “most notorious and influential”, in that it questions the official accounts of 9/11.

It states that the obvious response by Government of producing information often fails because any refutation risks being taken as evidence of a cover up. The authors propose introducing ‘alternative information’ to civilian groups which believe in conspiracy theories. This may be introduced directly by agents of the Government, ‘or their allies’, in what they term ‘open infiltration’, or it may be introduced by civilian groups, which would be seen to be independent of Government.”

Shortly after the report was published, Jamie Bartlett opened up a blog on the DEMOS website headed ‘The bloggers strike back’ giving a description of the report, and accepting comments. Many of these comments concerned the issue of 9/11, which had been included in the report.

In response to one contributer, he stated: “Paolo you are absolutely right, the report was not about the 9/11 truth movement, but about conspiracy theories in extremist groups. I have, however, consequently been sucked into a debate about 9/11, which I am more than happy to take on”.

He added: “Finally, I will be going on to a radio show soon with someone who I think is quite an influential person in the 9/11 truth movement. To his credit he's willing to have me on his radio show. So I'll post details when I get them. I put a couple of questions up myself, and these were replied to privately. I then asked Carl whether they would be willing to come and talk to us and answer questions on their report. Carl replied that he would, but that they would both be abroad for the next meeting.

Some time later I wrote on Jamie’s blog page: “You and Carl will be most welcome to come to our 9/11 Keep Talking group in London to explain your report and to answer questions on it. This would provide an opportunity for both of you to demonstrate just how 'open infiltration' would work, and how you would propose to introduce ‘alternative information’ in connection with the 9/11 issue. It would also allow you to explain to us the other forms of infiltration which you propose, and why they are necessary, compared with the current methods already employed by the security services. Carl has already accepted in principle, and so if you could email me with some dates, I'll be able to set something up.”

Jamie responded privately, and that led to Monday’s meeting. Initially, we had intended this as a normal monthly meeting of the London group, which we had been holding in a pub in St Pancras Station, in a meeting room provided free of charge. But by the last meeting they were asking us to commit to £10 per head in drinks and food. Attendance went down. Then David Rose stepped in. He is a PhD student of Sociology at Goldsmith’s College, a part of the University of London, working on ‘Visual Sociology and Conspiracy Theories’ (http://www.gold.ac.uk/sociology/staff/nash/).

DEMOS press release

Instead, civil society must play a stronger role in engaging with conspiracy theories where they find them, and the education system needs to do more to equip young people with critical thinking skills, especially in respect of the net.

BBC report:

Secrecy surrounding counter-terrorism operations is fuelling mistrust of authorities, a study by independent think tank Demos suggests.

It urges the government and secret services to be more open to stop extremist groups using conspiracy theories to discredit them.

A Demos spokesman said: "Less-secret services could make Britain safer."

The study calls for greater communication with trusted community leaders and individuals.

Both the DEMOS press release and the Guardian blog give prominance to 9/11, thus emphasising that the 9/11 truth movement was indeed of primary relevance to the report. Please feel free to pass this newsletter on to friends and to get the information out there, and above all, keep talking.

"Please move along, there is nothing to see here"

2011-06-05T16:46:00.008+01:00

Originally sent July 2010

The fifth anniversary of the terror outrage in London on July 7, 2005, passed off quietly – a little too quietly for some relatives of the victims.

According to a Government press release: “For the 7th July 2005 Inquests, evidence of identity and the causes of death have already been taken and the deaths have been registered. The Inquests were adjourned at the request of the DPP [Director of Public Prosecutions] until the end of the trials of the men charged with conspiring to cause explosions with the 7th July 2005 bombers”.

That’s interesting, because it means that they called off an inquest pending a trial of people accused of conspiring with the bombers before they had legally established who the bombers were.

What’s more, the jury in the trial was told by the judge that the four named bombers were quilty.

The accused were acquitted after a retrial, though two of them were found guilty of a charge that had not been brought, of conspiring to attend a place of terrorist training.

The Independent newspaper has a section in its website dedicated to the inquests () and that contains an description of subsequent events:

“The lead Coroner received notification of the outcome of that trial in May 2009 and since then Lady Justice Hallett has been given jurisdiction over the 56 inquests and has assembled a team to assist her. The first decisions she must make include whether there is ‘sufficient cause’ to resume the inquests and, if so, the scope of the inquiry she intends to make”.

That’s interesting, too. Not only did they cause the inquests to be adjourned by accusing innocent people of conspiracy, but when the inquests are reopened, they have to reestablish the need to hold the inquests. Following the pre-inquest hearings, a report was issued by the Coroner’s Court, headed “Decision following pre-inquest hearing from 26 to 30 April 2010”.

What struck me about that report was its complexity. Much of it was dealing with legal points for and against the need for the inquests, and the form of the inquests, and whether or not there should be a jury. Out of the 66 pages, 32 were concerned with the need and the scope of the inquests. This included seven pages which summarised what was known or what “it was said could have been known with due diligence before the bombings”. The accuracy of that information seemed to have been already accepted.

In fact, the report stated: “Save for Mr O’Connor who, on one occasion, went so far as to accuse MI5 of lying to the ISC, the families are not asserting MI5 was guilty of any intentional wrongdoing. They are concerned that there may have been failings and simply wish to know more. I make it clear that no failings either systemic or individual have yet been established and no evidence has been produced to me yet to justify the assertion any member of MI5 has lied”.

The idea of official wrongdoing had already been dealt with in a paragraph which stated: “I should also add that what have been called ‘conspiracy theories’ abound in the media and on the internet. Mr Christopher Coltart who appeared for some of the bereaved families summarised them for me. Some are more outlandish than others. Suffice it to say there has been widespread speculation about the wider circumstances of the plot and the identity of any mastermind”.

Later on, the report states that the inquests “will help put minds at rest, confirm or allay the rumour and suspicion generated by ‘conspiracy theorists’ …”. Under consideration of whether there should be a jury, the report states:

“In the absence of a jury, I could publish a full explanation of my conclusions. This may more suitably meet the expectations of the bereaved families, survivors and the wider public, including the ‘conspiracy theorists’."

What on earth does the Rt Hon Lady mean by ‘conspiracy theorists’? She herself uses the words ‘conspiracy’, and syntactically related words, seven times in her report, apart from the above three mentions of ‘conspiracy theorists’, and on each occasion she is referring to allegations of conspiracy by the state against individuals. The sloppiness of her references to ‘conspiracy theorists’, compared with the legal exactitude of the rest of the report, stands out like a sore thumb. Translated, I think it means: “This inquest will exclude the possibility of state complicity, irrespective of the evidence, and in defence will resort to name-calling”.

A more ballanced view was put forward in a local radio station in Bristol, in a slot run by Tony Gosling and Martin Summers under the title ‘BCfm Friday Drivetime’.

In an hour-long enquiry into the 7/7 London bombings, they interviewed a variety of witnesses and experts, including Robert Webb whose sister Laura died in the Edgware Road tube blast. Only 28 minutes into the programme did they ask, “Could this be a 'False Flag' attack?”.

The Guardian’s reporter Mark Honingsbaum had got to the scene of the Edgware Road explosion and interviewed witnesses immediately after the event. They were referring to an explosion UNDER the carriage of an underground train, yet when Mark Honingsbaum’s report appeared in print, that had been changed to ‘in’ the carriage. Other discrepancies in the official story emerge, and the programme suggests: “MI5 lied about the four alleged bombers, they had been known to the security services in the past - not 'clean skins' at all”.

Finally, they included part of a talk by MI5 whistleblower Annie Machon, who had some interesting things to say about the privatisation of intelligence on a massive scale, involving “many, many large companies”. The programme website is at (http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/43887).

In the meantime, the Chilcott inquiry into the Iraq war has resumed. I think a result of the interviews so far has been an increase in healthy scepticism amongst the public about what they are told by politicians. That may be hard for decent well-meaning MPs who will occasionally behave less than perfectly, but the important thing is that people are now accepting that leading politicians can lie in a big way about crucial issues of war and peace. People I get chatting to down town or wherever now seem much more willing to accept the idea that 9/11 was very different from how it was told. I find that promotion of 9/11 truth is now mainly a matter of listening to people’s concerns about not believing what they are told any more, and helping them along. They are also increasingly perplexed about why we are in Afghanistan. That means that they are no longer completely fooled by the Osama bin Laden myth.

On Sunday 27th June a group of hardy anti-war protesters in London set out on a five-day walk to Colchester in an act of solidarity with former soldier Joe Glenton, who is in military prison there.

Sooner or later there will have to be an inquiry into the invasion of Afghanistan. Apart from the attacks of 7/7 and the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, there are other issues which used to be called ‘conspiracy theories’ which are overdue for proper investigation.

The government has announced their intention of setting up an inquiry into torture and rendition.

In the court cases, it appears that the government has been hiding behind national security in refusing access to key documents.

An inquiry into the death of Dr David Kelly is long overdue, and an announcement must be coming soon, since two members of the coalition cabinet have been calling for one. Norman Baker, who is now transport minister, wrote a book on the topic:

Home Secretary Dominic Grieve called for an inquiry during the election campaign.

It was revealed in January that Lord Hutton, after the Hutton inquiry, quietly decreed that vital documents be kept from the public for seventy years.

So the government does have something to hide. Hiding documents is becoming something of a habit.

Documents which were submitted to Lord Cullen's inquiry into the Dunblane massacre were subsequently placed under a 100-year Closure Order, though that was subsequently lifted.

Why was a gagging order placed on the Hollie Grieg case, prohibiting campaigner Robert Green from speaking out? and Why were investigations blocked in the Downs Syndrome Association and the BBC?

What on earth do these issues have to do with national security? Or is national security being used to protect influential people? We need to know.

Withholding crucial information is also a key ingredient in creating a war, as the video ‘War Made Easy’ shows:

So is provocation.

Prison Planet has reported on infiltration and provocation in the G20 demonstrations

In a second video on the same page they show how police provocateurs are spotted during a peaceful demonstration:

This is an excerpt from a new film ‘You, me and the SPP’ (http://www.youmespp.com/), which has just had a screening in Toronto, and is available on DVD. In this video the crowd wasn’t provoked. The video demonstrates what happens when one person understands the situation and manages to persuade others. When a second person speaks out others begin to follow, and very quickly the whole situation can be turned around.

Provocation can be much more subtle, though. Look at what happened on the Green in Parliament Square. In my June newsletter I reported on talk of possible agents, or provocateurs amongst them, and that Brian Haw had wisely dissociated himself from the Democracy Village in anticipation of what was about to happen. Well, it happened (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1296162), and apparently Brian Haw survived yet another legal assault.

Look also at what happened in the UK 9/11 Truth movement. Since I joined in December 2006 there have been two frenzies of antisemitism abuse, both of which caused severe disruption to the movement. Unless a second person speaks out, the provocateurs win. Negative talk can be infectious.

I first noticed this in the Esperanto movement when I mentioned the name of a former president, who had done much to build the movement up in the UK, to a positive and well-meaning friend. Within thirty seconds he was saying, “The trouble with [the former president] is ...”. I asked: “How is it, that whenever a good guy’s name is mentioned, within thirty seconds people find something negative to say about him?” He saw the point and didn’t do it again. The way the provocateurs implant such suggestion can be by as little as gesture and tone. It means that in the end good guys are doing the wreckers work for them.

Something similar happened on the 9/11 Forum in connection with an excellent public meeting at The Friends Meeting House opposite Euston Station in London on July 14. The meeting had been organised and paid for by US truth campaigner Professor Jim Fetzer, who was also one of the speakers, together with Dr Kevin Barrett, Co-Founder of Muslims for 9/11 Truth, also from the US. They had teamed up with Israeli-born London-based jazz saxophonist and political commentator Gilad Atzmon, who talked about the Middle East situation. The compere was Kenneth O’Keefe, who had been on the Mavi Mara relief boat to Gaza. There was a problem, though. As Jim Fetzer explained on the night, they had to be careful how they organised such a meeting, because there could be interventions. Indeed, he said that there had been a problem regarding the venue, which they had managed to overcome. That meant that they were using just people in London whom they knew and could trust. They would probably have been unaware of the ludicrous interventions in the launch of Nick Kollerstrom’s book ‘Terror on the Tube’, which I reported on in my newsletter of September 2009. So they were right on that count. There used to be regular monthly meetings in London with at least fifty people present, but organising that sort of thing now is not easy. Some of us managed to reestablish the informal discussion group which became known as the ‘Keep Talking’ group, from the catch phrase at the end of this newsletter. We latched on a little late to what was happening with the Euston meeting, and my immediate fear was that we could have fewer than twenty people turning up in a hall with a capacity of a thousand. So when in the end some 60 to 70 turned up, I felt a little relieved. I think we all felt grateful to the organisers and the speakers. I know that Declan Heavy in London did a lot of work visiting mosques, in order to create interest in the Muslim communities. Despite the sympathetic responses he was receiving, I think we can all understand the pressures these people will be facing, and why they may stay away from an event of this nature. So how is such an event treated in the 9/11 Forum, of which I used to be a moderator (http://911forum.org.uk/board/viewtopic.php?p=148947)? Well, the numbers are derided, and the speakers are criticised for raising so-far unexplained issues. I, too, have a problem in understanding the video images of aircraft which appear to slice through tons of steel and concrete as if they were butter. If I thought it was possible to create a massive hologram in the sky, I would be looking at that, but I don’t. If I thought it was possible to graphically edit all the videos taken, professional and amateur, then I’d be looking at computer generated imagery, but I don’t see that one either. That doesn’t make me a ‘no-planer’, though. I don’t work from beliefs; I did physics. Perhaps a gaping hole was created moments before impact by thermite explosions. Perhaps Osama bin Laden, coming from Saudi Arabia, had mastered the art of miragery, and could create a plane mirage over New York from his cave in Tora Bora. If that’s what people had been told by Bush and Blair, many of them would be believing it.

Some parts of the 9/11 truth movement have somehow developed their own orthodoxy, which cannot be questioned any longer. OK, the press will have a field day with its myriads of conspiracy theories, but they don’t have to be bound by the truth. The truth is that we don’t know. Similarly, you don’t need to believe in ‘directed energy’ and ‘molecular dissociation’ in order to see that something weird happened to the top thirty stories of the South tower. I personally have a high regard for Professor Steven Jones’s work, which resulted in the thermite theory of controlled demolition. I can accept that as the primary mechanism. But can it explain the spectacular pulverisation of the top thirty stories? That doesn’t look like controlled anything. Perhaps nanothermite could explain it, if used in sufficient quantities, but we would need a coherent theory and some figures. There’s not much doubt that something weird happened, and we don’t know what it was. By labelling people who raise such questions, good people are doing the wreckers work for them.

In membership associations, the agent provocateurs can be the Awfully Nice Brigade. I’ve just had an article published on the website of The British Humanist Association in their series ‘My humanist hero’ (http://www.humanistlife.org.uk/2010/06/humanist-heroes-ludovic-lazarus-zamenhof/). I wrote about peace campaigner Ludovik Zamenhof, who is better known for launching Esperanto in 1887. For twenty years he was working with a Very Persuasive Person posing as an French aristocrat, who was seen to be working hard for the language but mysteriously undermining the humanitarian principles behind the movement. Then in 1907 the Awfully Nice Brigade played dirty tricks and split the movement in what became known as the ‘Ido-skismo’. Zamenhof may have latched on to the idea that the interventionists could have been hypocritical language chauvinist agents for the French state yet remained quiet in the wake of the Dreyfus Affair in order not to create a diplomatic incident, but I couldn’t find any evidence that anyone had even thought of that until 2007. I had been discussing the ‘Ido-skismo’ with a friend who was researching it and writing it up as a lawyer would, making out a case that it was fraudulent (http://rik.poreo.org/documents.html) when I reread an old account, and said “Ah!”. It had taken a hundred years to see the obvious.My article on Zamenhof is the first of three. The third is a good solid account from a genuine Esperantist and language teacher, but the second is hypocritical. It was written by the editor of The British Esperantist, who would undoubtedly, had Zamenhof been alive and living in the UK, have given him similar treatment to the treatment he gave me.

It all started with an undermining editorial in Autumn 2004 (http://esperanto-gb.org/lbe/arkivo/957/01.html (eo)) with a mixture of distortion, untruth and innuendo about my work not as just “one individual”, but as the association’s Information Officer, and it culminated in attempts to wreck the British Esperanto Congress in 2007, whose theme was ‘Renewal’. This resulted in the resignation of their own conference coordinator (http://rik.poreo.org/esperanto_truth_1.doc (page 2)). Following the first article, I requested a meeting with the president, Professor John Wells, to discuss it with him. Requests were ignored, but when I did eventually approach him in person at The London Esperanto Club he went into an infantile tantrum, saying “You’re childish and like Lapenna”. That shook me; I had considered him a friend and colleague for forty years. Just thirty years earlier, and three meters north of the spot where he was now standing, he had told me, “Lapenna is paranoid”. Professor Ivo Lapenna had been forced to resign as President of the Universal Esperanto-Association in 1974, following a furore, started by provocative articles in The British Esperantist. Professor Wells later criticised Professor Lapenna for ‘behaviour’ (http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/wells/lapenna.htm (eo)). History was repeating itself, and he himself had given me the link. A year after that incident I was on the Management Committee, and in order to block me, they had tasked me with ‘Research’. I submitted to the President what should have been a rather boring draft financial report, and requested a meeting to discuss it. The meeting was refused and the message came back that I was paranoid. I then received an intimidatory message about ‘active opposition’ should I be a candidate at the next AGM. They passed a motion of censure on the grounds of ‘behaviour’, then cut off contact, effectively expelling me, which they had no legal power to do. They then published a statement about me in their newsletter (http://esperanto-gb.org/eab/eab_update/gxisdate33.pdf page 6). I myself became a persona non grata in the association I had done so much to build up. But eventually the President shot himself in the foot by publishing the most incredible statement to the members. This is worth careful study by anyone interested in how propaganda works, not just in tiny membership associations, but on the world stage, too. It should go into the English curriculum for all schools in the UK. He used four techniques, carefully interwoven: the red herring, table-turning, ambiguity and insinuation. Furthermore, he actually managed to confess that if my facts were right, then the implication would be that he and other trustees were dismantling the association. He then shot himself in the other foot by publishing his statement on the Internet (http://esperanto-gb.org/eab/eab_update/gxisdate41.pdf page 3), where it could be examined by people who were perhaps not quite so brainwashed as the members were. The answer sheet, to go at the end of the kids’ English textbooks, is my open letter asking for clarification, which has remained unanswered despite reminders at the AGMs, and is available on request, or alternatively, a letter of explanation to their own former solicitor (http://rik.poreo.org/response_to_wells.doc). The attitude of ordinary members can be summed up by: “I don’t understand what’s going on; leave it to the committee”, and “I don’t know what you’ve said, but you’re wrong”. The defence from the President has been consistently, “That’s history”, to which, in desperation, I eventually replied, “Yes, and so are you”. The members see my activities as negative, but I see them as positive.

In 2005 I was looking for parallel cases of associations which may posssibly have been infiltrated and taken over by the state. Now I’m wondering if there is a progressive association that’s not been taken over by the state, and if so, what’s wrong with it. At first sight, you wouldn’t notice anything wrong. The Esperanto association in the UK has just launched a marvellous new postcard publicity campaign. That’s a throwback to 1963 when they had impressive enquiry postcards printed – and in colour! That was phased out by the current lot about a decade ago. Who could the present drab black-and-white cards be targeting other than the members themselves? So when in the 9/11 movement emails were coming from the Awfully Nice Brigade, targeting key individuals, and suggesting that they may be sympathisers with the Nazis, we could learn from history. The lesson is to trace where that sort of thing is coming from, rather than to just walk away.

But that’s not the point. Where was the attack coming from and what did it mean? Could it have meant: “Watch it, mate, or we’ll cut off your funding”? If so, then someone should have been telling us that there was a major cause for concern over national security. We see here the same four techniques of propaganda: the red herring (antisemitism), ambiguity (the Palestinians are semites), the table-turning (what is Netanyahu doing to the people of Gaza?), and insinuation (sympathisers with the Nazis). Of course it’s not antisemitic to stand up against tyranny or to question the offical version of events. Nor is it anti-British.

In the pre-inquest report of the Coroners’ Court for 7/7, we see similar use of the term ‘conspiracy theorists’. Turning the tables in such an intricate manner may suggest that they know something. It’s usually easier to see the obvious from the outside than from the inside, but it’s easier to do something about it from the inside than from the outside.

Don't dare criticise Israel, you will be called an anti-semite

2011-06-05T16:12:00.010+01:00

Originally sent June 2010

When I sat down to write this newsletter, I had intended to start off by congratulating peace campaigner Brian Haw for getting a bigger picture on the front page of the London Evening Standard on the day that the Queen opened Parliament than the Queen did herself.

But then, the world went crazy again.

The attack by the Israeli Defence Force on an aid convoy in international waters shocked the world. Even the Israeli version admits that they did it. They may attribute the deaths to armed resistance, but if that were true – and many are disputing that - would it have been unreasonable to have put up resistance when your boat is being pirated in international waters?

Angry demonstrations rapidly spread across the world, and early images appearing on our television screens included orthodox Jews demonstrating against the Israeli government. There are now various Jewish groups who are opposed to the military actions taken by Israel against the people of Gaza, and on other issues, too. A demonstration outside the IDF headquarters in Tel Aviv against the storming of the Gaza Flotilla was reported on Israel Social TV but, they say, not in the mainstream media:

If any good is to come from this sorry story, it has to be the realisation that you can now criticise Israel, or rather the actions of those who pull the strings in Israel, without being credibly accused of antisemitism, as you can for any other state. There has been much talk recently of covert operations by the Israeli secret service Mossad.

The UK government protested to Israel about the forging of UK passports in an undercover operation to assassinate a Hamas leader in Dubai.

There has been growing impatience in the US over Israel’s treatment of the people of Gaza. Considering that the US is Israel’s main ally and backer, and that they are also the world’s military superpower, it would seem surprising that a small beseiged country like Israel would want to go it alone. In the case of the Free Gaza flotilla, the Israeli forces would have known that even if the operation had been carried out without violence, they would still have been seen on virtually every television screen outside Israel as agressors on the high seas. How can we account for this behaviour?

It seems to me to be a symptom of overconfidence in one’s own strength. If we reduce the world stage to the laboratory of a tiny organisation which poses no threat to national security, we sometimes see the same sort of arrogance.

In my case, I could not understand how my opponents thought they could possibly get away with some of the blatent things they were saying and doing. Any normal person, I thought, would be able to see through them right away; it was as if they didn’t care. Yet, in the short term, they were right, because they knew one or two things that I didn’t know. They knew how accepting the ordinary members had become after years of brainwashing. I was later to find out that it was no use trying to present evidence to the members; they just weren’t interested, because they knew that I was wrong, even if they didn’t know what I was saying. It was no use showing them simple financial charts which appeared to contradict what they had been told for years. Yet these points could be grasped very quickly by others outside the organisation. The only defence which my opponents could offer, when their conspiracy of silence failed, was to react with contrived indignation, as if it were all an anticommittee plot by one individual. Yet I had only been putting together their own statements.

If we now replace our microscope with a telescope, we see the equivalent on the world stage. On the world stage, it was becoming increasingly clear that it was difficult to criticise Israeli policy without being vulnerable to allegations of antisemitism or of being a Nazi sympathiser. I first became aware of a possible Mossad connection with the London bombings of July 7, 2005, after I had written about the launch of the book ‘Terror on the Tube’ in my newsletter of September 2009, when emails were going around with suggestions of Nazi sympathies. Yet I had not touched upon issues concerning the Nazis, or indeed anything that would have made me vulnerable to such allegations.

I had so far assumed that the ludicrous interventions in the launch of Nick Kollerstrom’s book would have been coming from our own secret services, which may have had something to hide. Yet where was this coming from? Sure enough, I then realised that the CCTV surveillance in the London Underground was being run by an Israeli company.

Chapter Three of Terror on the Tube quotes an announcement on this from Israel National News of September 21, 2004:

"Verint Systems, a subsidiary of Israel's Comverse Technology announced that Metronet Rail has selected Verint's networked video solution to enhance security of the London Underground, according to an Israel21c report
...
Verint president and CEO Dan Bodner told Israel21c: 'We have significant experience working with transportation authorities and are committed to delivering innovative networked video security solutions for the transportation industry.'".

So what happened to the masses of CCTV footage that should have been available, which would have given a much more complete picture of what was going on? Were all those cameras dummies, or was footage being withheld from the public? Was that footage being withheld by the London Metropolitan Police, or was it being withheld from them?

According to the announcement, “The system will enable security personnel to monitor passenger platforms and certain remote portions of the track”. So would some people in or from the Middle East have had instant access to pictures of the London Underground at the time of the terrorist attacks? What we find, Nick writes, “is a company with 24 hour access to the entire tube network run by a senior ex-Israeli army officer, whose former employers are engaged in a largely covert war against Arabs for land”. The company, and its controlling company, according to Appendix 2 of the book, are run by ex Shin Beth and Mossad officers. How could a government minister have been so convinced that she knew better than the police at a meeting of COBRA, the government's emergency committee, in which she was insisting that there were eight incidents when the police representative was insisting that there were four?

This conversation was described in Andy Hayman’s book ‘The Terrorist Hunters’, which the UK government banned for a while after its publication.

Was the government minister making this up, or was she repeating what she had been told to say? Where did that information come from ultimately? If the minister’s information was correct, then the most obvious source of that would have been the Israeli company operating the CCTV cameras. That leads us again to the question of who is running the country. Constantly we are led in the direction of the big financial institutions. We need to ask where the political influence in those institutions lies. The picture that seems to be emerging is not one of unified central control, but of various competing factions, which all have a common interest in keeping the public in ignorance.

Whatever horrors one faction brings about, they can be confident that competing factions will retain a conspiracy of silence, because it is in their best interests to do so. If we pick up the microscope again, we see various individual police officers going beyond the law in their treatment of members of the public, but what do other police officers do about it? If they witness such an event yet remain silent, then surely they are guilty of complicity.

In false flag terrorism, what incentive is there for one group to speak out against another if they may be guilty of something similar themselves. Inevitably, the more ruthless groups will be outdoing each other, and so a bubble will be created. Eventually, the whole thing will get out of hand, and various groups will realise that they have to speak out. Then the bubble bursts.

I think we have just witnessed the bursting of such a bubble. I saw a snippet of news on the television, in which Bill Clinton asked, “Who’s the superpower here?”. Apparently that happened when he met Binjamin Netanyahu for the first time, in 2006.

Did that mean that Israel was punching above its weight even then, or did it mean that the Israeli lobby have more influence in Washington than we had imagined? The Israeli lobbying organisation AIPAC held its largest ever conference in Washington in March, and amongst its main speakers were Hillary Clinton, Binjamin Netanyahu and Tony Blair. Shortly beforehand, there had been a diplomatic incident when, during a visit to Israel by Vice President Joe Biden, the Israeli government announced more construction work on occupied land in Jerusalem.

Aljazeera put out a programme analysing the strength of the Israeli lobby in the US under the title ‘Inside Story - US-Israel: Unsettled dispute’:

On November 16, 2009, Channel 4 put out a programme in its Dispatches series, under the title ‘Inside Britain's Israel Lobby’, in which they showed how the Israeli lobby appear to be using financial pressure to censure political opinion in the UK.

All political parties are affected, they said, but they focused on the Labour Party and the Conservative Party.

Given this degree of influence, it is interesting that UK Foreign Secretary William Hague was so outspoken in speaking out against the attack when funding had previously been cut off when he had spoken out against Israeli action in Gaza, according to the Dispatches programme.

The programme shows how branding people as ‘antisemitic’ is a deliberate policy by the pro-Israel lobby to silence critics. Over the past few months there have been increasing concerns over a possible Mossad connection with 9/11.

Dr Alan Sabrosky is a former director of studies of the Strategic Studies Institute at US War College, and was described in the Kevin Barrat Show on No Lies Radio as “the most controversial voice in the 9/11 truth movement”, in an introduction to an interview on March 30, in which he claims that Mossad was behind 9/11.

There has been much speculation, but we need hard facts. It would be difficult to see how Bulding 7, which housed a major centre of the CIA, could have been prepared for controlled demolition without the knowledge of the CIA. That, of course, could mean some faction in the CIA, but at a high level. If Mossad and the CIA were complicit, then we would need detailed evidence to know which of them was in the lead role. Many questions remain to be answered concerning the attacks of 9/11. One thing we do know, however, is that for 25 seconds Building 7 was in free fall, within a margin of error of 1%.

Physics teacher David Chandler recently produced a new analysis of the collapse of the tower, based on new information released from the NIST final report on Building 7.

“This is high school physics we’re talking about”, he says, “If they can’t get the high school physics right, what confidence can we have in their multicoloured computer-generated whizz-bang simulations that tell us of the exact sequence of girder failures, without any physical evidence for any of it. I’m a high school physics teacher. I teach my students better lab practice than NIST demonstrates here”. He calls the NIST report a “cover-up by a government agency”. How could those who set up this operation possibly hope to get away with it, when they knew there would likely to be video footage and scientific analysis?

Again, it seems to me to be a symptom of overconfidence in one’s own strength, in this case, the strength of the mass media brainwashing of the population. The video is pretty conclusive proof of controlled demolition, yet they have got away with it for nearly nine years. It’s an analogous situation to my financial charts. The bubble has yet to burst. False flag terrorism is so widely known about amongst people with inquisitive minds who look for alternative sources of information than the mainstream media, that that has to be another bubble waiting to burst.

The Israeli assault on the Free Gaza Flotilla will remind many of the sinking of the USS Liberty in 1967, which is now well-documented yet unknown to the general readership of the mainstream media.

In this incident, the Israeli forces were in collusion with the US in attacking the US surveillance ship Liberty during the 1967 war, in an operation apparently designed to give a pretext to attack Egypt. The attack was witnessed by a Soviet ship, and so the operation was called off at the last moment. The recent assault on the Free Gaza Flotilla may bring the matter of the USS Liberty to the public’s attention, now that the UK government has stated that there should be an inquiry into the recent event.

Meanwhile, another dangerous situation is building up between North and South Korea, regarding the alleged sinking by North Korea of the South Korean warship Cheonan. This was investigated by ‘The Joint Civilian-Military Investigation Group’ of South Korea, with additional experts from the US, Australia, the UK and Sweden. In their final report, they conclude:

“Based on all such relevant facts and classified analysis, we have reached the clear conclusion that ROKS ‘Cheonan’ was sunk as the result of an external underwater explosion caused by a torpedo made in North Korea. The evidence points overwhelmingly to the conclusion that the torpedo was fired by a North Korean submarine. There is no other plausible explanation”.

Yet the only evidence that they present of the torpedo being fired by a North Korean submarine is that the torpedo was marked with “No. 1” written in Hangul. That is the script of the Korean language, used both in North Korea and South Korea. I would say that evidence points overwhelmingly to faked stupidity. It seems the Chinese are not impressed either.

Premier Wen Jiabao stated that China will take its position on the basis of truth and facts, and that it will seek information from various sources and seriously study it before making clear its stand in "a fair and objective manner”.

He also stated that China understands the current difficult situation President Lee Myung-bak and the South Korean government are facing. The publishing of the Cheonan report comes at a very convenient moment for the pro-American government of South Korea, just ahead of their general election on June 3.

The New York Times reports:

“Soon after taking office two years ago, Mr. Lee appeared at risk of losing public support, as he faced mass demonstrations on the streets of Seoul against the import of United States beef. Now, political experts are talking about the ‘Cheonan effect’, as polls show that more than half of expected voters approve of the president and his tougher line toward the North.”

Brian Haw has been on a protest vigil since June 2, 2001. Initially he was campaigning against the economic sanctions on Iraq and the bombing of the country by the US and UK. After 11 September 2001, he widened his focus, directing his messages of peace against the 'war on terror', the terror that the US and UK have inflicted on Afghanistan and Iraq.

During this time, he has successfully fought legal battles against actions to get him removed from his camp on the green opposite Parliament. The police at times have been brutal, and gone beyond the law. Parliament even introduced a law which is generally believed to have been aimed at removing him, now known as Haw’s Law, but when challenged, the court ruled that the law could not be applied retrospectively. The result was that Brian Haw became the only person in the world with the legal right to protest outside the UK Parliament without police permission.

On May 1 this year, a group of about fifty peace demonstrators set up camp on the same piece of land, calling themselves the Democracy Village. Unlike Brian Haw, some of them dug the turf and started growing vegetables there, and unlike Brian Haw, they were not targeted by the police. There was talk of possible agents, or provocateurs amongst them, who would turn the whole protest into a circus and enjoy police immunity. Brian Haw wisely dissociated himself from them, apparently anticipating what was about to happen. On the evening of May 25, the day of the Queen’s speech and the opening of Parliament, the London Evening Standard reported on its front page: “The Queen was greeted by extraordinary scenes as she arrived at Westminster for the state opening of Parliament today. Dozens of campaigners encamped outside the Commons jeered and waved banners as her coach drove past – but the only people to be arrested were veteran anti-war protester Brian Haw and his friend Barbara Tucker. Sixty-year-old Mr Haw, who has been living in a tent opposite Parliament for nine years, was dragged off for obstructing police sniffer dogs”. Inside, there was a two-page spread under the heading “Why did Boris allow shanty town to stay there so long?”, Boris being the London mayor Boris Johnson, whose spokesman stated: “The Mayor respects the right to demonstrate. However, the scale and impact of the protest is now doing considerable damage to Parliament Square and preventing its peaceful use by other Londoners, including those who may wish to have an authorised protest”.

Clearly the whole operation had to be a set-up, with the police targeting Brian Haw, and the politicians using the Democracy Village as an excuse. The behaviour of the authorities in this issue seems to have been extraordinary. How can we account for this behaviour? It seems to me to be a symptom of overconfidence in one’s own strength. Instead of quietly removing Brian Haw whilst the nation’s attention was on the Queen’s speech, they succeeded in making the Queen’s speech look ridiculous, and in focusing attention on Brian Haw. Brain had not been demonstrating against the monarchy, but nothing could have been more damaging to the monarchy than what happened. The Independent covered the story on its front page with two photos, one headed ‘Inside’ and the other headed ‘Outside’. It contrasted the promises of reintroducing some of the civil liberties taken away by the Blair regime with the suppression of what was, after all, a legal vigil outside Parliament. Yet cabinet minister Vince Cable in the new coalition has in the past given his support to Brian Haw.

In a gesture of support, together with Susan Kramer MP, he offered a new poster to Brian Haw in 2006, to replace one of those taken by the police, and is pictured on Brian’s website. The Independent contrasted what was in the Queen’s Speech on civil liberties with what was actually happening in Parliament Square.

The contrast of the ostentatious splendour of the throne and the crown with the T-shirt of a lone protester being dragged from his tent outside put the monarchy itself into disrepute. Buckingham Palace’s PR people will need to do something to repair the damage. If Brain is allowed to return, the Establishment will lose face. If he is imprisoned or dies, he will become a martyr. If he is simply evicted, he will become a celebrity.

In 2007 the Tate Modern staged an exhibition under the title ‘State Britain’, which was a recreation of Brian’s display just before it was removed by police in May 2006.

I think the best way out of the current predicament would be for the Tate Modern to exhibit a monument in memory of Brian Haw’s vigil. Respectable members of the Establishment are calling his camp an ‘eyesore’ and so the monument should be an eyesore, too. It should be a piece of modern sculpture depicting the ugliness of war. When eventually Brian Haw’s vigil does come to an end, that monument should be placed on the very same spot as his vigil. It should be a permanent monument, and it should be named ‘The Westminster Haw Memorial’.

Exporting a sham democracy and usurping control

2011-06-05T15:58:00.005+01:00

Originally sent May 2010

So, The Government won.

Now that the party leaders have completed their negotiations to decide who the managers will be, they will still have to sit at the table with Sir Humphrey, who will tell them what they can and cannot do:

Sir Humphrey will, in turn, consult with the banking fraternity:

Now that no one party has an overall majority, it might be more difficult to conceal the fact revealed by Clare Short in her book ‘An Honorable Deception?’ that we have not had cabinet government in the UK since 1997. It should be just a little more difficult for a future Tony Blair to push war plans through cabinet without objections from other parties.

The big debate now is about proportional representation, since the party holding the balance of power has just 57 MPs rather than the 150 that would be expected if it represented the national share of the vote. The problem with proportional representation is that it breaks the link between MPs and their constituents, and that could make MPs even less accountable to the voters.

My own system of ‘Every Vote Counts’ would solve that problem. Under the Every Vote Counts system the results of the election would have been: Parliamentary votes: Conservatives 235;Labour 190; Liberal Democrats 150; Others 77. Parliamentary seats:Conservatives 306; Labour 258; Liberal Democrats 57; Others: 28.

In other words, the numbers of seats would be exactly as at present, but the voting power of MPs in the Commons would be weighted to represent the proportion of votes gained by their parties nationwide. Where a free vote of conscience is allowed, MPs would vote as individuals, and the party weightings would not apply. Such a system, which I had previously referred to as ‘Shifted PR’, because it shifts the proportional weighting from the electorate to parliamentary voting, has other advantages, too. People with minority views throughout the country would be more likely to vote, and so people may begin to reengage in the democratic process. Tactical voting would be reduced, and changes in parliamentary boundaries would be less critical in deciding who is to manage the country. There would then be a credible mechanism for anomolies in one parliament to be reduced for the next. The big disadvantage of such a system is that people will find it difficult to believe that the problem can be solved so simply.

One problem with any electoral system, however, is that it requires a certain amount of intelligence and common sense to run it. Even in the election we have just experienced under the simple ‘First Past the Post’ system, a nationwide epidemic of stupidity seems to have broken out, with

reports of people queueing up outside polling stations and finally being unable to vote when the deadline of ten o’clock had arrived, either because not enough ballot papers had been printed, or because the authorities had not allocated enough manpower

In some instances extra man power was called in from the local police station, but the police tackled the voters rather than the problem. The problem turned out to be that many authorities could not cope with an increase in voter turnout of a massive 4%. It seems that nobody has overall responsibility for the election arrangements, a common problem in British politics

Former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, before the election,compared the UK electoral system with that of Uzbekistan’s.

On the issue of whether there was real choice between the candidates, he wrote: “International electoral monitoring bodies pay a great deal of attention to this. For example, in December's parliamentary elections in Uzbekistan, it was the lack of real choice between five official parties, all supporting President Karimov's programme, on which the OSCE focused its criticism”. He went on to ask: “How different is the UK,really? For example, I want to see an immediate start to withdrawal of British troops from Afghanistan; I am increasingly sceptical of the EU;and I do not want to see a replacement for the vastly expensive Trident nuclear missile system. On each one of those major policy points, I am in agreement with at least 40% of the UK population, but on none of those points is my view represented by any of the three major political parties”. He also outlines various malpractices in the UK electoral system,summarising with: “So, there we have British elections today: an unfair electoral system, censorship of candidates' electoral addresses, little real political choice for voters, widespread postal ballot-rigging and elections administered by partisan council officials in a corrupt political climate”. He finally puts the question “So are British elections still free and fair?” and answers it with “If this were a foreign election I was observing, I have no doubt that my answer would be no”.

The Guardian’s heading of “British democracy: no better than Uzbekistan's” wasn’t actually his.

The day before the election the police were reported to have launched their biggest ever investigation into election fraud.

This is the democracy that we have been exporting to Iraq and Afghanistan. It seems that post-9/11 the rules of democracy have changed. The ‘enemy within’ is no longer the Communists, but the Islamists, a term, like ‘Al Qaida’, invented in the West. Terrorism in the West no longer comes from such groups as the Red Brigade, reportedly supported by Operation Gladio, but from ‘Islamists’ in ‘Al Qaida’,sometimes supported by little evidence, even when carried out in area sunder heavy video surveillance, as were the London bombings of July 7, 2005. At least Big Brother Watch (http://www.bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/) has reported some commitments from the political parties to reduce statesurveillance of the population. In their newsletter of May 7 they saythat a majority of MPs in the House of Commons have pledged to roll back the surveillance state.

“… the nation has voted to support pro-privacy and pro-liberty parties on policies like the national identity database,the DNA register, CCTV, stop and search, covert surveillance and thepower of the state to enter private property or monitor our behaviour with intrusive data chips”, they say.

Further encouraging noises came from Conservative shadow justice minister Dominic Grieve, who told the Mail on Sunday that the investigation into the death of government weapons inspector Dr David Kelly should be reopened because the public ‘have not been reassured’ bythe official verdict that he killed himself.

In a letter passed to The Mail on Sunday, he praised a group of doctors who are campaigning for a coroner’s inquest into Dr Kelly’s death, and questioned the judgment of Lord Hutton, who chaired the inquiry into the death. Two months earlier the newspaper had revealed that Lord Hutton had secretly ruled that evidence relating to the case, including Dr Kelly’spost-mortem report, should not be released for 70 years.

On the day that the Prime Minister was giving evidence to the Chilcott Inquiry, Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker was calling for a reopening ofthe inquest into Dr Kelly’s death, in a speech in the House of Commons.

“A death certificate was issued in the name of the Oxfordshire coroner,giving the reasons for death. It was issued on 18 August 2003 - significantly, just barely after the Hutton inquiry started sitting. What was the point of an inquiry to investigate the circumstance ssurrounding the death of David Kelly if the Oxfordshire coroner, through an aborted inquest process - and that is what it was - rushed out a certificate giving the reasons for death before Lord Hutton had evenconsidered the matter?”, he asked.

He called for a “proper inquest” on the grounds of insufficiency of inquiry and the discovery of new facts or evidence. He accused Lord Hutton of not doing his job properly, describing the Hutton inquiry as “a charade of a legal process”.

Norman Baker had previously researched the issue, and is the author of the book‘The Strange Death of David Kelly’ published in 2007.

Referring to evidence which he himself had discovered through a Freedom of Information request to Thames Valley police, he asked MPs, “Why was it left to me to find that out?” I think a lot of us in the truth movement feel like that over a whole range of issues where official cover-ups are suspected. Pressure for an inquiry into the invasion of Afghanistan may take a little longer to build up. The longer that takes, the more time there will be for public opinion to soften regarding the possibility that war, too, could have been launched on the basis of deception. There was very little discussion of the war during the election campaign, and I began to wonder how that could be,

when 63% of the population thought that the UK should withdraw its troops from Afghanistan by the end ofthe year, or so,rising to 77% in a later poll

I found a leaked CIA document on the wikileaks.org website, outlining how public opinion in France and Germany should be manipulated in favour of the war, in the event that not mentioning the war should turn out not to be enough to allow politicians to ignore public opinion. I wrote about that in my April newsletter, and had an article published in Le Monde Diplomatique.

Then I put three alternative questions forward for a local hustings meeting, one of which was whether candidates had had instructions from their parties not to mention the war (see no.13).

Lo and behold, we then had a half page in the local newspaper on candidates’ views on the Afghan war. The division was clear: candidates for the main parties supported the official line, whereas candidates for the small parties wanted to bring troops out.

I then received a letter from my Conservative candidate, Richard Benyon,saying, “I believe that there should be an enquiry into the Afghan conflict in due course; I would like it to ask very serious questionsabout post conflict stabilisation”. Even though that would limit the scope of the inquiry, to exclude the reasons that we invaded Afghanistanin the first place, at least it’s a beginning. If we can get support for a public inquiry into the war, then we can haggle about the details later. Of course, such an inquiry would have to consider how British troops were supporting the war objective, which we were told was to “get Osama bin Laden dead or alive”.

For that we would need to know what evidence they had that Osama bin Laden was in Afghanistan, and if he was, where in Afghanistan he would have been. They would also have to show evidence to support the idea that fighting the Taliban would help them secure that war objective. Were the Taliban hiding Osama bin Laden? This would raise questions over the evidence presented in the US extradition request to the Afghan government, and any other documentation that would be required to support the idea that the Afghan government had been acting illegally or unreasonably in not handing over Osama bin Laden to the Americans. I don’t think the public are fully convinced any longer. Every time someone asks “Why are we in Afghanistan?” they reveal doubts on the official version of events. If people were fully convinced that defeating the Taliban in Afghanistan was vital to our national security, I don’t think 77% of the population would want us to withdraw our troops by the end of the year or so. Such activity may have opened up a little chink in the conspiracy of silence over the war, but how can the lid be kept on such an enormous issue in such an effective manner?

It wasn’t just the politicians and the press. Where were the main campaigning groups? The Stop the War Coalition was capable of filling Trafalgar Square when protesting against the Iraq war, so where were they during the election campaign in connection with the Afghan war? The 9/11 Truth movement in London used to have some visibility, with regular public meetings and demonstrations in Parliament Square, yet everyone now seems to be suffering from burn-out.

Even the Esperantists are suffering from burn-out. We set up Esperanto Lobby in 1972 and two years later had a majority in the House of Commons in a parliamentary group, thus demonstrating what adedicated group of one and a half thousand people can achieve. How times have changed. In 1999 there was an epidemic of stupidity, which disabled key people from actually achieving anything any longer. Now the national association is claiming that as a ‘Charity’ they are not allowed to contact members of parliament.

Liberty, the National Council for Civil Liberties, had a membership of 9000 when I joined for a year in 2006, yet in the mass media we only seem to hear from their office staff, mainly their director, a former Home Office barrister. Even at their AGM it was their former Home Office barrister who was in control, rather than the elected president. With a lobbying force of 9 000 they could really have been having some impact on current issues of encroaching state control and surveillance, but I saw no attempt to encourage ordinary members to get involved. Indeed, one resolution at the AGM was proposing to expell any member of the committee who made any statement to the press which had not beenapproved by the committee. I was the first to speak out against that,saying that such a resolution was going against what Liberty stood for. The resolution was overwhelmingly defeated at that meeting. But would I have been in a better position to gain publicity in my local newspaperfor the dangers of CCTV had I remained in Liberty? I doubt it.

It seems that the best way to campaign on social issues nowadays is what I suppose we could call ‘guerilla campaigning’. Individuals do what they can, and remain in loose association, with small groups springing uphere and there, with new groups forming as old ones become ineffective. In London, some of us have regrouped, and are continuing the old-style 9/11 meetings that we used to have. On the Bank Holiday Monday of May 3 we had 14 people present, and I think we all found it a useful opportunity for exchanging news and views. The main topic was unexplained aspects of the 9/11 attacks, as shown on a series of videoclips. There is still no credible explanation of how an essentially aluminium aircraft could hit a massive steel-framed structure withoutjust crumbling up, but appearing to glide effortlessly through the tower as if it were made of butter, and then coming out of the other side.There are various speculative ideas, but no theories. Then how did masses of concrete disintegrate into dust? Could thermite, thermate or nanothermite explain that? Events of such intensity are so far outside our everyday experiences that it would be dangerous just to guess.

Nick Kollerstrom said a few words about hisbook ‘Terror on the Tube’ and its new website(http://www.terroronthetube.co.uk). That website is a mine of information on the events of July 7, 2005.

The 7/7 issue, too, is one which is crying out for a public inquiry, but we are unlikely to get one in the current climate. The contradictions in the official story, as pointed out in page after page of Nick’s book,are just too shocking for most people to take in at this stage. There will undoubtedly be further fun and games before a public parliamentary inquiry can be set up. There will undoubtedly be further evasions, denigrations and disruptions on the way. All this leads us back to the question of how our democracy is being usurped, and how the invisible government really works. We have some of the inside story from former MI5 officers David Shayler and Annie Machon regarding the penetration of political groups and groups in the peace movement.

Now we find we have to turn the question around: what sort of membership associations promoting social change would not be infiltrated and manipulated? I think we need to take a closer look at the grass roots democracy of our daily lives. The advice I was hearing for over forty years was that if you want to influence things in an organisation it’s best not to resign, but to influence things from within.

Anti-war campaigner George Galloway told the House of Commons on 24 June 2009 that the Labour Party lost half its membership because of the Iraq war:

Now imagine what could have happened had they stayed in the party. Together with like-minded people who did not resign, they would have had the voting power to change the entire leadership of the party. For that to happen they would have had to have come to terms with the idea that the party had been usurped by a small group which did not seem to have the traditional values of the party.

The idea of influencing things from within applies just as much to the opposition, as Sir Humphrey explained in the video I linked to right at the beginning of this piece. Once this is generally understood, then there can be a way forward to restoring truth and democracy.

In 1915 another anti-war campaigner outlined a letter to the diplomats of the world, to be sent out after the end of the Great War. It contained just one demand: that after the war it should be declared that every country “morally and materially should be fully owned by all of its people”.

Ludovic Zamenhof had come to the realisation that internal democracy is the key to peaceful co-existence.

Whatever you do, don't mention the war!

2011-06-05T15:27:00.010+01:00

Originally sent April 2010

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:

Iraq, Chilcot and linguistic hegemony

2011-06-05T08:51:00.013+01:00

Originally sent March 2010

Whatever the outcome of the Chilcott Inquiry into the Iraq war (http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/), the fact that it is being held in public will enable people to join some of the dots in the bigger picture. What is the connection, for instance, between Iraq, Gordon Brown’s role as Chancellor, 9/11, Baroness Ashton’s appointment as EU foreign policy chief, and language wars? Read on.

In his performance before the Chilcott Inquiry on March 5, Gordon Brown showed a masterly skill in appearing to say one thing, but implying the opposite (http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/transcripts/oralevidence-bydate/100305.aspx).

When repeatedly questioned on his part in the decision-making, as a senior member of the Cabinet, he would say that the details did not concern him, or that he was informed of this or that. On points where he may have disagreed with the Blair policy, he would say merely that there were lessons to be learned. I think we can take it from Clare Short’s statement to Chilcott that Gordon Brown was marginalised in the decision-making regarding the waging of war against Iraq, may well have been justified.

The first question, coming from the chair, was whether he thought the decision to invade Iraq was right. He replied “It was the right decision, for the right reason”. What was that reason? He didn’t subsequently mention Weapons of Mass Destruction, nor 9/11, but only violations of UN resolutions. He didn’t even justify the invasion on the basis of an immediate threat of agression from Iraq. The stated reason was vague: “For me, the problem goes back to how we deal with rogue states”, he said.

Although Tony Blair had talked about UN violations, Gordon Brown’s statement would suggest that he thought that Tony Blair had gone to war largely for the wrong reasons. He gave no indication of any collective Cabinet view on the issue. When pressed on the decision-making process, he would talk about trying to achieve a diplomatic solution, in the knowledge that there was a military option. “We had to make the diplomatic solution work”, he said. The Chancellor is not traditionally in war cabinets, he told Chilcott, and his role was not to second-guess military options, but to make sure the funding was there. This would be in line with Clare Short’s statement that Gordon Brown had been non-commital on the invasion of Iraq before the event.

In his rather lengthy answer to the first question, he pointed out that the structure of decision-making had been changed. Communication between ministers and their opposite numbers in the US was now much easier, he pointed out. What, then, were these new decision structures? Did that mean that the Cabinet was being by-passed, and that the decisions were being taken at best by Blair and Bush, and at worst by powerful people in Washington or Wall Street? Later he stated that they needed proper structures for decision-making. “Shouldn’t we have had a Cabinet committee?” he was asked. “I think we need to learn that lesson”, he replied.

On financial reconstrucion, he said that one of his regrets was that he was not able to push the President further on this issue, again supporting the interpretation that the masters were in the US rather than London. Asked whether he thought the Cabinet was properly briefed, he said, “I was”, again avoiding the issue of collective decision-making in the Cabinet, and giving credence to Clare Short’s view that the Cabinet was not properly briefed. On the question of whether the Cabinet was able to take a genuinely collective decision, he said, “Let us be clear”. That would sound like another lesson to be learned. He then restated that the war was right for the right reason.

He also said that in future the House of Commons should make the final decision to go to war. So who did take the decision to go to war? When asked why a decision had to be taken on March 17, and whether this was because the US was about to go ahead, he stated merely that that was a matter of judgement. Who would have made that judgement? Would they have been in London or Washington? The Chairman asked whether he thought that a simple yes/no answer from the Attorney General on the legality of the war was sufficient, and whether he should have seen the Attorney General’s document. Gordon Brown replied that he knew the military were satisfied by the legal assurance. Presumably, the military would have thought that the Cabinet would have been satisfied by the legal assurance, since that was where the document was supposed to have originated. It sounds as if each side accepted the legal advice because they thought the other side had accepted it. In future, Gordon Brown said, we will have to provide greater information to Parliament. Another lesson learned.

On reconstruction, he was asked what went wrong. He said that we needed a UN reconstruction agency. It was pointed out by Chilcott that the UK didn’t get the support of the UN for the war, so we didn’t have legitimacy of international institutions. Gordon Brown emphasised that we need international organisations, and concluded, “We have learned lessons”. He also said twice that he did a paper for the Americans. Not for the Cabinet? Not for the international development secretary Clare Short? For the Americans. “I felt the US should take more seriously the issue of reconstruction”, he added. Yet Clare Short had been persuaded by Tony Blair to stay on in the Cabinet thinking that she was in charge of reconstruction on the British side.

Much of the questioning of Gordon Brown was on the financial side, and the role that he had played in funding the war. One telling line was, “Clearly, when sanctions are involved, the treasury has to know”. He was marginalised, then, in the decision-making. There had been much cricisism from the generals about lack of equipment for the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, yet when questioned on this, he stated that he had, as Chancellor, made it clear to the Prime Minister that no option should be ruled out on the basis of cost. “Every request for equipment had to be met”, he said. When asked about the Treasury setting limits on the military, he said it was the other way round: “If you need more, come back to us”, he had told the military. “We managed to meet the requirements for Iraq and Afghanistan”, he told Chilcott. “The first priority was to ensure that the soldiers were properly equipped”, he insisted. He stated that he did understand the concerns of relatives, and that every request for equipment was answered. As Prime Minister, he asked the military to assure him that they have the resources. However, he did add, “It’s not for me to make decisions on specific items of equipment”. So how do we reconcile that with previous claims of a guilotine coming down on military expenditure? “That’s not much to do with Iraq”, he said, “The Iraq war was being funded separately. MoD ended up with more money than expected”. He then repeated, “The Ministry of Defence ended up with more with more money, not less”, adding that the Ministry of Defence’s budget was out of control. On equipment, he said that there had been a procurement problem, involving a time lag, and that the Chinooks had to be modified, and adapted for use in Afghanistan. The UK helicopter fleet, however, was the biggest in Europe.

The overall picture coming across is that Gordon Brown had been attempting to restrain the military by means of the only tool at his disposal, but that he gave the military all they needed for the specific operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. It looks as if he was indeed marginalised in the decision-making process, which took place behind the scenes in the UK and the US. Faced with that fait accomplis, he adopted a survival tactic, rather than vociferously speaking out, as Robin Cook and Clare Short did. What would have happened if Gordon Brown had not restrained the military post 9/11? Would the military have been better equipped in the subsequent wars? Or would they have extended their reach into more areas? Would we by now have been in Iran and Pakistan, or some other areas of the world? It would have been quite in line with traditional Labour Party politics to attempt to restrain the military and its post-colonialist adventures. Suppose that Gordon Brown had resigned, together with Robin Cook and Clare Short. Would that have stopped the war? Or more to the point, would it have been likely in the judgement of someone in Gordon Brown’s position to have stopped the war? Clare Short didn’t know in advance that Robin Cook was about to resign, so there was no coordination in any case. At first sight, a resignation of three key ministers would have made the war impossible. On the other hand, Gordon Brown may have been aware that it would only have taken a Gladio-style operation to bring the House of Commons back into line very quickly.

This brings back memories of Harold Wilson and his silent opposition to the Vietnam war being waged by the Americans. He managed to keep Britain out of that, but could not openly oppose it. As a Prime Minister with traditional Labour Party views, he would have been opposed to post-imperial military adventures of this sort. A further sign of this is his support for Esperanto as a second language for the world, rather than the imposition of English, which, we now know was being planned behind the scenes in conjunction with the security services (http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=4jVeGWtzQ1oC&dq Interview at http://www.lingvaj-rajtoj.org/robert-phillipson/). In the Esperanto association we knew at the time that there was something wrong, because of Wilson’s silence on this during his premiership, despite the Esperanto Parliamentary Group having a majority of members in the House of Commons. He had spoken out in favour of Esperanto before his premiership, and, indeed, joined the Esperanto Parliamentary Group some time after his premiership, but Esperanto seemed to be taboo for those holding office. Harold Wilson was ousted as Prime Minister in 1976 by MI5. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4789060.stm).

Wilson was not the only office holder at that time to keep quiet on Esperanto. Lord Thompson of Fleet, having been appointed UK Commissioner to the European Economic Community, denied knowledge of Esperanto in an interview with The Guardian, only days after having written to a member of the Esperanto association that he spoke the language and supported it. Wilson’s friend Lord Davies of Leek resigned suddenly as Chairman of the Esperanto Parliamentary Group, following dirty tricks, which I was charged with investigating. I concluded that the Esperanto association was under surveillance, and that a spoof letter sent in his name to The Guardian was a professional job. I was puzzled, though, at Lord Davies’s immediate resignation, when he could easily have declared that he had not been the author of that mysterious letter. I felt the he must have known something I didn’t. This was in the same period that there was a denigration campaign against the President of the Universal Esperanto Association, a professor at the London School of Economics, and shortly before my own resignation in my public relations role in the British Esperanto Association, following dirty tricks from within. It took thirty years to join the dots (http://esperanto.org/Ondo/Ondo/165-lode.htm#165-08).

Meanwhile, in 1997 the Shayler Affair exploded in the British media, when David Shayler and Annie Machon resigned from MI5, telling the press about illegal operations by the security services, including penetration and dismantling of even tiny organisations which posed no threat to national security. Subsequently they have continued to bring these issues to the public’s attention, despite the odds. Annie Machon nearly died of a rare strain of meningitis, and David Shayler is now immersed in narcotics. Annie has talked publicly about their experiences on numerous occasions. She gave a fairly detailed account at a conference in Berlin, which is available on video via the Internet (http://www.anniemachon.com/annie_machon/what-can-we-do-to-counter.html).

Following 9/11, Gordon Brown told Chilcot, the counterterrorism budget doubled in size, leading to twice as many people working in the security services. So what have they been up to? The Shayler Affair and the Wilson Affair both point to the security services targeting the very people they are supposed to be protecting. With a very much enlarged budget and extended personnel, are the security services really there to defend the realm, according to MI5’s motto, or are they moving us towards a police state, as many people in the UK now suspect? If Harold Wilson had been Prime Minister during the current era, what more could he have done to reign in these military adventures? Gordon Brown would have been acutely aware of Wilson’s predicament. Tony Blair’s EU Commissioner was for some time former Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock. I don’t remember what his previous views on Esperanto had been, but Glennys Kinnock, recently denied that she had written to a constituent before she was an MEP, saying that she was in support of Esperanto. Unfortunately, the archives are missing. Either in an act of incredible stupidity or an act of language vandalism, the two filing cabinets of Esperanto Lobby disappeared from the Esperanto headquarters in London. That was about the time that a frenzy was stirred up against their organiser, leading to the collapse of the Esperanto Parliamentary Group. In 2002 The European Commission asked their Vice-President Neil Kinnock to set up a working group on Esperanto. Later he obfuscated on whether or not that had been done, but the previous year he had come under fire from the French and German foreign ministers for his plans to cut down on the number of languages used in EU translation.

Le Monde described this as "a perfidious British plot in order to transform the EU into a sort of English speaking area”.

Neil Kinnock went on to head the British Council. In December 2009, Britain’s Baroness Catherine Ashton was appointed as the EU’s foreign policy chief, a post created by the new EU Constitution, together with the post of President of the European Council, which was filled by Herman van Rompuy. Britain’s rebel MEP Nigel Farage recently criticised Herman van Rompuy’s suitability for the post, and was fined for language which was considered unparliamentary in Brussels, but would have been considered parliamentary in Westminster. In reply, Herman van Rompuy used language which evidently was considered parliamentary in Brussels but would have been considered unparliamentary in Westminster. Previously, Nigel Farage had been reprimanded for criticising the appointments of Herman van Rompuy and Baroness Catherine Ashton to those positions:

Although Herman van Rompuy is a native Dutch speaker, he replied to the criticisms in French, and is known, in language terms, as a francofile. To offset the French language influence, Baroness Ashton is well qualified, as essentially a monolingual English speaker. Not only that, she is uniquely qualified as having been Tony Blair’s junior minister responsible for the collapse of foreign language learning in English state schools, in her role as chair of a ‘Languages Strategy Group’.

The National Centre for Languages (CILT) has been carrying out Language Trend surveys since 2002, and the 2009 survey shows that the number of students choosing to take a language at 14 is still in decline."

In 2002 there were calls from EU politicians and diplomats for the British to become more skilled in foreign languages.

Clearly, something had to be seen to be done. I also picked up on discussion in the Lords on a new strategy for languages in schools, and so I contacted an old friend, who had been a headmaster and language teacher, as well as the President of the British Esperanto Association in the 1970s. He wrote an interesting piece for me, saying,

“The Government's latest initiative on language teaching is like most Government initiatives - good in parts”, and then later suggesting, “And to ensure that only a very small number ever reach the stage of fluency in another language, they will allow the majority to give up at the age of 14.”

Some time later I was able to report on a forthcoming new languages strategy document to appear later in 2002.

This was announced in the Lords by a Baroness Ashton of Upholland. I did wonder at the time about Baroness Ashton’s idea that a Spanish teacher in Spain could teach a class of school kids in England via the Internet, but I thought they must know what they’re doing. Then in April 2003 I reported on an assessment from my language teacher friend, who had now rejoined the association and become their spokesperson for education. “There is already an acute shortage of language teachers”, he wrote, “If this policy is implemented, in a few years time there will be virtually none at all, thus making it impossible for pupils to achieve even moderate fluency in a language other than their own." What we hadn’t envisaged was crazy things happening within the association. That was my last newsletter for the association, and my language teacher friend left the association again a couple of years later. The Government went ahead, continually ignoring warnings. We all knew that language learning in the schools was collapsing, and the government just let it happen. It seems to me now that I was right: they did know what they were doing. The National Strategy for Languages in England now looks like one of those ‘projects destined for failure’ which Clare Short wrote about in her book on Iraq. Was it controlled demolition?

Now Baroness Ashton is talking of a comprehensive strategy for the Western Balkans.

Shortly before becoming Prime Minister, Gordon Brown suddenly started talking about the New World Order:

He described it as a ‘restructuring’. Presumably that is what he would have been referring to in his statement to Chilcott when he said that the structure of decision-making had been changed. Clearly, such a New World Order would be one to be imposed primarily by the US and British military. Yet Gordon Brown had been reigning in the military. What could have persuaded him at the last moment to make speeches that would impress the military in the US and the UK, but would have been unlikely to gain him much popularity amongst his own MPs or amongst the public? And was that a willing conversion? If you’re planning a military empire, there are certain things you have to do. One of these is to decide on an imperial language.

Sure enough, in 2008, Gordon Brown announced that he wanted the world to want to learn English, and that the Government were putting resources into this, and funding the British Council, a registered non-political charity, to implement this political strategy

I don’t know what Gordon Brown’s personal views are, but I doubt whether he had joined the Labour Party with the idea of imposing an English-speaking militaristic hegemony on the world.

According to Clare Short, we have not had cabinet government in Britain since 1997. So who does rule Britain? Is it the elected representatives, and are they allowed to speak freely. Or is it a military industrial complex, pushing its own interests, silencing anyone with dangerous questions, and using the secret services to turn the UK into a police state? We don’t quite know, but it looks like crooks.

Re-establishing democracy

2011-06-05T08:49:00.003+01:00

Originally sent February 2010

The hanging of Chemical Ali must have sent a chill down the spine of some of those testifying before the current Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq War.

I was impressed at the speed with which political analysts latched on to the implications of Tony Blair’s brilliant performance on January 29. I followed the morning session on radio and television, and the afternoon session on the Channel 4 website, and so could follow comments from journalists and the public alike.

Clare Short, who resigned as Blair’s minister for International Development and then wrote a book about it(‘An Honourable Deception? New Labour, Iraq and the Misuse of Power)described some of Tony Blair’s statements to the Chilcot inquiry as “ludicrous” on BBC television

‘Tony Blair Iraq inquiry evidence ludicrous, says Short’

She also said that Gordon Brown had been marginalised. As I write this, she is giving evidence to the Chilcot inquiry. When she says that people were marginalised, that she was told to shut up, and that there was briefing against her, I know how she felt. We need Clare Shorts in all levels of society.

However, no-one seemed to pick up on the big strategic shift in defending the decision to invade Iraq. The case based on Weapons of Mass Destruction had collapsed, and the legal basis had been discredited, andso Tony Blair was forced to fall back on other arguments. Although other issues had always been stated as a factor, the emphasis in Blair’s justification shifted massively to events which were outside the scope of the Chilcot inquiry. That means that, if it is so minded, the Chilcot inquiry could conclude that Blair did believe that an invasion was necessary on the grounds of the previous history, and that his only sin had been to mislead the public as to the real cause of the invasion.That may let Blair off the hook, but would it let the Chilcot inquiry off the hook? I’m not so sure.

The terrorist events of September 11, 2001, changed everything, Blair told the inquiry. Yet nothing had changed on the ground in Iraq. The change was entirely to do with the calculus of risk. It was pointed out that other countries were developing Weapons of Mass Destruction, andsome were more advanced than Iraq. So why, Blair was asked, pick on Iraq. He replied that with Iraq they had the route. That route involved previous UN resolutions on Iraq, and the crimes committed by Saddam on his own people. That, of course, is outside the scope of the Chilcot inquiry, but if those crimes against his own people include the gassing of Kurds, for which Chemical Ali was recently hanged, then many people will be wondering who was complicit with Chemical Ali in supplying thosechemical weapons in the first place.

There was, of course, and still is, no evidence to link Saddam Hussein with 9/11, and it was even admitted that there was no direct evidence. They could therefore have used 9/11 as a pretext to invade any country in the world, provided they could find a route. Finding a route is another way of saying making out a propaganda case, and that takes us to Blair’s propaganda chief, Alistair Cambell, whom I was calling Comical Ali at the time of the invasion. He may now be recalled by the Chilcot inquiry.

Justification on the basis of the terrorist attacks of September 11th formed a substantial part of Blair’s response in the early part of his interrogation. It also featured on the very first day of the Chilcot inquiry. It is clear then, that 9/11 is pivotal in Blair’s justification of the invasion. The Chilcot inquiry must therefore deal with this issue. How much of what we were told by Blair on 9/11 was lies? Did Blair have good reason to link 9/11 with Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda and the Taliban, or did he not? We know that the case against Osama bin Laden was fabricated by politicians and not supported by the FBI. So where was Blair getting his information from? What was the position of MI6 on this? If the events of September 11are to be accepted in any shape or form as reasonable grounds for wanting to invade Iraq, then these questions must be tackled by the Chilcot inquiry.

One would-be key witness is the late government scientist David Kelly. It was revealed by The Mail on Sunday that following the Hutton inquiry,

Lord Hutton had secretly ordered that all medical reports, including the post-mortem findings and photographs of Dr Kelly’s body, remain classified information for 70 years.

The legality of this is questionable, and a week later, the Mail on Sunday reported that the ban may be lifted.

By denying access to the relevant documents, the authorities are admitting that there has to be something to hide. Documents would not normally be withheld unless there was a potential risk to national security, orpotential exposure of the activities of the security services. As I undertand it, the official version that Dr Kelly had committed suicide had nothing to do with national security. It would then appear that secrecy over the relevant documents could be taken as an implicit confession. This, too, is something that the Chilcot inquiry should look at.

Whatever the final outcome of the Chilcot inquiry, one result so far has been that it is now politically acceptable to suggest that Tony Blair be charged with war crimes. This is now being said, for instance, by members of the audience in Question Time programmes, and now even in the mainstream press. Guardian journalist George Monbiot has a reputation for defending the indefensible on 9/11, and of attacking 9/11 truthers as conspiracy theorists, yet even he is calling for Blair to be put on trial. He has set up a website, and is calling for donations, in order to give a reward to anyone who succeeds in issuing a citizens arrest of Blair for war crimes. According to Wikipedia, some people think he may be an opportunist, but even if he is, it shows that calling for Tony Blair to be put on trial is no longer a crazy idea being put forward by a few conspiracy theorists.

Perhaps one day soon, the mainstream media will pick up on the fact that, in theory, Tony Blair is already under investigation by the London Metropolitan Police. In 2008 a dossier was finally accepted by the London Metropolitan Police, making a case for Tony Blair to be investigated for war crimes in connection with the Iraq war. The background to this was then explained at a press conference, and a video was put up on YouTube:

As I watched Tony Blair at the Chilcot inquiry, I could not but wonder why he was not being interviewed by Scotland Yard. Where are the police on this?

Since the end of last year’s silly season, the mainstream media in the UK has been full of what used to be called ‘conspiracy theories’, but which have now become serious issues of public concern. There has been a whole range of matters concerning war, civil liberties and government propaganda. Recent research into climate change has shown that politicians lie more than previously thought. Even if the mainstream media had been minded to, it would have had difficulty in focusing on the underlying problem at this stage. The truthers are like tug boats,constantly pulling the huge ship of state. Momentum is being built up, though, in the right direction, but no huge shove by the truthers is going to make much immediate difference. What is making a difference is the constant tugging. Where I think we should be gently tugging public opinion towards are the underlying issues of 9/11, Gladio, false flag operations, state propaganda and the real reasons for conflict at home and abroad. We also need to know who is running the country.

There’s plenty of opportunity for truthers to gradually nudge public opinion on the issues that are catching the headlines in the mainstream media. I’ve been registering the occasional comment on mainstream media websites, raising some of the above concerns in connection with the Iraq war. Others may have their own ways of doing things. It’s all about establishing the democracy that most of us previously thought we already had.

So why are we in Afghanistan?

2011-06-04T17:44:00.014+01:00

Originally sent November 2009

Why are we in Afghanistan? This question is now being asked far and wide, and with a dramatic crescendo over the past few weeks. It is sad that it has taken a death toll of 232 on the British side, with 95 so far this year, for the war to be questioned so vehemently in the mainstream media.

That question was the dominant theme in Thursday’s BBC television programme Question Time.

The previous Thursday, Britain’s former top cop Sir Ian Blair stated: "We were wrong to go into Afghanistan in the first place, and that's because if the reason was that if this was to do with the attack on the twin towers on 9/11, Afghanistan wasn't the place it was launched from".

Even yesterday’s Daily Mirror is asking: “So what exactly is this war in Afghanistan for?”, in defence of Lance Corporal Joe Glenton, who spoke out at the recent anti-war rally and was subsequently arrested.

This was reported by the BBC

So if Afghanistan wasn't the place that the attacks of 9/11 were launched from, where were they launched from?

The Guardian last month asked: “Who really blew up the twin towers?”.

Questions that should have been raised eight years ago are now at last surfacing in the mainstream media. They should really be asking who blew up the three towers, not the twin towers, as I did in 2007 (www.gazetejo.org/system/files/gazetoj/monato04.pdf ), but they’ll get there. The process is now unstoppable.

In a Special Report for Veterans Today, author David Ray Griffin asks: “Osama bin Laden as Responsible for the 9/11 Attacks: Is This Belief Based on Evidence?”. He states:

“The idea that Osama bin Laden was responsible for the 9/11 attacks has been an article of faith for public officials and the mainstream media. Calling it an ‘article of faith’ points to two features of this idea. On the one hand, no one in these circles publicly challenges this idea. On the other hand, as I pointed out at length in two of my books – 9/11 Contradictions and The New Pearl Harbor Revisited, no good evidence has ever been publicly presented to support it”.

There is a similar story concerning the aircraft. On the Physics 911 website, George Nelson, a retired Colonel of the US Air Force, writes under the heading: “Impossible to Prove a Falsehood True: Aircraft Parts as a Clue to their Identity”. He gives the aircraft identification numbers and concludes:

“not one piece of hard aircraft evidence has been produced in an attempt to positively identify any of the four aircraft. On the contrary, it seems only that all potential evidence was deliberately kept hidden from public view. The hard evidence would have included hundreds of critical time-change aircraft items, plus security videotapes that were confiscated by the FBI immediately following each tragic episode”.

The historic debate, which I mentioned in the October newsletter didn’t take place because France 2 supposedly couldn’t find four credible people that want to debate 9/11 against Bigard, Kassovitz, Laurent and Harrit.

Nevertheless, the TV channel announced that it would air the October 28 show but with Bigard and Kassovitz only. This means that the two 9/11 specialists had been cut out, and there would be no real debate.

I mentioned Operation Gladio in my September newsletter. An interview with the director of the film Gladio, Allan Francovich in which he talks about how he got his information on the CIA.

Francovich suffered a heart attack while going through US customs at Houston airport, Texas on April 17, 1997, and died at the age of 56. There are fears in some quarters that Operation Gladio may have its present-day counterpart in the Middle East.

Writing in 2006 for Global Research, Michel Chossudovsky, analyses revelations in the Washington Post of leaked documents from the military. These indicated that the role of Abu Musab Al Zarqawi had been deliberately ‘magnified’ by the Pentagon with a view to galvanizing public support for the US-UK led ‘war on terrorism’. Chossudovsky’s article is headed: Who is behind "Al Qaeda in Iraq"? Pentagon acknowledges fabricating a "Zarqawi Legend", and it concludes:

“The Pentagon documents leaked to the Washington Post regarding Zarqawi have revealed that Al Qaeda in Iraq is fabricated. The suicide attacks in Iraq are indeed real, but who is behind them? There are indications that some of the suicide attacks could have been organized by the US-UK military and intelligence”.

Such evidence had been presented in an article by Michael Keefer headed: ‘Were British Special Forces Soldiers Planting Bombs in Basra? Suspicions Strengthened by Earlier Reports’.

In the light of Gladio, such reports are worrying. A similar story is emerging in India, too. A book by a very senior retired police officer, S M Mishrif, was published last month under the title ‘Who Killed Kalkare: The real face of Terrorism in India’, in which he states:

“Political violence, or terrorism, by State as well as by non-State actors has a long history in India”. The book is now in its 3rd edition.

I went to a public meeting organised by the Reinvestigate 9/11 group on October 2. The most persuasive contribution was from Danish professor of Chemistry Niels Harrit, who had jointly published a paper on nanothermite found at the scene of the crime. He presented a layman’s explanation of this, and its use in controlled demolition.

The rest of the meeting, however, seemed to focus on 9/11 controversies. The top half of the South Tower was said to have had a planned power-down for 26 hours of the previous weekend, but there was only one witness, and none of the employees or their families had spoken out

Watch the award winning documentary The Elephant in the Room.

What would be the significance of this, considering that Niels Harrit had stated that preparation for controlled demolition would have taken weeks? Then attention was directed to a theory that the Pentagon was hit by Flight 77 after all. No evidence was presented, and I can’t find any on the Internet. There was also further talk of Holocaust deniers, but no link was made explicit to the 9/11 campaign: only to 7/7, which they weren’t dealing with. Why hype it up? Had that been my first 9/11 meeting, I would have left the meeting less convinced than I had been when I arrived. Why call a public meeting for novices, and then focus on 9/11 controversies, when most of the essential issues were ignored? The essential question on the Pentagon is: whatever did hit it, what was it doing there in the first place? I know of no theory that will explain all the facts.

We’d appreciate any comments. But don’t just talk to us; there are many readers of letters in newspapers, internet blogs, etc, who would like to hear from you, as well as many politicians and journalists who perhaps wouldn’t.

When we stop debating important topics is the day we surrender freedom

2011-06-04T16:49:00.017+01:00

Originally sent October 2009

Censureship and suppression of the truth has been on many people’s minds over the past few weeks in the UK, and even the mainstream media are getting concerned.

The case of Binyam Mohammad, the former Guantanamo Bay captive, who claimed British involvement in his torture, returned to the headlines when

the Law Lords stated that seven redacted paragraphs of their initial judgment should be made public. The paragraphs relate to CIA documents passed to MI5, relating to Binyam’s treatment. The judges said that the public interest in making the paragraphs public was “overwhelming”.

The minister has stated his intention to appeal against that ruling, on the basis of a letter from the CIA which stated that public disclosure could be reasonably be expected to cause serious damage to the UK’s national security.

If the minister does appeal, says Clare Algar, executive director of the charity Reprieve, “he will be saying that English Court has no right to decide what information is necessary to disclose in the public interest. If this is right, we will have become an American client state, and the rule of law will no longer exist”.

There has long been a supposition in the UK that parliamentary proceedings are public. Yet the country’s most senior judge, Lord Judge, found it necessary to speak out following the use of a ‘super-injunction’, deployed to gag the media from reporting on a question raised by the Labour MP Paul Farrelly.

The issue concerns an attempt to suppress the Minton report on dumping of toxic waste by the company Trafigura. One MP, Peter Bottomley, said the order should never have been granted, and that he intended to report the lawyers concerned to the Law Society. Speaking at the Royal Courts of Justice in London, Lord Judge added: "We use the words 'fundamental principle' very frequently, but this is a fundamental principle. The absolute privilege for Members to speak freely in Parliament did not come without a price, and previous generations fought – and indeed died – for it. It is a very precious heritage which should be vigorously maintained and defended by this generation”.

The Independent reports on plans to introduce secret inquiries into controversial deaths from which the public and bereaved families could be banned, and that they are to be pushed through the House of Commons despite a Lords defeat. The new powers, it states, would allow them to turn inquests such as that of Jean Charles de Menezes and those involving the deaths of British soldiers into secret hearings.

We need only think of the deaths of Dr David Kelly, Princess Dianna, and those 52 people in London who died in the terrorist attacks of July 7, 2005, to have deep concerns. In my September Newsletter I reported on the banning of the book ‘The Terrorist Hunters’, written by the the top counter terrorist officer of the London Metropolitan Police at the time of the London bombings of July 7, 2005. I received an email from the author, Andy Hayman, saying that the book has now been unbanned. We weren’t allowed to know at the time why the book was banned, but the story now is that “further sales of the book should be delayed to ensure a section was not read by jurors in an ongoing court case and interpreted by them, rightly or not, as a reference to that case”.

Publication of ‘The Terrorist Hunters’ may also, of course, have complicated things following Mike Rudin’s BBC Conspiracy Files piece on 7/7 on June 30. I wrote in my September Newsletter, that the documentary seemed more interested in discrediting bona fide researchers who had found inconsistencies in the official version of events than in trying to establish the truth. What I didn’t spell out, because I think it was a red herring, was that they denounced one researcher as being a ‘holocaust denier’. I think it is true that most of us would agree that the far-right in the UK are using this issue to stir up racial hatred for their own political agenda. However, as with everything else, there is a small number of academics who question the generally accepted view. I have no reason to think that Nick Kollerstrom, the author of ‘Terror on the Tube’ has any links or sympathies with the far-right, and every reason to think he doesn’t. Mike Rudin’s team were clearly playing the racist card in order to discredit meticulous research on 7/7, research which had even brought a government minister to account before Parliament when one crucial part of the official theory was proved to be wrong. Yet even the government minister did not play the racist card. My impression after that programme had gone out was that it was so over-the-top in its propaganda effort that a substantial number of viewers would have realised that there had to be something to hide.

Shorty after sending the September Newsletter out, I received an insinuating email from one guy, who is supposed to be on the side of truth in the 9/11 truth movement, attacking Nick’s book, but even worse, attacking me personally for reporting on its launch. He wrote: “If you too are a Holocaust denier than that would perhaps explain your treatment in the esperanto society”. There has clearly been a substantial effort put into suppressing information on the 7/7 issue, which could be embarrassing to the powers that be, and I reported on the antics of the wreckers in the September Newsletter. I was not surprised to come under attack following that Newsletter, but the insinuation was awful. I have been in the Esperanto movement since 1962, and never once have I been involved in any dispute concerning race or religion. I had to think hard before I could even recollect anyone else being in a dispute of that nature in the movement, before coming up with a charming nutter in Switzerland who set up a quasimasonic organisation that uses Esperanto and subverts the Esperanto movement.

Many Esperantistists, as well as Jews, Gypsies and others died under both Hitler and Stalin. The estimate for Esperantists was 30 000 , and I have regularly rubbed shoulders with people from all nationalities, including some who had fled Nazi Germany.

I took that email along to the following 9/11 meeting in London, because the only item announced for the agenda was whether or not to exclude Nick. Of course, with such an agenda, you wouldn’t expect many people to turn up, and they didn’t. The point I made was that they could do the same to anyone, and what they were saying didn’t even have to be true. It turned out, as I had expected, that despite being a charming guy in public, he had been abrasive to others, too. After the meeting, there was a flurry of emails, in which two of us were described as Nazi sympathisers, as well as Nick, who was accused of having posted on Nazi websites. None of this was true. It was nasty stuff, and all carefully worded. You can’t reasonably condemn someone for offensive views and yet send out that sort of stuff.

My own view is that this sort of stuff has to be faced up to, otherwise, we find that people just drop by the wayside. We need to deal with the matter, and then just carry on promoting the cause. If we accept that some people can go around labeling others, banning them and instigating quarreling, then how do we in future discuss the central issues? Any serious discussion on 7/7 would necessarily eventually contain references to Nick’s book. Anyone referring to Nick’s book, as I did in the newsletter, would then run the risk of being called a Nazi sympathiser. That is censorship in its worst form. I would call it intimidation.

There was a parallel case in France, in which a new law was brought in to control dissenting opinion.

The linguist and social commentator Noam Chomsky was one of those petitioning against that law. When he came under attack for that, he wrote an essay, stating: “Faurisson's conclusions are diametrically opposed to views I hold and have frequently expressed in print (for example, in my book Peace in the Middle East, where I describe the Holocaust as "the most fantastic outburst of collective insanity in human history"). But it is elementary that freedom of expression (including academic freedom) is not to be restricted to views of which one approves, and that it is precisely in the case of views that are almost universally despised and condemned that this right must be most vigorously defended. It is easy enough to defend those who need no defense or to join in unanimous (and often justified) condemnation of a violation of civil rights by some official enemy”. On Faurisson's alleged anti-semitism, Chomsky wrote “such charges have been presented to me in private correspondence that it would be improper to cite in detail here”. Further on, he wrote: “Putting this central issue aside, is it true that Faurisson is an anti-Semite or a neo-Nazi? As noted earlier, I do not know his work very well. But from what I have read -- largely as a result of the nature of the attacks on him -- I find no evidence to support either conclusion. Nor do I find credible evidence in the material that I have read concerning him, either in the public record or in private correspondence. As far as I can determine, he is a relatively apolitical liberal of some sort”.

http://www.chomsky.info/articles/19801011.htm

As I write, we have a press frenzy over whether the leader of the British National Party should have been invited by the BBC to take part in the panel discussion programme Question Time. The most objectionable part of the BNP is that they exclude people from their party whom they consider to be ethnically not indigenous to Britain. That one is being dealt with by the courts. Politicians may justifiably complain about that, but it is for the courts to decide. I think that the general public opinion is to agree with the decision, because, whatever his views, his party did receive a million votes in the EU election, and he is an MEP. A minority, including some in government, have been expressing the opposite point of view. If we accept that an MEP and party leader should be excluded because we don’t like his views, then what is to stop the government from excluding others, like 9/11 Truthers? Perhaps they are already. I haven’t heard of Michael Meacher on this topic for a while. The leader of the BNP has spoken out against the Afghan war. Does that make everone else who opposes that war a Nazi? Of course not. What if he now tells the world that 9/11 was an inside job? We don’t solve anything by allowing disreputable journalists to set our agenda. If they throw in red herrings, we should just say, “So what?”. That is more-or-less what a primary school teacher told one of my children when he had been denounced by another as not believing in God.

The US 9/11 truth movement is much stronger than that in the UK. I was sorry to hear that the 9/11 truth movement in the US is going the same way as that in the UK, but our young US friend seems to have got it spot on. He was describing a combination of elitism and in-fighting. He wouldn’t have had the life experience to realise that such things don’t just happen by chance, but that’s exactly what you look out for. Perhaps we need more sixteen-year-olds in the 9/11 truth movement in the UK.

At the very first meeting of the 9/11 truth movement, in Ipswich on December 13, 2006, it was made clear that the truth movement was not set up as a national membership association, because it would be infiltrated and dismantled from within. David Shayler then talked of ‘Very Persuasive People’. One thing to look for, they told us later, was quarreling. They had set up the truth movement to be flexible, as a chaotic network of individuals and groups. When one group gets into trouble, another might spring up. So many people are now aware of the 9/11 issue that when they move on to other issues of public concern, the 9/11 issue is always there in background.

It’s the seminal event that made us aware that we live in a managed democracy. You don’t expect a smooth ride when you go into something like this.

The combination of elitism and quarreling was evident in the More 4 documentary ‘When Boris met Dave’, which went out on October 7

about the mayor of London and the leader of the opposition, when they were both members of the exclusive Bullingdon Club at Oxford University. It showed the aristocratic swagger, together with the smashing up of the middle classes.

This was a development of their life at Eton, where pupils learn not only to be highly competitive, but, according to the programme, to be pathologically power-hungry. They could probably have produced a programme on Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson, too, if they had thought of that early enough. Former Bullingdon Club members had taken over the heart of both major parties, essentially giving the electorate a choice between Bullingdon and Bullingdon.

Now I hear that there is to be a historic debate on French television on the 9/11 issue. “You have until October 28 to learn French because French TV France 2’s “L’objet du scandale” with Guillaume Durand will air a historic debate over the official version of the 9/11 events”, says the World for 9/11 Truth website (http://world911truth.org/historic-911-debate-with-bigard-laurent-kassovitz-and-harrit-on-french-tv/).

“This is already a victory for the Bigard/Kassovitz camp who challenged the French media to organize a fair debate over 9/11 after being vilified by many French journalists because of their positions on 9/11. They have been called many names and even received death threats. But no serious journalist was able to challenge them on their positions and to seriously make a case against them based on facts. Now will be their chance, and like Bigard mentions in the below video, ‘good luck to them.’”, says the website.

They also point out that this is also a victory for the 9/11 truth movement because “the official US government conspiracy theory is supposedly not debatable. ... The day we stop debating important topics is the day we surrender freedom. Not only is it debatable, but the 9/11 truth movement is growing faster than ever — worldwide — and nothing will stop it”.

That indeed is a breakthrough, but we’re still not getting through to the mainstream media in the UK. The British have a unique way of dealing with censorship when they see it. The trouble is, they don’t usually see it.

George Orwell described how censureship works in the UK in his introduction to the first edition of Animal Farm in 1945. Unfortunately, his introduction didn’t appear in the book. Here is one paragraph from that essay, which seems timeless:

“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. Anyone who has lived long in a foreign country will know of instances of sensational items of news - things which on their own merits would get the big headlines - being kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that 'it wouldn't do' to mention that particular fact. So far as the daily newspapers go, this is easy to understand. The British press is extremely centralized, and most of it is owned by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics. But the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays, films and radio. 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 in the popular press or in the highbrow periodials.”

7/7 and the mystery of the late train

2011-06-04T15:55:00.022+01:00

Originally sent September 2009

The silly season started early this year, with a new BBC television documentary in Mike Rudin’s conspiracy files series. This was on the London bomb attacks of July 7, 2005, in which 52 people were killed. The documentary seemed more interested in discrediting bona fide researchers who had found inconsistencies in the official version of events than in trying to establish the truth. The programme, ‘The Conspiracy Files: 7/7’ was broadcast in the evening of June 30,

just when science historian Nick Kollerstrom was launching his new book ‘Terror on the Tube’ in a London pub.

This is a meticulous piece of work, showing page after page how the official version of events just cannot be right. It was Nick who brought to light the fact that the terrorists reached the scene of the crime by taking a train from Luton to King’s Cross which happened to have been cancelled on that day.

This led to the minister having to correct this error in the House of Commons. However, if they had taken an earlier train, then the time stamps on the surveillance video must have been wrong, and if they had taken a later train, then they would have missed their own suicides.

But the wreckers were out. There were messages coming through on the 9/11 Forum that the event had been cancelled, and denials of this from the organiser. When I turned up at Conway Hall, we were told that the event had been cancelled, but there were conflicting stories on who had cancelled it. Then the organiser turned up and led us to an alternative venue, which was closed, and, as it turned out, had been closed for a week. We ended up in a noisy room in a pub. Then there were allegations that some in the truth movement were undercover agents for the Ministry of Defence, with no attempt at providing any evidence whatsoever, and bouncers at the doorway to stop anyone filming the event. The whole thing just got silly. Despite all that, Nick gave a very good introduction to his book to those of us who were left. Afterwards we watched the BBC documentary.

Among those calling for a public enquiry into the events of 7/7 was even the top counter terrorist officer of the London Metropolitan Police, who was responsible for the police response to those terrorist attacks. A few days earlier, Andy Hayman had appeared in a national television interview on his new book, The Terrorist Hunters, which was about to come out.He said in the interview, that although he was in charge, he didn’t feel he was in charge.

While he should have been in a situation of directing matters, he was called to a meeting of a coordinating committee with the minister and others. He related how the government appeared to have an agenda of their own in connection with the events. One minister insisted that there were eight terrorists, whilst he was reporting the police version, that there were four. He thought that the coordinating committee was slowing things down. “We have to be prepared to think the unthinkable”, he said in the interview.

On July 2, the government decreed, through the courts, that the book should be banned in British shops. The decision to ban it just hours before its launch seemed absurd. It had already been distributed to the bookshops, and it had already appeared in those in the Internet. According to one report, 2 500 copies of the book had already been sold.

If it was to do with security, that would be difficult to understand. The Russian and Chinese secret services would surely already have their own copies, and Osama bin Laden, if he still exists, would surely have his in the caves of Torra Bora, or wherever, possibly even in arabic translation, provided by his family members and friends of George Bush. Clearly, that was not the danger that they were shielding themselves from. The public is not allowed to know the reason for the ban. The real danger to the government can only be that the book should fall into your hands, or my hands, or the hands of sixty million other Brits, whose eyes might begin to open up to the deeds of the clownocratic elite.

On the same day as Nick’s book launch and the BBC documentary, Russia Today put out an interview with US investigative journalist Wayne Madsen, who claimed that

American intelligence had sent Afghan mercenaries into Iraq, in order to attack the country’s civilians and military personnel. Madsen said that the Afghans were recruited from the Taliban and were paid for their services.

Not much of this seems to make sense, until you learn of Operation Gladio, a NATO operation said to be responsible for terrorist attacks in Europe

A report is currently circulating that former Italian President Cossiga, who was one of those who revealed the existence of Gladio, had told national daily Corriera della Sera that

the 9/11 terrorist attacks were run by the CIA and Mossad, and that this was common knowledge among global intelligence agencies. I couldn’t find the original source of this, which in one report was given as Issue 52, December 24, 2007

The report also states that in March 2001, Gladio agent Vincenzo Vinciguerra stated, in sworn testimony, "You had to attack civilians, the people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple: to force the public to turn to the state to ask for greater security."

At the end of July I attended this year’s Universal Esperanto Congress in Bialystok in Eastern Poland, where the Esperanto idea began in the mind of young Lazarus Zamenhof. He was a life-long peace campaigner, and he identified language as one of the main barriers separating different populations, even in his home town. Later he was to work on interfaith ideas, and in 1906 had prepared to launch these ideas at the Universal Esperanto Congress in Geneva. Taking advice from friends, though, he cut that part of his speech, because the wreckers were out. It was the same wreckers who were to split the movement the following year in the famous ‘Ido schism’. This followed the pogroms of 1905 and 1906. What he did say in his speech was:

“It is now known, that it wasn’t the Russian population that was to blame for the bestial butchery in Bielystok and many other towns, because the Russian population was never crual and savage; it is known that it wasn’t the Tartars and the Armenians who were culpable in the persistent butchery, because both peoples are calm peoples, who don’t want to impose their control over anyone, and the only thing that they want is just to be left to live in peace. It is now known quite clearly that that those to blame are a group of abominable criminals, who, by various and most disreputable means, by widely spread lies and slanders, artfully create terrible hate amongst some peoples against others”.

He argued that we need to get people talking to each other across the barriers to counter such propaganda. This year’s congress, with 1800 people from 62 countries and celebrating the 150th anniversary of the birth of Zamenhof, struck the imagination of the local council. Their contribution was outstanding. They had just opened a Zamenhof museum in the town centre, and all over the town there were Esperanto flags, together with Polish and local flags. The congress coincided with their music festival, and as part of that there was a concert in the central square, including poems set to music by a local composer, and a rendering of Beethoven’s choral symphony in Esperanto. Esperanto was everywhere. Across a side road from ‘Esperanto Cafè’ was an ice-cream shop called ‘Glaciajoj’. But the wreckers were out.

Zamenhof’s bust was daubed with paint, Coach tyres were slashed, A heavy stone was thrown through a window, injuring a young man from Brazil, Esperanto flags were removed from their holders near the Zamenhof bust, A marquee outside the congress centre had been set alight a few days before the opening ceremony, A Molotov cocktail was thrown at the Zamenhof Centre, A plaque outside Zamenhof’s old school was broken, and a congress poster was defaced

Clearly, this was not just bored kids, but a concerted attack.

Following an earlier incident, Professor Zbigniew Galor of Poznan University had stated that antisemitism in Poland is no longer connected with Jews. It is, he said, only an ideological mask for economic interests.

Following the congress in Bialystok, the local police said they had not known of anything similar happening in the town

The vandalism was clearly targeting Esperanto. The economic interests are unlikely to be those of the Czar, but much more likely to be those of the financial oligarchy behind the New World Order.

A friend of mine from the Esperanto movement recently gave a presentation on a Muslim radio station in Reading, Berkshire, on the topic of flouridation of drinking water. The campaign for flouridation was, he says, a public relations campaign run by the master of spin Edward Bernays. He also stated that the campaign has taken hold only in English-speaking countries. Such is the power of language.

The English-language version of the documentary film ‘ZERO: An investigation into 9/11’ has now found its way on to the Independent’s website, which is perhaps not too surprising, since the Independent sponsored the film in the first place.

This must be one step nearer to the film, or its contents, being discussed openly in the press. I should have thought that by now some television channel, such as Channel 4 or More 4 would have had its eye on this film. This is the obvious film to choose, since it examines only the evidence and does not attempt to deal with any conspiracy theories other than the official one.

The BBC, too, has been ignoring the evidence, and because of this, some activists held a demonstration outside the BBC studios in Shepherds Bush on the eighth anniversary of 9/11.

A new version of the Loose Change video has now been issued on DVD. It’s called ‘LOOSE CHANGE 9/11: An American Coup’. Loose Change has made video history, now with over two million views world-wide.

I’ve just come across a magazine called ‘Republic Magazine’ (http://www.republicmagazine.com/), which describes itself as ‘politics with an edge’. The latest issue is ‘Issue 16 – 911 Uncovering the Truth’. It’s a subscription magazine, but the contents eventually appear on their website, as did Issue 11 – The Dark Hand of History’

The theme of this month’s magazine, it states, is to expose the ‘puppet master’.

“The late [comedian] George Carlin said it best ‘it’s a private club, and you ain’t invited!’ Are deals really made in smoky back rooms? Are there really bizarre initiation rites to become accepted by those mortals who pull the strings of society? In this, our 11th issue of Republic, we have dared to venture into the tombs, temples and halls of the secret rulers to bring light to the dark places so that you may know where to clip the strings of the puppet masters”.

There are articles on Freemasonry, the order of Scull and Bones, the Quigley Formula , The Council on Foreign Relations and The Trilateral Commission, and The Bohemian Grove, as well as an introduction to the New World Order.

A secret society which is known to have bred influential politicians in the UK is Oxford University’s Bullingdon Club. There was much discussion of this in the mainstream press, including BBC’s Newsnight, when Peter Mandelson came back into the Cabinet.

I think we all have to be aware of the sorts of things that do go on, and be vigilant, whatever society, association or club we happen to be in. Some people think it’s not patriotic to tell the truth; I think the opposite. People need to talk about these things across cultural divides.

Democracy, they say, is not something you have; it’s something you do.