Showing posts with label Afghanistan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Afghanistan. Show all posts

Monday, 31 December 2012

Mainstream media this is your chance



November / December 2012

  • Deception as a cause of war
  • Gaza: Jews speak out
  • UN recognises Palestine – but what difference will it make?
  • British Jews for Justice petition UK Foreign Secretary
  • Nuke Afghanistan and Pakistan, says Tony Blair's former minister
  • Are micro-nukes being used for state terror?
  • 9/11 – The Great American Psy-Opera
  • President of Italy's Supreme Court to refer 9/11 crimes to the International Criminal Court
  • Government think-tanks, and back-door manipulation
  • Press control proposal could backfire to expose 9/11 deception
  • Crisis initiation, and why we need to pay attention
  • They say that truth is the first casualty of war. It's not true. When war breaks out, truth has already died. Deception is the main ingredient in creating wars in the first place.

    So when we are constantly told that the Israeli military are bombarding Gaza because of the rocket attacks that Hamas has been inflicting on Israel, we have to be cautious. Where is the evidence that Hamas fired those rockets? Could they have been fired by overzealous Palestinian militants in spite of Hamas? Or could they have been fired by Mossad itself, in a typical false-flag attack, giving a credible pretext for war? Or could they have been fired by Palestinian activists infiltrated by Mossad agent provocateurs? A quick Internet search on "Mossad 'false flag'" will give a host of alleged or suspected false flag operations by Mossad, so what is going on now in Gaza?

    I found an analysis of fatalities due to rocket attacks said to be coming from Gaza against Israel, by Phan Nguyen, a Palestine Solidarity activist based in New York.This shows inconsistencies in the figures. The author concludes that the figures given by the Israeli Defence Force are consistently higher than those which could be established. There were also inconsistencies in the statistics on the numbers of rocket attacks, given in different graphics by the IDF, and in comparison with those given by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center. In his conclusions, he writes: "After a full year of no Israelis being killed by rocket fire from Gaza, Israel had to invade Gaza, prompting the new killing of three Israeli civilians, which provides retroactive justification for the prompting itself".

    What I do know, however, is that any criticism of the actions of the Israeli government is often countered with allegations of antisemitism. Strangely, this also applies to anyone seriously questioning the government's versions of 9/11 and 7/7. But now many Jews are speaking out against the bombing of Gaza by Israel. Miko Peled is an Israeli Army veteran, the son of an Israeli general, as well as ~the author of the book 'The General's Son'. In a videoed lecture on Brasscheck TV he says that the Israeli education system teaches racism, that beaurocracy makes life impossible for Palestinians, and that the Israeli Army is a terrorist organisation. He also talks about the beginning of the bombing of Gaza in 2008, when a hundred tons of bombs were dropped on Gaza starting at 11:25 am, when school children were changing shifts, and many would have been out on the streets at that time. He stated that the Zionist state had to be replaced by a democracy.

    One thing that I learned from this lecture was that all land in Israel belongs to the state. Perhaps this has some relevance to Israel's plans to eradicate the entire Palestinian village of Susiya in the West Bank. The organisation Rabbis for Human Rights, which has about a hundred members, is petitioning against this plan, claiming that the land is privately owned and is registered in the Land Registry, and that the expulsion of Palestinian people from their homes is illegal.

    Another Jewish voice to speak out is that of musician Rich Siegel, who has produced a CD 'The Way to Peace'. A quote of his is displayed in a blog by peace activist Ken O'Keefe, under the heading 'Words from an Honest, Intelligent & Compassionate Jew – Rich Siegel'. Rich Siegel begins: "It is so terribly and dramatically disturbing to have been raised Jewish and Zionist, and to see the death and destruction that my people are bringing to the world". He says that many are afraid to speak out for fear of being called "Anti-Semite". The rest of his paragraph is not so restrained. His own life story confirms my view that many Zionists are and were quite sincere, but that the movement was hijacked – as many social movements are - by sociopathic maniacs. It reminds me also of the story of a young Zionist activist in the nineteenth century by the name of L L Zamenhof, who, when he had figured out the full implications of what he was doing, distanced himself from the movement. Zamenhof tried to create a bridge of understanding through language; Rich Siegel is reaching out to people with music.

    A heart-rendering song by Rich Siegel, called 'Gaza 2012: Help is on the way' is presented on the website of another Jewish activist, the jazz musician Gilad Atzmon, who himself served in the Israeli Defence Force, from which he concluded "I was part of a colonial state, the result of plundering and ethnic cleansing". He supports the Palestinian right of return, and the one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and is author of the book 'The Wandering Who? A study of Jewish identity politics'.

    In his blog of 27 November 2012, he wonders why the British government is now prepared to back a UN proposal for a two-state solution. He suggests that a 'two-state solution' would 'liberate' Israel from the burdens of being an occupier.

    As I write this, the UN finally recognises Palestine as a non-member observer state. This may not be the ideal solution, but it does give the Palestinians a voice in the international arena, and opens the way for them to be able to challenge some of the Israeli elite in the international courts. Will it stop the violence? Probably not, but it does enable a response to violence by diplomatic means rather than by rockets. The Palestinians do have cause to celebrate in the streets. But what are the implications for the Israeli settlements on Palestinian land? And will the Israelis have to rebuild the wall on their own land rather than that of Palestine? What will the Israeli reaction be now? They have already hit back by approving the construction of 3 000 new settler homes on Palestinian land. The Israeli ambassador to the UN, Ron Prosor, stated: "This resolution will not advance peace. This resolution will not change the situation on the ground. It will not change the fact that the Palestinian Authority has no control over Gaza, …"(). I think they will divide and conquer.

    A letter to the British Foreign Secretary, William Hague, from Jews for Justice for Palestinians, dated 20 November, was signed by 1600 British Jews. It began: "We write to express our astonishment at your statement of 15th November, when you said that Hamas bears principal responsibility for the current crisis", explaining that it is difficult to square that with the statistics from the UN Office for the Protection of Civilians, which show a pattern of mutual attacks during the year to the end of October 12, with 73 Palestinians being killed while no Israelis were killed. "Although Israel had been killing militants continually from early October, which often triggered retaliatory rocket attacks, from 4th November Israel began to kill civilians on land … It would seem that this was a pattern of mutual attacks, not of Hamas initiating the confrontation", the letter continued. However, the letter explains, most important is a revelation on the ceasefire negotiations: "On 12th November the militant factions confirmed their agreement to cease firing providing Israel stopped its military actions against them. The Palestinian in charge of the negotiations was none other than Ahmed Jabari, who had kept the militant factions in check for years and who had negotiated the release of Gilad Shalit with Gershon Baskin. Israel destroyed the nascent ceasefire by assassinating him, and then commenced its concentrated attacks. The Israeli government justified it by referring to his organizing of terrorist attacks 'over five years', thereby neatly ignoring the ceasefire negotiations. The only credible conclusion is that the Israeli government did not want a ceasefire". They are still collecting signatures on their website.

    Jews for Justice for Palistinians have been campaigning with others for the non-renewal of a European Parliament security contract with G4S, on account of its role in inhumane treatment of Palestinian political prisoners. The success of that campaign was announced in April this year. Certainly I would not have been happy in accepting G4S 'protection' had I been in the European Parliament, if only because of the debacle of the London Olympic Games earlier this year. But I would still have opposed it had my only knowledge of G4S been my experience of them at Reading railway station one winter's night a couple of years ago. Having missed my last connecting train I got chatting with what I thought was a fellow passenger, who told me he, too, was waiting for an early-morning train. I told him about a meeting I'd just attended in London on 9/11. There followed a provocative incident and what I now think was a faked dispute between him and a cleaner, the result of which was that I found myself being frog-marched out of the station by two security guards who refused to show me their identity. Outside the station I found others who had been banished. Then the police arrived and refused to take my complaint, but told me to move off the station forecourt. A taxi driver who had seen the whole incident called me over. "It happens every night", he told me. Then the guy I had been talking to in the station reappeared and walked back in. "He's there every night", said the taxi driver, "He's an informer". It later transpired that the security company at Reading station is G4S. They must not be allowed to take over any role in the police service or the judicial service in the UK, and they should not be trusted with any public assignment.

    There must be some British Jews who are asking the question I was asking after my first visit to Germany at the age of 13, when I found that, actually, Germans were normal people, even if they had just over thirteen years previously been led by a maniac. My question was: "Could it happen here?" Common sense told me it couldn't, because we're British, yet logic told me it could. The British support for the insurgents in Syria for doing what the Gazans were being accused of doing by the Israelis is a further example of imperial expansionism. It was that imperial expansionism that roused the imperial rivalry of Kaiser Bill, which led to two world wars. I never voted for Tony Blair or his party, but when he became Prime Minister in 1997 I was favourably impressed, even if I had been puzzled on how he had risen to power so easily after decades of internal party disputes. Then came Iraq. I was finding it difficult to believe that a British government could actually instigate a war on the basis of deception. By 2005 it was becoming very clear, that Tony Blair's New Labour group was a right-wing coterie which had surrepticiously taken over the Labour Party. At the same time I was investigating a small membership association, and finding the same sort of setup. Then in 2006 I came across scientific and technical articles which showed up the mega-lies of the US and the UK governments in relation to 9/11. My faith in the British Establishment was shattered. So I can understand the feelings of Miko Peled and Gilad Atzmon when they underwent something similar – though being in the Israeli military, their feelings may have been even more intense than mine were. There was a strong feeling of betrayal, as I realised that virtually everything I thought I knew about the British Establishment was a false reality set up by the propagandists. So it's not just the Jews; it's us, too. I've had many Jewish friends throughout my life, and long may that continue.

    And what is Tony Blair doing as the Middle East peace envoy for 'The Quartet' (the UN, the US, the EU and Russia)? Not very much as far as I can see from the Quartet's website. He did meet with Israel's president, Shimon Peres, though, and stated: "I very much hope that over the coming days we can achieve cessation on a basis that is sustainable, on a basis that stops the threat of missiles coming from Gaza, targeted at Israeli civilians, and also then relieves the people of Gaza, who have also suffered, of course". As I have reported previously, Tony Blair is also making a lot of money through his contacts in the area.

    Tony Blair's former Secretary of State for Defence Procurement, Lord Gilbert, wasn't doing much to help the cause of peace, either, when on 22 November, in a Lords debate on talking to the Chinese about multilateral nuclear disarmament, he said that he was in favour of the nuclear deterrent. He suggested that the neutron bomb could be used as "an enhanced radiation reduced blast warhead to create cordons sanitaire along various borders where people are causing trouble". He then suggested doing just that on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Lord Gilbert has interests in the oil, gas and mineral industries, and is a trustee of the Armed Forces Parliamentary Scheme, a privately run programme sponsored by three defence companies, which aims to "improve the quality of debate on military issues". I see that a Conservative MP, Douglas Carswell, was banned from this organisation, after criticising the propriety of defence companies sponsoring it when he saw British companies under-equipped on the front line. Understandably, though it was reported in Asia, little of this neutron bomb idea has been reported in the mainstream media in the UK, except for Russia Today and in a news website The News Tribe, published in Bradford in English and Urdu.

    There was an obvious flaw in the logic of Lord Gilbert's defence of the nuclear deterrent; the deterrent effect of nuclear weapons works only because the devastation caused by a nuclear bomb would be so enormous that no-one would consider actually using it. As soon as you start talking about tactical nuclear weapons that deterrent effect vanishes. So do mini-nukes, or micro-nukes exist, apart from the neutron bomb? Here we are talking about low-yield nuclear weapons, as distinct to suit-case bombs. I had always thought that low-yield nuclear weapons were impossible, if they operated by fission, because of the critical mass required to start a nuclear explosion. However, now I learn of a law passed in Congress in 1994 which prohibited research and development of low-yield nuclear weapons. Never believe anything before it's been officially denied! Then in 2004 that law was repealed.

    So could a low-yeald nuclear bomb have been used in demolishing the twin towers in 9/11? Professor Steven Jones is a leading expert in nuclear fusion, and he has repudiated the idea, stating that the levels of radioactive fall-out elements is not high enough. He also states in the same letter that the observed concrete pulverisation could have been brought about by chemical explosives. However, I know of no scientific study which would quantify this. The question of where the energy came from to pulverise much of the twin towers has, since 2006, been the source of a bitter dispute in the Scholars for 9/11 Truth, which was being run by Steven Jones, Judy Wood and Jim Fetzer. Jim Fetzer published an open letter, before a split in the team claiming that Steven Jones was attempting to supress discussion on alternatives to his own thermite theory of controlled demolition, which would fully account for Building 7, but only partially account for the twin towers. Judy Wood was focusing attention on the pulverisation of the towers, but putting forward her own theory of 'directed energy', and claiming that no high temperatures were involved. Steven Jones regarded this as nonsense. But what did cause the pulverisation? Jim Fetzer is now turning his attention to mini-nukes, or micro-nukes, as I reported in my last newsletter.

    I came across a very interesting series of videos, under the heading '9/11 – The Great American Psy-Opera', produced during 2012 by a multitalented Ace Baker. In a series of eight videos, he presents the essentials of each issue in a very lucid and logical manner, sometimes with musical interludes of his own compositions, in order to illustrate the points. I have yet to view the first two videos, 'Broken News' and 'The Official Story vs. The Truth Movement', but the third video, 'Scholars for 9/11 Truth' gives us an interesting account of the issues I have just outlined. The fourth video, 'Phenomena', examines the three theories, and is drawn to the idea of mini-nukes. I have yet to view the fifth, 'Legally Challenged'. The sixth, 'What Planes?' makes a case out that, actually, no planes hit the twin towers, and the seventh, 'The Key', shows how the videos may have been faked. This leaves the overwhelming objection that too many people witnessed the planes. The final video, 'The Psy-Opera' shows how that could be accounted for by psychological techniques of deception. I found this most interesting, and would be interested in receiving any technical critiques.

    Some witnesses said they saw no planes, but just explosions. I think we've been missing something big here. I used to have a temporary job at Gillette's factory in Isleworth, and as I would cycle under the flight path near Heathrow, I would hear aeroplanes screeching above me. I was incredulous that anyone could actually live there under such conditions. Aircraft are now quieter than they were in the 1970s, but even so, would not absolutely everyone in the vicinity be saying that they heard a terrific screeching noise just over their heads, and looked up, to see a massive aircraft plunge into the tower? Another point that makes me reconsider this is the denigration by labeling. Anyone even querying this was being mocked as a 'no-planer'. Perhaps I ought to take out the hyphen in that, too, as I did with 'antisemitism'.

    I now need to watch the 'Legally Challenged' video. However, a recent development is the news that the President of Italy's Supreme Court, Ferdinando Imposimato, is to refer 9/11 crimes to the International Criminal Court. In 2007 the court's chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, told the Sunday Telegraph that he would be willing to launch an inquiry and could envisage a scenario in which the Prime Minister and American President George W Bush could one day face charges at The Hague.

    So what do we need to do in our daily lives to stop such things happening? The main thing is to be able to identify the style of those who are not trying to engage with the arguments, but have other techniques of persuasion. There is at the moment a big press story over an idea being put forward for the building of vast areas of farmland in the UK. The case for this was put on Newsnight by a government representative, Nick Boles, and I recognised his style; it was very thinktankish. I said, "I wonder if he's linked to Policy Exchange, or possibly Demos". When I checked him out, I found that he had founded Policy Exchange! Policy Exchange is David Cameron's favourite think tank, and was responsible for falsification of receipts presented to Newsnight when accusing UK mosques of purchasing terrorist literature. David Cameron's later statement that multiculturalism had failed was based on a further report by Policy Exchange, which I analysed, and I concluded that that, too, was a falsification. Now it appears that the recent elections for Police and Crime Commissioners was based on a Policy Exchange idea. The result was the lowest turnout in a nationwide election ever: 15.1%, including 2.8% spoilt papers. "Not good for democracy" wrote the BBC's political correspondent Nick Robinson. My only hope with regards to the new Police and Crime Commissioners is that it will open up a new avenue for pressing for investigations into police corruption. My police authority, the Thames Valley Conservative Police Force, is responsible for the David Kelly affair.

    So an organisation that arguably should have been prosecuted for inciting religious or racial hatred is now advising the government on police policy. It's not just Israel; there is something sick in British society, too.

    In the UK the report of the Leveson inquiry into phone hacking has just been published. What started out as a scandal on illegal activity by some journalists has now escalated into a recommendation for an 'independent' body to be set up to regulate the press. I should have thought that the obvious means of stopping illegal activity would be to apply the current laws rather than to create new ones. The obvious starting point in this case would be to review the defamation laws, which in the UK hugely favour the rich and powerful. Surely the answer must be to enable a bottom-up solution rather than a top-down solution. Just how would the government create an 'independent' regulatory body, when influence is consistently through the back door?

    The press is now biting back very hard. If they win, this attempt at regulation could be a blessing in disguise, because they will be under pressure to demonstrate that an independent press is necessary in defending the people against tyranny. They will be on the lookout for issues which would otherwise not reach the public, because they are just too embarassing to government. Most people in the UK are wondering why on earth we went into Afghanistan in the first place. What better an issue could there be for the press to attack the political establishment with than the cause of that war, and so the basis for its continuation. It was enabled by Tony Blair's deception in the House of Commons, when he stated that he had proof that Osama bin Laden was responsible, and that he would deposit a document in the library containing that proof. The document he deposited essentially repeated what he had said in the Commons. Come on, Press, show your guts. You know that the Afghan War was brought about by deception; if you don't challenge government on that now, you will have failed to demonstrate that you are even worth saving.

    "I frankly think that crisis initiation is really tough, and it's very difficult for me to see how the United States President can get us to war with Iran": thus began a lecture to the think tank Washington Institute for Near East Studies by a Patrick Clawson. Yes, the warmongers are actually talking openly about what they're doing to initiate wars, in the sure knowledge that they won't be widely reported by the compliant mainstream media. Max Igan and Ken O'Keefe in Gaza show us this remarkable video clip, and tell us why we all need to pay attention.

    Truth is not the first casualty of war; peace is the ultimate casualty of deception.

    Sunday, 30 September 2012

    Is the public enemy no.1?

    September 2012

    As the world was distracted by the great Olympic sideshow, Britain and the US admitted to giving military aid to the insurgents in Syria. "And we will give them more", stated UK Foreign Secretary William Hague.

    Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused the US of trying to justify terrorism.

    Kabul Press notes the lack of comment from the US administration on the assassination of Syria's Foreign Minister, suggesting that they are encouraging Syrian suicide bombers.

    An article in Iran's Press TV website claims that NATO has secretly authorised an attack on Syria.

    History is repeating itself. The mainstream media seems to have learned nothing from Iraq. Yet Syria seems to be the line drawn in the sand, as far as Russia and China are concerned.

    Attempts to isolate Iran, again on the grounds of weapons of mass destruction, are now looking ridiculous, as 120 nations assemble in Tehran for a conference of the Non-Aligned Movement.

    "Non-Aligned Movement: Tehran's new secret weapon?" asks an article on the Russia Today website:

    Leaders and ranking envoys from more than 120 developing nations flew to Tehran this week to attend the 16th summit of the NAM. There, they are expected to throw their support behind Iran in its standoff with the UN Security Council and the ‘big six’ of world powers. Basking in the publicity they are usually deprived of by international media, the leaders of “underdeveloped and unprivileged” nations (to use the NAM’s parlance), will feel like real movers and shakers in world politics. At least, for the five days before they return home.

    Yet who is the enemy? They keep saying that terrorist incidents bear all the hallmarks of Al Qaida. I pointed out in my July newsletter that Al Qaida always has been a US database of CIA operatives and their co-fighters, and that perhaps it should be written as 'Al CIA da'.

    An analysis of the possible links with the CIA has since been published by Elias Davidsson on the website Muslims for 9/11 Truth, under the heading 'Al-CIA-duh exposed! Who are Al Qaeda's enemies?'

    I think we were all relieved that there wasn't a terrorist attack on London during the Olympics, but it's not over yet. The Paralympics ends on the 9th of September. In an article headed 'Imminent terror attack on London?', the Iranian television website Press TV has published further reasons to think that an attack may have been planned.

    In September 2011 the Westfield Stratford City Mall, situated next to the Olympic Park, was opened by former Executive Chairman and General President of the Westfield Group Frank Lowy. "Frank Lowy and his copartner Larry Silverstein had rented the whole World Trade Center (WTC) for 99 years just a few weeks before the 9/11 attacks", the article states. It also points out:

    "The WTC complex buildings 1, 2, and 7 along with Westfield Hotel were ruined in the 9/11 attacks, so Silverstein and the Westfield company pocketed about $5.4 billion from the attacks".

    I think that must have been the Marriott Hotel, owned by the Westfield Group. Other Marriott Hotels which suffered terrorist attacks were those in Islamabad (2008-09-20) and Jakarta (2008-07-17). "With regard to Lowy's talent for investment in places that are victims of terrorist attacks, the question raises that [of] whether the Olympic Park would be a possible target for terrorist attacks. The insurance companies have been committed to compensate about $7 billion for lost profits, if terrorist attacks happen", the article suggests

    I think we have to regard the scenario analysis published by the Rockefeller Foundation, which I reported on in my July newsletter, as being just that: four possible scenarios, one of which was the 'Hack Attack' involving a terrorist attack during the London Olympics. That document could have been put out to sound out ideas amongst the insiders, in rather a similar way that think tank reports in the UK can be put out to sound out political ideas before politicians have the courage to talk about them in public. Perhaps someone should be analysing the other three scenarios put out by the Rockefeller Foundation.

    I think there's not much doubt that the London Olympics must have been the most militarised and draconian ever. I don't think there can be many people left in the UK who would not agree that the Olympics were taken over by giant corporations. Stories of the 'brand police' defending the commercial rights of these corporations against other business told us whose side the Establishment was on. The most ludicrous of these that I came across was the announcement of an investigation when unofficial condoms were found in the Olympic village.

    So what's it all about? Suppose this were extended to the whole country, not just for the Olympics, but forever, with G4S running the brand police, the rest of the police, the prisons and possibly parts of the the judicial system, too. That's what Mussolini called Fascism. When I say we are governed by corporations, most people nowadays seem to agree. That is how close we are. Could it be that the Olympic circus was just an exercise for the coming Fascist state?

    There's been a lot of nonsense, as well as a lot of sense, talked of the year 2012. My own interpretation has been that 2012 is the culmination of a twenty-year operation to introduce the draconian New World Order. This may have consisted of four five-year plans following the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe. In the UK these stages look like: stage 1 (1992 - 1997) establishment of New Labour, Demos, etc; stage 2 (1998- 2002): pretexts for Blair's wars; stage 3 (2003 - 2007) chaos in the Middle East and fear at home; stage 4 (2008 - 2012): financial control. So perhaps there's now a fifth stage (2013 - 2017): consolidation of the corporate / Fascist state.

    In my July newsletter I mentioned Richard Cottrell's idea that Tony Blair may be positioning himself to come back as Prime Minister. I thought he could never be an elected leader ever again, so if he was to become Prime Minister again they would get some clown elected in 2015 - perhaps the current Mayor of London Boris Johnson - then let Tony Blair take over in 2017.

    I asked Richard for his thoughts on this, and he wrote back, "I think we are mistaken that Bliar is popularly unelectable. I am afraid the electorate in the UK is now so dumbed down (just the same here in Italia, btw) that Iraq happened somewhere in the Old Testament, ...". He wrote that he thought there'll be a new openly 'National Socialist' movement, building on the rather successful New Labour model, except this will be a mass movement with distinct fascist overtones and organisation. "Somewhere in London", he wrote, "the blueprints are being worked on right now. The elimination of all opposition groups will lead the way to compulsory membership if there's to be any kind life for the ordinary individual: jobs, access to health and education, housing, even food - and the right to travel, especially abroad. Of course it won't happen overnight, it will 'evolve' with the assistance of a few dramatic false flags here and there". It's a chilling thought, but if you look at Tony Blair's website and you understand Orwellian newspeak, it's believable.

    Tony Blair came under attack from Archbishop Desmond Tutu in The Observer, in an article explaining why he refused to share a platform with Tony Blair at the 'Discovery Invest Leadership Summit' in Johannesburg the previous week. He wrote that those responsible for the suffering and loss of life arising from the invasion of Iraq in 2003 "should be treading the same path as some of their African and Asian peers who have been made to answer for their actions in the Hague".

    It was a good time to bury bad news for the Chilcott inquiry into the Iraq war. Publication of the findings of the inquiry, which began in 2009, has been delayed for at least a further year, owing to the refusal of the government to release cabinet papers. However, the Chilcott committee has had access to those papers; the only issue is whether the papers can be released to the public. So why can't Chilcott go ahead with the report, even if it is partly based on evidence which they cannot publish? According to The Guardian article: "Chilcot has said Blair's claim that MI6 established 'beyond doubt' that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction was 'not possible to make on the basis of intelligence'".

    The Daily Mail reacted with an editorial, beginning:

    "Tony Blair stands accused, by this paper among many other observers, of one of the most serious abuses of power a prime minister can commit. The charge is that he made a private agreement with George Bush to join the US in an offensive war against Iraq. Then, with the aid of spin doctor Alastair Campbell, he wildly exaggerated evidence that Saddam Hussein posed a deadly threat to this country, so as to persuade the Cabinet, Parliament and the British people that the invasion was justified".

    What puzzles me is that the Daily Mail can condemn Tony Blair for deception over the Iraq War but remain quiet on deception over the Afghan War. Shortly after 9/11 Tony Blair told Parliament that he had proof that Osama bin Laden was behind the attacks, and that he would make the evidence available to MPs, who would be able to read it after the debate in the House of Commons Library. The document he deposited there said little more than he had told the Commons, and he could just as easily have presented that to the Commons as the speech he gave. That was plain deception. <

    Now history is repeating itself, with talk of possible use of chemical weapons by Syria, and development of a nuclear bomb by Iran, with Israel threatening to bomb Iran and presidential candidate Mitt Romney giving them the green light if he is elected as US President. If Israel were to carry out its threat it's unlikely they could disrupt any underground nuclear facility in Iran, unless they themselves dropped a nuclear bomb on Tehran in order to wipe out all the people involved. In carrying out any bombing campaign they would have most of the world against them, including many in Israel and the US. And if Tehran did have a nuclear bomb, could they use it? Their Muslim neighbours in Pakistan haven't used theirs yet.

    In this war rhetoric against Iran, Mitt Romney stated that Iran had "seized embassies". That is exactly what UK Foreign Secretary William Hague threatened to do to the London embassy of Ecuador, in order to arrest Julian Assange, who has been granted political asylum by Ecuador, and is now residing in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. On 19 August Julian Assange gave a speech from the embassy balcony, but beforehand, former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray gave a speech outside, in which he stated:

    "The Vienna Convention is absolutely plain. The Vienna Convention of 1961 is the single most subscribed international treaty in existence, and it states in article 22 section 1 that the diplomatic premises of an embassy are inviolable. Full Stop. Are inviable. You can not invade the embassy of another country. As Tariq [Ali] rightly said, there were times when I sheltered Uzbek citizens from their government within the confines of the British embassy in Uzbekistan. Even during the height of the tensions of the Cold War the opposing parties never entered each other's embassies to abduct a dissident. The fact that William Hague now openly threatens the Ecuadorians with the invasion of their sovereign premises is one further example of the total abandonment of the very concept of international law by the Neoconservative juntas that are currently ruling the former Western democracies [cheering]".

    He went on to say:

    "And I tell you this: in international law and in Ecuadorian law, whatever British domestic legislation may say, if the Metropolitan Police enter the premises of the Ecuadorian embassy they are subject to Ecuadorian law, and they are committing a crime under Ecuadorian law [cheering] and for this as individuals policemen are quite likely liable to prosecution [cheering]".

    Answering a question from a journalist, Craig Murray said that the British diplomatic service was extremely unhappy at this threat by William Hague, and that it makes every British embassy around the world liable to invasion. The video and a full transcript were published on the Democracy Now website.

    Craig Murray wrote in his blog the following day that a Guardian editorial claimed that he had omitted all mention of the sexual allegations against Julian Assange, and that the Guardian had made no attempt to indicate the gist of what he had actually said. He wrote that even the New York Times had at least got to the point, when reporting: "a former British diplomat, Craig Murray, asserted that Mr. Assange had been 'fitted up with criminal offenses' as a pretext".

    The Guardian had earlier been working with Julian Assange in publishing some of the material which he had provided.

    "The Guardian's shrill and vitriolic campaign against Assange is extraordinary in its ferocity, persistence and pointless repetition", he wrote, "The sad truth is that its origins lie in the frustration of the Guardian's hopes to make a great deal of cash from involvement in Assange's putative memoirs".

    Perhaps the sad truth is that otherwise the Ecuadorian embassy might get a little overcrowded.

    The following day, Craig Murray appeared on Newsnight, and said, "I think there are elements of a set-up", and outlined why. He was widely criticised for naming Anna Ardin as one of the women who had made allegations against Julian Assange. He defended this on the grounds that this information was already widely known, and, indeed, Anna Ardin had herself publicised her case by giving interviews to the press. He also pointed out that the BBC had repeatedly named Nafissatou Diallo, the alleged rape victim of Dominique Strauss Kahn, while the criminal investigation into the alleged rape was still in progress. "Why the contradiction?", he asked.

    In the same edition of Newsnight, a video clip of Respect Party MP George Galloway was shown, in which he stated: 'The Julian Assange Sex Crime Allegations, If True, Are Not Rape'. This attracted widespread condemnation in the press, though I don't recall any similar condemnation when former cabinet minister and now veteran anti-war campaigner Tony Benn told the Stop the War Coalition on 7 February 2011, "The charge of rape simply doesn't stand up to examination". It's important to point out, though, that Julian Assange hasn't been charged; he's only wanted for questioning. The Swedish government's website states: "Within the EU the procedure for extradition has in general been replaced by surrender according to the European Arrest Warrent".

    So I'm confused.

    US feminist Naomi Wolf told Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight that the Assange case was being treated differently from other similar alleged rape cases in Sweden.



    Canadian author Naomi Klein, too, on December 2010 tweeted: "Rape is being used in the Assange prosecution in the same way that women's freedom was used to invade afghanistan. Wake up!"

    Australian author and film director John Pilger wrote on 23 August that the British government's threat to invade the Ecuadorean embassy in London and seize Julian Assange is of "historic significance". "Hague has made a laughing stock of Britain across the world", he wrote. "It is as if the Olympics happy-clappery has been subverted overnight by a revealing display of colonial thuggery", he continued, going onto the "Guardian's perfidious role in the whole Assange affair". He also wrote of a Pentagon document which described how Julian Assange would be destroyed with a smear campaign leading to "criminal prosecution".

    I have to say that there has been some scepticism within the 9/11 Truth Movement concerning Wikileaks. The amount of information and the amount of editing would suggest that there must be a national intelligence agency at work behind it. Some commentators whose analyses I generally value were taking this line, such as Gordon Duff of Veterans Today, who in December 2010 thought that Wikileaks was a Mossad operation and Webster Tarpley argues that Wikileaks is a CIA operation.

    It's possible, of course, that Julian Assange himself doesn't know where the information is coming from, since Wikileaks is the publisher rather than the spying network. It's quite possible that such an operation would be used by national intelligence agencies. One possibility that no-one ever seems to consider is that Russia could be behind Wikileaks. Julian Assange has had his own show on Russia Today, and the Russian intelligence services would surely not let their television station fall into such a trap. Russia does have an interest in limiting NATO's advance throughout the world, as we all have, and it would be expected that they would have some operation to counter the CIA/MI6 subversion that they are reporting across the globe, including Russia. Selective reporting would be expected, even if only to avoid revealing their sources. Russia Today does regularly interview people who are active in the truth movement in Britain and the US.

    Daniel Estulin, famous for his revelations on the secretive Bilderberg meetings, has just published a book called 'Deconstructing Wikileaks'. The author "freely admits to some ambivalence in his opinion of Wikileaks".

    Whatever the truth, the propaganda war continues. John Pilger's latest film 'The War You Don't See' is now available to watch online. It's about the role of journalists in military propaganda. "If people really knew the truth", British prime minister Lloyd George told the editor of The Manchester Guardian in 1917, "the war would be stopped tomorrow. But of course they don't know, and can't know".

    "Never has so much official energy been expended in ensuring journalists collude with the makers of rapacious wars which, say the media-friendly generals, are now "perpetual". In echoing the west's more verbose warlords, such as the waterboarding former US vice-president Dick Cheney, who predicated "50 years of war", they plan a state of permanent conflict wholly dependent on keeping at bay an enemy whose name they dare not speak: the public."

    "What are you going to do about it?", asked John Pilger four times on 26 April 2012 in an article headed 'You are all suspects now. What are you going to do about it?'. I intend to do exactly what I have been urging others to do, and what we in '9/11 Keep Talking' are doing, and what John Pilger, Craig Murray and many others have been doing: Keep Talking!

    Sunday, 5 June 2011

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

    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

    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.

    Saturday, 4 June 2011

    So why are we in Afghanistan?

    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.





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