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LATE NEWS 2005 ...
Friday, 18 March 2005
‘Beware of the Wolf[owitz] at the [Profiteers’] Door’ ...
You do not have to be a wild anti-zionist/neo-con conspiracy theorist to see dense dark-force 'world domination' schemes at work in Wolfowitz's likely appointment as head of the World Bank.
Who is afraid of the big bad wolf and his pack of nihilistic wreckers? At lot of people it would seem. Otherwise why are European leaders and others not speaking out publically against this sick joke appointment decision by Bush?
It is further evidence that most of them don’t even believe in their own cant anymore - and will only sit back and watch Bush and Co. wreck [by making a travesty of] any semblance of decent liberal and humane international values.
'Europeans resigned to Wolfowitz appointment
By Financial Times Reporters
Published: March 17 2005 19:03
Leading western nations ... appeared resigned to accepting Paul Wolfowitz as the next head of the World Bank in spite of varying degrees of irritation expressed privately by European officials.
Acknowledging the doubts, Mr Wolfowitz, who has been a controversial figure as US deputy defence secretary, said: 'People who don't know me may not understand why I am so eager to take on this challenge.'
The intellectual [sic] architect of the US war on Iraq stressed his belief in the World Bank's 'noble mission' of fighting poverty, referring to his first-hand experience of the tsunami relief operations in Indonesia and Sri Lanka.'
Sunday 13 March 2005
'Round up the Usual Suspects ...'
[Adapted from BBC reports]
At least 10 alleged 'foreign terror suspects' are under house arrest in the U.K., without any charges having been laid against them - in a disgraceful travesty of the 'rule of law' in Britain.
Meanwhile, British state terror suspects - along with their accomplices in the political ruling classes - walk free ... and continue to terrorize and otherwise befuddle the British public with unsubstantiated scare stories and deliberately issue-obscuring statements.
The home secretary Charles Clarke took the first possible opportunity to abuse his power and sign the tyrannical house arrest orders after new 'anti-terror' laws - which are contrary to all conventions of British law - were passed in Parliament last Friday.
Leader of the Commons Peter Hain later claimed Tory party leader Michael Howard's opposition to the measures had 'put the security of the UK at risk'. That was deceptive rubbish - and Mr Hain knew it was.
For some reason, Mr Hain then omitted to mention that the government's entire 'terror strategy' had made Britain a generally more fear-filled and dangerous seeming place.
Nor did he mention that British involvement in the illegal state-terror attack on Iraq has increased the chances of a non-state-terror attack on the British mainland.
To put it simply, it is the U.K. government’s own policies that have 'put the security of the U.K. at risk'.
Tory party co-chairman Liam Fox later said Labour prime minister Tony Blair had shown he was ‘arrogant and out of touch’ while forcing through the house arrest measures.
This was perhaps fair comment, but Mr Fox then failed to mention that the Tory party had put up no more than token opposition to the Blair government's repressive abuses of civil liberties in Britain.
He further failed to admit that over the last two years the Tory Party has mostly gone along with the U.K. government's servile support for a Bush-led American foreign policy that is making the world a much more dangerous place.
Liberal Democrat president Simon Hughes said his party would continue to oppose the measure - and would vote to repeal them in the next parliament.
For some reason, Mr Hughes did not explain why about a quarter of Liberal Democrat MPs - including the craven party leader Charles Kennedy - failed to turn up for an opportunity to defeat the measures outright in a Parliamentary vote last week - suggesting that the Liberal Democrats too are offering no more than token opposition to the governements ‘reign of terror’.
Thursday 10 March 2005
More 'Tough' Talk from that Really Weak and Fear-filled Man Blair - who does not have the Guts to admit the errors of his ways...
[Adapted from BBC reports]
Blair issues terror bill warning!
Tony Blair has ruled out making further concessions as his anti-terror plans suffer more defeats in the Lords.
He said it was "time to be strong" as he rejected introducing a limit on the bill's lifespan, saying it would send a "signal of weakness" to terrorists.
Who is the real leader of the British New Labour Party?! Clue ...
Tuesday 1st March 2005
'Non-denial denials' - an example
[Adapted from last week's BBC reports, etc.]
In the 'non-denial denial', unscrupulous 'power elite' characters deliberately attempt to bamboozle the public - and evade telling the truth - by denying something that is false, while NOT denying something of which they are probably guilty.
Eg. 'Goldsmith denies war advice claim'
Last Friday the attorney general Lord Goldsmith denied claims that a previous statement by him to Parliament about the legality/illegality of the Iraq war was drafted by Downing Street officials.
[In making this 'denial' - over a matter of little significance - the attorney general was evading the real issue - which was why the government is suppressing his FULL legal advice to the prime minister drafted personally by him before the start of Iraq war two years ago.]
Lord Goldsmith told parliament last Friday that Lord Falconer and Baroness Morgan played no part in drafting a previous parliamentary answer about his legal advice.
[These were only two 'red herrings' - thrown into public discourse to throw people off the trail to the truth - and take public consciousness further away from the real issue of the pre-war legal advice.]
He added that his previous parliamentary answer represented his present view that the war was legal, but was not a summary of the previous actual detailed legal advice he gave to the PM before the war.
[This was only deliberately vague and issue-obscuring waffle - to confuse people.]
The government has resisted calls to publish the full advice, saying such papers are 'always' kept confidential.
[It is simply untrue that such papers are ‘always’ kept secret. And, obviously, if the legal advice cleared up the matter in the government’s favour - and got it off the hook of the charge that it knew in advance that the attack on Iraq was illegal - then they would publish those suppressed documents in full.]
Wednesday, 23 February 2005
‘XXXX MURKED THE SPAT’
As far as mainstream media reports would have us believe, the Iraqi elections were 'freee and fair' - and represented a 'vindication' of the illegal U.S.-U.K led invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Evidence is piling up that this was not so.
The biggest corruption of the electoral process was, of course, in Falluja - where large numbers of potential 'opposition' voters were slaughtered ... and entire streets of dissenters were reduced to rubble [in a kind of 'no homes for no voters' scandal].
It was a murderous and brutal form of 'ballot rigging'.
At a more mundane level of vote rigging, the third place showing for Allawi looks highly suspcious.
He was an exiled American placeman politician, parachuted in to be a puppet Iraqi prime minister, with no popular support-base or party structure on the ground in Iraq.
It does look as if the main Shi'ites and Kurdish party blocs - who must have been reasonably content with their share of the 'carve up' of post-Saddam Iraq - were willing to let shares of their true votes be diverted to Allawi and his cronies - to give him the appearance of 'respectability'.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX...
‘Simply Under-Stating Outrage At Official Over-Statement’
Seeking to ‘justifiy’ illiberal now anti-terror measures, U.K. Home Secretary Charles Clarke claimed in the House of Commons this week that there was a terrorist threat that ‘threatened the life of the nation’.
That was simply a lie - because while there might be a ‘terror threat’ that threatens the lives of some British citizens, it is not on such a scale that it threatens the ‘life of the nation’.
What the government is now doing is deliberately over-stating in a deceptive way the scale of the ‘terror threat’ - in order to cover-up the scale of its previous deception of the British people over such matters as ‘weapons of mass destruction’.
15 February 2005
South Tyneside Stop The War Coalition joined hundreds of other North-East England anti-war activists marching through the streets of Newcastle on Saturday, 12 February, 2005 to demand an end to the illegal occupation of lraq.
The marchers were entirely peaceful and unarmed.
The march was, however, marred by an oppressive presence of police officers nearby - several thousands of whom, including armed officers, and dog sections, were guarding Labour Party members who were being temporarily detained as suspects under anti-terrorist laws in an anonymous large building in Gateshead on the opposite side of the River Tyne.
Details of the suspects’ treatment while in police custody are not yet available under the Freedom of Information Act.
08.02.2005
UK p.m. Tony Blair told the House of Commons liaison committee today that he agreed with US president George Bush's criticisms of Iran.
"It certainly does sponsor terrorism, there is no doubt about that at all," he said.
I doubt his 'certainty'.
Less doubtful is that Blair is a close ally of one of the world's leading state terrorists, US president George Bush.
What We Are Up Against ...
Ron Suskind, American journalist, partly explains:
'In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior advizer to Bush ... he told me something that at that time I didn't fully comprehend - but which I now believe get to the very heart of the Bush presidency.
The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community', which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality'. I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really works any more,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality - judicously as you will - we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'w
30 January 2005
Giving The Power-Elite ‘Games’ Away:
The Deliberately Confusing Networks of State-Terror
A common misunderstanding about 'state-terror' networks is that they are well-organized and rationally efficient.
In fact, they operate in systems of virtual 'administrative anarchy' - an 'alphabet soup' of changing code-named groupings - with each group suspicious of - and even spying on - every other - and, effectively, 'competing' against each other to meet vague 'targets' broadly suggested by ambiguously worded 'executive orders'.
The irrationality of the state-terror 'organization' actually encourages irrational behaviour lower down its 'command chain' - it 'brings out the worst in people' in other words - 'hence' the disgusting spectacles of physical and sexual abuse of other human beings by British and American troops in the jails of Iraq.
For the 'power-elite' this 'administrative anarchy' has certain advantages:
- no explicit 'abuse', 'torture', or even 'kill', orders have to be issued - so 'responsibility' can always be denied;
[A classic example of this is to be found in the history of Nazi Germany - no explicit 'kill Jewish people' order was issued for the Holocaust by the gang at the top of the Nazi state: all they had to do was set the tone of the anti-Jewish ideology, then set up the state-terror structures ... and let events take their terrible courses ...]
- the general state of uncertainty and confusion - in the shifting group designations and vague, ambiguous orders [for example, what does an order to be 'harsh' to prisoners really mean?] - prevents anyone really understanding what is going on - including those directly involved - so 'deniability' is built into the course of events
- individuals low down the command-chain can be 'scape-goated' if media reports and/or popular opinions turn against aspects of the state-terror activity.
The present American-led state-terror operation that is known as 'the war on terror', contains many typical examples of this 'Administrative Anarchy ... Alpahbet Zoup' [AA...AZ].
Documents unearthed by the American Civil Liberties Union [ACLU], for example, show quite clearly that:
- 'undirected' abuse, torture and even murder of Iraqis by the US Marine Corps [USMC] in Iraq is widespread
[By 'undirected', I mean: occurring as part of an almost 'inevitable' course of events when a large and powerful army is in a war zone during a period of protracted and confusing conflict - 'these things happen' in other words, but it is a mistake to regard them as 'accidents', or else solely the fault of 'rogue individuals' ... because when the 'power elites' launch operations such as the invasion and occuaption of Iraq, they KNOW in advance that ‘these things will happen', and that elements of their forces will run ‘out of control’ ...]
- running alongside this 'official' military operation - in which the abuses can be blamed on individual 'rogue' troops - there is a clandestine network of even harder-edged and deliberately brutal 'special operations' - done by 'task forces' going unders various coded designations
- other more traditional elements of the American state - including the Federal Bureau of Investigation [FBI] and the Defence Intelligence Agency [DIA] are 'investigating' - and in other ways 'competing' with - these clandestine 'special operations' units
[This is probably best understood in terms of 'turf wars' between competing 'intelligence' agencies.]
- president George W. Bush personally issued an ambiguous 'Executive Order' authrorizing the use of extreme 'interrogation' methods in his 'War on Terror'.
Documents sourced to the FBI refer specifically to a 'Presidential Executive Order' as authorizing the use of sleep deprivation, physical stress positioning, sensory deprivation through the use of hoods, and even intimidatory use of military dogs, in interrogations of 'terror suspects'.
The documents further detail an account by an apparent FBI agent who had 'observed numerous physical abuse indicents of Iraqi civilian detainees', including 'strangulation, beatings, placement of lit cigarettes inot the detainees' ear openings'.
Other sources suggest Bush personally signed an ambiguously labelled top secret 'finding' shortly after the 9/11 attacks in 2001, which authorized the setting up of clandestine teams of 'special forces' - given his 'authority' to pursue, arrest - and even assassinate - suspected 'high value' al Qaeda operatives 'anywhere in the world'.
This was the origin of the Special Access Program [SAP], which has operated under different names in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere.
SAP involves 'secret interrogation centers' in 'allied countries' where 'harsh treatments' are used - 'unconstrained by legal limits of public discourse'.
US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is personally responsible for the expansion of SAP into the terror-prison system used against detainees in Iraq.
One of the 'ground-level' American state-terror groups operating in Iraq is 'Task Force 121' - which seems to be a sub-unit of SAP.
In December 2003 a fact-finding mission was set up by mainstream American Generals disturbed by reports of systematic abuses by U.S. troops.
The ‘mission’ included an investigation of the activities of Task Force 121.
It found that it was made up primarly of soliders from two Army 'special mission units' - who were operating outside orthodox military command.
Task Force 121's existence was 'not officially acknowledged by the Pentagon' - so its activities had built-in ‘deniability’.
Members of Task Force 121 were observed 'beating detainees and using a secret facility to hide its interrogations'.
It hardly needs to be said that what such people let others 'observe' of their activities was only likely to be the 'tip of the iceberg' of those activities.
What the 'special mission units' have been up to when they are not being 'observed' is likely to be much worse.
It is a fact that several of Task Force 121's members are now under criminal investigation for the deaths of two prisoners in its custody - in other words, individuals are being 'scape-goated' to protect people higher up the chain-of-command.
In June 2004 the Defence Intelligence Agency [DIA] had investigators assigned to Iraq to observe the activities of Task Force 6-26 - which is either a variant of Task Force 121 or else an associated group.
The DIA people observed 'prisoners arriving at the Temporary Detention Facility in Baghdad with burn marks on their backs. Some have bruises and some complained of kidney pain'.
They saw Task Force 6-26 officers 'punch a prisoner in the face to the point that the individual needed medical attention'.
Such reported incidents of abuse - buried as 'throwaway incidentals' in Pentagon documents reporting the activities of one state agency spying on another - can again be regarded as 'tips of the iceberg'.
Meanwhile, it is a fact that British clandestine state-terror activities have been enmeshed with these American ones.
Tips of that British state-terror 'iceberg' are suggested by the fact that a total of 36 individual British armed forces personnel are now facing the courts - or being 'scape-goated' - over 'abuse' charges - including up to 20 for allegedly killing Iraqis.
[See Also: Forum - Will The War on Terror Lead to World War?]
13 January 2005
US 'is eroding global human rights'
[Adapted from BBC News reports]
Violations of human rights by the US are undermining international law and eroding its role on the world stage, a leading campaign group says.
Human Rights Watch [HRW] says the US cannot claim to be defending human rights abroad if it practises abuses itself.
"Its embrace of coercive interrogation [is] part of a broader betrayal of human rights principles in the name of combating terrorism," HRW says.
It urges the creation of an independent commission to examine prisoner abuse at Iraq's US-run Abu Ghraib jail.
Investigatations are taking place into abuses at that facility and at the U.S. detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
HRW says that because of its own actions, the US cannot claim 'the moral high ground', nor to be 'leading by example'.
It cites coercive interrogation techniques at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib jail as particularly damaging.
The group, the largest US-based rights organisation, says the actions of the US in such detention centres have undermined Washington's credibility as a proponent of human rights and the leader of a 'war against terror'.
According to the report, the impact of the abuse scandals has seriously damaged the US's role as a self-proclaimed 'champion of human rights', with the effects reverberating worldwide.
For example, when the US classified what was happening in Sudan's Darfur region as 'genocide' it was immediately accused by that country's government of double-standards, and of using Darfur as part of 'a global American assault on Islam and Arabs'.
US gives up search for Iraq WMD
[Adapted from BBC reports]
This week the US stopped searching for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
The chief US Iraq Survey Group investigator, Charles Duelfer, is reportedly not even planning to return to the country.
Mr Duelfer reported last year that Iraq had no stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons at the time of the US-led invasion nearly two years ago.
The existence of WMD had been the stated reason in Washington and London for going to war with Iraq.
Mr Duelfer claimed when he released his interim report in October that former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein still had the desire to restart WMD programmes - but offerred no evidence for this claim.
The final version of his report is due to be published in a few weeks.
Officials are still sifting through documents but there is no expectation that the hunt will be revived.
Former US inspector David Kay told the BBC this was the expected outcome.
Former head of UN weapons inspections Hans Blix also said there was no surprise in the announcement.
Mr Blix also pointed out that there was in fact no evidence for Duelfer's residual claim that Saddam intended to restart WMD programmes.
IRAQ SURVEY GROUP FACTS:
Set up in May 2003.
HQ in Washington, offices in Baghdad and Qatar.
Consisted of more than 1,200 weapons experts from the US, Britain and Australia.
First leader, David Kay, quit in Jan 2004 stating WMD would not be found in Iraq.
New head, Charles Duelfer appointed by CIA.
10.03.2005
They may have given up the search for the non-existent ‘wmd’, but we have not given up searching for an explanation of why the public was so badly misled on this issue.
Facts
Number of days since U.S.-U.K. forces began an invasion of Iraq, mostly on the pretext that the then Iraqi government possessed ‘weapons of mass destruction’: MORE THAN 700.
Number of days since the start of that invasion during which credible evidence of ‘weapons of mass destruction’ has not been found: MORE THAN 700.
Comment
The decency and credibility gaps widen further ...
With every day that passes, the scale of the deception seems to grow.
So far, no one has been properly called to account for this deception.
Some people in ‘responsible’ positions of ‘authority’ misled the general public - big time ... for a long time ... and almost certainly deliberately.
It is almost two years since the invasion of Iraq, and no WMD have been found - because there were none to be found.
Iraq is in a continued and worsening disordered state.
There has been a sham ‘handover of power’ to a puppet government, with dubious imposed elections to follow this month.
British troops have been used as pawns in an American foreign policy that is not in British interest - let alone the interests of the wider world.
Before the invasion of Iraq, the governments of the United States of America and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland told their own citizens and to the wider world that they had ‘overwhelming evidence’ that Saddam possessed huge stockpiles of quickly usable ‘weapons of mass destruction’ - and ‘hence’ represented a threat that ‘had’ to be disarmed rapidly with military force.
This suggestion by the governments was simply untrue - and an indication of fundamental dishonesty at the cores of the two governments.
That it was untrue can now be regarded as a proven fact.
Even the official American-led search for the non-existent weapons is now over.
No one can hide huge stockpiles of ‘overwhelming evidence’.
No one can now deny the scale of the original deception over 'WMD'.
And why did the British government - particularly - mislead [= ‘misinform’ and ‘lead badly’ and ‘lead astray’, etc] and almost certainly lie to [= knowingly and deliberately tell falsehoods to] the British public and wider humanity over Iraq’s alleged possession of rapidly usable WMD?
The truth is quite simple: Tony Blair and others knew that by any standard convention of international law it was illegal to invade, occupy, and topple the government of another sovereign nation without proper international sanction - which they did not have.
They needed a ‘pretext’ to do something that was otherwise, legally speaking, ‘out of order’.
There was not one to be found, in truth, so ‘they' made one up, and in the process deceived their own people - including the troops they asked to do the fighting for them - disgracefully.
Philip Talbot
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