Who’ll mourn Maggie?

by Stuart Littlewood
Wednesday, April 10th, 2013

These last two days the airwaves have been awash with eye-dabbing tributes to former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher. She has been elevated almost to sainthood by commentators, political hacks and former colleagues. Such near-hysterical adoration, it seems to me, is a measure of the wretched scarcity of leadership talent in Britain over the last 50 years.
 

Yes, she demonstrated a few admirable virtues for which she is rightly remembered and which were sadly lacking in the wimps who surrounded her. But they are trumped by a catalogue of failings. When she took over the leadership of the Conservative Party in 1975 she ominously declared:

I am not a consensus politician. I am a conviction politician.

This was a deeply scary opening gambit. It’s fine as long as your convictions are soundly based. But when they are grounded in barmy beliefs you become a menace to party and country.

Almost straightaway Thatcher turned Britain’s manufacturing heart, known as the Black Country, into an industrial wasteland. I was there, working for a major engineering group. I saw the devastation first-hand and felt the anguish and despair of the local people. Big organisations shed jobs by the hundreds and thousands. Many shut their doors for ever. Countless highly skilled small businesses – jobbing contractors to the large companies – were crippled by sky-high interest rates, the new ‘wisdom’ dispensed by the inventors of ‘Thatcherism’. Base interest rates climbed to 15%, which meant that business owners were paying as much as 22%.

As George Galloway says,

she destroyed more than a third of Britain’s manufacturing capacity, significantly more than Hitler’s Luftwaffe ever achieved.

Thatcher had become a disciple of ‘monetarism’, a school of thought claiming that by juggling the money supply you could determine economic activity, keep a lid on inflation and manage the economic cycles. Demand would be boosted or damped by turning the money tap. This new approach was just the medicine for reviving Britain’s ailing economy, according to her bestest political friend Keith Joseph, aka the ‘Mad Monk’.
 

Then came de-regulation and the privatisation of our utilities (many ending up in foreign hands). There was little attempt to re-start manufacturing. Instead the emphasis was on expanding financial services. A financial sector free-for-all and an explosion of personal and corporate greed followed. It fitted perfectly her sickening statement that “there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families… people must look to themselves first.” The self-centred revolution had arrived.

A prisoner of the Zionists?

Margaret Thatcher was kept in parliament by the considerable Jewish vote in her Finchley constituency, which adjoins the North London Jewish quarter of Hendon and Golders Green. Unsurprisingly, she was a member of the Anglo-Israel Friendship League of Finchley and the Conservative Friends of Israel (of which, I believe, she was a founder).
 

David Frum, who was one of George Dubya Bush’s speechwriters and credited with the ‘axis of evil’ speech vilifying Iraq, Iran and North Korea, wrote of Thatcher  that she “was elected from a heavily Jewish north London constituency… Altogether, five Jews served in her cabinets, including her strongest Chancellor of the Exchequer, Nigel Lawson, and her ideological mentor, Education Secretary Keith Joseph…  One of her favorite ministers, Malcolm Rifkind, went on to serve under her successor John Major as the first Jewish foreign secretary — voiding the taboo that had descended after the creation of the state of Israel against Jews in UK national security positions.

Thatcher’s sympathy for Israel especially worried and frightened British officials. When she became party leader in the mid-1970s, she succumbed to pressure and resigned from pro-Israel groups…

The fear was, of course, that Thatcher’s closeness with British Jews might suggest she was a ‘prisoner of the Zionists’. Charles C Johnson, writing in December 2011 , says that Thatcher reluctantly agreed to quit the Jewish groups she belonged to, but kept her relationships with pro-Israel parliamentarians. “In addition to Nigel Lawson, she appointed Victor Rothschild as her security adviser, Malcolm Rifkind to be secretary of state for Scotland, David Young as minister without portfolio, and Leon Brittan to be trade and industry secretary. David Wolfson, nephew of Sir Isaac Wolfson, president of Great Universal Stores, Europe’s biggest mail-order company, served as Thatcher’s chief of staff. Her policies were powered by two men — Keith Joseph, a member of Parliament many thought would one day be the first prime minister who was a practicing Jew, and Alfred Sherman, a former communist turned free-market thinker.”

Joseph and Sherman, with Thatcher, had set up the Centre for Policy Studies in 1974.  Joseph wanted to

fundamentally affect a political generation’s way of thinking.

Thatcher was generally supportive towards Israel but did not trust Begin and Shamir, whom she recognised for the shameless terrorists they were. In 1986, when Peres was prime minister, she became the first British premier to visit Israel, although she had previously been twice as a member of parliament – presumably on brainwashing trips organised by her party’s Friends of Israel.

During that landmark visit in 1986, reports Haaretz, she was asked why Queen Elizabeth had never found the time to tour the Holy Land. Thatcher replied: “But I’m here.”  And she didn’t seem to mind staying in the King David Hotel, the former British Army headquarters which was blown up by Jewish terrorists in 1946, killing 91 soldiers and civilians.

Nevertheless she was occasionally critical and, for example, condemned Israel’s bombing of Osirak, Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor, in 1981. It represented a grave breach of international law, she told The Jewish Chronicle. Bombing another country like that could lead to “international anarchy”.

All the same, under Thatcher’s eleven-and-a-half year watch important taboos were broken and Jews were appointed to such top Offices of State as chancellor of the exchequer and secretary for defence, foreign and home affairs. The floodgates opened for Zionist sympathisers or worse, such as Straw, Miliband and Hague to subsequently take up the crucial post of foreign secretary and make a toxic hash of our relations abroad.
 

At home she left a wide trail of social and industrial wreckage, sweeping away key industries and relying on the froth and fizz and corruption of a financial services boom. She all but switched off our engine of real wealth – manufacturing – making the prospect of real recovery a very distant one.

Those who’ll mourn for Maggie most will be the Old Etonians and other products of our public schools who make up our ruling ‘élite’ and whose tender upbringing fixated on Matron rather than the Laws of Cricket.

Stuart Littlewood

10 April 2013

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Paris, London to Arm Syria Militants even without EU Support

Local Editor

France and Britain are prepared to arm Syrian militants even without unanimous EU support, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Thursday. Fabius pointed out that Paris and London will call for moving up the date of the next European Union meeting on the Syria arms embargo, indicating that the two countries will decide to arm the rebels even if the 27-member EU does not give unanimous agreement. France and Britain ask “the Europeans now to lift the embargo so that the resistance fighters have the possibility of defending themselves,” he told France Info radio. “If unanimous EU support for lifting the measure is lacking, the French and British governments will decide to deliver weapons,” he added, considering that “France is a sovereign nation.” “We must move quickly… and we along with the British will ask for the meeting to be moved up,” Fabius said. Prime Minister David Cameron had said Tuesday that “Britain would consider ignoring an EU arms ban and supplying weapons to Syrian rebels if it would help topple President Bashar Al-Assad.

Source: AFP 14-03-2013 – 10:46 Last updated 14-03-2013 – 10:46

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The Predator

By Daniel Mabsout



This predator is feasting on human flesh and has been doing so for quite a while . US and UK have grown two extensions equal in size and importance to lift them up and allow them to soar high in the sky looking for living preys . These extensions are Israel and Saudia . The preys belong to multiple nationalities and religion and the predator does not distinguish between them . He will feast on Pakistanis , Afghanis , Iraqis and Palestinians and on Lebanese and Libyans and Syrians. The two criminal States : Israel and Saudia will make sure that the predator monster is being well fed .The crimes these two states are committing on behalf of US and UK are unimaginable . They are masters of explosions and car bombs and criminal attempts and massive assassinations , They hire killers and pay them to kill whether children , women ,civilians or old people . They supply them with weapons and send them after minorities and other Muslims , they kill pilgrims and people while they fast , worship and pray. They are raising hell in Syria right now so much that they seem very close to burning it . Syria will be their burial ground inshAllah .

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Mali, Algeria, Libya: the real reason Britain signed up for war on Africa

The truth behind the ‘war on terror’ is that it is part of Western powers’ imperialistic quest to secure natural resource reserves for their corporations

By Patrick Kane
Huff Post
14 February 2013

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With the start of 2013 the ‘war on terror’ has burst back into the headlines. The attack on a BP gas plant in Algeria sparked declarations from David Cameron which identified North Africa as the new front line.

Already the UK has backed military intervention in Mali and upgraded military support for Algeria and Libya. In Algeria, Cameron announced a strengthened ‘military partnership’ to combat terrorism and “improve security in the region”, and in Libya he pledged more British training for security forces and support for securing the country’s borders.

The reality of the never-ending ‘war on terror’ is that it is integrally bound up with an imperialistic drive for resources.

Central to understanding David Cameron’s rapid reaction to events in North Africa is a government document published in November last year to little or no fanfare.

That document is the UK’s Energy Security Strategy, released by the Department for Energy and Climate Change: the first time the UK has ever produced such a strategy. The document rings the alarm for the UK’s future energy security, stating, “Declining reserves of fossil fuels in the North Sea are making the UK increasingly dependent on imports at a time of rising global demand and increased resource competition”, which is leaving the UK “increasingly exposed to the pressures and risks of global markets”.

The point is illustrated with some dramatic statistics: UK oil production, which currently provides for 70% of UK oil demand, is “expected to decrease by 5% per year”, meaning that within 20 years the North Sea oil supplies will have run out, leaving the UK completely dependent upon imports, whilst global demand for oil is predicted to increase by 15% by 2035.
 
There will be even more competition for gas supplies, with global demand forecast to rise by 55% by 2035. Again, declining North Sea supplies mean that the UK will go from importing about 50% of the gas it uses currently “to nearly 70% by 2025”.

At international level, the document identifies the importance of “energy diplomacy” in securing UK supplies of oil and gas for the future. Energy diplomacy, it says, includes “maximising commercial opportunities” for UK corporations, forcing open new markets to guarantee them unrestricted access to valuable energy resources.

Here we get to the crux of the strategy: it is not the ordinary UK citizen that is being protected- for evidence look no further than the exorbitant energy bills crippling Britain’s poor- but the interests of UK corporations which supply the energy.

This ‘energy diplomacy’ is of course a euphemism for militaristic British foreign policy. This includes the provision of military aid and weapons sales to regimes which control strategic energy reserves regardless of how repressive and violent they may be, as well as the readiness to use military force against states or groups which threaten UK energy security interests or those of UK allies.

Of course, militaristic British policy focussed upon securing energy resources at the expense of human rights is not new, for evidence just look at Nigeria. What we are witnessing currently is an increased sense of urgency to take control of strategic energy resources.

The Ministry of Defence in 2010 laid out its analysis of future strategic threats to the UK, and predicted that in coming years major powers are “likely to use their defence forces to safeguard supplies [of hydrocarbons]”. It identified North Africa as a strategically important area where a key focus of European states’ engagement will be on securing access to energy resources.

The military cooperation agreements announced last month with Algeria and Libya are part of UK ‘energy diplomacy’ aimed at securing access to strategic resources in North Africa. Both countries are identified in the UK Energy Security Strategy as producers of gas and oil which are important trading partners and hence countries which are important to the UK’s energy security.

Algeria now supplies 5% of the UK’s gas needs, whilst Libya is not only an important trading partner, but is a country whose oil supply is so important to the global oil market that the price of oil rose by 10-20% when armed conflict erupted there in 2011. Before the conflict in Libya had even finished, it was reported that BP had begun talks with rebel leaders aimed at securing access to the country’s oil wealth, and the French foreign minister publicly stated that it was “fair and logical” for French companies to benefit after French military intervention in the country.

In Mali, France’s UK-backed intervention is in support of a regime which violently seized power in a coup d’etat last April which led to the country’s suspension from the African Union. Could the large, as yet unexploited uranium and oil reserves thought to be contained in the deserts of Northern Mali and Eastern Niger explain the eagerness to back such a regime?
For a clear example of the link between Western commercial energy interests and militarism in North Africa, just look over the border from Mali at Niger. Last week, the president of Niger announced that French special forces have been deployed to the country to protect the huge Arlit uranium mine owned by French multinational Areva, in response to instability in the region. French companies used to have exclusive access to uranium supplies in Niger, however a change in government policy in 2007 ended the exclusivity, meaning they now face competition from Chinese and Indian companies.

The truth behind the ‘war on terror’ is that it is part of Western powers’ imperialistic quest to secure natural resource reserves for their corporations. We should all fear for the peoples of energy-rich regions as the global resource grab plummets new depths.

 
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It really is time Tony Blair faced justice at the International Criminal Court

How Tony Blair and Iraq Robbed a Generation of Their Faith in Politics

I imagine for many people alive today, the great politicising event of their childhood came in the form of a tragedy.

The first dreadful hammer of the Luftwaffe passing overhead, the panicked screams at the Dealey Plaza or the bullet holes at Bogside – that key event that propelled you to develop a political consciousness seems more likely to have been one that made you angry than inspired.

But for many of us who were still just 16 on 15 February, 2003, that landmark came in a moment of hope when more than 1,000,000 people descended on the streets of London to march in protest against the imminent invasion of Iraq.

Anti-Iraq war march, London, 2003
It was, we were told, the largest public protest in British history. I still remember the feeling of pride as I poured over the pictures, that sense that we belonged, not to the most ‘politically apathetic generation’ ever to live after all, but to the most engaged, the most righteous.

Like hundreds of teenagers who didn’t make the real thing, students at my school hastily arranged their own small protest, marching through our small rural town chanting and playing anti-war music. We must have looked pathetic, but we didn’t care. We were adding a cry to a national roar that made the hairs on the back of our necks stand up.

It didn’t even occur to me that it might not work.

But first, let’s go back.
*Perhaps growing up in a small town in Northumberland – the UK’s northernmost, most sparsely populated county – we were a touch parochial. But the events of 9/11 didn’t so much politicise my schoolmates as demonstrate to us for the first time that there was a wider world out there at all. Most of us didn’t know what the Twin Towers were until they were crumbling in a plume of smoke. None of that ‘stuff’ – the news, the bickering politicians – had any relevance to us.

And then in the space of a day, before the dust in Manhattan had even settled, the notion of politics had sprung up out of nowhere, like that moment when you realise the opposite sex isn’t just attractive but that they’re going to matter, a lot, for the rest of your life.

I began reading newspapers to find out what was going on. I bought the Times because I had heard of it, until an older boy said it was ‘right-wing’. I figured out what right-wing meant, and bought the Guardian.

The space between 9/11 and the Iraq War being something people were talking about felt tiny, and that’s because it was. Just nine days after the attack, George W Bush, addressing Congress (and the world), uttered the words ‘War on Terror’ for the first time. Fabrications about the links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda followed, and the international reputation of the most despised and ridiculed American in living memory was launched.

We couldn’t have known, at the time, how ‘Dubya’ would come to dominate how we felt about the world for the next eight years, how he’d oscillate from a figure of fun for our blossoming liberal sententiousness to quite simply the most terrifying man in the world. How he’d eventually make us despise our own prime minister. How, because of him, shamefully tossing around prejudice remarks about ‘stupid Americans’ felt OK.

The crazier Bush’s rhetoric got, the more he divided the world into good and bad like it was some kind of He-Man cartoon, the more I clung to the notion that here, we wouldn’t be drawn into using phrases like ‘axis of evil’. America was excitable, in the throes of imperialism. We were post-empire, cynical and weary.

But our prime minister saw things differently. Up until 2001, I think most of my generation still believed, in an abstract way, that Tony Blair was a decent man. He looked and sounded good on tele, he’d ended the conflicts in Ireland that had been a distant bogeyman of our childhoods and the other guy – the Tory -always seemed old, bald and well, boring.

But now suddenly, Blair was siding with Bush at every turn. When the president launched his War On Terror, Blair said he’d back it. When the president said he believed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, Blair said he believed it too. The press presented him as Bush’s poodle, and we winced in acknowledgement.

Then came Resolution 1441 and Hans Blix. Blix swept into the darkening saga like a comforting beam from a lighthouse. The arrival of the peaceful Swede, with his glasses and nervous smile, seemed to my young mind like democracy at work. All Iraq had to do was open to doors to the weapon inspectors, show they had nothing to hide and war would be avoided. Like Piggy from Lord Of The Flies, Blix was supposed to be the rational voice of intelligence. But like Piggy he was taken out of action by an unstoppable boulder: an American government that had made its mind up to go to war long ago.

Blix didn’t find a thing, because there were no WMDs to find. By 31 December 2002, his team had reached the same conclusion as an Iraqi dossier presented to the UN during the same period: they were in the clear. It should have ended right there. Instead, two years later, Blix would tell the BBC what by then we all already knew – Bush and Blair ignored him and dramatised a threat in order to start a war.
*Looking back today, the whole charade that precipitated the Iraqi War reminds me of an incident from my teenager years.

A friend of mine had developed a complex about never having been in a fight. None of us had, really, being comfortable, middle-class kids who had grown up with no need for violence. One night this friend got drunk and followed an even punier guy from school out of the pub, where he backed him into a corner and preceded to bait him.

Trying to pluck up the courage to take a swing, my friend taunted this other kid unsuccessfully, before trying a new tact. He started sexing up some perceived slight from long ago, wanting to convince himself the guy deserved what was coming to him. He worked himself into a faux outrage, then finally, after an excruciating half hour, threw his punch.

My friend, you might say, was like a new American President desperate to prove he could be tough by attacking an opponent he knew he could easily beat. And in the background, feeling uncomfortable but doing nothing to stop it, was me. Tony Blair.
*Bush and Blair pushed for a second UN resolution to start a war in Iraq and failed, but American and British troops continued to build up around the Gulf. On 7 February, Downing Street admitted that its dossier on Iraq – released the previous week to push the case for war – was a muddled patchwork of academic sources pulled together by mid-level lackeys of Alastair Campbell. Still, the troops flooded in. Three days later, France and Germany make a last ditch attempt to keep the peace by suggesting the UN triples the number of arms inspectors in Iraq. The US-UK alliance ignored them.

Which brings us to the day of 15 February, 2003 – the day of my generation’s political awakening.
For two years we had watched our government join America in ignoring every plausible reason for not starting a war with innocent people in a poor country in the Middle East – the scepticism of the press, the will of the UN, the weapons inspectors, the facts. It had been a depressing lesson in the limitations of politics and politicians, these things we’d only just started paying attention to.
Then, at what felt like the last moment, the people stepped up.

Early in the morning they assembled: first at Embankment, then, through force, Westminster and Whitehall. Ken Livingstone, the mayor, led the way. Over a million people – a million, all sending a message to Tony Blair: you work for us, and we don’t want this war. And it wasn’t just London, either. Damascus, Athens, Seoul, Rome, Tokyo, Sydney – hundreds of cities all over the world were witnessing the same thing.

280 miles away from London, we were feeling for the first time the age old thrill of protest. A handful of us skipped school in the afternoon, drew CND signs on our face with one of the girl’s eyeliner and took a portable stereo playing Bob Dylan and Barry McGuire to our town square. Shoppers wandered by looking bemused. Some stopped to tell us well done. We argued with anyone who would listen about the lack of WMDs. We stood beneath a gloomy overcast sky but felt bathed in a warm glow.

Guardian/ICM polls at the time put support for the war at just 29% of the public, with 52% opposing. But Blair heard about polls all day long. Naively, I thought a million people marching past his window would be impossible to ignore.

A little over a month later, at 9.34pm on Wednesday 19 March, we watched on television as the first bomb fell on Baghdad. 28 British soldiers would die before the month was out.
*If every generation lives through an event that opens their eyes to politics for the first time, then perhaps there also an event that closes them again, if not entirely then at least in part.

My father isn’t a political man. He’s passionate and he cares about lots of things, but the political system depresses him. All my life I’ve heard him dismiss it – ‘they’re all the same’, ‘it’s pointless’ – and describe himself, with a hint of sadness, as ‘apolitical’.

In the build up the Iraq War, and particularly on the day the world marched, I couldn’t have understood his stance any less. I remember feeling disappointed in him. But as it came to dawn on me that it had all come to nothing, that Blair was pushing ahead with the war anyway, I came to understand a little of how he felt.

It left me – and most of us at school who had taken an interest in the world after 9/11 – bitterly angry. The buds of our idealism were buried under an avalanche of cynicism. I couldn’t comprehend how Blair had the nerve to ignore the will of the country. I assumed that, if they’d ignore us over something as important as war, they’d ignore over anything.

Ten years later and, like my father, I care about the issues politics affect, but I don’t trust the political system, and I don’t believe in politicians.

And I’m not alone. I see and hear it everywhere. Ask anyone in their late twenties to name an MP from their lifetime they admire, and most will stare at you blankly. Plenty of us are engaged in politics, but without relish, voting in elections like we’re choosing from the menu at Wimpy. When the expenses scandal broke in 2009, there were no marches, no protests, just a shrug of the shoulders and a look that said: why would we expect anything else? Since the early promise of Blair proved so misplaced, there hasn’t been a single inspiring figure in the top tier of British politics. No wonder we idolise Obama from afar: how we long for a leader whose motives we can trust, no matter how they might fail.

The worst legacies of the Iraq War belong to the families of the soldiers and civilians from Iraq, Britain, America and everywhere else forced to make sacrifices for an illegal occupation. But another legacy, one harder to measure than body bags, is the way Tony Blair’s hubris robbed a generation of their faith in politics.

I sometimes wonder how differently we’d feel today if Blair had listened. No doubt at the time he felt he was heeding the call of history, but he heard the wrong message. Ten years later, even when the last troop finally comes home, we’ll all still be paying a price.

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IS UK DEFENSE CONTRACTOR PLANNING SYRIAN CHEMICAL WEAPONS FALSE FLAG?

Posted on January 29, 2013 by Alexandra Valiente

 

Tony Cartalucci

Unconfirmed “leaked” documents indicate Washington-approved, Qatari-funded false flag attack using Libyan chemical weapons in Homs, Syria.

Documents allegedly “hacked” belonging to UK-based defense contractor Britam (official website here) appear to show the company considering an offer from Qatar to use Libyan chemical weapons in Homs, Syria in order to frame both the Syrian and Russian governments. The plan involves using Britam’s Ukrainian mercenaries and Soviet-era chemical weapon shells brought in from Libya’s large, Al Qaeda-linked, Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) controlled arsenals.|
 

The e-mail reads:

Phil

We’ve got a new offer. It’s about Syria again. Qataris propose an attractive deal and swear that the idea is approved by Washington.

We’ll have to deliver a CW to Homs, a Soviet origin g-shell from Libya similar to those that Assad should have. They want us to deploy our Ukrainian personnel that should speak Russian and make a video record.
Frankly, I don’t think it’s a good idea but the sums proposed are enormous. Your opinion?

Kind regards
David

It should be remembered that this is not confirmed – and there is most likely no way that it can ever be confirmed. However, in light of recent, and continuous attempts by the Israelis and NATO to justify a military intervention in Syria based on fears of “chemical weapons,” and considering how a nearly decade-long war and occupation was fought in neighboring Iraq under similar and patently false pretenses, every potential piece of evidence should be taken seriously.
 

It should also be remembered that during the Iraq War, British special forces were caught carrying out false flag attacks, dressed as sectarian extremists in Basra, Iraq, and shooting at Iraqi policemen. After the British soldiers were arrested, the British army attacked the police station they were being held at to free them. The precedence of Western nations using false flag operations, including terrorism, to achieve geopolitical objectives beyond their borders most certainly exists.
 

The Libyan Connection

Mention of acquiring chemical weapons from Libya is particularly troubling. Libya’s arsenal had fallen into the hands of sectarian extremists with NATO assistance in 2011 in the culmination of efforts to overthrow the North African nation . Since then, Libya’s militants led by commanders of Al Qaeda’s Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) have armed sectarian extremists across the Arab World, from as far West as Mali, to as far East as Syria.
 

In addition to small arms, heavier weapons are also making their way through this extensive network. The Washington Post in their article, “Libyan missiles on the loose,” reported:

“Two former CIA counterterrorism officers told me last week that technicians recently refurbished 800 of these man-portable air-defense systems (known as MANPADS) — some for an African jihadist group called Boko Haram that is often seen as an ally of al-Qaeda — for possible use against commercial jets flying into Niger, Chad and perhaps Nigeria.”

While undoubtedly these weapons are also headed to Niger, Chad, and perhaps Nigeria, they are veritably headed to Syria. Libyan LIFG terrorists are confirmed to be flooding into Syria from Libya. In November 2011, the Telegraph in their article, “Leading Libyan Islamist met Free Syrian Army opposition group,” would report:

Abdulhakim Belhadj, head of the Tripoli Military Council and the former leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, “met with Free Syrian Army leaders in Istanbul and on the border with Turkey,” said a military official working with Mr Belhadj. “Mustafa Abdul Jalil (the interim Libyan president) sent him there.”

Another Telegraph article, “Libya’s new rulers offer weapons to Syrian rebels,” would admit

Syrian rebels held secret talks with Libya’s new authorities on Friday, aiming to secure weapons and money for their insurgency against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, The Daily Telegraph has learned.
At the meeting, which was held in Istanbul and included Turkish officials, the Syrians requested “assistance” from the Libyan representatives and were offered arms, and potentially volunteers.

“There is something being planned to send weapons and even Libyan fighters to Syria,” said a Libyan source, speaking on condition of anonymity. “There is a military intervention on the way. Within a few weeks you will see.”

Later that month, some 600 Libyan terrorists would be reported to have entered Syria to begin combat operations and have been flooding into the country ever since.

Image: Libyan Mahdi al-Harati of the US State Department, United Nations, and the UK Home Office (page 5, .pdf)-listed terrorist organization, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), addressing fellow terrorists in Syria. Harati is now commanding a Libyan brigade operating inside of Syria attempting to destroy the Syrian government and subjugate the Syrian population. Traditionally, this is known as “foreign invasion.”
 

Washington Post’s reported “loose missiles” in Libya are now turning up on the battlefield in Syria. While outfits like the Guardian, in their article “Arms and the Manpads: Syrian rebels get anti-aircraft missiles,” are reporting the missiles as being deployed across Syria, they have attempted to downplay any connection to Libya’s looted arsenal and the Al Qaeda terrorists that have imported them. In contrast, Times has published open admissions from terrorists themselves admitting they are receiving heavy weapons including surface-to-air missiles from Libya.
 

In Time’s article, “Libya’s Fighters Export Their Revolution to Syria,” it is reported:

Some Syrians are more frank about the assistance the Libyans are providing. “They have heavier weapons than we do,” notes Firas Tamim, who has traveled in rebel-controlled areas to keep tabs on foreign fighters. “They brought these weapons to Syria, and they are being used on the front lines.” Among the arms Tamim has seen are Russian-made surface-to-air missiles, known as the SAM 7.
Libyan fighters largely brush off questions about weapon transfers, but in December they claimed they were doing just that. “We are in the process of collecting arms in Libya,” a Libyan fighter in Syria told the French daily Le Figaro. “Once this is done, we will have to find a way to bring them here.”

Clearly NATO intervention in Libya has left a vast, devastating arsenal in the hands of sectarian extremists, led by US State Department, United Nations, and the UK Home Office (page 5, .pdf)-listed terrorist organization LIFG, that is now exporting these weapons and militants to NATO’s other front in Syria. It is confirmed that both Libyan terrorists and weapons are crossing the Turkish-Syrian border, with NATO assistance, and it is now clear that heavy weapons, including anti-aircraft weapons have crossed the border too.
 

The Guardian reported in their November 2011 article, “Libyan chemical weapons stockpiles intact, say inspectors,” that:

Libya’s stockpiles of mustard gas and chemicals used to make weapons are intact and were not stolen during the uprising that toppled Muammar Gaddafi, weapons inspectors have said.

But also reported that:

The abandonment or disappearance of some Gaddafi-era weapons has prompted concerns that such firepower could erode regional security if it falls into the hands of Islamist militants or rebels active in north Africa. Some fear they could be used by Gaddafi loyalists to spread instability in Libya.

Last month Human Rights Watch urged Libya’s ruling national transitional council to take action over large numbers of heavy weapons, including surface-to-air missiles, it said were lying unguarded more than two months after Gaddafi was overthrown.
On Wednesday the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, said the UN would send experts to Libya to help ensure nuclear material and chemical weapons did not fall into the wrong hands.

And while inspectors claim that Libya’s chemical weapons are in the “government’s” hands and not “extremists’,” it is clear by the Libyan government’s own admission, that they themselves are involved in sending fighters and weapons into Syria.
 

Bottom Line

It cannot be said for certain whether the e-mail allegedly sent by Britam is genuine, but the West is openly subverting Syria through the funding and arming of terrorists from across the Arab World. Terrorists are confirmed to be moving through NATO-member Turkey, with the Turkish government’s explicit assistance. Heavy weapons are both being supplied and paid for by the West, and likewise brought across Syria’s borders through NATO-member Turkey.

Despite this, the momentum of NATO’s armed, proxy-aggression toward Syria has been broken multiple times. Threats of a no-fly zone are waning as NATO’s proxies are neutralized with little left to establish a no-fly zone over. The fear now for NATO and its various partners across the region, from Israel to Erdogan in Turkey, to Qatar and Saudi Arabia, is that there will be nothing left of the so-called “Free Syrian Army” (FSA) to intervene on behalf of.

With time running out and the Syrian people still stalwartly defending their nation, it is possible that the desperate measures described in the alleged e-mail from Britam have been considered – as the rhetorical groundwork to accommodate such measures has already been long-ago laid out by the complicit Western media. The purpose of exposing this alleged e-mail is not necessarily to accuse Britam, but to remind readers to be vigilant. And should “chemical weapons” be used in Syria in an apparent joint Syrian-Russian operation, Britam, the United Kingdom, and Qatar should be the first suspects that come to mind.

‘Syria militants possess chemical weapons’
 

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Abuse in UK’s Iraq occupation was ‘systemic’

Source

The UK government is facing more allegations of vicious abuse in its Iraqi prisons during the occupation. Now, on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the invasion, lawyers want to prove that the abuse was systemic.

Next week, from January 29, not long before the 10th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, UK lawyer Phil Shiner will present 180 statements to a high court in London. They were gathered in Beirut by Shiner and his Public Interest Lawyers team from Iraqis detained by the British army in southern Iraq between 2003 and 2008. The testimony is shocking, both because of its volume (another 871 statements are still to come), and its sickening detail.

One civilian, known only as Khalid, said, “[A British soldier] then grabbed my penis and dragged me around the floor while holding it. He also made me squat up and down whilst naked and inserted his finger into my anus. I would have preferred to have been killed than subjected to this.”

Another prisoner, named Halim, claimed he was told: “Fuck you and fuck Islam!” by a soldier who then “opened the belt of my trousers and said ‘now jiggy jiggy’. The soldier put his boot in my chest and pulled my trousers down … The soldier put his foot on my chest … lifted me in the air and turned me on to my front.”

Mousa was ‘kicked to death’ by British troops in Basra

Not just ‘bad apples’

These are two of the dozens of descriptions, which feature hooding, sleep and sensory deprivation, mock executions, stress positions, threats of rape of detainees’ female relatives, regular beatings, and religious abuse.

Shiner intends to show that the “bad apples” defense usually peddled by governments in such cases will no longer wash. He will argue that the sheer volume of the evidence he has gathered shows that the abuse was “systemic,” and that, under the European Convention on Human Rights, a full inquiry is required.

“We’ve got the training materials, we’ve got the policy documents,” Shiner told the British Observer newspaper. “Violence was endemic to the state practices.”

Kartik Raj, UK-based campaigner for Amnesty International, agreed. “The allegations of abuse, ill-treatment, and death in custody – some of them are not allegations, they’re proven fact – are so credible and so many, that there really does need to be an independent and thorough investigation,” he told DW. “And it is something that should be looked at as a systemic issue in a systematic manner, rather than a series of individual cases where individuals have to take out a civil action against the government.”

Proving systemic abuse

The importance of proving that such cases are not isolated is shown by the injustice that followed the killing of Baha Mousa. Mousa, a 26-year-old hotel receptionist, died after just 36 hours of British custody in Basra in September 2003. A British government inquiry into the death found that he had died after having been hooded for 24 hours and severely beaten. He suffered “at least” 93 injuries, including fractured ribs and a broken nose, and died, the inquiry concluded, of a combination of lack of food and water, heat, exhaustion, fear, previous injuries, and the hooding and stress positions. Andrew Williams, a law professor who wrote the book A Very British Killing on the Baha Mousa case, concluded more simply, “He was kicked to death.”

Mousa’s father gave evidence at the inquiry into his son’s death
 

Seven soldiers were charged for the war crime. Six were acquitted or had their charges dropped, while the seventh, Corporal Donald Payne, was discharged from the army, served a year in prison for “inhumane treatment,” while being cleared of manslaughter and perverting the course of justice. The judge, Justice Ronald McKinnon, stated that “none of those soldiers has been charged with any offence simply because there is no evidence against them as a result of a more or less obvious closing of ranks.” “A collective amnesia set in,” Williams told DW.

Thanks to the sheer number and the repetition in the new statements collected by Shiner, it seems easy to establish that there was a pattern of abuse during the British army occupation of southern Iraq. According to Williams, who also works as a researcher and legal advisor for the Public Interest Lawyers, “Under international criminal law, it’s not completely required that you have to prove beyond any doubt that a particular person was responsible for setting up a program of abuse.” Instead, Shiner will try to “establish that there is clear evidence… that people in authority knew that it was happening, and yet nothing was done to stop it.”

Training interrogators

Some of the interrogation techniques described both in the Baha Mousa inquiry and the new testimonies – including hooding, sensory deprivation, and stressing – were made illegal in Britain in the early 1970s, following a European Court of Human Rights case on the treatment of Irish prisoners.

The abuses alleged against UK forces recall those of Abu Ghraib
 

In light of this, the training materials for British army interrogators, some of which were disclosed in the Baha Mousa inquiry, have become key evidence. But the allusions in those manuals and Powerpoint presentations are vague. “They show that there was a degree of contempt for detainees,” said Williams. “There would be comments such as, ‘Get them naked.’ There are certain indications in these materials that most people would see as abusive in themselves, but they also open the door for soldiers to take the material as a license to invent ways of treating detainees. You need to put together the pieces of a jigsaw.”

The British Ministry of Defense’s answer to all this is that any general questions about abuse were dealt with by the Baha Mousa inquiry, which resulted in 73 recommendations, as well as the ongoing work of its own internal “Iraq Historic Allegations Team.” But this, says Amnesty International’s Raj, is not enough.

“It’s clear that the Baha Mousa recommendations, including the systemic recommendations, are based on a very, very specific time frame,” he said. “I think the new issues have not been sufficiently addressed.”

British troops occupied Basra until 2009

“The inquiry only looked at the particular systems in that particular case,” added Williams. “It couldn’t look at the investigation that took place after Baha Mousa was found dead, nor could it look at any other examples of abuse that had come to light. It couldn’t join the dots.”

‘Culture of contempt’

Once they are joined, argues Williams, these dots create an image of what he calls a “culture of contempt” during the occupation of Iraq – including not only abuse of prisoners of war and civilians, but also unlawful killings on the streets.

If the high court does rule that there will be a public inquiry, it could go beyond making recommendations to actually prescribing responsibility. “From an international criminal law position, the answer to the question ‘how high does it go?’ is that it goes to top of government,” said Williams. “But in terms of direct culpability – that’s impossible to know unless you look at individual cases. As to general governmental responsibility, one has to ask who was in power at the time, who was overseeing the way that troops were operating and the means of interrogation.”

The fact that the British government recognizes that there is a problem seems beyond doubt – in December it was reported that over £14 million (16.7 million euros) had been paid out to over 150 Iraqis in compensation for their treatment at the hands of British soldiers. “Why would they receive compensation, unless there was some legitimacy to their complaints?” asked Williams
 

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Fresh charges: British "Abu Ghraib" hearing next week

 

http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/fresh-charges-british-abu-ghraib-hearing-next-week
 

Screenshot: Video uploaded on 13 July 2009 showing a British soldier screaming abuse at hooded Iraqi detainees has been played at the public inquiry into the death of Baha Mousa. (Video: ITN News)

Published Sunday, January 20, 2013

 

The UK was accused of pursuing a policy of systematic torture over a five-year period and breaking international laws of war during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

There will be a hearing next week to review the fresh charges against Britain at the high court in London, led by civil rights lawyers, as the 10th anniversary of the invasion nears this March.
The Public Interest Lawyers group, founded by Phil Shiner, has conducted face-to-face interviews in Lebanon with Iraqi survivors, and the relatives of those unlawfully killed, that claim to have been tortured and abused by British intelligence officers and soldiers.

In addition to reports of beatings and other forms of violence, witness statements include sexual depravity, insults to Islam, masturbating over a prisoner, female interrogators stripping for information, and sodomy with the finger, according to an article in The Guardian.
Others were deprived of sleep, starved, threatened with execution, and subjected to sensory deprivation.

The video below posted by The Guardian “ shows a prisoner threatened, intimidated, subjected to sensory deprivation and complaining of starvation.”

Even though many died after beatings, they were said to have died of “natural causes,” the article reports.

The public hearing, to take place on January 29 over three days and expected to shed light on a “systematic” abuse by the British army, follows an inquiry into the death of Baha Moussa, an innocent hotel worker killed in Basra in 2003, while in British custody.

In the case put forth by the Shiner and his colleagues, the army doctor in charge at the time of reporting ill-treatment along with ensuring the well-being of other prisoners, was found guilty of misconduct and banned from practicing medicine.

The doctor had only reported a small trace of dried blood under Moussa’s nostril but the civilian, in custody for 36 hours, had been hooded for 24 of those hours and was found to have suffered at least 93 external injuries prior to his death according to a post-mortem examination.
Linked to the case, Cpl Donald Payne was dismissed from the Army and jailed for a year, while seven others admitted to inhumane treatment.

The video below depicts a British soldier yelling abusively at hooded Iraqi hostages and had been shown at the public inquiry into the death of Baha Mousa.

Video showing a British soldier screaming abuse at hooded Iraqi detainees has been played at the public inquiry into the death of Baha Mousa.

The Public Interest Lawyers group has so far collected 180 statements for the end-January inquiry, and it is expected that they will present a total of 1051 at the public hearing.

Interviews were conducted in Lebanon where the “travel formalities are more straightforward.” The witnesses were located and encouraged to cooperate by a “local Iraqi citizen” and then interviewed in Lebanon, where statements were drawn up using “high-quality interpreters” according to a transcript of a public hearing.

Shiner and his colleagues are currently representing 130 former detainees who say that “they or their family members were unlawfully detained, ill-treated, or killed by UK forces” during the war on Iraq.
 

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US UK Genocide Against Iraq

Op-Ed: US-UK Genocide Against Iraq 1990-2012 Killed 3.3 Million-Including 750K Children

By Sherwood Ross
Approximately 3.3 million Iraqis, including 750,000 children, were “exterminated” by economic sanctions and/or illegal wars conducted by the U.S. and Great Britain between 1990 and 2012, an eminent international legal authority says.

The slaughter fits the classic definition of Genocide Convention Article II of, “Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part,” says Francis Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois, Champaign, and who in 1991 filed a class-action complaint with the UN against President George H.W. Bush.

The U.S. and U.K. “obstinately insisted” that their sanctions remain in place until after the “illegal” Gulf War II aggression perpetrated by President George W. Bush and UK’s Tony Blair in March, 2003, “not with a view to easing the over decade-long suffering of the Iraqi people and children” but “to better facilitate the U.S./U.K. unsupervised looting and plundering of the Iraqi economy and oil fields in violation of the international laws of war as well as to the grave detriment of the Iraqi people,” Boyle said.

In an address last Nov. 22 to The International Conference on War-affected Children in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Boyle tallied the death toll on Iraq by U.S.-U.K. actions as follows:

# The slaughter of 200,000 Iraqis by President Bush in his illegal 1991 Gulf War I.
# The deaths of 1.4 million Iraqis as a result of the illegal 2003 war of aggression ordered by President Bush Jr. and Prime Minister Blair.
# The deaths of 1.7 million Iraqis “as a direct result” of the genocidal sanctions.

Boyle’s class-action complaint demanded an end to all economic sanctions against Iraq; criminal proceedings for genocide against President George H.W. Bush; monetary compensation to the children of Iraq and their families for deaths, physical and mental injury; and for shipping massive humanitarian relief supplies to that country.

The “grossly hypocritical” UN refused to terminate the sanctions, Boyle pointed out, even though its own Food and Agricultural Organization’s Report estimated that by 1995 the sanctions had killed 560,000 Iraqi children during the previous five years.

Boyle noted that then U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright was interviewed on CBS-TV on May 12, 1996, in response to a question by Leslie Stahl if the price of half a million dead children was worth it, and replied, “we (the U.S. government) think the price is worth it.”

Albright’s shocking response provides “proof positive of the genocidal intent by the U.S. government against Iraq” under the Genocide Convention, Boyle said, adding that the government of Iraq today could still bring legal action against the U.S. and the U.K. in the International Court of Justice. He said the U.S.-U.K. genocide also violated the municipal legal systems of all civilized nations in the world; the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child; and the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 and its Additional Protocol 1 of 1977.

Boyle, who was stirred to take action pro bono by Mothers in Iraq after the economic sanctions had been imposed upon them by the Security Council in August, 1990, in response to pressure from the Bush Senior Administration. He is the author of numerous books on international affairs, including “Destroying World Order” (Clarity Press.)

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Syrian rebels: ‘We were trained by Jordanian officers & US-UK Intelligence officers!’

Via FLC

“…The training took place as far back as October and involved hundreds of rebels, the participants said. In one case, the rebel participant said men he believed were American intelligence officers observed what was taking place. Another said he believed British officers were helping to organize the training. The training itself was handled by Jordanian military officers, the rebels said.“We hoped there would be more training on larger weapons,” said Kamal al Zoubani, a fighter from the southern Syrian city of Daraa, which often is referred to as the birthplace of the uprising against President Bashar Assad, which began nearly 22 months ago. “But we were allowed to take light weapons back to Syria with us.” 

By November, another rebel said, the training had expanded to anti-tank weapons and Stinger anti-aircraft missiles.

American officials, citing concerns that they didn’t know the political leanings of anti-Assad groups, have said repeatedly that they aren’t providing weapons to the rebels, leaving that to countries such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia…”

Posted by G, M, Z, or B at 10:25 AM

 

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