Russia-gate’s Mythical ‘Heroes’
By Coleen Rowley | Consortium News | June 6, 2017
Mainstream commentators display amnesia when they describe former FBI Directors Robert Mueller and James Comey as stellar and credible law enforcement figures. Perhaps if they included J. Edgar Hoover, such fulsome praise could be put into proper perspective.
Robert Mueller with President George W. Bush
July 5, 2001 – (White House photo)
Although these Hoover successors, now occupying center stage in the investigation of President Trump, have been hailed for their impeccable character by much of Official Washington, the truth is, as top law enforcement officials of the George W. Bush Administration (Mueller as FBI Director and James Comey as Deputy Attorney General), both presided over post-9/11 cover-ups and secret abuses of the Constitution, enabled Bush-Cheney fabrications used to launch wrongful wars, and exhibited plain vanilla incompetence.
TIME Magazine would probably have not called my own disclosures a “bombshell memo” to the Joint Intelligence Committee Inquiry in May 2002 if it had not been for Mueller’s having so misled everyone after 9/11. Although he bore no personal responsibility for intelligence failures before the attack, since he only became FBI Director a week before, Mueller denied or downplayed the significance of warnings that had poured in yet were all ignored or mishandled during the Spring and Summer of 2001.
Bush Administration officials had circled the wagons and refused to publicly own up to what the 9/11 Commission eventually concluded, “that the system had been blinking red.” Failures to read, share or act upon important intelligence, which a FBI agent witness termed “criminal negligence” in later trial testimony, were therefore not fixed in a timely manner. (Some failures were never fixed at all.)
Worse, Bush and Cheney used that post 9/11 period of obfuscation to “roll out” their misbegotten “war on terror,” which only served to exponentially increase worldwide terrorism.
Unfulfilled Promise
I wanted to believe Director Mueller when he expressed some regret in our personal meeting the night before we both testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee. He told me he was seeking improvements and that I should not hesitate to contact him if I ever witnessed a similar situation to what was behind the FBI’s pre 9/11 failures.
A few months later, when it appeared he was acceding to Bush-Cheney’s ginning up intelligence to launch the unjustified, counterproductive and illegal war on Iraq, I took Mueller up on his offer, emailing him my concerns in late February 2003. Mueller knew, for instance, that Vice President Dick Cheney’s claims connecting 9/11 to Iraq were bogus yet he remained quiet. He also never responded to my email.
Beyond ignoring politicized intelligence, Mueller bent to other political pressures. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Mueller directed the “post 9/11 round-up” of about 1,000 immigrants who mostly happened to be in the wrong place (the New York City area) at the wrong time. FBI Headquarters encouraged more and more detentions for what seemed to be essentially P.R. purposes. Field offices were required to report daily the number of detentions in order to supply grist for FBI press releases about FBI “progress” in fighting terrorism. Consequently, some of the detainees were brutalized and jailed for up to a year despite the fact that none turned out to be terrorists.
A History of Failure
Long before he became FBI Director, serious questions existed about Mueller’s role as Acting U.S. Attorney in Boston in effectively enabling decades of corruption and covering up of the FBI’s illicit deals with mobster Whitey Bulger and other “top echelon” informants who committed numerous murders and crimes. When the truth was finally uncovered through intrepid investigative reporting and persistent, honest judges, U.S. taxpayers footed a $100 million court award to the four men framed for murders committed by (the FBI-operated) Bulger gang.
Current media applause omits the fact that former FBI Director Mueller was the top official in charge of the Anthrax terror fiasco investigation into those 2001 murders, which targeted an innocent man (Steven Hatfill) whose lawsuit eventually forced the FBI to pay $5 million in compensation. Mueller’s FBI was also severely criticized by Department of Justice Inspector Generals finding the FBI overstepped the law improperly serving hundreds of thousands of “national security letters” to obtain private (and irrelevant) metadata on citizens, and for infiltrating nonviolent anti-war groups under the guise of investigating “terrorism.”
For his part, Deputy Attorney General James Comey, too, went along with the abuses of Bush and Cheney after 9/11 and signed off on a number of highly illegal programs including warrantless surveillance of Americans and torture of captives. Comey also defended the Bush Administration’s three-year-long detention of an American citizen without charges or right to counsel.
Up to the March 2004 night in Attorney General John Ashcroft’s hospital room, both Comey and Mueller were complicit with implementing a form of martial law, perpetrated via secret Office of Legal Counsel memos mainly written by John Yoo and predicated upon Yoo’s singular theories of absolute “imperial” or “war presidency” powers, and requiring Ashcroft every 90 days to renew certification of a “state of emergency.”
The Comey/Mueller Myth
What’s not well understood is that Comey’s and Mueller’s joint intervention to stop Bush’s men from forcing the sick Attorney General to sign the certification that night was a short-lived moment. A few days later, they all simply went back to the drawing board to draft new legal loopholes to continue the same (unconstitutional) surveillance of Americans.
The mythology of this episode, repeated endlessly throughout the press, is that Comey and Mueller did something significant and lasting in that hospital room. They didn’t. Only the legal rationale for their unconstitutional actions was tweaked.
Mueller was even okay with the CIA conducting torture programs after his own agents warned against participation. Agents were simply instructed not to document such torture, and any “war crimes files” were made to disappear. Not only did “collect it all” surveillance and torture programs continue, but Mueller’s (and then Comey’s) FBI later worked to prosecute NSA and CIA whistleblowers who revealed these illegalities.
Neither Comey nor Mueller — who are reported to be “joined at the hip” — deserve their current lionization among politicians and mainstream media. Instead of Jimmy Stewart-like “G-men” with reputations for principled integrity, the two close confidants and collaborators merely proved themselves, along with former CIA Director George “Slam Dunk” Tenet, reliably politicized sycophants, enmeshing themselves in a series of wrongful abuses of power along with official incompetence.
It seems clear that based on his history and close “partnership” with Comey, called “one of the closest working relationships the top ranks of the Justice Department have ever seen,” Mueller was chosen as Special Counsel not because he has integrity but because he will do what the powerful want him to do.
Mueller didn’t speak the truth about a war he knew to be unjustified. He didn’t speak out against torture. He didn’t speak out against unconstitutional surveillance. And he didn’t tell the truth about 9/11. He is just “their man.”
Coleen Rowley, a retired FBI special agent and division legal counsel whose May 2002 memo to then-FBI Director Robert Mueller exposed some of the FBI’s pre-9/11 failures, was named one of TIME magazine’s “Persons of the Year” in 2002. Her 2003 letter to Robert Mueller in opposition to launching the Iraq War is archived in full text on the NYT and her 2013 op-ed entitled “Questions for the FBI Nominee” was published on the day of James Comey’s confirmation hearing. This piece will also be cross-posted on Rowley’s Huffington Post page.)
Relevant links:
http://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20020603,00.html
http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/report/911Report_Ch8.pdf
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/05/politics/full-text-of-fbi-agents-letter-to-director-mueller.html
https://oig.justice.gov/special/0306/full.pdf
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/18/us/immigrants-suit-over-detention-after-9-11-is-revived.html
http://www.ocregister.com/2017/05/21/comey-mueller-bungled-big-anthrax-case-together/
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/government_programs-jan-june07-patriotact_03-09/
http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/DOJ/story?id=4444329
https://www.aclu.org/news/fbi-counterterrorism-unit-spies-peaceful-faith-based-protest-group
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/09/opinion/questions-for-the-fbi-nominee.html
http://www.newsweek.com/ali-soufan-breaks-his-silence-77243
Who’s funding Britain’s terrorists? ‘Sensitive’ Home Office report may never be published
RT | May 31, 2017
An investigation commissioned by former Prime Minister David Cameron into the revenue streams behind jihadist groups operating in Britain may never be published, the Home Office has admitted.
The inquiry is thought to focus on British ally Saudi Arabia, which has repeatedly been highlighted by European leaders as a funding source for Islamist extremists, and may prove politically and legally sensitive, the Guardian reports.
The UK has close ties with Saudi Arabia. Prime Minister Theresa May visited the country earlier this year.
In January 2016, a specialist Home Office unit was directed by Downing Street to investigate sources of overseas funding of extremist groups in the UK. The findings were to be shown to Cameron’s then-Home Secretary May.
Eighteen months later, however, the Home Office told the Guardian the report had not been completed and would not necessarily be published, calling the contents “very sensitive.”
A decision on the future of the investigation would be taken “after the election by the next government,” a spokesperson said.
Cameron was urged to launch an investigation in December 2015 as part of a deal with the Liberal Democrats in exchange for the party supporting the extension of British airstrikes against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) from Iraq into Syria.
According to the Guardian, Tom Brake, the Lib Dem foreign affairs spokesperson, has written to the prime minister asking her to confirm that the investigation will not be shelved.
“As home secretary at the time, your department was one of those reading the report. Eighteen months later, and following two horrific terrorist attacks by British-born citizens, that report still remains incomplete and unpublished,” Brake wrote.
“It is no secret that Saudi Arabia in particular provides funding to hundreds of mosques in the UK, espousing a very hard line Wahhabist interpretation of Islam. It is often in these institutions that British extremism takes root.”
Lib Dem leader Tim Farron said he felt the government had not held up its side of the bargain.
The report must be published when it is completed, he said, even if its contents are sensitive.
“That short-sighted approach needs to change. It is critical that these extreme, hardline views are confronted head on, and that those who fund them are called out publicly.
“If the Conservatives are serious about stopping terrorism on our shores, they must stop stalling and reopen investigation into foreign funding of violent extremism in the UK.”
Left Forum caves to pressure: bans panels amid claims speakers are Holocaust deniers, anti-Semites
By Craig McKee | Truth and Shadows | May 28, 2017
Ironically, this year’s Left Forum is called “The Resistance.” But it seems that what America’s largest leftist conference is resistant to is free speech. And integrity.
This article was going to be about three “Deep State” panels, focusing in particular on 9/11 and false flag terrorism, being banned earlier this month because of just two letters of “complaint” that targeted individual speakers with ad hominem attacks, alleging the speakers to be “anti-Semitic,” “Holocaust deniers,” and (the real kiss of death) “conspiracy theorists.”
But just as I was about to post the article, and just four days before the event is to start (it runs June 2-4 at John Jay College in New York City), the Left Forum informed these same organizers that a fourth of their panels, ironically the one on the topic of “thought crimes,” has also been given the boot based on a threat by an unidentified German organization to pull out of the conference if Professor Anthony Hall of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada is allowed to speak. (Hall was the subject of a previous post on Truth and Shadows here, which also addresses other examples of Zionist attacks on academic freedom and free speech.)
Others who are scheduled to be part of the panel include Joy Karega, an assistant professor of rhetoric and composition who was fired from Oberlin College in Ohio for posts she made on Facebook charging that Israel and Zionists were behind 9/11 and the Charlie Hebdo event; and activist Jeremy Rothe-Kushel, who was arrested at an event in Kansas City after attempting to ask a second question to author and diplomat Dennis Ross about the use of state-sponsored terrorism by the U.S. and Israel.
The organizers of the four banned panels, and a fifth that was accepted by the Forum, have decided to create their own event, appropriately called the “Left Out Forum” that will allow them to go ahead with their panels on Sunday, June 4 at an as yet undisclosed location (organizers are afraid that pressure will be brought to bear on the owners of the alternative venue to cancel that event if the location is released too early). To find out where the venue is in New York, check http://noliesradio.org/archives/130703 on June 2. These panels will be live streamed by No Lies Radio.
The Left Forum is offering the wrong kind of “resistance”
Left Forum co-director Marcus Graetsch informed the organizers of the banned panels that the German organization is accusing Hall of being a Holocaust denier. (These organizers have asked that their names not be included in this article to avoid the harassment by Zionist “activists” that others have been subjected to.) Hall, who is currently fighting his suspension by the University of Lethbridge, is not a Holocaust denier. He believes, quite correctly, that any historical subject should be open for discussion and debate.
Graetsch wrote: “a big german [sic] organization Left Forum has worked together with many years said they will withdraw panels etc. when Anthony Hall speaks at Left Forum, he is a Holocaust denier. The board and the staff of Left Forum will act now and cancel the panel ‘Political Correctness: The Dangers of Thought Crime Police’”
The other co-director, Ashley Abbott, followed this email with one of her own:
“And to elaborate, hundreds of people contacted us. This prompted us to do further research and upon doing so, we (the board and staff) agree that a panel featuring Anthony Hall should not occur at Left Forum.”
It took just two letters to get three panels banned initially, but the fourth resulted from “hundreds” of complaints about Hall. Of course we only have their word for this. I find it virtually impossible to believe that “hundreds” of complaints could be received unless all were co-ordinated by the same organization. Interestingly, it is the panel that has been banned, not the speaker. So, organizers don’t even have the option of bringing in a different speaker.
Both Graetsch and Abbott did not respond to interview requests. Neither did five members of the Left Forum board of directors who I contacted by email.
Here are the four panels being censored:
- “9/11 Truth: Ground Zero for a Resistance Movement,” with speakers Kevin Barrett, Richard Gage, and Barbara Honegger. Moderated by Dr. Lucy Morgan Edwards.
- “Terrorism”: Fake Enemies, Fraudulent Wars,” with speakers Michael Springmann, Anthony Hall, and Patrick Henningsen. Moderated by Tom Kiely.
- “False Flags: Staged, Scripted, Mass Psy-Op Events,” with speakers Kevin Barrett, Dave Lindorff, and Ole Dammegard. Moderated by Dr. Lucy Morgan Edwards.
- “Political Correctness: The Dangers of Thought Crime Police,” with speakers Anthony Hall, Joy Karega, and Jeremy Rothe-Kushel. Moderated by Cheryl Curtiss.
This is the only one of the five panels that has been approved:
- “Co-Opting the Left: Infiltration by the Corporate State to Neutralize Resistance,” with speakers Kevin Zeese and Glen Ford. Moderated by Cheryl Curtiss. (June 4 from 12-1:50 p.m. in room 1.91)
The issue arose initially when someone named Stewart Sunshine wrote to the Left Forum on April 3, claiming to be writing “on behalf of a group of New York activists,” although he provided no names other than his own. In his letter he leveled accusations that speakers involved in some of the panels are anti-Semites. He provided a list of profiles of individuals who he objected to in the 2016 conference, although just one was actually among the speakers that had been invited to participate in any of the five panels this year. Sunshine wrote:
“I am writing to you, on behalf of a group of NYC activists, to express our objection to a number of antisemitic conspiracy theorists and Holocaust deniers who appeared on the ‘Deep State track’ last year. The most well-known of these speakers, Kevin Barrett, bragged on the Far Right website Veterans Today that they had tricked the Left Forum into hosting their speakers…”
Barrett, who hosts the weekly podcast False Flag Weekly News with Anthony Hall, actually called Sunshine to confront him about his accusations, and you can listen to that very entertaining call here. You can also read Barrett’s detailed refutation of Sunshine’s accusations here.
One of the panel organizers responded to the Sunshine letter, writing this:
“Sunshine and his anonymous group target an ever-expanding kitchen sink of activists who challenge their orthodox dogma. Their most radioactive tactic is to smear dissenters with unfair and unaccountable hateful epithets such as ‘neo-Nazi,’ ‘anti-Semite,’ ‘Jew hater’ — gross inflammatory trigger words.”
A second letter of complaint to the Left Forum followed on April 11 from Kai Kieferle of Calgary, Alberta, who wrote this: “I am writing to suggest Kevin Barrett, Anthony Hall, and others of their ilk should not be allowed to participate in the ‘Left Forum’ this year. Hall and Barrett are well understood to be conspiracy theorists relying on deeply anti-Semitic material. Their intellectual credibility is suspect given their nonsensical writings about 9/11, what they call the ‘Zio-American Empire’, and many other topics where they consistently find Jewish people to be responsible for it all.”
Barrett responded in writing to the Left Forum after having the letters forwarded to him: “Kai Kieferle has been stalking and harassing me for years using many false names. He has repeatedly refused to stop contacting me despite my repeated requests. He made a brief, creepy, aggressive, threatening appearance at my talk in Calgary in summer 2015 — spent a few minutes unsuccessfully trying to intimidate me, identifying himself as “Count One,” then fled. I didn’t learn his real name until much later.”
Regrettably, none of this is new for people like Barrett and Hall. In recent years, we have seen many examples of universities—where freedom of speech and critical thinking are supposed to be in great supply — being successfully pressured by Zionists and ardent supporters of Israel. So, we should not be surprised that this conference of “progressive” thinkers would be just as timid and weak-willed that it would ban and censor academics and intellectuals based on intimidation and baseless attacks.
It confirms for us once again that you might get away with discussing 9/11 and false flag operations at a conference like the Left Forum, but if you dare to criticize Zionism and the State of Israel in the process, you’ll find yourself on the outside looking in.
Manchester Bombing: The Libyan Connection
By David Macilwain | American Herald Tribune | May 28, 2017
Following the Manchester suicide bombing, one wonders just what is necessary before Western media commentators and journalists join the dots – to make a true picture of the terrorist monster unleashed on the world by their own governments.
It is a question many people were asking only a day earlier, as those media blandly reported the demented ravings of the US, Saudi and Israeli leaders about the global terrorist threat posed by Iran. Surely there must have been some misunderstanding! Even though some commentators noticed a few of the Emperor’s clothes were missing, or a little inappropriate (black-flag underwear?) none challenged the ludicrous ideas that Iran was a global sponsor of terrorism, and “still” sought to develop nuclear weapons.
For Iranians however, and their friends and allies, events of the last weeks have stripped bare both the “Emperor” and his terrorist partners, and revealed the depths of deceit in the West’s fight against the “Islamic State”. The Libyan link in this chain of covert war – the LIFG connections of the Manchester bomber – has finally and unexpectedly rounded out the picture.
Silence over the collapsed Libyan state is just another of the Western media’s failings, though silence might be preferable to further repetition of the old lies about a “Revolution against the dictator Qadhafi”, followed by tribal warfare, and now compounded by the supposed presence of “Islamic State”. What has actually been happening in Libya, both since 2011 and dating back to the ‘90s has been cleverly or unwittingly concealed from Western audiences by their media and leaders in what looks like a complex game of diversions and distractions, white lies and black lies.
As revealed recently by Tony Cartalucci, and further dissected by Thierry Meyssan, the network of alliances and collaboration between Libyan Salafist groups and US and UK intelligence services has played a central role in NATO’s campaign against the “resistance” states, including Libya, Syria, Iran and Shia Lebanon. The failure of Western commentators and analysts to notice this “conspiracy” and consequently adjust their viewpoint has enabled grossly criminal behaviour to continue without public opposition. The exposing of the “Libyan connection” – by US intelligence agencies – threatens to change this, and the extreme reaction from the UK to the US leaking of the Manchester bomber’s identity – cutting communications between their intelligence services for 24 hours – indicates just who is threatened by it.
It was former MI5 agent David Shayler and his partner Annie Machon who first made public the co-operation between MI6 and anti-Qadhafi Salafists in Libya in the 1990s. MI6 helped in the formation of the “Libyan Islamic Fighting Group” from Afghanistan mujahideen/Al Qaeda veterans, with the express aim of assassinating the Libyan leader. Following the plot’s failure, and changing attitudes to Qadhafi in the UK, marked later by Tony Blair’s much publicised rapprochement with him, the tables were turned on several key leaders. Most notable, and now notorious, was Abdulhakim Belhaj, who was delivered back to Tripoli by the CIA/MI6 and imprisoned for six years.
During this period, up until the “Arab Spring”, other members of the LIFG who were resettled in the UK around 1998 – in the Manchester suburb where they were rediscovered last week – became rather persona non grata and some were placed on control orders as the LIFG was classified as a terrorist group.
However… a big however – when US, UK and French leaders decided in 2011 that they could no longer live with Moammar Qadhafi – who now supported his traditional secular Arab Nationalist allies in Syria – the UK leaders again found a use for their Libyan friends in Manchester, as leaders of the ‘Revolutionary forces’ against the Libyan government.
But of course it didn’t end there – in Libya – and hasn’t ended yet, either in Libya or in Syria, which is where many Libyan militants soon went.
The story of the ‘rat line’, from Eastern Libya to Turkey and onto Syria, was first prominently exposed by Seymour Hersh in early 2014, but observers in Turkey had noticed the presence of many Libyans in Turkey back in 2012, as they waited to join the violent insurgency against the Assad government in Syria. Amongst these fighters – or terrorists if you prefer – was Belhaj, who the CIA found was someone they could work with in their operation to “smuggle” militant jihadists and weapons from Libya to Syria. The US “consulate” in Benghazi seems to have been the centre of operations for the rat line, and disputes between different terrorist groups including the LIFG, and the CIA were likely the cause of the well-publicised attack and killing of the US ambassador Christopher Stevens.
Abdulhakim Belhaj meanwhile had returned to Libya, and somehow became the head of military forces in the Libyan transitional government. Rather contradictorily he had also launched legal action against the UK government for their years of action against him, including rendition and alleged torture by Libyan Intelligence on behalf of MI5. Compounding the picture of this terrorist-in-a-tie were claims last year that Belhaj was now the leader of Islamic State in Libya…
Before getting to the crucial questions on the identity of the Manchester bomber and his relatives, there is one other little thing to mention – Clinton’s emails. As is the habit with Western mainstream media, their focus has been almost entirely on aspects of this story which are relatively unimportant – such as Clinton’s use of a private server, and a witch-hunt over how the emails were leaked. It is of course the content of those emails that is the real story, and what they tell us about Clinton’s direct role in supporting the terrorist groups in Syria. Along with David Petraeus, who just happened to be in Tripoli when the Benghazi consulate was attacked, Clinton could hardly have been ignorant of the whole rat-line operation, even as her President Obama publicly debated whether to arm the “moderate opposition” in Syria.
But then Belhaj and his Libyan terrorist mates were not exactly moderate. Once Al Qaeda and now “Islamic State”.
It is against this background that we discover some shocking truths about the Manchester bomber, Salman Abedi – this young man who “appears to have become radicalised in Syria”.
In 2011, when MI5 facilitated the passage to Libya of LIFG members from Manchester, Salman’s father Ramadan Abedi evidently took his sons back to Tripoli to join the armed insurgents and learn how to kill people. Ramadan already had experience doing this in the ‘90s alongside Belhaj, as despite failing to kill Qadhafi there were many other innocent victims of the MI6 enabled LIFG “contras”.
In the six years since, Salman Abedi evidently went to fight in Syria, with Al Qaeda or “IS”. Perhaps he even went there with the CIA’s “rats”. So it could be said that joining the dots on the Manchester bombing gives us quite a good picture of a Western mercenary rat, whether it’s a white rat or a black rat…
Alleged suicide bomber’s father arrested as he expresses doubts over son’s involvement
Ramadan Abedi
OffGuardian | May 28, 2017
According to various outlets including an article in Reuters, Ramadan Abedi the father of Salman Abedi, expressed astonishment his son could be responsible for the alleged bomb attack in Manchester on May 21. And while he was voicing his doubts to a reporter, western-backed Libyan security forces arrived to take him away.
Many mainstream sources have claimed Ramadan Abedi was a member of an anti-Gaddafi terrorist group. Alternative analysis site Voltaire.net goes further and suggests a link between Ramadan and MI6 operations in Libya.
Given that anti-Gaddafi Libyans have long been nurtured by the UK and other western nations, even if we don’t accept direct connections with the UK security apparatus, this seems an odd background for a putative suicide bomber, as even the Guardian noted. And indeed Ramadan Abedi, currently living in Libya, but having been resident in the UK for many years, expressed considerable surprise and consternation that his son would have committed such an act. He denied the suggestion Salman was a member of ISIS, and is quoted by Reuters as saying:
Salman doesn’t belong to any organization… The family is a bit confused because Salman doesn’t have this ideology, he doesn’t hold these beliefs…. I didn’t expect that to happen, never…”
Ramamdan also allegedly added the claim that there were “hidden hands” behind the attack.
In a truly bizarre development members of the Libyan Rada arrived while this interview was being conducted and escorted Ramadan away, for reasons that were not specified.
Earlier Salman’s brother, Hashem, was also detained by Rada “on suspicion of links to Islamic State.”
The speedy arrests leave open the question – is this a legitimate round up of terror suspects, or, as some have suggested, a means of silencing those who might reveal too much about the Abedi family’s connections with western security agencies?
“Is free-speech really worth all this hassle?” – Gaby Hinsliff
By Kit | OffGuardian | May 26, 2017
I’ve never written a response to a Gaby Hinsliff column before. I’ve never felt the need. In much the same way that I’ve never written an online review of sliced bread or an essay about cardboard. It’s… there, I suppose, and it does a job, but it’s hardly worth getting excited about.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. – Mahatma Gandhi
The Manchester bombing was “let happen” by MI5 because of the Conservative party’s disastrous dip in the polls. That was the theory tweeted by Rufus Hound, a comedian. As theories go, and it is still just a theory at this early stage, it’s not at all outlandish. History is full of precedents of power structures making people believe they are under threat in order to secure their position. As Hound succinctly put it, #Reichstagfire.
The bombing, whether real or staged or allowed to happen or planned by MI5, will allow May to talk about strength and stability some more, allow the Tory’s to attack Corbyn on the grounds of being “soft on terrorism”, and distract everyone from the conservative plans to sell everything in the country that isn’t nailed down, arrest anyone that isn’t a member of a golf club, and levy hefty taxes on bedsits, old-age and despair.
If you find yourself reading this and thinking, “Well, I guess that’s possible,” I have some bad news for you: You are a dangerous, delusional moron.
At least, according to Gaby Hinsliff.
Mr Hound posited a theory, one with which Ms Hinsliff disagrees. In a rational world what would follow is a balanced exchange of ideas. Rhetoric, debate, discourse. These are the tools that make a society great, right?
Instead we get roughly 2000 words of insults, innuendo and fallacy. Her defence of Theresa May’s morality is a wondrous example of double-think:
This isn’t just silliness crowned with ill-judged Nazi references. It’s using a public platform to baselessly suggest that loved ones could be alive today had the Tories not been desperate to win an election. Before eventually apologising and deleting the exchange, Hound explained that “I struggle believing our establishment is incapable of great evil” – as if one comedian’s struggle with his own addled beliefs was reason enough to allege complicity in mass murder.
Clearly facts are too burdensome to carry when storming uphill to capture moral high ground, because Hinsliff seems to forget: May’s “complicity” in mass murder does not need to be “alleged”. It is an historical fact.
As an MP, May supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq.The final count on the number of dead Iraqi children as a result of that war is still unclear, however most reasonable estimates put it somewhere north of 22. Likewise Libyan children. And Afghan children. And Syrian children. In fact, Theresa May has actually never once voted AGAINST military intervention of any kind.
Theresa May is absolutely FINE with blowing up children, and has never given us any reason think she sees our children as more precious than their children. That Hinsliff can so easily, comfortably, make that distinction says more about her own mind than anything else.
Even if you buy into the (vaguely racist) assumed distinction between children born in Baghdad and children born in Manchester, any defence of May’s morality – or the morality of the conservative party as a whole – begins and ends with their domestic policies. People have died after being deemed “fit for work”. Old, sick, disabled, injured people are denied care and security, while £350 billion pounds is spent on a machine for setting the world on fire.
Any argument based on the assumed morality of power structures is illogical, an example of what they call the Divine Fallacy or the argument to incredulity. An argument based on the morality of this Tory government? That is nothing short of absurd.
Her vaguely directed bile would carry more weight (maybe) if she could at least demonstrate she had even the slightest idea what she was talking about:
Social media is littered with amateur “truthers” who once watched a YouTube video about Noam Chomsky’s theory of false flags, and now see conspiracies lurking under every bed.
I’m not sure what a “professional” truther would be, aren’t all people naturally inclined to want to know the truth? That said, even the most cursory of google searches would have taught her that Noam Chomsky’s “theory of false flags” is that “they don’t really happen and even if they do who cares”.
I realise that, as a journalist, Ms Hinsliff is imbued with a natural contempt for the truth, and I understand that writing a column without researching your ideas is much, much easier, but it’s hardly right she should flaunt it. At least a passing veneer of competence would make the Guardian’s (increasingly desperate) pleas for money so much more effective.
Bizarrely, she is so incredibly bad at making her argument, she accidentally makes the opposite case:
It’s not unreasonable to think an election fought in the shadow of a terrorist threat could help the traditional party of law and order, and the state did collude with paramilitaries in Northern Ireland; besides, the government’s emergency Cobra committee meets in secret, so can anyone outside the room really know what happened?
This paragraph is just delightfully odd, it seems to be heading towards a “BUT” that never arrives. Hinsliff lays out all the (perfectly reasonable) logic behind suspecting government involvement, and then just leaves an ellipsis on the end, hoping we can come to the “right” conclusions all on our own.
The equivalent of a defense attorney, at a murder trial, beginning his final statement to the jury with:
“Yes, obviously, my client had every reason in the world to want the victim dead, and yes, he has undeniably killed people before. And, true, he can’t account for his whereabouts on the night in question.”
… and then just sitting down without another word.
Apparently, when Hinsliff writes about “reversing the burden of proof”, she means she’s going to start proving herself wrong and saving everybody else the trouble. Very considerate of her.
“But where is all this going?”, you might ask. What, indeed, is her point?
Like mushrooms, conspiracy theories grow in the dark. But mushrooms also need manure, which is where social media comes in.
There it is. Beneath all the rambling about Diana, and the Moon Landings, and Noah Pozner, what we have here is yet another attack on the internet, and the ability of people who lack the “journalistic and regulatory processes” of the mainstream media to say things with which Ms Hinsliff (and her colleagues) are paid to disagree.
The internet’s magical power – that by expanding social circles to millions worldwide it allows the like-minded to find each other, however esoteric their interests – is also its sickness. There is no belief so repellent that it cannot find an echo somewhere online, and feel normalised…. Paedophiles are emboldened to learn just how many others secretly fantasise about sex with children, leading one another on to ever more violent obscenities.
This not-so-subtle concomitance of paedohilia and anti-establishment political ideals aside, this is at last an honest expression of a justly held fear. The internet is a threat – as an open network of person-to-person communication, it really sticks in the media’s collective craw. As such, it is blamed and bad mouthed at every corner.
That’s not to say that Rufus Hound was right or wrong. I’m not writing in defence of conspiracy theories per se. Maybe every conspiracy theory is wrong. Maybe Oswald was guilty as hell and physics stopped working on 9/11. Or maybe John Lennon is still alive and Stanley Kubrick directed the moon landings. It’s immaterial. This goes beyond that. This is about free speech, and the right to be wrong.
Unless we stand up for each other’s right to hold, and express opinions – even wrong opinions – then no opinions will ever be safe. Because when they clamp-down on the internet, it won’t be truth that decides what stays and what goes, but political convenience, and unless we defend all of it, none of it is safe.
In the past few months the internet’s lack of regulation has been blamed for Clinton’s loss of the election, for Russia’s “spreading influence” and for the proliferation of “fake news”.
In the past week alone, the Guardian has been running articles on Facebook’s lack of moderation. How they promote child abuse, misogyny and holocaust denial. Already Theresa May has called on tech companies to “do more” to combat online extremism.
They blame it for paedophilia, terrorism, sexism, racism. Drugs are dealt, threats are issued, abuse hurled. The internet is a playground, as David Thorne said, but apparently it’s one of those rusty, graffiti-ridden playgrounds where nice kids shouldn’t go. Tear it down. Pave it over.
Cure society’s ills by making it smaller, more isolated and much, much easier to control.
Maybe I’m just getting middle-aged. But there are weeks when [arguing with conspiracy theorists] seems an inordinately high price to pay for a convenient means of swapping gossip and cat videos.
Isn’t free speech difficult? Isn’t it all just so much hassle? Wouldn’t it be SO much easier if we could just stomp it all out? Yes, obviously, fewer cat videos would be a shame, but think of the benefits – a nice safe world, full of nice safe pre-approved thoughts. That sounds nice, doesn’t it?
This sentence does more than give us a fleeting glimpse at the author’s complete lack of imagination, it shows… again… where the establishment’s crosshairs are trained. And it’s on us. At OffGuardian and the hundreds of sites like us. At the minor celebrities tweeting reasonable (but forbidden) thoughts to groups of followers “more than double the circulation of a national broadsheet newspaper”. We’re all talking to each to other now, bypassing the established and approved lines of communication.
And it’s causing no end of trouble.
They lie, they distort, they misinform … you and I are expendable
By Dave Alpert | Intrepid Report | May 26, 2017
Let me state this once again: beware, we are being used, abused, and lied to.
Monday, there was an explosion at a concert in Manchester, England, where reports indicate that it was a suicide bombing and 22 people have died.
As we have come to expect, within hours, before any investigation or evidence, officials labeled this a terrorist attack. And, as often happens, ISIS took responsibility.
Does this mean that Britain will escalate its military involvement in Syria as a response to this bombing? I’m willing to bet on it.
The timing of this attack is interesting. British Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservatives are running for re-election on June 8 and their lead is shrinking. Will this event re-energize the Tories’ campaign? I would be surprised if it didn’t.
As things stand now, Parliament is not in session and, therefore, there is no one to hold the government in check. This will allow May the opportunity, although there is not great popular support, to increase Britain’s military involvement in Syria.
I don’t know how you feel about coincidences, but I see them as rare phenomena. Usually, events occur with some intent.
Luciana Bohne, a Facebook friend, posted the following coincidences on Facebook:
- 11 March 2004: terrorist attack in Madrid; three days before election by an electorate opposed to invasion of Iraq (2003) on pretext of war on terror
- 13 July 2007 Terrorist attack in London; strengthens Tony Blair’s alliance with US’s “war on Terror.” Blair refuses investigation into incident,.
- 15 November 2015: Terrorist attack in Paris; Hollande bombs Syria and declares state of siege (or similar assault on constitutional government).
- 22 May 2017: terrorist attack in Manchester in full gear election season.
Of course, we cannot leave out the “Mother of all Coincidences,” the 9/11 attack on the US. This attack opened the door for the US to justify militarizing the Middle East with its troops and armaments, overthrowing “regimes” that were not friendly to the US agenda of world domination and replacing them with “friendly, more democratic governments.”
Gaining popular support for military intervention in Iraq and other Middle East countries was the topic of discussion and a high priority from the very first meeting of the George W. Bush cabinet as reported by Bush’s Treasury Secretary, Paul O’Neill.
Can we shrug off the 9/11 attack as merely another coincidence and a fortunate occurrence for the Bush administration? They needed an event, similar to Pearl Harbor, to gather popular support to send troops into the Middle East and they got it. Coincidence?
The 9/11 attack not only effected US foreign policies, it created an atmosphere for the popular acceptance of the government’s trespassing on our basic civil and human rights. Such constitutional rights as due process, habeas corpus, privacy, the right to dissent and protest were taken from us.
Corporations were empowered to exploit and steal and use their money and wealth to control elections. Elections have been rendered meaningless and are nothing more than political theater allowing the populace to feel they have a stake in how this country is run. The reality is, for a candidate to actually rise to the point where he/she is an acceptable candidate, he/she must be endorsed and financially supported by the corporations . . . the Goldman Sachs and other banksters, the pharmaceuticals, the health insurance people, the war and weapons industries, etc. In other words, they must sell their collective souls.
Is it no wonder that we are vulnerable and left to the mercy of these predatory corporations who are allowed to operate in a predatory capitalist system? Is it a surprise that students who graduate from colleges are left with the burden of enormous debt . . . a debt that must be repaid in full regardless of circumstance or misfortune? Is it a surprise that Barack Obama was an ardent supporter of the Trans-Pacific Pact (TPP) an agreement that would have destroyed thousands of jobs here in the US and rendered tens of thousands of US workers unemployed?
Is it a coincidence that the mainstream press, which is corporate owned, is nothing more than an echo chamber for big business and US imperialism?
Is it merely coincidence that the government, “our” representatives, agree to abolish social service programs while giving tax breaks to the wealthy, while militarizing police departments, and adding $10 billion to the US military budget as well as agreeing to contribute to Israel’s military budget by offering them $35 billion over the next 10 years?
But, it doesn’t end there. We once had the right to privacy and the protection against unreasonable search and seizure. What do we live with today? We are all subjected to government surveillance of our mail, phone calls, texts, and personal records. This is all justified as necessary to keep us safe. Safe from whom? The police departments are supposed to keep us safe and they have been killing hundreds of unarmed, mostly African-American, US citizens every year.
But, it doesn’t end there. Using the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the executive branch of “our” government has empowered itself to assassinate U.S. citizens. The government has also empowered itself to call the Army into the streets of this country to control civil unrest. Since 1878, this has been illegal. The executive branch can order the military to seize U.S. citizens deemed to be terrorists or associated with terrorists. Those taken into custody by the military can be denied due process and habeas corpus and held indefinitely in military facilities. Activists and dissidents, whose rights were once protected under the First Amendment, can be threatened under this law with indefinite incarceration.
So, when we talk about 9/11 or any other meaningful and impactful event, we must ask two basic questions . . . why now? and who benefits from this event?
We must never accept, at face value, the official narrative! We must always examine the outcome of these events in order to put into perspective what happened and why it happened.
ISIS Terrorist Attack in Manchester? 17 Days Before Crucial UK Elections
By Peter Koenig | Global Research | May 24, 2017
British elections are planned for 8 June 2017.
At the end of a pop concert by US singer Ariana Grande in Manchester, an enormous ‘controlled’ explosion killed at least 22 people and injured 59, as reported by British media. Many of them are children and adolescents, as most of the concert-goers were young people.
The singer is unharmed. The concert hall accommodates 21,000 people. After the blast, panic broke loose, resulting in a mass stampede. It is not clear whether people were also killed in the stampede.
Hours after the explosion, although BBC reported it was not evident what exactly happened, UK police and authorities talked immediately of an act of terror.
Early Tuesday morning, 23 May, British authorities said that the Islamic State (IS) claimed responsibility for the explosion. The Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police, Ian Hopkins, stated investigators believe the attack was carried out by a lone suicide bomber “carrying” a homemade device. He was killed by the blast.
The IS-Propaganda agency Amak apparently issued the claim of IS’s responsibility for the deadly blast. Did an independent authority check whether this is indeed true?
The attacker, is now named by US officials (why US officials?) as Salman Abedi, 22, a British citizen, born in the UK. He is told having detonated the improvised explosive device.
Another 23-year-old suspect was apprehended in the south of Manchester. But so far, the Chief Police Officer refused to talk to the media about suspects.
Prime Minister, Theresa May raised the threat warning to the highest level, from ‘severe’ to ‘critical’, saying other attacks may follow. This is the highest security level in the UK. She also urged police to investigate whether the attacker was alone or may have acted as a member of a wider terror group.
The attack is the worst in the UK since 56 people were killed in the 7 July London bombings in 2005.
Both, Theresa May and her election opponent, Labor Leader Jeremy Corbyn expressed their deep sorrow to the victims’ families. All campaign activities for the 8 June elections have been suspended.
Mr. Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, proclaiming on what the raised threat level means for the city, said,
“there will be additional police officers on London’s streets over the coming days – including additional armed officers. You will also see some military personnel around London – they are there to help our police service to keep us safe and guard key sites.”
The head of Counter Terrorism at the Metropolitan Police, Mr. Mark Rowley, informed that
“there has been an arrest and there are currently multiple searches and other activity taking place as I speak. However, at this stage it is still not possible to be certain if there was a wider group involved in the attack; 24 hours in we have a number of investigative leads that we are pursuing to manage the ongoing threat.”
All of this points to a rapid militarization of the UK, akin to France. What EU country will be next?
Was it The ISIS, Who is Behind the ISIS?
Why would the Islamic State kill children in England, when they know exactly that this provokes further NATO – EU – US military aggression against them?
And why in England, just before elections?
Do they not know that they incite election results unfavorable to them, unfavorable to Muslim society, electing the candidate that promises even more discrimination against Muslims? A candidate even less eager to find a peaceful solution in the Middle East?
Of course, they know.
Known and documented ISIS- Daesh, Al-Qaeda and most other terror groups fighting in the Middle East proxy-wars for the West, are constructs of US intelligence. ISIS is financed by America’s staunched Middle East ally Saudi Arabia. This relationship has to be addressed. Who are the State sponsors of terrorism.
We, The People, should wake up to this reality.
Are these terror attacks being used to dupe the public into accepting more “protection”, like a gradual but ever accelerating militarization of the West. Even the installation of Martial Law is not far-fetched. Former French President Hollande tried to introduce it in France’s Constitution in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo terror attack; so far unsuccessfully.
This gives the Deep State-installed EU government, i.e. Brussels, the legitimacy to clamp down and if needed violently repress protests in European cities, as they may arise with increasing neoliberal financial domination of western economies, imposed austerities, privatization of public services, educations systems, health care – cuts in pensions, in brief, the imposition of a repressive economic system. We are almost there, just look at Greece.
As always, the question to ask is Cui Bono?
At first sight it looks like the tragic Manchester act of terror could benefit Theresa May and her conservative Tories. They propagate clamping down on terrorism, on immigration to keep ‘terrorists’ out. Snap-elections decided without much warning by PM Theresa May, are scheduled for 8 June, just 17 days away from the attack, but enough time to launch massive pro-conservative and anti-Labor propaganda.
Interestingly, Jeremy Corbyn has been making rapid gains lately in the polls. The supposed ‘terror’ attack, may set his gains back and advance the “pro-security” Tory leader, Theresa May. As if Jeremy Corbyn and Labor were against ‘security’ – This is the implied falsehood of the presstitutes – foreseeable, like in The Theft of an Election Foretold.
Interestingly too, the recent French elections were also preceded by a terror attack. Just days ahead of the first round of elections, a gunman opened fire on a police car on Champs Élysées, killing one policeman and injuring two, the gunman was immediately killed by French police; the chief witness gone. End of story.
See Also:
Germany and NATO: Towards Martial Law, Preparing for a “Fascist Repression” in Europe?
French Election Fraud? Will Macron be Able to Form a Government?
Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a former World Bank staff and worked extensively around the world in the fields of environment and water resources. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe.
Copyright © Peter Koenig, Global Research, 2017
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