It’s interesting that the Third Man at the centre of a growing scandal involving a plot to attack Iran and the man who appointed him to be Britain’s first Jewish ambassador to Israel share a somewhat similar background. In a profile of Matthew Gould entitled “New envoy’s a passionate horse-loving Zionist,” the Jewish Telegraph quotes the ambassador:
“My dad’s parents came from Poland in the 1910s and 1920s and met in Birmingham. My grandfather actually took part in the Battle of Cable Street in east London, something I am really proud of. The family’s original name was Goldkorn, but my dad, Sid, changed it when he went to read maths at university.”
In a Mail Online article from August 4, 2007 entitled “Putin aide: ‘Miliband’s hatred for Russia runs in family’” we learn
“The [Russian] newspaper said that in the Twenties the Foreign Secretary’s grandfather, Samuel, then Shimon, Miliband, a native of the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw, had fought under the command of Trotsky ‘eliminating’ white Russians opposed to Communism.”
Is it possible that Shimon Miliband and Matthew Gould’s grandfather knew each other from radical Jewish circles in early 20th century Poland? More importantly, what influence might their common ideological heritage have played in David Miliband’s decision to send Gould as Britain’s supposed “Man in Tel Aviv.”
A thoughtful email from University of East Anglia’s Douglas Maraun in which he shares serious misgivings about the politically correct atmosphere prevalent within the establishment in 2007.
date: Wed, 24 Oct 2007 11:05:20 +0100
from: “Douglas Maraun”
subject: Informal Seminar TODAY
to: cru.internal@uea.ac.uk
Dear colleagues,
I’d like to invite all of you to todays discussion seminar, 4pm in the
coffee room:
“Climate science and the media”
After the publication of the latest IPCC, the media wrote a vast
number of articles about possible and likely impacts, many of them
greatly exaggerated. The issue seemed to dominate news for a long time
and every company had to consider global warming in its advertisement.
However, much of this sympathy turned out to be either white washing
or political correctness. Furthermore, recently and maybe especially
after the “inconvenient truth” case and the Nobel peace prize going to
Al Gore, many irritated and sceptical comments about so-called
“climatism” appeared also in respectable newspapers.
Against the background of these recent developments, we could discuss
the relation of climate science to the media, the way it is, and the
way it should be.
In my opinion, the question is not so much whether we should at all
deal with the media. Our research is of potential relevance to the
public, so we have to deal with the public. The question is rather how
this should be done. Points I would like to discuss are:
-Is it true that only climate sceptics have political interests and
are potentially biased? If not, how can we deal with this?
-How should we deal with flaws inside the climate community? I think,
that “our” reaction on the errors found in Mike Mann’s work were not
especially honest.
-How should we deal with popular science like the Al Gore movie?
-What is the difference between a “climate sceptic” and a “climate denier”?
-What should we do with/against exaggerations of the media?
-How do we avoid sounding religious or arrogant?
-Should we comment on the work/ideas of climate scepitics?
If you have got any further suggestions or do think, my points are not
interesting, please let me know in advance.
The French bank, BNP Paribas, has decided to cease operations inside Israel, after the bank was targeted by the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, which aims to use economic pressure to get Israel to adhere to its obligations and abide by international law.
Although the bank stated that its withdrawal from Israel was not due to the pressure campaign, but instead due to heavy losses sustained during the Greek financial crisis, Israeli officials and bankers have stated that they believe the bank gave in to pressure from European human rights groups to pull out of Israel.
BNB Paribas will close its offices and lay off sixty employees in Israel, and will end its financing of projects in the Jewish state.
The Governor of the Bank of Israel, Stanley Fischer, told reporters from the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz that he had met with top executives from BNB Paribas several times, and exchanged harsh words with them when they announced their decision to leave Israel.
The Bank of Israel is a private institution that prints currency for the Israeli government and regulates interest rates in Israel. It is the successor to the Anglo-Palestine Bank, which carried out those functions until 1948, when the state of Israel was created on the land of historic Palestine.
BDS campaigners have targeted banks, financial institutions, businesses and universities around the world that have investments inside Israel. The movement has compared itself to the anti-apartheid movement against the white South African government in the 1980s. Some of the main organizers of the BDS campaign against Israel are South Africans who compare the situation of Palestinians to that of black South Africans under the racist apartheid system. The group includes Archbishop Desmond Tutu, President Nelson Mandela, and the largest trade union in South Africa, COSATU.
In recent years, the BDS movement has succeeded in convincing dozens of businesses to pull out of Israel; including the Deutsche Bank divesting from Elbit, a company involved in construction of the Israeli Annexation Wall; the Norwegian government’s divestment from an Israeli security firm; and Harvard University’s decision to divest from Israeli companies.
The group hopes that by using economic pressure, they can convince the Israeli government to end its occupation of Palestinian land, and cease its discriminatory laws that target Palestinians.
There is a huge government cover-up in progress over the Werritty connection to Mossad and the role of British Ambassador to Israel Matthew Gould, and their neo-con plan to start a war with Iran.
Yesterday at 22.15pm I submitted by email a Freedom of Information request for:
All communications in either direction ever made between Matthew Gould and Adam Werritty, specifically including communications made outside government systems.
At 23.31pm I was astonished to get a reply from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The request was refused as it was
“likely to exceed the cost limit”.
Now it is plainly nonsense that to gather correspondence between two named individuals would be too expensive. They could just ask Gould.
And a reply at nearly midnight? The Freedom of Information team in the FCO is not a 24 hour unit. Plainly not only are they hiding the Gould/Werritty correspondence, they are primed and on alert for this cover-up operation.
Even more blatant was the obstruction of MP Paul Flynn, when he attempted to question Cabinet Secretary Gus O’Donnell on the Gould-Werritty connection at the House of Commons Public Administration Committee. These are the minutes: anybody who believes in democracy should feel their blood boil as you read them:
Publc Admininstration Committee 24/11/2011
Q<369> Paul Flynn: Okay. Matthew Gould has been the subject of a very serious complaint from two of my constituents, Pippa Bartolotti and Joyce Giblin. When they were briefly imprisoned in Israel, they met the ambassador, and they strongly believe—it is nothing to do with this case at all—that he was serving the interest of the Israeli Government, and not the interests of two British citizens. This has been the subject of correspondence.
In your report, you suggest that there were two meetings between the ambassador and Werritty and Liam Fox. Questions and letters have proved that, in fact, six such meetings took place. There are a number of issues around this. I do not normally fall for conspiracy theories, but the ambassador has proclaimed himself to be a Zionist and he has previously served in Iran, in the service. Werritty is a self-proclaimed—
Robert Halfon: Point of order, Chairman. What is the point of this?
Paul Flynn:> Let me get to it. Werritty is a self-proclaimed expert on Iran.
Chair:> I have to take a point of order.
Robert Halfon:> Mr Flynn is implying that the British ambassador to Israel is working for a foreign power, which is out of order.
Paul Flynn:> I quote the Daily Mail: “Mr Werritty is a self-proclaimed expert on Iran and has made several visits. He has also met senior Israeli officials, leading to accusations”—not from me, from the Daily Mail—“that he was close to the country’s secret service, Mossad.” There may be nothing in that, but that appeared in a national newspaper.
Chair:> I am going to rule on a point of order. Mr Flynn has made it clear that there may be nothing in these allegations, but it is important to have put it on the record. Be careful how you phrase questions.
Paul Flynn:> Indeed. The two worst decisions taken by Parliament in my 25 years were the invasion of Iraq—joining Bush’s war in Iraq—and the invasion of Helmand province. We know now that there were things going on in the background while that built up to these mistakes. The charge in this case is that Werritty was the servant of neo-con people in America, who take an aggressive view on Iran. They want to foment a war in Iran in the same way as in the early years, there was another—
Chair:> Order. I must ask you to move to a question that is relevant to the inquiry.
Q<370> Paul Flynn:> Okay. The question is, are you satisfied that you missed out on the extra four meetings that took place, and does this not mean that those meetings should have been investigated because of the nature of Mr Werritty’s interests?
Sir Gus O’Donnell:> I think if you look at some of those meetings, some people are referring to meetings that took place before the election.
Q<371> Paul Flynn:> Indeed, which is even more worrying.
Sir Gus O’Donnell:> I am afraid they were not the subject—what members of the Opposition do is not something that the Cabinet Secretary should look into. It is not relevant.
But these meetings were held—
Chair:> Mr Flynn, would you let him answer please?
Sir Gus O’Donnell:> I really do not think that was within my context, because they were not Ministers of the Government and what they were up to was not something I should get into at all.
Chair:> Final question, Mr Flynn.
Q<372> Paul Flynn:> No, it is not a final question. I am not going to be silenced by you, Chairman; I have important things to raise. I have stayed silent throughout this meeting so far.
You state in the report—on the meeting held between Gould, Fox and Werritty, on 6 February, in Tel Aviv—that there was a general discussion of international affairs over a private dinner with senior Israelis. The UK ambassador was present. Are you following the line taken by the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government who says that he can eat with lobbyists or people applying to his Department because, on occasions, he eats privately, and on other occasions he eats ministerially? Are you accepting the idea? It is possibly a source of great national interest—the eating habits of their Secretary of State. It appears that he might well have a number of stomachs, it has been suggested, if he can divide his time this way. It does seem to be a way of getting round the ministerial code, if people can announce that what they are doing is private rather than ministerial.
Sir Gus O’Donnell:> The important point here was that, when the Secretary of State had that meeting, he had an official with him—namely, in this case, the ambassador. That is very important, and I should stress that I would expect our ambassador in Israel to have contact with Mossad. That will be part of his job. It is totally natural, and I do not think that you should infer anything from that about the individual’s biases. That is what ambassadors do. Our ambassador in Pakistan will have exactly the same set of wide contacts.
Q<373> Paul Flynn:> I have good reason, as I said, from constituency matters, to be unhappy about the ambassador. Other criticisms have been made about the ambassador; he is unique in some ways in the role he is performing. There have been suggestions that he is too close to a foreign power.
Robert Halfon:> On a point of order, Chair, this is not about the ambassador to Israel. This is supposed to be about the Werritty affair.
Paul Flynn:> It is absolutely crucial to this report. If neo-cons such as yourself, Robert, are plotting a war in Iran, we should know about it.
Chair:> Order. I think the line of questioning is very involved. I have given you quite a lot of time, Mr Flynn. If you have further inquiries to make of this, they could be pursued in correspondence. May I ask you to ask one final question before we move on?
Sir Gus O’Donnell:> One thing I would stress: we are talking about the ambassador and I think he has a right of reply. Mr Chairman, I know there is an interesting question of words regarding Head of the Civil Service versus Head of the Home Civil Service, but this is the Diplomatic Service, not the Civil Service.
Q<374> Chair:> So he is not in your jurisdiction at all.
Sir Gus O’Donnell:> No.
Q<375> Paul Flynn:> But you are happy that your report is final; it does not need to go the manager it would have gone to originally, and that is the end of the affair. Is that your view?
Sir Gus O’Donnell:> As I said, some issues arose where I wanted to be sure that what the Secretary of State was doing had been discussed with the Foreign Secretary. I felt reassured by what the Foreign Secretary told me.
Q<376> Chair:> I think what Mr Flynn is asking is that your report and the affair raise other issues, but you are saying that that does not fall within the remit of your report and that, indeed, the conduct of an ambassador does not fall within your remit at all.
Sir Gus O’Donnell:> That is absolutely correct.
Paul Flynn:> The charge laid by Lord Turnbull in his evidence with regard to Dr Fox and the ministerial code was his failure to observe collective responsibility, in that case about Sri Lanka. Isn’t the same charge there about our policies to Iran and Israel?
Chair:> We have dealt with that, Mr Flynn.
Paul Flynn:> We haven’t dealt with it as far as it applies—
Chair:> Mr Flynn, we are moving on.
Paul Flynn:> You may well move on, but I remain very unhappy about the fact that you will not allow me to finish the questioning I wanted to give on a matter of great importance.
It is shocking but true that Robert Halfon MP, who disrupted Flynn with repeated points of order, receives funding from precisely the same Israeli sources as Werritty, and in particular from Mr Poju Zabludowicz. He also formerly had a full time paid job as Political Director of the Conservative Friends of Israel.
But despite the evasiveness of O’Donnell and the obstruction of paid zionist puppet Halfon, O’Donnell confirms vital parts of my investigation. In particular he agrees that the Fox-Werritty-Gould “private dinner” in Tel Aviv was with Mossad, and that Gould met Werritty many times more than the twice that O’Donnell listed in his “investigation” into this affair.
Of the six meetings of Fox-Gould-Werritty together which I discovered, five were while Fox was Secretary of State for Defence. Only one was while Fox was in opposition. But O’Donnell has now let the cat much further out of the bag, with the astonishing admission to Paul Flynn’s above questioning that Gould, Fox and Werritty held “meetings that took place before the election.” He also refers to “some of those meetings” as being before the election. Both are plainly in the plural.
It is now evident that not only did Fox, Gould and Werritty have at least five meetings while Fox was in power – with never another British official present – they had several meetings while Fox was shadow Foreign Secretary. O’Donnell is right that what Fox and Werritty were up to in opposition is not his concern. But what Gould was doing with them – a senior official – most definitely is.
A senior British diplomat cannot just hold a series of meetings with the opposition shadow Defence Secretary and a paid zionist lobbyist. What on earth was happening?
The absolutely astonishing cover-up and lack of honesty from the government about the Fox-Gould-Werritty relationship is being maintained with cast-iron resolve. Not only is Gould a self-declared fervent zionist, he was born in the same year as Chancellor George Osborne and attended the same private school – St Paul’s. At least some of the time he was meeting Fox and Werrity while they were in opposition, Gould was Private Secretary to New Labour Foreign Secretary David Milliband. That opens up the question of whether David Milliband, another fervent zionist, was part of the discussions with Mossad and US neo-cons on how to engineer war with Iran, for which Werritty was the conduit.
That would help explain the completeness of the cover-up. The government appears able with total impunity to refuse to answer MPs’ questions on Gould/Fox/Werritty, and they will not respond to Freedom of Information requests. It is now proven without doubt that O’Donnell lied blatantly about the number of Gould-Fox-Werritty meetings, and that Mossad was involved. And yet every single British mainstream media outlet still refuses to mention it.
I know from a mole that the plot involves a plan to attack Iran. For the cover-up to be so blatant and yet so comprehensively maintained, the secret at the heart of this conspiracy must be great, and those complicit must include a very large swathe of the British political and media establishment.
UPDATE: access to this blog is now blocked from FCO and Cabinet Office terminals. Very wise – truth can be contagious.
A video taken today by photojournalist Fadi Arouri shows Israeli occupation forces demolishing the homes of Palestinians in the village of Beit Hanina north of occupied Jerusalem, in the West Bank.
In the video, an elderly Palestinian man can be seen admonishing Israeli occupation soldiers as his home is torn down by a bulldozer.
Beit Hanina’s residents have long been targeted for removal by the Israeli occupation, and home demolitions have been frequent on the pretext that homes are built “without permits.” But as is well-documented, the occupation does not give permits to Palestinians to build on their own land, even as Israeli colonies, illegal under international law, sprout everywhere.
Beit Hanina, which straddles the line between Israeli-declared “greater” Jerusalem and the rest of the occupied West Bank, was bissected several years ago by an “apartheid road,” Road 443, built by Israel for the exclusive use of Israelis.
Notably, French-based firm Veolia profits from the ethnic cleansing of residents of Beit Hanina and other Palestinian villages along Road 443, by running bus services for settlers.
Bahrain’s king vowed reforms on Wednesday after a commission of inquiry found that his security forces used “excessive force” and tortured detainees in a March crackdown on peaceful protests.
King Hamad commissioned the report to investigate allegations of government misconduct and human rights abuses against protesters, democracy activists, and opposition figures.
On Wednesday he vowed there would be reforms.
“We will introduce and implement reforms that would please all segments of our society,” the Ben-Khalifa said after the findings were released.
He also expressed “dismay” at the mistreatment of detainees.
“We do not tolerate the mistreatment of detainees and prisoners. We are dismayed to find that it has occurred, as your report has found,” he said.
Responding earlier to the findings of the Independent Commission of Inquiry, an official spokesman also said the government accepts the criticisms.
“The government welcomes the findings of the Independent Commission, and acknowledges its criticisms,” a statement said.
“We took the initiative in asking for this thorough and detailed inquiry to seek the truth and we accept it.”
The report also acknowledged that the commission did not find proof of an Iran link to the unrest, dispelling widespread allegations by Gulf leaders that Iran played a role in instigating the mainly Shiite protests.
“Evidence presented to the commission did not prove a clear link between the events in Bahrain and Iran,” said Cherif Bassiouni, the commission’s lead investigator.
The peaceful mass demonstrations which rocked the kingdom earlier this year were violently crushed as government forces used live ammunition and heavy-handed tactics to scatter protesters.
Bassiouni said the death toll from the month-long unrest reached 35, including five security personnel. Hundreds more were injured. […]
In March, Bahraini security forces boosted by some 1,000 Gulf troops crushed the month-long uprising in Manama’s Pearl Square, epicenter of the peaceful anti-government movement. … Full article
The official inquiry castigating the UK’s former defence secretary Liam Fox for what has come to be known as a “cash-for-access” scandal appears to have only scratched the surface of what Fox and accomplice Adam Werritty may have been up to when they met for dinner in Tel Aviv.
Nazareth – Last February Britain’s then defense minister Liam Fox attended a dinner in Tel Aviv with a group described as senior Israelis. Alongside him sat Adam Werritty, a lobbyist whose “improper relations” with the minister would lead eight months later to Fox’s hurried resignation.
According to several reports in the British media the Israelis in attendance at the dinner were representatives of the Mossad, Israel’s spy agency, while Fox and Werritty were accompanied by Matthew Gould, Britain’s ambassador to Israel. A former British diplomat has claimed that the topic of discussion that evening was a secret plot to attack Iran.
Little was made of the dinner in the 10-page inquiry report published last month by Gus O’Donnell, the cabinet’s top civil servant. O’Donnell found that Werritty, aged 33 and a long-time friend of Fox’s, had presented himself as the minister’s official adviser, jetted around the world with him and arranged meetings for businessmen with Fox.
The former minister’s allies, seeking to dismiss the gravity of the case against him, have described Werritty as a harmless dreamer. Following his resignation, Fox himself claimed O’Donnell’s report had exonerated him of putting national security at risk.
However, a spate of new concerns raised in the wake of the inquiry challenge both of these assumptions. These include questions about the transparency of the O’Donnell investigation, the extent of Fox and Werritty’s ties to Israel and the unexplained role of Gould.
Craig Murray, Britain’s former ambassador to Uzbekistan until 2004, when he turned whistle blower on British and US collusion on torture, said senior British government officials were profoundly disturbed by the O’Donnell inquiry, seeing it as a “white wash.”
Murray himself accused O’Donnell of being “at the most charitable interpretation, economical with the truth.”
Two well-placed contacts alerted Murray to Gould’s central – though largely ignored – role in the Fox-Werritty relationship, he told al-Akhbar.
Murray said he has pieced together evidence that Fox, Werritty and Gould met on at least six occasions over the past two years or so, despite the O’Donnell inquiry claiming they had met only twice. Gould is the only ambassador Fox and Werritty are known to have met together.
In an inexplicable break with British diplomatic and governmental protocol, Murray said officials were not present at a single one of the six meetings between the three men. No record was taken of any of the discussions.
Murray, who first made public his concerns on his personal blog, said a source familiar with the inquiry told him the parameters of the investigation were designed to divert attention away from the more damaging aspects of Fox and Werritty’s behaviour.
Subsequently, the foreign office has refused to respond to questions, including from an MP, about the Tel Aviv dinner. Officials will not say who the Israelis were, what was discussed or even who paid for the evening, though under Whitehall rules all hospitality should be declared.
Also unexplained is why Fox rejected requests by his own staff to attend the dinner, and why Werritty was privy to such a high-level meeting when he had no security clearance.
The real concern among government officials, Murray said, is that Fox, Werritty and Gould were conspiring in a “rogue” foreign policy – opposed to the British government’s stated aims – that was authored by Mossad and Israel’s neoconservative allies in Washington.
This suspicion was partially confirmed by a report in the Guardian last month, as O’Donnell was carrying out his investigation. It cited unnamed government officials saying they were worried that Fox and Werritty had been pursuing what was termed an “alternative” government policy.
Murray said the Tel Aviv dinner was especially significant. His contact had told him the discussion had focused on ways to ensure Britain assisted in creating favourable diplomatic conditions for an attack on Iran.
Israel is widely believed to favor a military attack on Iran, in an attempt to set back its nuclear program. Israel claims Tehran is trying to develop a nuclear weapon under cover of a civilian nuclear energy project.
Israel has its own large nuclear arsenal and is known to be fearful of losing its nuclear monopoly in the region.
Britain, like many in the international community, including the US government, officially favors imposing sanctions on Iran to halt its nuclear ambitions.
The episode of the Tel Aviv dinner, Murray said, raises “vital concerns about a secret agenda for war at the core of government, comparable to [former British prime minister Tony] Blair’s determination to drive through a war on Iraq.”
The Guardian revealed this month that the defense ministry under Fox had drawn up detailed plans for British assistance in the event of a US military strike on Iran, including allowing the Americans to use Diego Garcia, a British territory in the Indian ocean, as a base from which to launch an attack.
The O’Donnell inquiry has done little to allay many officials’ concerns about the series of strange meetings involving Fox, Werritty and Gould.
David Cameron, the British prime minister, has so far refused opposition demands to hold a full public inquiry into Fox and Werritty’s relationship. And the three men at the centre of the saga have refused to discuss the nature of their ties.
This month revelations surfaced that Werritty had had dealings with other government ministers
“It is deeply inadequate of the prime minister to continue to refuse to probe this issue further,” said shadow defense spokesman Kevan Jones, in response to the new information.
The British media have cautiously raised the issue of apparent Israeli links to Fox and Werritty.
The Daily Telegraph reported that the pair secretly met the head of the Mossad – possibly at the Tel Aviv dinner, though the paper has not specified where or when the meeting took place.
Last month the Independent on Sunday claimed that Werritty had close ties to the Mossad as well as to “US-backed neocons” plotting to overthrow the Iranian regime. The Mossad were reported to have assumed Werritty was Fox’s “chief of staff.”
In addition, the O’Donnell report revealed that Werritty’s many trips overseas alongside Fox had been funded by at least six donors, three of whom were leading members of the pro-Israel lobby in Britain.
The donations were made to two organisations, Atlantic Bridge and Pargav, that Werritty helped to establish. Werritty apparently used the organizations as a way to gain access to Conservative government ministers, including three in the defense ministry.
The advisory board of Atlantic Bridge, which Werritty founded with Fox, included William Hague, the current foreign minister, Michael Gove, the education minister, and George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Despite Werritty’s apparently well-established connections to the ruling Conservative party, the media coverage has implied that he was a lone “rogue operator,” hoping to use his contacts with Fox and other ministers to manipulate British government policy.
Murray, however, raises the question of whether Werritty was actually given access, through Fox and Gould, to the heart of the British government. Were all three secretly trying to pursue a policy on Iran favored by Israel and its ideological allies in the US?
A clue to the answer, according to Murray, may lie in a series of meetings between the three that have slowly come to light since O’Donnell published his findings.
According to the 2,700-word report Werritty joined Fox on 18 of his official trips overseas, and that the pair met another 22 times at the defense ministry, with almost none of their discussions recorded by officials. The Guardian has also reported that Fox’s staff repeatedly warned him off his relationship with Werritty but were overruled.
Despite the serious concerns raised about Werritty by defense ministry staff, Gould, one of the country’s most senior diplomats, appears nonetheless to have cultivated a close relationship with Werritty as well as Fox.
According to Murray’s sources, Gould and Werritty “had been meeting and communicating for years.” The foreign office has refused to answer questions about whether the two had any contacts.
O’Donnell’s report mentions another meeting between the three, in September 2010. On that occasion, Gould met Fox in what a foreign office spokesman has described as a “pre-posting briefing call” – a sort of high-level induction for ambassadors to acquaint themselves with their new posting.
Werritty was also present, according to O’Donnell, “as an individual with some experience in…the security situation in the Middle East.” His participation at the meeting was “not appropriate,” O’Donnell concluded.
However, Murray said such briefings would never be conducted at ministerial level, and certainly not by the defense minister himself.
He added that a senior official in the defense ministry had alerted him to two other peculiar aspects of the meeting: no officials were present to take notes, as would be expected; and their conversation took place in the ministry’s dining room, not in Fox’s office.
“As someone who worked for many years as a diplomat, I know how these things should work,” Murray told al-Akhbar.
“So much of this affair simply smells wrong,” he said.
Murray’s queries to the foreign office about this meeting have gone unanswered but have revealed other unexpected details not included in the O’Donnell report.
In a statement in late October, after the report’s publication, a foreign office spokesman said Gould had met Fox and Werritty earlier than previously known – before Gould was appointed ambassador to Israel and when Fox was in opposition as shadow defense minister.
The foreign office has refused to answer questions about this meeting too – including when it occurred and why – or to respond to a parliamentary question on the matter tabled by MP Jeremy Corbyn. All that is known is that it must have taken place before May 2010, when Fox was appointed defense minister.
In replying to Corbyn’s questions, William Hague, the foreign minister, acknowledged yet another meeting between Fox, Werritty and Gould – at a private social engagement in the summer of 2010.
Again, the foreign office has refused to answer further questions, including one from Corbyn about who else attended the social engagement.
The trio were also together shortly before the Tel Aviv dinner, when Fox made a speech at the hawkish Herzliya security conference in a session on the strategic threat posed by Iran.
And a sixth meeting has come to light. Fox and Gould were photographed together at a “We believe in Israel” conference in London in May 2011. Werritty was again present.
“That furtive meeting between Fox, Werritty and Gould in the MOD dining room [in September 2010], deliberately held away from Fox’s office where it should have taken place, and away from the MOD officials who should have been there, now looks less like briefing and more like plotting,” Murray wrote on his blog about the Ministry of Defense meeting.
Both Werritty and Gould are considered to have an expertise on Iran.
Gould was the deputy head of mission at the British embassy in Iran from 2003 to 2005, a role in which he was responsible for coordinating on US policy towards Iran. Next he was moved to the British embassy in Washington at a time when the neoconservatives still held sway in the White House.
Werritty, meanwhile, has travelled frequently to Iran where he has teamed up with opposition groups seeking the overthrow of the Iranian regime. On his return from one trip to Iran he was called in by Britain’s MI6 foreign intelligence service for a debriefing according to the Independent on Sunday.
Werritty also arranged for Fox to travel with him to Iran in summer 2007, when Fox was shadow defense minister. He also arranged a meeting in May 2009 at the British parliament between Fox and an Iranian lobbyist with links to the current regime in Tehran.
The murky dealings between Fox, Werritty and Gould, and the government’s refusal to clarify what took place between them, is evidence, said Murray, that a serious matter is being hidden. His fear, and that of his contacts inside the senior civil service, is that “a neo-con cell of senior [British] ministers and officials” were secretly setting policy in coordination with Israel and the US.
Gould’s unexamined role is of particular concern, as he is still in place in his post in Israel.
Murray has noted that, in appointing Gould, a British Jew, to the ambassadorship in Israel in September last year, the foreign office broke with long-standing policy. No Jewish diplomat has held the post before because of concerns that it might lead to a conflict of interest, or at the very least create the impression of dual loyalty. Similar restrictions have been in place to avoid Catholics holding the post of ambassador to the Vatican.
Given these traditional concerns, Gould was a strange choice. He is a self-declared Zionist who has cultivated an image that led the Forward, a main Jewish US newspaper, to describe him recently as “not just an ambassador who’s Jewish, but a Jewish ambassador.”
When Americans think of propagandized people they think of the now defunct Soviet Union or Nazi Germany or perhaps a banana republic dictatorship of the sort supported by their government. Very few of them would think of themselves as being under the sway of a government and corporations who work hand in glove to tell outright falsehoods or hide important information that is inconvenient for them.
In this country, not only are we victims of a government intent upon keeping us misinformed or silent in the face of its wrong doing, but they work hand in hand with a media almost entirely owned by corporations. The interests of the people are rarely in sync with the interests of these corporations, and that results in a media which works with the government which consciously works to misdirect our attention or have us believe outright lies.
Almost every major news story gives us an example of this terrible phenomenon. We may be told that Iran is on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons capability, but we are not told that it has the right to do so as a signatory of the Non Proliferation Treaty. To add insult to injury, there isn’t any proof that Iran has even acquired this capability.
But Israel is chomping at the bit to attack Iran, and its lackey state, the United States of America, will not stand in its way. The corporate media never tell us that Israel, a country which is not a signatory of the NPT, has an arsenal of an unknown number of nuclear weapons.
A simple and easily provable fact, that the nation which casts itself as the victim of a potential nuclear power is itself nuclear, is rarely mentioned. One might read the New York Times and Washington Post every day and watch one of the broadcast or cable news networks at night, and not be aware of this information.
“Government sources say,” are the buzz words for falsehoods told in the name of the state. So-called prestigious publications will print the most outrageous information without attribution, investigation or proof of very serious charges. The Washington Post prints a story, quoting an anonymous source, claiming that Gaddafi’s Libya not only was in possession of a mustard gas stockpile, but also that it was supplied by Iran.
When Israel and/or the United States attack Iran none of the highly paid anchor men or women or reporters who have access to the administration will stray far from the official party line. That is why one president is as dangerous as any other. The system rewarded the liars who drove America to war against Iraq. The anti-Iranian warmongers will probably fare equally well.
Foreign policy has long been the domain of the big lie, but reporting or the lack of reporting on important domestic issues is either twisted in favor of the powerful or ignored altogether. The sins of omission are as dangerous as the sins of the bald faced lie. Did any major newspaper report on the week-long Georgia prison strike which took place one year ago? This phenomenal story of incarcerated Bloods and Crips working hand in hand with members of Aryan nation should have been front page news. But it was ignored, and the country lost an opportunity to be informed that their nation has the largest prison system on the planet and that it profits quite literally from their slave labor.
The court scribes who tell us that a statistical blip is proof of economic recovery or that the president had no choice but to accept the “Satan sandwich” budget deal are no better than propagandists in dictatorial states. The press corps in Libya, who actively assisted NATO in destroying that nation, committed international war crimes in the process. They will never reveal their own evil doing nor will they be called to account by a public that doesn’t even realize the magnitude of their crimes.
Anyone who is resistant to the notion that this country is awash in propaganda need look no further than the case of Anwar al-Awlaki. The president ordered the killing of an American citizen who was never charged with a crime. He then directed his minions to reveal to the New York Times the existence of a secret, extra legal memo which justifies his actions. The Times no doubt celebrated their role as court favorites and ignored the role that a newspaper ought to play in reporting a story that should have resulted in a presidential impeachment.
Americans love to say that they live in the greatest country in the world. Such a nation will be hard pressed to admit that they can trust little of the information they get. The nexus of a corrupt governmental structure and a corporate media results in nonsense on a good day and disinformation on a bad one. Our country is not great, it is just powerful and very, very dangerous.
Margaret Kimberley’s Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgandaReport.com.
President Obama has been doing his charming best to play off the huge dilemma that the success of the Occupy Wall Street movement represents for his brand of corporate Democratic politics. Obama, the phony populist who is actually far better suited to corporate boardrooms, tried to mollify demonstrators at a campaign stop in New Hampshire, this week. Obama told a high school crowd: “In the Occupy movement there is a profound sense of frustration. The American dream – seems like that’s slipping away.” But, such presidential vagaries do not begin to describe the major thrust of the Occupation movement, whose overwhelming focus is “to get money out of politics,” as progressive reporter Arun Gupta recently told Black Agenda Radio. If there is anything that unites the supposedly leaderless Occupation movement, says Gupta, it is “a message about extreme concentration of wealth and power, and that wealth is used to dominate the political system.”
The trick that President Obama must pull off this election year is to raise a cool one billion dollars, while pretending to run as a man of the people – of the 99 percent. That kind of money can only come from the same Wall Street mafias that bankrolled Obama from the very start of his 2008 race for the White House. By any objective standard, the First Black President is really Mr. Moneybags, a corporate politician who has repaid Wall Street’s investment in him with $16 trillion of the people’s money. And, there is no doubt, Wall Street wants him back for a second term. To paraphrase Othello, Obama has done the plutocrats some service, and they know it. That’s why he is far ahead in the electoral race that really counts in America, the quest for campaign contributions, having already raised $155 million for himself and the Democratic Party – far ahead of any combination of Republicans.
However, after two months of Occupy Wall Street fever, Obama’s intimate relationship with rich men’s wallets may prove prejudicial to his reelection prospects. How can Obama claim to be ready to stand up to the 1 percent, when he’s weighted down with a billion dollars of their money?
The very idea that taking bundles of Wall Street checks hand over fist could be a negative for an American presidential campaigner, is testimony to the strength of the movement that has emerged over the past several months. I remember well how, back in the 2004 campaign, ABC’s Ted Koppel decided it was his civic and journalistic duty to evict the three poorest candidates from the Democratic primary race. Al Sharpton, Dennis Kucinich and Carolyn Moseley Braun, said Koppel, should get out of the running, to give more breathing space to the richer candidates. Koppel spoke to the non-corporate candidates like raggedy ass interlopers at a rich man’s ball. “You don’t have any money, at least not much,” Congressman Kucinich, said Kopple. “Rev. Sharpton has almost none.” And Ambassador Moseley Braun, “You don’t have very much.” Then Koppel accused them of being “vanity candidates” who ought to drop out. Immediately afterwards, ABC News cut off coverage of their campaigns.
What a difference even a whiff of a social movement makes. Now, the corporate candidates will have to explain why they’ve got so much money, and what they promised to do to get it. Especially, the richest one of all, Barack Obama.
The other day, I was listening to the voice of “liberal” radio, NPR, and was surprised to hear its bizarre, and yet quite candid, report on what it apparently views to be one of the more hideous aspects of the Gadhafi years – a modern welfare state which looked after working people.
Thus, without tongue in cheek, or any note of irony, NPR, in its November 14 report, entitled, “Libya’s Economy Faces New Tests After Gadhafi Era,” explained that the biggest impediment to the new economic era is the Libyan worker who was simply too coddled by Gaddafi.
NPR thus cited a 2007 book on the Libyan economy by authors Otman and Karlberg who called “the Libyan worker under Gadhafi ‘one of the most protected in the world,’” receiving job tenure, government subsidies of around $800 a month for the average Libyan household, and gasoline at a mere 60 cents a gallon. NPR, citing the same book, explained that workers now freed from such a tyrannical world by NATO bombs, have been left with a “’subsidy mentality’” and a “’job-for-life outlook which has ill-prepared Libyans for the more aggressive and cutthroat world of competition.’”
However, lucky for them, Libya’s new acting finance and oil chief, Ali Tarhouni, is resolved to turn this situation around by disciplining Libya’s workers through “smaller government and a larger and freer private sector.” NPR describes that, Tarhouni, being the realist that he is, “has no illusions that it will be an easy transition.” The report thus quotes Tarhouni who states that, “[t]he challenge here is that this is a welfare state,” with Libyan workers expecting too much from their government. I’m sure Tarhouni, with Western support, will show these workers a thing a two.
Of course, had NPR gone further, they could have also explained that, according to the statistics of the United Nations Development Programme, Libya, at the time of the NATO invasion, had the highest human development indicators (which measure levels of health, education and income) in all of Africa, with a life expectancy of 74.5; undernourishment of the population at under 5%; and adult literacy at over 88%. Libya was in fact ranked 53 in the world out of 169 comparable countries, ranking, for example, above Turkey, (post-Soviet) Russia, Brazil and Costa Rica in terms of the human development indicators.
For NATO, its corporate allies, and its media mouthpieces, such prosperity for workers simply will not do. We live in a world where austerity for the workers is the order of the day – for those in Libya, Greece, Italy, Spain, Great Britain and the U.S. as well. And those who stand in the way of such austerity measures, whether they be a nationalist government in Libya, Communists in Greece or Occupiers in the U.S., must be dealt with accordingly – by violent reaction.
Thankfully, once in a while, we have news sources such as NPR which will, albeit quite unwittingly and clumsily, tell us that this is indeed what our military and police actions are all about. You just have to be reading and listening between the lines to find out.
Dan Kovalik is Senior Associate General Counsel of the United Steelworkers of America.
What initially piqued my interest in this story was the report in Haaretz that former Mossad chief Rafi Eitan organised President Museveni’s recent visit to Israel, where the Ugandan dictator ended up staying in the same hotel as the Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga. Eitan claims to be interested in starting a ranching business in Uganda. According to a senior Ugandan government official, the president’s secret visit likely had something to with “security matters and buying arms.”
Researching the origins of President Obama’s recent deployment of approximately 100 combat-equipped U.S. forces to help regional forces “remove from the battlefield” Lord’s Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony and senior leaders of the LRA, I learned that Sen. Russ Feingold was the author of the LRA Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act in 2009. Under the guise of campaign finance reform, McCain-Feingold legislation doubled the financial resources that the Israel lobby can deploy to elect and retain its supporters. What are the odds that AIPAC crafted both pieces of legislation?
In a 2010 report, the International Crisis Group recommended that the U.S. government should:
Deploy a team to the theatre of operations to run an intelligence platform that centralises all operational information from the Ugandan and other armies, as well as the UN and civilian networks, and provides analysis to the Ugandans to better target military operations.
George Soros, one of the ICG’s main donors, is also a major (and for a long time secret) donor to J Street — or “AIPAC Lite” as Philip Giraldi so aptly described the supposedly “alternative” pro-Israel lobby group. His Open Society Foundation is actively promoting “open society ideals” in Uganda. Significantly, ICG appears to be the source of the supposedly “humanitarian” R2P doctrine:
In its efforts to help prevent conflict worldwide, the International Crisis Group has consistently drawn upon the doctrine of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), the principle that sovereign states, and the international community as a whole, have a responsibility to protect civilians from mass atrocity crimes. Crisis Group President Gareth Evans served as co-chair of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty that first developed the R2P concept in 2001.
In an ABC report on Obama’s decision to protect “the people of central Africa,” Jake Tapper notes that Human Rights Watch “has a great deal of information about the infamous LRA.” In 2010, Soros gave $100 million to the American organisation enabling it to “increase its advocacy in key emerging regions in the developing world.”
Considering Soros’s reputation as a “non-Zionist,” it’s remarkable how often his interests appear to converge with those of the Jewish state’s intelligence services.
This is what happens when you demand speedy production in an era of politicized regulation
By Meryl Nass, MD | February 12, 2022
All these tragedies have been due to failures of testing or failures in manufacturing processes. Most occurred before vaccine manufacturers were given virtually complete protection from liability in 1987.
With the duration of patent exclusivity determining how much new products earn, products are rushed to market as quickly as possible, most using a shortened path for FDA review. Recalls and market removals of approved products are much more common than they used to be. We can only expect more of these disasters in the future, especially if the products are mandated for everyone. … continue
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