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Mind the gap! Democratic deficit in UK, US has never been bigger

By Neil Clark | RT | September 6, 2013

The issue of Syria has demonstrated the massive gap that has opened up between the elite and ordinary people in both the US and Britain.

Poll after poll after poll shows very large majorities against strikes on Syria. People are war-weary, and the last thing they want is for their countries to become embroiled in another Middle-East war.

One Congressman in the US tweeted earlier this week that he had asked 200 people if they supported strikes on Syria and only four said ‘Yes’– that’s just 2 percent. Another said that 99 percent of calls to his office were against military action.

Let’s get one thing straight: the only people who are keen on war with Syria in the US and UK are the elites. Ordinary people on both sides of the Atlantic want absolutely nothing to do with it.

In Britain, the overwhelming majority of people were delighted that our parliament voted against war last week and that enough of our legislators finally listened to the people to defeat the serial warmongers.

A BBC poll showed that 71 percent of people thought parliament had made the right decision. Yet our neocon/’liberal interventionist’ elite is furious that legislators listened to the views of ordinary members of the public and not them. “You’re a disgrace,” screeched neocon Minister Michael Gove at MPs who voted against the government. Behaving like spoilt brats having a temper tantrum because they were not allowed to get their own way, the Permanent War brigade have been calling for a “second vote” in parliament, showing arrogant contempt for the views of the majority of ordinary people who don’t want war with Syria.

Neocon historian Andrew Roberts threw a hissy fit in a newspaper column last Sunday, attacking the “hideously amoral selfishness” of “new Britain” for not supporting war with Syria. Serial warmonger and drama queen Lord Paddy Ashdown declared “In 50 years trying to serve my country I have never felt so depressed/ashamed” – after parliament finally listened to public opinion and not to warmongers like Ashdown.

Nick Cohen, poster boy for Britain’s pro-war faux-left tweeted “Can’t help thinking that the British parliament’s vote will be remembered as a low and mean point in our history.” Have you got that? Parliament listening to ordinary members of the public is a “low and mean point.” Such is the fundamentally undemocratic neocon/liberal interventionist mindset, which says that no point of view on foreign policy counts except their own and that of their neocon pals.

Since last week’s parliamentary vote, UK establishment figures have been lining up to give Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, a jolly good thrashing for daring to defy the War Party’s line on Syria. Writing in The Times, aptly described as ‘The Warmongers Gazette’ by anti-war conservative writer Peter Hitchens, David Aaronovitch called Miliband a ‘political vulture’. Aaronovitch’s attack on Miliband was hailed as ‘devastating’ by Ian Katz, the editor of Newsnight, the BBC’s flagship Current Affairs program, which wheeled out a ‘Dr. Rola’ from ‘Hand in Hand For Syria’ to criticize Miliband’s failure to back the government.

Since the vote Newsnight has promoted a series of pro-intervention figures, seemingly desperate to try and get us plebs to change our minds. What part of ‘WE DON’T WANT WAR WITH SYRIA’ do our elite not understand? Now the high priest of ‘Liberal Interventionism’, the multi-millionaire war criminal Tony Blair, has joined the ‘Get Miliband’ lynch mob, saying that he was “disappointed” that parliament hadn’t supported the government, adding, “This is something where I just have to disagree with the leadership of the [Labour] party.”

For our neocon/liberal interventionist elite, Miliband is a shocker, a bounder, a rotter, and a ‘political vulture’. But most ordinary people in Britain are very pleased that he and his party listened to the public and opposed the government on Syria. You’d never have known it from listening to neocon newspaper columns, but after last week’s vote, bookmakers shortened the odds of Labour winning the next election to 8-13.

If Miliband and his party had voted the way the neocons wanted, then it’s highly likely that earlier this week US and British forces would have launched their attack on Syria. Which is why of course the Permanent War gang are so angry with him.

The pro-war lobby may be numerically tiny, but in both the US and UK it is massively overrepresented in the mainstream media. Despite the Iraq debacle, the same columnists who urged on that particular catastrophe, are still in front of their keyboards, propagandizing for yet another Middle East ‘intervention’, and are still treated with enormous deference whenever they appear on the likes of CNN or the BBC. Which is very, very often.

“Did you know there are people who supported the Iraq War getting invited on news programs to talk about Syria?” tweets comedy writer Graham Linehan. S’TRUE!!!

The disproportionate voice that necons and ‘liberal interventionists’ have in the UK and US media makes it appear that their views are more widely held in the public at large than they are. But in fact their extremist pro-war views are very rarely found outside elite, Establishment circles.

The gap between the elites in the US and the UK is now larger than at any time in the last 100 years. If we do go to war with Syria, despite the overwhelming public opposition, then it will show that democracy is well and truly dead in both our countries.

Are we countries where the views of the majority are listened to, or are we countries where a tiny, unrepresentative, pro-war clique always gets their way? We’re about to find out.

Neil Clark is a journalist, writer and broadcaster. His award winning blog can be found at www.neilclark66.blogspot.com. Follow him on Twitter

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September 7, 2013 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

London faces calls to make its case for a possible war before parliament

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Press TV – August 27, 2013

Opposition to a possible military intervention in Syria has intensified in Britain with the Labour party demanding that the government “make their case” before the parliament.

An alleged chemical attack hit parts of the Syrian capital Damascus on Wednesday killing hundreds of people.

Foreign-backed terrorists in the country claimed that the government forces were behind the assault in the Damascus suburbs of Ain Tarma, Zamalka and Jobar while medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres, which treated those affected in the attack, said it cannot even “scientifically confirm” the use of chemical weapons.

Shadow Foreign Secretary Douglas Alexander said on Monday that the cabinet has to “make their case” in the parliament before they can make a decision whether to go to a new war, if any such decision is to be made.

“Given both the seriousness of the reported chemical weapons strikes in Syria, and the enduring and complex nature of the conflict itself, ahead of any action being taken I would fully expect the Prime Minister to make his case to Parliament,” Alexander said.

“[The Prime Minister must be] open about the objectives, the legal basis, and the anticipated effect of any [British military action],” he added.

Meanwhile, British Conservative MP John Baron, who is leading MPs’ demands for a parliamentary session on the matter, expressed serious concerns about Britain going to war without the approval of the UN Security Council because of a Russian opposition to military intervention in Syria.

“Essentially, it is a civil war. If the West intervenes without a UN resolution … I think there is a more serious risk of this escalating beyond Syrian boundaries,” he said.

This comes as legal experts have seriously questioned the legality of a military move against Syria, saying it would create a “controversial situation”.

“The difficulty here is there’s no threat as I understand it to the security of this country or the United States and therefore on what basis can we intervene?” Michael Caplan, an international lawyer, asked during an interview on BBC Radio 4.

Following the alleged chemical attack in Syria, which government forces say was a false flag attack by foreign-backed militants, Britain, the US and France have been beating drums of war to punish what Washington described as a “moral obscenity” by Bashar al-Asad government in Syria.

Russia has demanded evidence from the three on their claims but no proof has yet been presented or even announced to exist.

The situation has sparked fears that Britain is assisting the US to justify another war based on totally unfounded claims after former British PM Tony Blair tampered with evidence related to Iraq weapons of mass destruction to facilitate the invasion of the country in 2003.

The fears are especially strong because the Syrian government cannot have sensibly carried out a large-scale attack when UN weapons inspectors were stationed almost 20 kilometers away from the site of the attack, waiting to probe earlier claims of poisonous gas strikes.

Qualms are also fueled by sporadic reporting of Syrian foreign-backed militants being in possession of chemical weapons, including a Twitter post by Abdola Al-Jaledi, a former high-ranking member of the Jabaht al-Nusra militant group, which said his colleagues were in possession of chemical weapons.

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August 27, 2013 Posted by | Deception, Militarism | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

UK has a CCTV for every 11 people

Press TV – July 10, 2013

Britain has a CCTV camera for every 11 people, a security industry report disclosed, as privacy campaigners criticized the growth of the “surveillance state”.

Britain has a CCTV camera for every 11 people including 750,000 in “sensitive locations” such as schools and hospitals, British Security Industry Authority (BSIA) says.

The BSIA said there are up to 5.9 million closed-circuit cameras across Britain dramatically raising the previous estimates that put the number of cameras somewhere between 1.5 million and four million.

“Because there is no single reliable source of data no number can ever be held as truly accurate however the middle of our range suggests that there are around five million cameras,” Simon Adcock, of the BSIA, said.

The revelations drew angry criticism from privacy campaigners Big Brother Watch who described the CCTV culture as a sign of an ailing democracy in Britain.

“This report is another stark reminder of how out of control our surveillance culture has become,” Big Brother Watch director Nick Pickles said.

“With potentially more than five million CCTV cameras across country, including more than 300,000 cameras in schools, we are being monitored in a way that few people would recognize as a part of a healthy democratic society,” he added.

Pickles also compared the situation to the dystopia represented in George Orwell’s 1984 novel.

“This report should be a wakeup call that in modern Britain there are people in positions of responsibility who seem to think ‘1984’ was an instruction manual,” he said.

The novel pictures a society where every single private move of the citizens in the then future Britain of 1984 is monitored by the eye of the state.

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July 11, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Crush Your Citizens By Spying on Them

Democracy : Citizens Watch Government. Tyranny : Government Watches Citizens.

By BRIAN CLOUGHLEY | CounterPunch | June 24, 2013

In some of Shakespeare’s plays there was ambivalence about spying on people, but in one instance there has been an obvious follow-on to modern times, when in Hamlet he has Polonius  demand of his servant Reynaldo that he should act as a spy and

Inquire me first what Danes are in Paris;

And how, and who, what means, and where they keep

What company, at what expense.

Which was a bit like the Brits’ comically amateur efforts at spying on foreign missions before and during the G20 International Summit in London in 2009, after which the intercept spooks boasted in a bizarre Power Point Presentation about

What are our Recent Successes?

Blackberry at G20

Delivered messages to analysts at the G20 in near real-time

Provided timely information to UK ministers

Enabled discovery of 20 new e-mail selectors

Gee Golly Gosh.  Oh what fun, you must have had, you pointy-headed tummy-rubbing finger-lickin’ techno-dweebs, listening to all the foreign delegates’ Blackberry transmissions, and, as your Power Point had it, “reading people’s email before/as they do.” What were your orders? No doubt something like

Inquire me first, what Foreigners are in London;

And how, and who, what means, and where they keep,

What company, at what expense.

The orders, barely believably, came from the British government, and it’s sad to realize that it ordered spying on its allies, because Turkey — a main target of British G20 spookery — is, after all, a longtime fellow member of Nato, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. But that sort of association is meaningless when the Brits want, as the orders went : “to establish Turkey’s position on agreements from the April London summit” by spying on this faithful military partner which has a thousand troops in Afghanistan.

Britain, and all the other G20 members boast that their Group is “the premier forum for our international economic development that promotes open and constructive discussion between industrial and emerging-market countries on key issues related to global economic stability.” But how on earth can you have “open discussion” when you can’t trust the host country of the gathering? How could you be “constructive” with Britain when you know its spooks are bugging your BlackBerry?  And what else are they finding out from your conversations that will be most useful to other spooks?

There is no loyalty and no allegiance among allies in the Brave New World of BlackBerry buggers. The old-fashioned ideas of having honorable union to join in defending freedom is ditched in the interests of knowing what an ally might think or plan — in order that these thoughts and plans can be destroyed by the friend who spies on an ally.

Britain and Turkey signed the Nato Treaty which says, with optimistic ingenuousness, that

The Parties to this Treaty reaffirm their faith in the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations . . .
 They are determined to safeguard the freedom, common heritage and civilization of their peoples, founded on the principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law.

But the principles of democracy, rule of law, and all that sort of starry-eyed stuff are thrown out of the window when it’s considered necessary by the Brits to find out what is being done by Turkey. And by who else, one wonders? If you can spy on one Nato ally, you are probably spying on others. Or all of them?

And you wonder about the people who do all this stuff. What can they be like, deep down, these operatives who have cast aside all moral scruples?  What do they look like, these programmed robots who consider themselves above the laws of nations and immune to the ideals of humanity and decency? Do they ever think, as Shakespeare had Polonius say to his son, that

This above all: to thine own self be true,

And it must follow, as the night the day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man.

And speaking of being false, it seems to have been forgotten that a British Cabinet Minister stated on February 26, 2004, that her country was spying on the UN Secretary General. This barely believable admission of criminality was only a five-minute wonder, of course, but it’s no less serious for that. The Minister, Clare Short, was being questioned by a BBC interviewer about the squalid deception leading up to the war on Iraq by America and Britain. In the course of discussion she was asked if US and UK pressure was being brought to bear on nations and individuals to fall in with their war plans, and part of her reply was that “The UK in this time was also getting spies on Kofi Annan’s office and getting reports from him about what was going on . . .  These things are done and in the case of Kofi’s office, it was being done for some time . . .  Well, I know — I’ve seen transcripts of Kofi Annan’s conversations.”

Then she was asked “So in other words British spies — let’s be very clear about this in case I’m misunderstanding you — British spies have been instructed to carry out operations inside the United Nations on people like Kofi Annan?” She answered “Yes, absolutely.”

So Britain, which signed the United Nations Charter almost 70 years ago “to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person,” chose to show its concern for fundamental human rights by planting listening devices in the office of the UN Secretary General. And Washington was in all this, right up to its earphones.

The interview with Clare Short came after dismissal of a criminal charge against a British government employee who informed the public in 2003 that a US National Security Agency official had asked British Intelligence to tap the telephones of UN Security Council delegates during the lead-up to the war on Iraq.

The person whose conscience would not permit her to accept a national policy of criminality was Katherine Gun, and she was charged with disclosing information contrary to national security. To be sure, she wasn’t treated as brutally and despicably as the pitiable Bradley Manning, against whom the mighty United States has brought all its power to crush. She wasn’t menaced by gigantic intimidating prison guards, or kept in solitary confinement, or subjected to a regime of endless menace that would have excited the admiration of any Nazi interrogator seeking to destroy the mind and body of a Jew or a Gypsy. No : she couldn’t be thrown in jail while awaiting trial, because Britain still has some citizens, thank God, who have a robust sense of decency and fair play — as well as a few most energetic newspapers. The slavering hyenas who rip at the body and mind of the vulnerable and wretched Manning wouldn’t get away with such persecution in Britain — not yet, anyway.

So after many months of waiting, Katherine Gun was brought to trial — and the case against her was dropped and she walked free. The charges were not publicly heard, examined and judged upon, as they should be in a democracy. Of course not — because that would have drawn the government and its pathetic little techno-dupes from the murky shadows into the light of truth and decency and open justice.   And the really funny thing — the only funny thing, in fact, about the whole farcical shambles — was the statement by the prosecution (in Britain called ‘The Crown’), about its reason for refusing to go any further. The little puppet prosecutor told the judge that “You will understand that consideration had been given to what is appropriate for the Crown to say. It is not appropriate to give further reasons. I am reluctant to go further than that unless the court requires I do.” And the judge caved in. The Regime of secrecy and deception had won yet again, and justice suffered another blow.

After Clare Short’s disclosure that Britain spies on the UN Secretary General the then prime minister of Britain, the devious liar Tony Blair,  pronounced that “I really do regard what Clare Short has said this morning as totally irresponsible.” And he justified his stance by declaring “she must know, and I think everyone knows, you can’t have a situation where people start making allegations like this about our security services.”

His message was clear, and remains clear from the recent statements by James, the Happy Clapper, the director of US national intelligence who lied to the Senate about spying on American citizens and then told the world that he gave the “least untruthful” answer to Senate questions because, of course, the end justifies the means. He knows that the intelligence industry will never be held accountable for breaking the law and spying on allies and fellow citizens — because the intelligence industry gets its orders from government.

As an anti-Obama placard had it in Berlin the other day : “Democracy: Citizens watch government. Tyranny: Government watches citizens.” We now realize that tyranny is approaching, in Britain and America. So be afraid; Be very afraid — because many of the people in power in our very own democracries intend that their fellow citizens should believe, in the words of Orwell, that  “War is Peace,  Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength.” And they’re getting there.

Brian Cloughley’s website is www.beecluff.com

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June 24, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

UK planned war on Syria before unrest began: French ex-foreign minister

Press TV – June 16, 2013

A former French foreign minister says Britain had been planning a war against Syria some two years before to the unrest broke out in the Arab country.

The statement by Roland Dumas came during a recent interview with French Parliamentary TV network, LCP.

“I’m going to tell you something. I was in England two years before the violence in Syria on other business. I met with top British officials, who confessed to me that they were preparing something in Syria,” said Dumas.

He continued by saying, “This was in Britain not in America. Britain was organizing an invasion of rebels into Syria. They even asked me, although I was no longer minister for foreign affairs, if I would like to participate.”

Responding to a question on the motive behind inciting violence in Syria, Dumas said, “Very simple! With the very simple aim! To overthrow the Syrian government, because in the region, it’s important to understand, that the Syrian regime makes anti-Israeli talk,” said Dumas

The former foreign minister added that he had been told by an Israeli prime minister a long time ago that Tel Aviv would seek to “destroy” any country that did not “get along” with it in the region.

Turmoil has gripped Syria since March 2011, and many people, including large numbers of Syrian security forces, have been killed in the unrest.

Damascus says the United States and its allies are seeking to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad by supporting armed terrorist groups operating in Syria.

In May, under pressure from Britain and France, the European Union lifted an arms embargo on the militants in Syria, while maintaining other sanctions on the Syrian government.


ROLAND DUMAS BALANCE SUR L’INTERVENTION OCCIDENTALE EN SYRIE !

June 16, 2013 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

The U.S. Base on Diego Garcia: An Overlooked Atrocity

By Sheldon Richman | FFF |June 4, 2013

The largest criminal organizations in the world are governments. The bigger they are, the more capable of perpetrating atrocities. Not only do they obtain great wealth through compulsion (taxation), they also have an ideological mystique that permits them uniquely to get away with murder, torture, and theft.

The U.S. government is no exception. This is demonstrated by, among many other things, the atomic bombings of noncombatants in Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World II. But let’s examine a lesser-known case, one we might know nothing about were it not for David Vine, who teaches anthropology at the American University. Vine has written a book, Island of Shame, and a follow-up article at the Huffington Post about the savage treatment of the people of Diego Garcia, part of the Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean. Americans may know Diego Garcia as a U.S. military base. It “helped launch the Afghan and Iraq wars and was part of the CIA’s secret ‘rendition’ program for captured terrorist suspects,” Vine writes.

What’s not widely known is that the island was once home to a couple of thousand people who were forcibly removed to make room for the U.S. military. The victims’ 40-year effort to return or to be compensated for their losses have been futile.

Great Britain claims the island. According to Vine, African slaves, indentured Indians, and their descendants had been living on the Chagos islands for about 200 years. “In 1965, after years of secret negotiations, Britain agreed to separate Chagos from colonial Mauritius (contravening UN decolonization rules) to create a new colony, the British Indian Ocean Territory. In a secret 1966 agreement, Britain gave U.S. officials base rights on Diego Garcia.”

But it did more than that. Britain “agreed to take those ‘administrative measures’ necessary to remove the nearly 2,000 Chagossians in exchange for $14 million in secret U.S. payments.”

The British kept their end of the bargain. In 1968, Britain began blocking the return of Chagossians who left to obtain medical treatment or to go on vacation, “marooning them often without family members and almost all their possessions,” Vine writes.

British officials soon began restricting food and medical supplies to Chagos. Anglo-American officials designed a public relations plan aimed at, as one British bureaucrat said, “maintaining the fiction” that Chagossians were migrant laborers rather than a people with roots in Chagos for five generations or more. Another British official called them “Tarzans” and “Man Fridays.”

Then, in 1971, the final order came down, reminiscent of a Russian czar expelling Jews from their village. “The U.S. Navy’s highest-ranking admiral, Elmo Zumwalt, issued … a three-word memo.… ‘Absolutely must go.’”

British agents, with the help of Navy Seabees, quickly rounded up the islanders’ pet dogs, gassing and burning them in sealed cargo sheds. They ordered … the remaining Chagossians onto overcrowded cargo ships. During the deportations, which took place in stages until May 1973, most Chagossians slept in the ship’s hold atop guano — bird crap. Prized horses stayed on deck. By the end of the five-day trip, vomit, urine, and excrement were everywhere. At least one woman miscarried.

Arriving in Mauritius and the Seychelles, Chagossians were literally left on the docks. They were homeless, jobless, and had little money, and they received no resettlement assistance.

Remember, this was happening, not in the 18th or 19th century, but in the late 20th century. This year marks the 40th anniversary of the last of the expulsions.

The personal toll has been great. The Chagossians remain poor, and many suffer from illnesses traced to their dispossession. “Scores more Chagossians have reported deaths from sadness and sagren,” or “profound sorrow,” according to Vine.

Five years ago the Chagossians had some ray of hope when three British courts declared the deportations illegal. But the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom overruled the lower courts. “Last year,” Vine adds, “the European Court of Human Rights dismissed the Chagossians’ final appeal on procedural grounds.…”

“A day after the European court ruling, the Obama administration rejected the demands of an online petition signed by some 30,000 asking the White House to ‘redress wrongs against the Chagossians.’”

The British were adequately looking after the matter, the administration said.

Here is government in all its glory.

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June 5, 2013 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Russia slams end of EU arms embargo, calls S-300s ‘stabilizing factor’ in Syria

RT | May 28, 2013

The failure of the European Union to agree on a new arms embargo for Syria is undermining the peace process, Moscow says. But the delivery of S-300 surface-to-air missiles may help restrain warmongers.

The comments come from Deputy Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov, referring to the results of Monday’s meeting in Brussels. After a lengthy negotiating session, EU governments failed to resolve their differences and allowed a ban on arming the Syrian opposition to expire, with France and Britain scoring an apparent victory at the expense of EU unity.

The EU’s move, which the Russian diplomat branded as an “example of double standards”, opens the door for Britain and France to supply weapons to Syrian rebels fighting the regime of President Bashar Assad.

Criticizing Europe’s decision to open the way for potential arms shipments to Syrian rebels, Russia insists that its own sale of arms to the Syrian government helps the international effort to end the two-year-long conflict, the diplomat added. He was referring to the delivery of the advanced S-300 long-range air defense systems, which Russia is carrying out under a contract signed with Syria several years ago.

“Those systems by definition cannot be used by militant groups on the battlefield,” Ryabkov said. “We consider this delivery a factor of stabilization. We believe that moves like this one to a great degree restrain some hotheads from escalating the conflict to the international scale, from involving external forces.”

The S-300 is a series of Russian long-range surface-to-air missile systems designed to intercept ballistic missiles, regarded as the most potent weaponry of its class. The missiles are capable of engaging aerial targets as far away as 200km, depending on the version used.

Once the Russian SAM missiles are deployed by Syria, it will have a better control of its airspace. The country endured three airstrikes this year, which are widely thought to have been conducted by Israel, but were never officially confirmed as such.

Britain and France have made a commitment not to deliver arms to the Syrian opposition “at this stage,” an EU declaration said. EU officials, however, said the commitment effectively expires on August 1.

London and Paris have argued support for rebels fighting Assad by allowing EU arms deliveries, despite the fact that extremist elements are known to work alongside the rebels.

Other EU governments, led by Austria and Sweden, argued that sending more weapons to the region would increase violence and spread instability.

Russia’s envoy to NATO Aleksandr Grushko said that the abolition of the EU arms embargo on the Syrian opposition will only exacerbate armed conflict in that country.

“We need to refrain from taking steps that would be contrary to this logic. Such steps include armed or non-lethal support to the opposition. This just adds fuel to the fire,” Grushko said on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, Moscow and Washington remain undecided as to the content of a proposed international conference on Syria, according to Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov.

“There remains a gap between the positions of Russia and the US regarding some issues and aspects of this major international crisis,” he emphasized.

“And we, for our part, cannot agree to hold such events [the international conference on Syria] amid a situation where partners and possible participants in such a conference seek to impose solutions on the Syrian people from the outside, as well as predetermine the course of a transitional process, the parameters of which have not been determined yet,” Ryabkov said.

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May 28, 2013 Posted by | Militarism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

‘UK must scrap useless, costly nukes’

Press TV – May 27, 2013

Former United Nations weapons inspector Hans Blix says Britain should end its Trident nuclear weapons program as he does not see how the £100bn plan can help the country better protect itself.

The Swede told an audience of some 1,600 at the Hay literary festival that even the US is not pursuing such a “costly rearmament” and questioned whether Trident is “required to protect UK independence or UK pride”.

He also said “it would be a big gain” if Britain gets rid of its whole nuclear stockpile.

“I know that the British military are not very keen on it. I don’t think Britain would be more protected by [Trident] and Germany and Japan seem to be managing without them [nuclear weapons],” he added.

Blix also warned about the persisting “risk of armed intervention” in other countries including North Korea and Syria stressing “there is astonishing little attention paid to the legality of armed intervention”.

Britain and its western allies have kept threatening Syria with a military attack, but Blix warned that any intervention will be hugely costly in terms of lives and resources.

May 27, 2013 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Charities condemn switching foreign aid to military

Press TV – May 2, 2013

UK charities have criticized British Prime Minister David Cameron for signaling that the foreign aid budget could be diverted to the country’s Ministry of Defence (MoD).

Leading British charity against global poverty Oxfam reacted angrily after Cameron hinted Britain’s foreign aid budget could be spent on the country’s military adventures.

“The Prime Minister needs to be categorical that not one penny of aid can be raided by the MoD”, said Oxfam spokesperson Emma Seery, emphasizing that Britain must stick to his commitment.

Ben Jackson of Bond, representing 350 British aid groups and trustees, also condemned the decision to divert foreign aid budget to military and said, “There are strict definitions of aid that clearly preclude it from being spent on military equipment.”

Earlier in February, Cameron indicated that he is ready to divert aid budget to military.

The British PM said the Department for International Development works closely with both the Foreign Ministry and Ministry of Defense, adding that foreign interventions to prove a “basic level of stability and security” would be part of Britain’s “foreign aid”.

The decision to divert foreign aid to military seems primarily aimed at pacifying members of Cameron’s own Conservative Party, who oppose the prospect of cuts to the country’s military budget.

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May 3, 2013 Posted by | Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

‘UK, France barring UN Syria inspection’

Press TV – April 29, 2013

Syrian Ambassador to the United Nations Bashar al-Jaafari says Britain and France are trying to undermine Damascus’s official request from the United Nation to investigate chemical weapons use in Aleppo.

Al-Jaafari said in an interview with the Lebanese NBN TV channel that the western governments seek to repeat the Iraqi scenario in Syria through questioning its sovereignty by opening its borders to undisciplined inspections by the UN under the pretext of chemical weapons use.

Al-Jaffari said the western sides do not want an investigation to take place suggesting they know full well that the anti-government militants used chemical agents in the town of Khan al-Asal, near Aleppo, and elsewhere.

The Syrian official said the comparison with Iraq is pretty clear as the UN also sent an inspection team to the country to examine weapons of mass destruction claims, but Iraq was occupied despite the fact that the inspection team did not find any WMDs.

He also rejected claims by Britain and France that chemical weapons were used in Homs four months before the Khan al-Asal incident saying they would have reported it earlier if any such attack ever existed.

The Syrian Foreign Ministry has written to the UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon calling on the body to explain the details of a likely inspection in Khan al-Asal.

However, Britain and France have demanded the team to be also sent to other areas of the country to investigate the use of chemical weapons.

The request has been rejected by the Syrian government that says inspectors cannot have unlimited access to all regions of the country without coordination with Damascus.

The Syrian government has also called for an independent inspection of Khan al-Asal saying Damascus and the UN could discuss the details on other alleged chemical weapons uses separately, though the UN has so far refused to do so.

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April 29, 2013 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , | Leave a comment

Britons’ phone calls spied on routinely by UK police: Report

Press TV – April 20, 2013

British police forces are making as many as 250,000 requests to snoop on people’s email and phone call details every year, a new report reveals.

According to a survey, which was carried out by civil liberties and privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch, 25 police forces across Britain made 506,720 requests for people’s “communications data” over the past three years, The Telegraph reported.

The survey released under the freedom of information laws found that the number of requests for Britons’ phone or email records has risen from 158,677 in 2009-10 to 178,985 in 2011-12. However, the figure could be increased to up to 250,000 including estimates for the forces that failed to reply to the research.

This comes as the UK government is seeking more snooping powers through the controversial Communications Data Bill, which is due to be published in the summer.

The draft bill is dubbed as the Snooper’s Charter, because it is considered as a significant threat to British citizens’ privacy.

The measures mark a serious increase in the powers the British government has to order any communications provider to collect, store and provide access to information about emails, online conversations and texts.

Former British shadow home secretary David Davis said, “It is frankly not good enough that the government is considering introducing a snoopers’ charter without even being able to tell us what they have used communications data for in the past.”

April 20, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Report slams UK involvement in torture

Press TV – April 18, 2013

A damning report has slammed Britain for violating human rights through colluding with the U.S. in the torture and rendition of terror suspects.

The document blamed the UK for being involved in or turning a blind eye to abuses and for co-operating in the murky U.S. practice of ‘extraordinary rendition’ – illegally transferring terror suspects to secret CIA jails in countries that allowed torture.

The so-called Constitution Project dossier also claims MI5 agents under the last Labour government knew prisoners were ill-treated at the hands of their captors.

An independent American task force did the research and concluded ‘indisputably’ that the U.S. ‘engaged in the practice of torture’ after the September 11 attacks.

The task force included an 11-strong panel of experts who spent two years investigating the country’s treatment of military detainees.

The experts found that the US used interrogation methods violating international laws – including waterboarding, sleep deprivation and extraordinary rendition. Their document also criticised the detention of 166 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

For years, Labour ministers denied involvement in rendition. But the report pointed out that the UK had paid out around £10million to more than a dozen detainees after they were illegally rendered and tortured.

“Torture – a crime – was committed and authorised at the top levels of the US government. Britain is just starting to face up to its role in this sad saga”, said Cori Crider, from human rights group Reprieve.

Tory MP Andrew Tyrie, chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Extraordinary Rendition, said: “This concludes that the United States engaged in kidnap and torture, in violation of its own laws and of international treaties. The report takes us a step closer to the truth.

“It is in the national interest of not just the U.S. but also of Britain to uncover the truth about the scope of the extraordinary rendition programme. Only then can we draw a line under it and move on”.

April 18, 2013 Posted by | Deception, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

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