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A Gangster State

By Craig Murray | August 20, 2018

Max Weber defined a key attribute of a state as holding the monopoly on the legitimate exercise of violence within a given territory. For anybody other than the state to use substantive physical force against you or to imprison you is regarded as an extremely serious crime. The state itself may however constrain you, beat you, imprison you and even kill you. That link is on deaths in police custody. I might also quote the state murder of 12 year old British child Jojo Jones, deliberately executed by drone strike by the USA with prior approval from the British government.

That is but one example of the British state’s decreasing reticence over the use of extreme violence. The shameless promotion of Cressida Dick to head the Metropolitan Police as reward for orchestrating the cold-blooded murder of an innocent and unresisting Jean Charles de Menezes is another example. So is Savid Javid’s positive encouragement of the US to employ the death penalty against British men stripped of citizenship.

There are a class of states where the central government does not have sufficient control over its territories to preserve its monopoly of violence. That may include violence in opposition to the state. But one further aspect of that is state sanctioned violence in pursuit of state aims by non state actors, done with a nod and a wink from the government – death squads and private militias, often CIA supplied, in South America have often acted this way, and so occasionally does the British state, for example in the murder of Pat Finucane. In some instances, a state might properly be described as a gangster state, where violent groups acting for personal gain act in concert with state authorities, with motives of personal financial profit involved on both sides.

It appears to me in this sense it is fair to call Britain a gangster state. It has contracted out the exercise of state violence, including in some instances to the point of death, against prisoners and immigration detainees to companies including G4S, who exercise that violence purely for the making of profit from it. It is a great moral abomination that violence should be exercised against humans for profit – and it should be clear that in even in most “humane” conditions the deprivation of physical liberty of any person is an extreme and chronic exercise of violence against them. I do not deny the necessity of such action on occasion to protect others, but that the state shares out its monopoly of violence, so that business interests with which the political class are closely associated can turn a profit, is a matter of extreme moral repugnance.

Rory Stewart appeared on Sky News this morning and the very first point he saw fit to make was a piece of impassioned shilling on behalf of G4S. That this was the first reaction of the Prisons Minister to a question on the collapse of order at Birmingham Prison due to G4S’ abject performance, shows both the Tories’ ideological commitment to privatisation in all circumstances, especially where it has demonstrably failed, and shows also the extent to which they are in the pockets of financial interests – and not in the least concerned about the public interest.

I should add to this that Tories here includes Blairites. Blair and Brown were gung-ho for prison privatisation, and even keen to extend the contracting out of state violence for profit to the military sector by the deployment of mercenary soldiers, which New Labour itself consciously rebranded as “private military companies”. Iraq was a major exercise in this with British government contracted mercenaries often outnumbering actual British troops.

The reason for the state to have the monopoly of violence in any society is supposed to be in order to ensure that violence is only ever exercised with caution, with regret and in proportion, solely in unavoidable circumstances. It is the most profound duty of a state to ensure that this is so. The contracting out of state violence for private profit ought to be unthinkable to any decent person.

August 20, 2018 Posted by | Corruption, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | 1 Comment

G4S says it will exit Israeli market, following high-profile BDS campaign

is-checkpoints

MEMO – March 10, 2016

British private security giant G4S has announced plans to sell its entire Israeli business within the next 12 to 24 months. The news has been welcomed by activists in the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, for whom G4S has been a long-standing target.

The decision to leave Israel was revealed in the company’s full-year results released Wednesday, when the company reported a 40 per cent fall in its pre-tax profits.

The company said its plans to exit Israel were part of a “continuing portfolio management programme” designed to “materially improve our strategic focus.” The Israeli business employs 8,000 people with a turnover of £100 million.

According to the Financial Times, G4S “is extracting itself from reputationally damaging work, including its entire Israeli business”, noting that human rights campaigners and BDS activists “have repeatedly attacked G4S’s work in [Israel].”

G4S provides equipment and services to Israeli prisons and detention centres, in which thousands of Palestinian prisoners are tortured and held – including without charge or trial. Israel also violates international law by jailing Palestinians outside of the occupied territory.

The company also has contracts with the Israeli authorities to provide equipment and services to Israeli checkpoints in the Occupied West Bank that form part of illegal Apartheid Wall.

In 2012, Palestinian groups “called for action to hold G4S accountable for its role in Israel’s prisons”, and since then, the campaign has inflicted growing economic and PR damage on the company. Activists say that G4S has since lost contracts worth millions of dollars around the world, with lost clients including private businesses, universities, trade unions, and United Nations bodies.

In 2014, the Bill Gates Foundation divested its $170m stake in the company following international protests. In the UK, at least five student unions voted to cancel contracts with G4S, and students successfully pressured two other universities not to renew contracts with the company.

The United Methodist Church, the largest protestant church in the USA, divested from G4S after coalition campaigning brought the issue to a vote. Just recently, as reported by Middle East Monitor, G4S lost a major contract in Colombia and a contract with UNICEF in Jordan, in both cases following campaigns by BDS activists.

Responding to the news of G4S’s planned withdrawal from Israel, Palestinian BDS National Committee spokesperson Mahmoud Nawajaa compared the pressure being felt by Israel to the boycott of Apartheid South Africa, and stated that BDS “is making some of the world’s largest corporations realize that profiting from Israeli apartheid and colonialism is bad for business.”

He added: “investment fund managers are increasingly recognizing that their fiduciary responsibility obliges them to divest from Israeli banks and companies that are implicated in Israel’s serious human rights violations, such as G4S and HP, because of the high risk entailed. We are starting to notice a domino effect.”

Nawajaa said the BNC was grateful “to all of the dedicated grassroots organizers around the world who are working in solidarity with Palestinians seeking freedom, justice, and equality”, but noted that the boycott of G4S “will remain among the BDS movement’s top priorities until we actually see its back out of the door of Israel’s regime of occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid.”

The caution is well-founded; G4S announced in 2013 that it would end its role in illegal Israeli settlements, checkpoints and one Israeli prison by 2015, but did not follow through. In 2014, G4S announced it “did not intend to renew” its contract with the Israeli Prison Service when it expired in 2017 but is yet to implement that decision.

In addition, Nawajaa claimed that owing to G4S’s involvement in the “racist mass incarceration business” in countries such as South Africa, UK, and USA, the BNC is “determined to work closely with partners to hold G4S to account for its participation in human rights abuses.”

In the last eight months, French multinationals Veolia and Orange and CRH, Ireland’s biggest company, have all exited the Israeli market. In January, the United Methodist Church put five Israeli banks from Israel on a “blacklist” due to their complicity in human rights violations, including the financing of illegal Israeli settlements.

Nawajaa said Israel is unable to “stop the impressive growth of BDS”, despite its efforts “to smear and delegitimize our nonviolent movement, including with anti-democratic laws in Europe and the US aimed at silencing dissent and suppressing our freedom of speech.”

“We believe strongly that our ethical approach and just cause will prevail, as this latest G4S announcement shows.”

March 10, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | , , , , , | 2 Comments

Netanyahu demands anti-Zionist posters be removed from London Underground

RT | February 23, 2016

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly asked the UK government to have hundreds of posters protesting Israeli occupation of Palestine removed from the Tube.

The Haaretz newspaper reported Tuesday that the Israeli prime minister himself had asked that the posters, which may have been posted in their hundreds, be removed.

The posters appeared on Sunday as part of a mass fly-posting effort to mark the annual Israeli Apartheid Week.

The posters on the London Underground trains hit out at a number of targets, including controversial UK private military firm G4S, which is involved in the running of Israeli prisons.

Transport for London (TfL) said that the posters would be taken down.

“It is flyposting and therefore an act of vandalism, which we take extremely seriously,” A TfL spokesman told the Evening Standard.

“Our staff and contractors are working to immediately remove any found on our network,” the spokesman added.

Some Jewish community groups said that the posters amounted to “smears” against Israel.

“These posters are awful smears that do nothing to contribute to peace and dialogue, placing significant strains on inter-community relations across London,” a London Jewish Forum spokesman told Haaretz.

“They are an act of vandalism, seeking to undermine the UK’s relationship with Israel and designed to foster discomfort. We welcome Transport for London’s commitment to quickly remove them.”

The posters were reported Monday as the Palestinian envoy to the UK Manuel Hassassian told the Independent newspaper that the decision to invite Israeli parliament speaker Yuli Edelstein to address an event held in the UK Parliament risked legitimizing Israeli expansionism, given Edelstein’s background.

“Mr Edelstein lives on an illegal Israeli settlement built on Palestinian land and he publicly opposes Palestinian statehood,” Hassassian said.

Edelstein is due to address the British Group Inter-Parliamentary Union in March.

February 23, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, War Crimes | , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Egypt sentenced nearly 600 to death last year

Reprieve | November 14, 2015

The Egyptian government has sentenced nearly 600 people to death in the last year, with the vast majority of death sentences handed down in relation to political protest, human rights organization Reprieve has found.

Data collected by Reprieve has found that since January 2014, at least 588 people have been sentenced to death in Egypt. In the cases that Reprieve was able to identify, some 72% of sentences were handed down for attending pro-democracy protests.

Reprieve’s report, released today, also found that the Egyptian authorities are overseeing a marked rise in actual executions. Between 2011 and 2013, only one execution was carried out in Egypt; but since January 2014, some months after President Sisi seized power, at least 27 people have been executed. The report also finds that at least 15 mass trials have taken place since March 2014.

Since taking power, President Sisi has overseen a regime of mass trials and sweeping death sentences for protestors – sometimes involving hundreds of prisoners at a time. Among those on trial and facing a potential death sentence is Irish teenager Ibrahim Halawa, who is being assisted by Reprieve. Yesterday, it was revealed that Ibrahim has witnessed torture methods including ‘crucifixion’ and electrocution being carried out in Wadi Natrun prison, where he is being held.

Mr Halawa’s family were last week joined by several British MPs in asking the UK to intervene on the case, during President Sisi’s visit to London for talks with the Prime Minister. The Foreign Office has told Reprieve that the UK is ‘monitoring’ Ibrahim’s case, and has said that it has been raised with the Egyptian authorities.

However, there are concerns over the UK government’s apparent support for the Egyptian security forces. Reprieve has found that the British government invited security and policing firm G4S to be part of the UK delegation at a recent major Egyptian trade conference hosted by President Sisi.

Commenting, Maya Foa, director of the death penalty team at Reprieve, which is assisting Ibrahim Halawa, said: “President Sisi has overseen an unprecedented surge in death sentences as part of a wave of repression that should attract condemnation from Egypt’s allies. Since 2013, many thousands of people – including journalists, activists and juveniles like Ibrahim Halawa – have been locked up for attending protests. Police torture is reported all too often, and Kafkaesque ‘mass trials’ have seen hundreds of death sentences handed down at a time. More than ever, the UK must use its increasingly close relationship with Egypt to urge an end to these terrible abuses – including the release of juveniles like Ibrahim.”

November 14, 2015 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Leave a comment

#PalestinianPrisonerDay: Protesters target G4S London HQ over Israeli ‘torture’ complicity

RT | April 17, 2015

Protestors gathered outside the London office of G4S on Friday to highlight the private security firm’s role in incarcerating Palestinian prisoners on behalf of Israel.

Organizers demanded the release of several prisoners, including Palestinian MP Khalida Jarrar and more than a hundred child detainees.

They also highlighted the ill treatment of prisoners, including alleged incidents of torture.

The protest in London takes place as part of an international day of action to mark Palestinian Prisoners Day, an annual expression of solidarity with Palestinians detained by Israel.

Palestinian Prisoners Day began as a mass action in support of hunger striking political prisoners on April 17, 2012.

It has grown into an annual event marked by human rights organizations and pro-Palestine groups across the world.

More than 100 people confirmed they would attend the protest on its Facebook page.

Organized by Innovative Minds (Inminds), a group which describes itself as online Islamic activists, the demonstration targeted G4S for its operation of two prisons and two detention centers in Israel and one prison in the West Bank.

Some 6,000 Palestinians are currently held in Israeli prisoners, according to the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association.

Addameer’s monthly detention report for February 2015 indicates 163 of these prisoners are children, 13 of whom are under 16.

The vast majority of those incarcerated are male, with only 22 female prisoners.

Lina Jarbouni, a female detainee from Galilee, is the longest serving female prisoner having been in jail for 13 consecutive years.

“Systematic torture and ill treatment” of Palestinian prisoners is well documented, according to human rights group War on Want.

Activists say G4S is complicit in this ill treatment by providing security systems for the Israel-based Ketziot and Megiddo prisons, which hold political prisoners arrested within Palestine.

War on Want claims G4S has acted in violation of Article 76 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits the transfer of prisoners from an occupied territory to the territory of the occupier.

G4S has become the target of an international boycott, with the South African government resolving to end work contracts with the security firm in November last year.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu was one of several notable activists, including Noam Chomsky, to sign a petition calling for G4S to end its participation in Israel’s occupation of Palestine.

Protestors outside the London office of G4S highlighted the plight of Palestinian prisoners being held by Israel as well as those detained by the security firm.

They demanded the release of Palestinian MP Khalida Jarrar, who was arrested by the Israel Defense Force (IDF) earlier this month.

The prominent feminist and human rights activist was sentenced to six months in prison without trial for violating a military injunction, which confines her to the city of Jericho and its surrounding.

Army sources told the Times of Israel the restraining order was based on her “incitement and involvement in terror.”

A spokesperson for the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) said Jarrar was heavily involved in the Palestinian Authority’s bid to join the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Activists also demanded justice for Jaafar Awad, 22, a Palestinian man who died from health complications resulting from “medical negligence” during his detention in an Israeli prison, according to the Palestinian Prisoner Society.

Another key theme of the protest was the detention of children.

Defense for Children International (DCI) launched an urgent appeal in 2012 after documenting 53 cases in which children were held in solitary confinement at the Al Jalame and Petah Tikva interrogation centers, and Hasharon prison.

Children reported being held in solitary confinement in a “foul smelling” cell measuring approximately 2 meters by 3 for an average of 10 days.

DCI reports no education is provided to them and they are denied access to their parents or lawyers while held in the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) controlled detention centers.

Read more:

Female Palestinian MP snatched by IDF, held without charge for 6 months

G4S posts £148mn profit despite ‘countless’ human rights scandals

April 17, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | 1 Comment

Police asked to investigate G4S over Guantanamo role

Reprieve | January 12, 2015

British security firm G4S could be criminally liable for its involvement in Guantanamo Bay, according to a new complaint filed with the Metropolitan Police.

Legal charity Reprieve, which represents several Guantanamo detainees, has reported the UK company to police after learning of a $113 million (£71 million) contract for G4S to supply ‘base services’ at the US prison through its US subsidiary, G4S Government Solutions (G4S GS). The exact nature of the services to be provided under the contract is unclear, prompting concerns that the company could be complicit in rights abuses under way at the prison, such as force-feeding.

G4S sold G4S GS to an undisclosed buyer for $135m (£89m) at the end of last year, and Reprieve’s complaint argues that both the contract itself and the sale could amount to an offence under the 2002 Proceeds of Crime Act.

127 men remain imprisoned without charge or trial in Guantanamo Bay, including British resident Shaker Aamer. The UK government has repeatedly said that Mr Aamer, who has twice been cleared for release, must be urgently returned to his British wife and children in London. Mr Aamer’s lawyers are urging the Prime Minister to secure his release during an upcoming US visit.

Kevin Lo, an investigator at Reprieve, said: “It is a scandal that, while British resident Shaker Aamer still languishes at Guantanamo, G4S has been seeking to profit from the sale of a contract that supports the abuses he and others suffer daily. No British firm should be profiting from a prison that UK ministers have rightly called a ‘shocking affront to the principles of democracy’. The authorities in the UK must hold G4S to account for its actions.”

January 12, 2015 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture | , , | 1 Comment

G4S stonewalls questions over involvement in Guantánamo Bay

Reprieve | November 7, 2014

British security company G4S is refusing to address concerns over its involvement in the running of the US prison at Guantánamo Bay.

Human rights charity Reprieve submitted a complaint to the UK government earlier this year, arguing that G4S has breached OECD Guidelines because of its contract to supply ‘base support operating services’ at Guantánamo Bay. The nature of support services provided by G4S are not made clear, and the company has refused to give further details about the $113 million contract, prompting concerns that G4S could be contributing to the abuse of detainees at the prison.

In a reply to the National Contact Point, the government body through which the complaint was submitted, G4S made no attempt to address the substantive allegations of the complaint. Instead the company argued that they have little control over G4S Government Solutions, its wholly-owned US subsidiary that won the Guantánamo contract.

G4S is a long-standing contractor for the British government, receiving millions of pounds annually in public money. Guantánamo has been called “a shocking affront to democracy” by a former government minister, and “a monstrous failure of justice” by Lord Steyn, formerly one of Britain’s most senior judges.

The UK Government’s NCP has suggested to Reprieve that it might pass the complaint to its US counterpart, prompting concerns they will avoid responsibility for investigating it.

148 men remain held without charge or trial in Guantánamo – including British resident Shaker Aamer who was cleared for release from the prison under the Bush administration in 2007 and again under President Obama in 2009. It is UK government policy that Mr Aamer should be returned as a matter of urgency to his British wife and their four children in London, yet he remains detained.

Kevin Lo, an investigator at Reprieve, said:  “G4S is deeply involved in running the legal black hole that is Guantánamo Bay, and the British public deserves better than the company’s stonewalling of questions. For the UK government to show that its condemnation of Guantánamo is more than just talk, the UK National Contact Point needs to press G4S for accountability and transparency.”

The complaint can be read in full, here.

November 7, 2014 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

L-3 and Garret supplying equipment for Gaza checkpoint

By Tom Anderson and Therezia Cooper | Corporate Watch | June 20, 2014

The Beit Hanoun (Erez) crossing is the only crossing for people who want to go directly from Gaza into the 1948 borders of Israel. People wishing to cross must apply for a permit and only a small number of permits are granted. Privileged people such as foreign journalists (who are not overly critical of Israel), NGO workers, business people and politicians are often granted permits. Other people have to go through the Rafah crossing from southern Gaza into Egypt.

The Beit Hanoun crossing is subject to frequent closures by the Israeli authorities. The terminal has been closed since the kidnapping of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank on 12 June. This closure amounts to an act of collective punishment against everyone in Gaza by the Israeli state.

The crossing is also the only way for hundreds of sick patients to obtain treatment. Israeli military attacks have destroyed vital services in Gaza, while the Israeli siege has prevented life saving equipment from reaching services in the Strip. See Corporate Watch’s recent briefing, Besieging health services in Gaza: a profitable business, to find out more about the effects of the siege on health in Gaza.

Corporate Watch did not apply for permission to cross through the Beit Hanoun crossing as we didn’t think that it would be granted. However, we did ask an NGO worker who was crossing to take a look at the equipment used in the terminal. The NGO worker, who wished to remain anonymous told us: “Coming from Israel, you first go through a private Israeli security firm check where your permit number is confirmed so that you can enter the terminal, then in the terminal you go through another Israeli security ‘border patrol’ check. Once through that you go on a long walk to the Palestinian Authority checkpoint where you’re registered, then you get into a taxi and drive just a minute to the Hamas checkpoint where another permit by the local government is checked. That’s the process for getting into Gaza.”

He told us “I saw the machine’s makes: ProVision on the full body scans, Garret on the metal detectors.”

Garrett are a security equipment supplier. In 2013 Corporate Watch reported that Garrett scanning equipment was being used by the police in the occupied West Bank. Garrett equipment is used by HM Court ‘Service’ in the UK. In our view, BDS campaigners should pressure HMCS to end its contract with Garrett because of its supply of security equipment used to enforce the unlawful siege of Gaza.

The PROVision scanners are manufactured by L-3. L-3 is a provider of military and security products and services. According to Who Profits it supplied body scanners to the Beit Hanoun terminal via Hashmira Israel, a security company owned by British-Danish company G4S.

June 20, 2014 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Make it happen on purpose, UK private security as terrorism vector

RT | July 18, 2013

The widening of the spiral of fear and increasing demand for ‘protection’ creates an international protection racket cartel indistinguishable, only in that they call themselves ‘legal’, from organized criminal gangs.

UK security firms Serco and G4S, described as ‘indispensable’ to Britain’s criminal justice system, have been overcharging the government by ‘tens of millions of pounds’ for criminals who had long finished their sentences or been dead for years.

How many kicks in the teeth, or near misses, can this British Government endure before it sees 21st Century ‘terrorism’ for what it is? An organized assault on our collective peace and safety with the purpose of spawning real terrorist cells.

Profit led policing

On Thursday July 11, 2013 Conservative Justice Secretary Chris Grayling delivered a progress report to the House of Commons on the privatization of UK Criminal Justice. His voice was trembling as though he himself could neither believe nor bear the consequences of what he was reading.

Two firms, he explained, Serco and G4S, have been overcharging the government by ‘tens of millions of pounds’ for electronic tagging of offenders, as well as continuing to charge the taxpayer for criminals who had long finished their sentences and some who had been dead for years.

The same week a London inquest jury delivered its verdict that Angolan deportee Jimmy Mubenga was unlawfully killed while being restrained by G4S guards. His plane was waiting to take off at London’s Heathrow airport when he died and a series of racist SMS texts were also found on the G4S guards’ phones.

Founded in 2004, G4S employs over 600,000 people in 125 countries with revenue of £7.5bn, making it the world’s largest security company. Despite its size G4S appears to have little regard for international law, taking on private prison work in Palestine/Israel which is alleged to contravene Article 76 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Transporting prisoners from the occupied territory into the country of the occupier.

Serco and G4S are now so deep into Britain’s criminal justice system the Guardian recently described them as ‘indispensable’. Serco manage six prisons including Oakwood ‘super-jail’ and two immigration removal centres. G4S manage police custody cells, a 999 emergency response service, county control room, police station and court facilities.

Britain’s criminal justice system is indeed becoming utterly entangled in the G4S web. The initiative is shifting with immense pressure being put on Chief Constables and Police and Crime Commissioners to sign up to G4S privatization deals which promise to slash budgets. In times of ‘austerity’ private security firms are getting the whip hand.

Although the ‘savings’ may look good, privatizing the criminal justice system moves society closer to the abyss. As the profit motive creeps in and accountability leaves by the side door we may as well dispense with the word ‘justice’ entirely. US Judge Mark Ciavarella Jr, for example, was sentenced to 28 years in jail in May 2013’s ‘kids for cash’ scandal where over 4,000 children were given maximum jail terms in exchange for over $2m in bribes from the private firm that ran the jails.

Protection racket cartel

In July of 2012 London prepared to host its first Olympics since 1948. But behind the scenes one thing threatened to spoil it for everyone. The main security firm was playing games with the Olympic Committee and the government.

G4S said it was ready, all the risk assessment boxes were ticked and certified. The trouble was they were lying. With only a month to go until the great show got on the road recruitment was nowhere near the numbers required and training was pitiful.

With only three weeks to go the British army saved the day, stepping in with 3,500 soldiers to replace the senior and mid-ranking G4S staff. How that came about is a cautionary tale about private security that was never fully told by the London press.

The world’s biggest private security firm G4S had a £300m contract to hire 10,500 staff for the games. They made sure it all looked good for police and Olympic organisers on paper … but unbeknown to them media savvy G4S trainee Ben Fellows was busy collecting particulars from his G4S classmates about just what a disaster of a ‘training operation’ was unfolding around them.

On Friday June 22nd, five weeks before the opening ceremony, Ben sensationally broke cover on my Bristol radio show under the pseudonym ‘Lee Hazledean’. With quotes like “If a terrorist wants to get into the Olympics all they have to do is queue up” he detailed the G4S shambles and became an internet sensation, clocking up over 120,000 YouTube views in a little over a week.

But his story presented the London media with a problem: if printed and transmitted tens of thousands of Olympic enthusiasts might stay away. One teenage girl, initially delighted with tickets her parents had bought her, told me after she heard the interview “I don’t want to go the Olympics any more… but I don’t know how to tell my mum”.

Running straight after Fellows’ interview Oxford economist & terrorism expert Martin Summers, reminded us that lawyer Kurt Haskell spotted the 2009 Underpants bomber being allowed onto the plane without a passport… again by private security.

He also pointed out the alleged 9/11 hijackers boarded the doomed planes in Boston via private security firms. If those attacks are being carried out by a private military company ICTS & G4S could, far from preventing, be the facilitators of terror attacks said Summers.

The next week, on Tuesday 26 June 2012 the Director General of MI5 Jonathan Evans appeared on Channel 4 News. Gone was the “wide open to terror” claim. Security correspondent Simon Israel just repeated Evans’ assertion that “the Olympics Games is not an easy target for terrorists”.

Except perhaps, Evans said, there may be an Iranian, Syrian or Hezbollah attack. What these countries and factions could hope to gain from bombing the Olympics neither Simon Israel, nor Jonathan Evans, who has since been replaced, attempted to explain.

So Ben Fellows was right because with three weeks to go 3,500 British soldiers were drafted in to take charge and the story of the G4S fiasco dominated national headlines for a week. Now the fix was in the London media were safe.

With less of a fanfare, Israeli President Shimon Peres announced he would no longer be coming to London. He and his staff had been promised special permission to stay in the central athletes only Olympic Village so he wouldn’t have to walk far and could observe the Jewish Shabbat. Under the new security regime they would have to stay outside the park like everyone else. You can tell real security, nobody bypasses it.

Back in September 2004, private Israeli software firm Verint Systems were granted privileged security access to the London Underground. This was ten months before the 7/7 London bombings.

Verint won a contract to install and operate ‘smart’ CCTV. So smart in fact that all the hundreds of expected images of July 2005 alleged bombers getting onto or travelling on the three bombed tube trains were ‘lost’.

So what of this company’s bona-fides’? Verint’s parent company Comverse Technologies had an embarrassing chairman. Israeli Kobi Alexander fled the US in 2006 and went straight on to the FBI’s ‘most wanted’ list after stealing from his own firm.

Charged on 35 counts he was chased by Wall Street regulators the Security & Exchange Commission (SEC). Finally being run to ground via Germany to Namibia. In 2010 he paid a fine of $53m to avoid going to court and regain his freedom to travel.

A previous incarnation of Verint Systems, Comverse Infosys, was implicated in the US’s 2001 AmDocs spying scandal where Israeli phone software, installed on US telecom networks, was being used to warn Israeli mafia drug traffickers to switch phones and identities when the FBI were tapping their phones. 200 or so Israelis were arrested and most deported.

But what about the most recent terror attacks? The April 2013 Boston bombings has some of the most serious problems of FBI and mainstream media credibility to date. Not only does there seem to be little to connect the official suspects to the bombing but a private ‘Craft’ security guard at the scene has a black bag that seems to ‘disappear’ around the time the bomb went off.

“Hey Bro, Where’d Your Backpack Go” was one set of images from the finish line circulated to tens of thousands when CBS 60 Minutes’ Twitter account was hacked. Again it appears to anyone with the time to take a look for themselves that private security should be a prime suspect in that bombing.

Neither does mainstream press seem to question why one of the FBI’s two official ‘prime suspects’, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was filmed under arrest, naked, unharmed and being sat down in the back of a police car but then somehow died of horrific wounds sustained when he was previously ‘run over’ by his brother Tamerlan.

If even just a small proportion of these allegations are true then ‘double your money’ private security firms paid for providing security at an event or location may be abusing that privileged access for ‘quid pro quo’ deals. Certainly the mainstream press are simply not asking even the most obvious questions.

Unscrupulous staff, ex mercenaries as some are, can then also be paid for tip-offs, to turn a blind eye, possibly with a nod and a wink from the top. They may even actually plant bombs themselves. A ‘false flag’ attack can have a massive political impact and, if the media oblige and look the other way, be blamed on the enemy of the day.

These dangers should make it clear that secretive and profit motivated private security companies must under no circumstances be allowed to replace publicly accountable police or armed forces.

July 18, 2013 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, False Flag Terrorism | , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Make it happen on purpose, UK private security as terrorism vector

The Gates Foundation and its unethical investments in G4S

By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | June 20, 2013

While three Dutch charities have announced that they will no longer accept donations by G4S due to the company’s support for the Israeli occupation, the Gates Foundation has deemed it ethical to invest in G4S, effectively exposing the often ignored link between philanthropy and human rights violations.

The Gates Foundation, renowned for its philanthropy, is allegedly ‘inspired by passion and compassion for the well-being of people’. Focusing on issues such as health, education, poverty, the Foundation now seems to be seeking a share in security affairs, effectively aligning itself with the conspiracy behind the fable of safeguarding human rights. Philanthropy should be viewed within a wider image – a surplus of funds derived from a capitalist enterprise channelled into appropriate projects which bestow a continuous temporary relief in order to avoid challenging the exploitation which has rendered communities around the world dependent upon charity. With the Gates Foundation aligning its interests with a service provider of oppression, profits will continue to fund approved projects at the expense of violating international human rights law, which is acceptable within the cycle of capitalist dependency.

G4S has been targeted by the BDS movement for its role in providing security and surveillance equipment, rendering the company complicit in war crimes with Israel’s security service, Shin Bet. Torture during interrogations is routine treatment in Israeli jails, often resulting in severe physical and metal degeneration or, as in the case of Arafat Jaradat, death. G4S endorses identical security concern rhetoric as that used by Israel, manipulating the foundations of human rights and security into a territory which encompasses nothing but the alleged rights of the oppressor.

In their 2012 Corporate Social Responsibility Report, G4S states that the company recognises it can ‘play a positive and negative role in respecting human rights around the world’. The company declares that its policy is based upon the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1947), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966), the International Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966) and the international Labour Organisation Declaration on Fundamental Rights at Work (1998). ‘Mapping the human rights landscape’, as stated in the report, and becoming a signatory to the UN Global Compact, are portrayed as a pledge to safeguard human rights, disregarding the UN’s significant faults and unapologetic stances when it comes to selectively bestowing human rights in order to promote and consolidate the impunity of powerful states and allies. In other words, G4S are emulating their provision of security services and basing their legitimacy upon an international organisation which thrives upon illegality.

Dependency has created a spectator society. While activist campaigns have created a far reaching resonance, leaders within the international community are too comfortably ensconced in their glorified positions to challenge a partnership which fuels the Israeli occupation’s crimes against Palestinians. As long as the interpretation of the social world is shaped by dominant allies, it is difficult to fragment the bond between society and economic power, effectively allowing an amalgamation of a ruling power to distort the power of intellectuals into a subservient role abetting international complicity in human rights violations.

June 24, 2013 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment