62% of British public says Israel committing war crimes, as polls show sympathy for Palestinians
MEMO | July 30, 2014
Almost two thirds of the British public (62%) believe that the Israeli government is committing war crimes, a new YouGov poll has revealed.
The survey, conducted 27-28 July, comes days after a separate poll carried out on behalf of The Sunday Times showed that 52% of the British public sees Israel’s bombing of the Gaza Strip as “unjustified”. Questioned about their attitude to the conflict more generally, 27% said their sympathies lie more with the Palestinians, while 14% said their sympathies lay more with the Israelis.
Polling data from the U.S. indicates Israel’s growing image problem, even amongst the citizens of its closest ally. A new Pew Research Center poll shows that among 18 to 29-year old Americans, 29% blame Israel more for the current violence, while 21% blame Hamas. Meanwhile, a Gallup poll last week showed that a majority of nonwhite Americans under-50 view Israel’s assault as “unjustified”.
In a CNN poll conducted July 18-20, only 57% of respondents said Israel’s actions in ‘Operation Protective Edge’ are justified.
Meanwhile, a survey of UK Christians commissioned by charity Embrace the Middle East has revealed that 35.4% sympathise more with the Palestinians, while 16.9% sympathise more with Israel. The research was conducted before Israel’s attack on Gaza, which charity head Jeremy Moodey said would likely only increase support for the Palestinians in UK churches.
Britain’s Shame
By Stuart Littlewood | Dissident Voice | July 26, 2014
Today in London crowds are gathering to vent their anger in a mass demonstration and march to Parliament to “stop the massacre in Gaza” and call for an arms embargo against Israel. This follows last weekend’s huge protest outside the Israeli embassy and campaigns against the BBC’s pro-Israel bias in reporting the assault on Gaza.
There is growing resentment among British people at being endlessly shamed by their government’s complicity in the mega-injustices and non-stop crimes inflicted on the native people of the Holy Land, exemplified by Whitehall’s attempts to whitewash Israel’s latest genocidal offensive.
And on this the 19th day of Israel’s blitzkrieg comes news of a brief humanitarian “pause”, after which the killing spree will continue while Israel attempts to eradicate Gaza’s tunnels. At this point in the orchestrated tragedy the Palestinian death-toll is approaching 900, three-quarters civilians including around 200 children, and more than 5,000 wounded.
These figures are gruesome enough, but Dr David Morrison reminds me that since September 2005 when Israel pulled out its squatters and withdrew its military from Gaza (but not from Gaza’s airspace and coastal waters) only 24 people have been killed in Israel by rocket and mortar fire coming from Gaza. Of those, 13 died during Israel’s three major military offensives against Gaza (including the present one). In the same period, nearly 4,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed by Israeli military action.
The unending tragedy is one that Britain created nearly 100 years ago with Balfour’s crackpot Declaration. Balfour, a Zionist convert, wrote: “In Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country.” He dismissed “the desires and prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now occupy that land” in favour of Zionism’s needs and hopes, which were “of far profounder import”.
At the time Lord Sydenham warned: “The harm done by dumping down an alien population upon an Arab country may never be remedied. What we have done, by concessions not to the Jewish people but to a Zionist extreme section, is to start a running sore in the East, and no-one can tell how far that sore will extend.” Well, the harm is massive and still waiting for a remedy. The running sore shows no sign of healing. The trouble will not end until Britain (with help from the international community) takes some very necessary steps. The problem is the British Government’s acute and persistent lack of integrity and foolish pledges of support to the aggressor.
Why is Hamas banished to outer darkness?
In the last few days I have seen two ministerial statements saying that Hamas, democratically elected to power in the 2006, is a proscribed terrorist organisation, proscribed being a posh word for something condemned as so bad as to be banished to outer darkness.
Earlier this month Robert Halfon, the Conservative MP for Harlow and Tel Aviv but not necessarily in that order, said in the House of Commons: “Hamas is Hamas is Hamas: it is a terrorist organisation whether it is part of the so-called unity Government [of Palestine] or not.” He wanted the British Government to “give Israel every possible assistance to take out the Hamas terrorist network so that that country can be sure that her children will be secure in the future”.
Hugh Robertson, Minister of State at the Foreign Offce, replied: “Nobody should be under any illusions about this at all: Hamas is a terrorist organisation and remains a terrorist organisation, and one that is proscribed by the British Government. The key thing about the technocratic [Palestinian] Government was that they signed up to the Quartet principles and renounced violence and no member of Hamas is a member of that Government.”
Earlier he had this to say: “If anybody in that Government were an active member of Hamas, which remains a terrorist organisation, that would absolutely be the end of this Government’s dealing with them and would be a very serious matter indeed. That is not the case at the moment; they are fully signed up to the Quartet principles.”
A few days later Baroness Jenny Tonge, in the House of Lords, asked the Government what action it planned to take to open diplomatic relations with Hamas in order to assess the viability of a long-term truce such as Hamas offered in 2006.
Baroness Warsi, Senior Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, replied: “Our policy towards Hamas is clear — we have no contact with Hamas, which is a proscribed terrorist organisation. Hamas must renounce violence, recognise Israel and accept previously signed agreements. Hamas must make a credible movement towards these conditions, which remain the benchmark against which their intentions are judged, before we consider a change in our stance.”
Warsi is a Muslim and should know better. How can anyone sensibly recognise Israel when it won’t agree its borders? Has she ever put it to the Israelis that they too must renounce violence, recognise Palestine and accept previously signed agreements — the benchmark against which their intentions will be judged?
And given all this stuff about Hamas being proscribed, what are we to make of a Home Office document dated 20 June 2014 in which, of the 60 international terrorist organisations proscribed by the UK government under the Terrorism Act 2000, only Hamas’s military wing – the Izz al-Din al-Qassem brigades – is listed, not Hamas’s political wing?
Why, then, aren’t we talking to Hamas’s political leaders?
How do organisations qualify for the Terror List anyway? Well, in the UK they have to pass a test and the Home Secretary decides. In the US, under Section 3 of Executive Order 13224 “Blocking Property and prohibiting Transactions with Persons who commit, threaten to commit, or support Terrorism”, the term “terrorism” means an activity that…
(i) involves a violent act or an act dangerous to human life, property, or infrastructure; and
(ii) appears to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, kidnapping, or hostage-taking.
This US order and its definition of terrorism, signed in 2001 by George W Bush, is used to outlaw and crush any organisation, individual or country the US doesn’t like. Funny how it fits the Israeli regime — those “amoral thugs”, as one British MP called them — like a glove. And they have been allowed to practise their terrorism on the Palestinians (and occasionally on the Lebanese and Syrians) without interference for the last 66 years.
The long drawn-out siege and blockade of Gaza, and the numerous military assaults on its people and their legitimate government, are only the latest crimes in a catalogue of torment and terror inflicted on all the Palestinian territories Israel occupies. They are clearly attempts to “intimidate and coerce”, while the mass destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure, the withholding of humanitarian aid, the assassinations, the abductions, the bulldozing of Palestinian homes, and the many violent and dangerous acts including indiscriminate bombing and shelling (and the use of cluster bombs in Lebanon), make Israel’s place on the Terror List a sure thing – or should do.
They talk of addressing “underlying causes” but can they agree what they are?
With Agent Hague gone from the Foreign Secretary post, we are beginning to see what his successor, Philip Hammond, is made of. He started by praising Egypt’s fake ceasefire initiative when Hamas hadn’t even been consulted on the terms and instead of coming through proper diplomatic channels it was released to the media as soon as Israel agreed it. Given the Egyptian regime’s hostility towards Hamas it is hardly an honest broker. Unsurprisingly it contained none of the guarantees that would sustain a ceasefire, such as a permanent end to the 8-year siege (promised but not implemented in the 2012 ceasefire) or the release of prisoners who had been freed then re-arrested by Israel. So what was in it for the illegally occupied Palestinians? Nevertheless Hammond thought it was jolly good and welcomed Israel’s acceptance of this piece of nonsense which hadn’t been shown to the other side.
His other statements have to be seen to be believed. They are on the FCO website. Following the UN Human Rights Council’s decision to launch an inquiry into potential violations of human rights by Israel in its operations in the Gaza Strip, a move Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu called a “travesty”, Hammond said the UNHRC resolution would not help achieve a lasting ceasefire. “It is fundamentally unbalanced and will complicate the process by introducing unnecessary new mechanisms… The UK could not support this resolution… We will continue to urge Israel to exercise restraint… blah, blah… while recognising its right to defend itself against these attacks.”
And after meeting Israeli and Palestinian leaders (though not Hamas), Hammond said: “With President Abbas… I reiterated the UK’s strong support for his leadership and thanked him for his own efforts to achieve a ceasefire. I stressed that, once a ceasefire is secured, there is an urgent need for a long term plan for Gaza.
“With Prime Minister Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Lieberman, I expressed my deep concern at Hamas’s rocket attacks and reaffirmed Israel’s right to defend itself. I urged that Israeli forces do everything they can to avoid civilian casualties, and stressed the need for a rapid conclusion to their ground operation in Gaza.”
Hammond doesn’t explain how Israelis can claim a right of self-defence against their victims – the people they are brutally occupying and blockading — or how Her Majesty’s Government can possibly “reaffirm” such a crass invention.
He said that for a ceasefire to be durable there must be rapid movement to address “the underlying causes” and find “a wider political solution”. So, Mr Hammond, what “wider political solution” do you have in mind? And, by the way, do you have any idea what those “underlying causes” are? Do you think you could ever get Israel to acknowledge what they are?
Here are some clues from two very knowledgeable sources. In 2010 Archbishop Theodosius Hanna (Orthodox Church of Jerusalem), on a visit to Ireland, told politicians: “The problem in Palestine has nothing to do with religion – it is not a religious issue. It is not a conflict of Christians, Muslims and Jewish people. It is a conflict between those who are the holders of a rightful cause and those who took away that right by military might.”
Fr Manuel Mussallam (formerly of the Catholic church in Gaza), who accompanied the archbishop, told the Irish what things were really like under military occupation. “We have spoken to Israel for more than 18 years and the result has been zero. We have signed agreements here and there at various times and then when there is a change in the government of Israel we have to start again from the beginning. We ask for our life and to be given back our Jerusalem, to be given our state and for enough water to drink. We want to be given more opportunity to reach Jerusalem. I have not seen Jerusalem since 1990.
“We want to see an end to this occupation, and please do not ask us to protect those who are occupying our territory.”
Nearly 4 years on, and what has changed? Can we rely on Hammond to make a difference? Here’s another clue. In a Jerusalem Post report the director of Conservative Friends of Israel remarked that, in his previous job as Defence Secretary, Philip Hammond “presided over a period when the UK-Israel defense relationship has never been better.”
Carrying on the Slaughter
It’s the new “self defence”
By Stuart Littlewood | Dissident Voice | July 21, 2014
Britain’s newly-minted foreign secretary Philip Hammond has lost his shine already. A few days ago he warmly welcomed Egypt’s bogus ceasefire proposal which hadn’t even been shown to Hamas.
Yesterday he was asked three times on the the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show whether Israel’s military operations in Gaza were a proportionate response and he ducked the question every time.
However he did say: “We will be looking very carefully at what is happening on the ground to make sure that it is proportionate, that civilian lives are being protected in a proper way.”
The continuing carnage suggests otherwise. Would Mr Hammond care to tell the world what action he has actually taken to “make sure”? Perhaps blood-letting doesn’t bother him. After all, he voted with the warmongers for the Iraq war.
Of course, he recited the obligatory mantra that Israel has the right to protect itself. The best way to avoid Palestinian loss of life in Gaza, he said, would be for Hamas to stop firing rockets from Gaza and “in those circumstances the world would not expect any kind of Israeli action against Gaza.”
He knows perfectly well that no rockets are fired from the West Bank, yet the West Bank is still under brutal occupation and blockade and Israeli repression there is unceasing. If rockets from Gaza were to stop, what difference would it make to the Palestinians there?
He’ll know too that Israel cannot claim right of self-defence against a people it has illegally occupied and humiliated for decades, and that the Palestinians are entitled to take up arms against their tormentor.
He finished by saying: “We need an immediate re-imposition of a ceasefire and then we need proper discussion about dealing with the underlying grievances.” Note the downgrading of war crimes and crimes against humanity to the level of mere grievances. I wonder if Hammond knows the first thing about the Palestinians’ “grievances”.
I commend to the new Foreign Secretary this video which shows how his attitude has rendered some people almost speechless.
In a statement to the House of Commons today the prime minister David Cameron issued what can only be described as a barrowload of propaganda horse manure on both the airliner tragedy in Ukraine and the Israeli blitzkrieg on Gaza
Eager to flog his plan for more sanctions he said the conflict in Ukraine could have been curtailed by Moscow but had been fermented by Moscow. It was a defining moment for Russia. “Those of us in Europe should not need to be reminded of the consequences of turning a blind eye when big countries bully smaller countries.” He didn’t see the irony. Perhaps he doesn’t realise that his beloved Israel’s defining moment has arrived.
Turning to Gaza, he came out with this: “The crisis was triggered by Hamas raining hundreds of rockets on Israeli cities indiscriminately targeting civilians in contravention of all humanitarian law and norms. We’ve been clear throughout this crisis that Israel has the right to defend itself. Those criticising Israel’s response must ask themselves how they would expect their own government to react if hundreds of rockets were raining down on British cities today.” Dear God, does no-one vet the drivel tossed out by Number 10′s speechwriters?
I mean, would a British government be mad enough to illegally occupy its next door neighbours for nearly 50 years, trash their heritage, steal their resources, move settlers into choice locations, cage the natives within the sealed remnants then bomb them all to hell and back for firing garden-shed rockets? Well yes, I guess a Cameron government might do exactly that if told to… and call it self-defence just like their Israeli buddies.
This week’s London Bombings anniversary must remind us not to be bounced into a police state
RT | July 11, 2014
It is heartbreaking this week, despite the insatiable Signals Intelligence fiefdoms exposed by Edward Snowden, to see our elected lawmakers scrabbling for yet more mass surveillance of UK citizens.
Time and time again we are told Islamic extremists are threatening our very way of life and time after time the evidence before our eyes is that our only real threat is the home grown, party political poodles of the police state.
In this case all the emergency ‘Data Retention and Investigation Powers’ bill (DRIP) will do, if passed into law, is bring what European lawmakers say could be illegal activities of British data retention within the law. Worried that they will be prosecuted for stealing data about who innocent citizens are communicating with and when, they are rushing to shift the legal goalposts so they are no longer breaking it, hoping that crimes they already committed will be overlooked.
What a blatant abuse of power by our lawmakers. Labour’s bloodhound MP Tom Watson rightly smelt a rat when he spotted House of Commons timetables being shifted around but Downing Street knows which side its bread is buttered. Confirmation that the emergency DRIP bill was about to be bounced through parliament was handed to the London media almost 24 hours before it was announced to the Members of Parliament who have to scrutinize and vote on it in a matter of days.
And you can see why they tell the press before they tell parliament too. London’s mainstream media have forgotten how to pose questions to the securocrats. Even when earlier this week, former Director General of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove told the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) that the Islamic terror threat to Britain was grossly inflated, and that ‘Britons’ Cameron included presumably, ‘spreading blood-curdling terrorism messages should be ignored.’ By the end of the week that, was all forgotten and the Islamic threat had expanded again so much that emergency legislation was now necessary to sacrifice our freedoms by Monday.
The 7/7 bombings? Big questions never asked, let alone answered
Nine years ago this week, London saw four devastating bomb attacks which killed 56 people on three London Underground trains and a bus. To mark the occasion graffiti was daubed on the Hyde Park 7/7 memorial, saying “Blair lied thousands died” and “Four innocent Muslims”. These are views which, though quite common on the streets, particularly of Leeds where three of the four alleged bombers came from, they are never articulated in the British mass media at all.
Questions, objections and evidence raised by the long standing July 7th Truth Campaign, families of the victims and some of those caught up in the attacks still hits a cold hard wall of police, government and security service silence. Nine years and fifty broken families on, national media discussion has been reduced to safe questions about amounts of compensation money paid to families and how far to curtail civil liberties to stop ‘this kind of attack,’ as if it’s all done and dusted, ever happening again.
When the government’s so-called ‘narrative’ was published in May 2006 researchers immediately spotted glaring errors with the alleged bombers journey into London. Home Secretary John Reid was forced into the House of Commons to announce that the train the police said they caught did not run that morning. Although the official story had it they were ‘clean skins,’ it later transpired MI5 had been following them for years. Those were just two in a series of shameful omissions and embarrassing errors in a police investigation and Home Office narrative with a frighteningly short shelf life.
The London Underground CCTV cameras bristling every few yards on the tube and every bus has several, so why were no CCTV pictures ever produced which showed any of the alleged bombers in or getting onto the bombed trains or bus? Verint Systems, an Israeli firm, won the private CCTV contract five months before the attack but no questions appear to have been asked during their vetting, despite Verint’s group chairman, Kobi Alexander, running off with tens of millions of dollars, wanted by Interpol, the FBI and Wall Street regulators the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
On the morning of 7/7, Associated Press in Jerusalem reported Israel’s then Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who happened to be in London that day, had received a warning from Scotland Yard before the bombs went off. Bibi changed his plans and stayed in his hotel, the report said, instead of setting off for a conference he was due to be attending at the Great Eastern Hotel at Liverpool Street Station.
Later that day, and subsequently on the BBC’s 2009 ‘Conspiracy Files’ documentary the Israeli embassy denied getting that warning but in the German newspaper ‘Bild am Sonntag’, Mossad chief Meir Dagan confirmed – yes they got the warning and passed it to Netanyahu in his hotel before the bombs went off. Even more embarrassing than this inability to get the story straight was that the official Home Office narrative, as well as all the evidence produced at the inquest, said there was no warning: the bombings were a surprise attack.
Former police officer Peter Power, sacked from his job in the Dorset constabulary after fiddling his expenses, appeared across global television on 7/7 representing his private security firm ‘Visor Consultants’. He described a terror drill exercise he was supposedly conducting that morning envisaging bombs at the same three tube stations where the real bombs went off.
With 275 stations on the London tube network, the chances of this really being as he said, a coincidence, come out around 275 to the power of three multiplied by the number of days in the year, 365 – around a cool eight billion to one, Peter. He described it on one TV network that day as a ‘spooky coincidence.’ An oblique reference perhaps to ‘spooks,’ the nickname given to the secret services?
He subsequently revealed to the BBC that his ‘terror drill’ had been sponsored by event organizers and publishers Reed Elsevier who, until 2007, ran Britain’s biggest arms fair, the Defence Security Equipment Exhibition (DSEI), where private military companies advertise everything, right up to fighting nuclear wars for you, and by the way torture equipment is openly on sale.
The proper judicial procedure would have been a public inquiry into the attacks, which would consider evidence systematically in front of a jury. Instead an inquest, designed to investigate a single death was convened in October 2010 under Lady Justice Heather Hallett, but her all-important jury was mysteriously missing. As the inquest dragged on through 52 separate hearings, survivors, and families of the victims, complained their big questions were not being addressed.
Previous attacks in public places and on public transport across Europe such as the 1980 Bologna railway station bomb, which killed 85 people and the 1985 Brabant Supermarket massacres which killed 16, have been conclusively traced to NATO intelligence by parliamentary enquiries in Italy, Belgium and Switzerland.
If the spooks had planted the 7/7 London bombs, it would not be the first time the network of NATO & Swiss secret services known as the ‘Club of Berne’, have done so. Under the guise of national security, they live a publicly funded life far from democratic oversight, and have been proven to run secret armies, immune from prosecution, in structures that run parallel to the regular armed forces.
“You had to attack civilians, the people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game,” stated NATO Operation Gladio soldier, Italian fascist Vincezo Vinciguerra. The objective, he explained from jail in a 1992 BBC Timewatch documentary, was “to force the people to turn to the state to ask for greater security.” Back in the 1980s the fake enemy was the Soviet Union, today it’s Islamic Extremists.
Controversial privacy law blasts pedophile enquiry questions out of the news
On the same day of this week’s ninth anniversary of 7/7, Home Secretary Theresa May announced in the House of Commons two enquiries into elite pedophile rings believed to be rooted in Westminster, connected to prominent public figures and said to have been centered around Elm Guest House in South West London. But May’s first choices to lead these enquiries are entirely unsuitable establishment figures themselves. The first, Peter Wanless, was Principle Private Secretary to three cabinet ministers including Michael Portillo and the second, Lady Butler-Sloss’s brother was attorney general when the abuse was allegedly taking place.
With all talk of who will or will not head up pedophile enquiries forgotten, the new emergency, we are being told by Prime Minister David Cameron, is that if terrorists were to attack Britain in the near future, like another 7/7, he would not want to say he had not done everything to stop them. But what Cameron isn’t saying is that his DRIP law will also help the secret state to keep a close eye on victims of child abuse, whistleblowers and their support networks.
What if this week’s real emergency is that criminals inside the Metropolitan police and secret state have known about and facilitated child abuse rings, used for political blackmail, for decades; that the two enquiries Home Secretary Theresa May set up this week might have their pliable leadership, overturned and get some real teeth, as the recent Hillsborough Independent Panel did. That the ‘well respected’ public figures that protected Jimmy Savile, Cyril Smith and the rest may be about to be winkled out and jailed at last.
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Beginning his working life in the aviation industry and trained by the BBC, Tony Gosling is a British land rights activist, historian & investigative radio journalist.
British Foreign Office Claims Documents Relating to CIA Abduction Program were “Accidentally” Destroyed
By Noel Brinkerhoff | AllGov | July 11, 2014
The British government has resorted to what some critics are calling a pathetic excuse to explain why it will not be turning over documents that could show officials were more involved last decade in the United States’ secret rendition program targeting terrorist threats than previously known.
Just how involved may never be known, now that the British Foreign Office has said that secret files documenting Britain’s role in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) program were destroyed by “water damage.”
The information in question purportedly contained details about CIA flights in 2002 carrying detainees to and from the secret military installation known as Diego Garcia, located in the middle of the Indian Ocean.
The British-controlled island, which the U.S. has long used for military operations, may have also housed a “black site” prison operated by the CIA for the purpose of interrogating detainees.
London has long insisted that it was unaware of any rendition activity on Diego Garcia until 2008, the last year of the George W. Bush administration that launched the war-on-terror program. At that time, the British Labour party admitted that assurances given by Tony Blair, while serving as Prime Minister, and by Jack Straw while Foreign Secretary, that the island had not been used for the U.S. rendition program were wrong. In fact, two rendition flights had stopped at the island, but only to refuel, reported the British government in its correction.
The timing of the latest British announcement was particularly alarming to critics, including human rights groups that have sought a full accounting of the country’s role in the renditions.
A U.S. Senate committee that investigated the CIA’s clandestine counterterrorism efforts is expected to release its findings soon, and with it, more news about Britain’s level of knowledge and participation in the controversial effort to neutralize al Qaeda operatives.
The Senate report, in fact, may even reveal that the shadowy activities on Diego Garcia were carried out with the “full co-operation” of the British government, The Independent reported.
“It’s looking worse and worse for the UK government on Diego Garcia,” Cori Crider, a director of the legal charity Reprieve, told the British newspaper. “First we learn the Senate’s upcoming torture report says detainees were held on the island, and now, conveniently, a pile of key documents turn up missing with ‘water damage?’”
Crider added: “The Government might as well have said the dog ate their homework. This smacks of a cover up. They now need to come clean about how, when and where this evidence was lost.”
To Learn More:
Government Needs to ‘Come Clean’ about Extent of Its Knowledge of US Activities on UK Soil, Campaigners Say (by Cahal Milmo, The Independent)
Files on UK Role in CIA Rendition Accidentally Destroyed, Says Minister (by Ian Cobain and Richard Norton-Taylor, The Guardian)
Newly-Discovered Documents Reveal CIA Helped Gaddafi against His Opponents (by Noel Brinkerhoff and David Wallechinsky, AllGov)
David Cameron spoke to Benyamin Netanyahu today. Here’s what was said.
Interventions Watch | July 9, 2014
From the Gov.uk website:
‘The Prime Minister spoke to Prime Minister Netanyahu earlier this evening about the situation in Israel. The Prime Minister strongly condemned the appalling attacks being carried out by Hamas against Israeli civilians. The Prime Minister reiterated the UK’s staunch support for Israel in the face of such attacks, and underlined Israel’s right to defend itself from them’.
So then, Israel simply defending itself from Hamas’ attacks on Israeli civilians.
The actual facts, of course, speak of a somewhat different reality. According to medical sources in the Gaza strip:
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Number of Israelis killed since the launch of ‘Operation Protective Edge’: 0
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Number of Palestinians killed since the launch of ‘Operation Protective Edge’: ‘at least 47′, of which 41 were civilians, and 12 children.
Nevermind that the very idea of ‘defending yourself’ against a people you have spent decades occupying, dispossessing, racially oppressing, collectively punishing and generally brutalising is a complete nonsense.
It doesn’t need me to point out that David Cameron’s supposed ‘humanitarianism’ and commitment to ‘freedom’ – which we are told was behind his decision to bomb Libya, and to almost bomb Syria – is a complete sham. He is simply the latest mouthpiece for a British Establishment that has long both committed and supported the perpetration of war crimes and atrocities in the service of colonial domination, while talking the language of human rights and freedom.
But statements like that one help to drive the point home.
And they illuminate where the BBC have been taking their lead from, perhaps:
(BBC News Online front page, circa 01:00 A.M., July 9th 2014)
7/7 attacks: What is MI5 hiding?
By Jane Calvari | Press TV | July 7, 2014
Lower Manhattan, New York City, September 11, 2001; a shocking event leads to the declaration of the so-called global “War on Terror” lead by the United States Government.
The world changed after 9/11. Since then Governments across the world and the British Government in particular have introduced anti-terror laws that have compromised essential liberties in the society.
But that was not enough for the British officials. There was a need for another shock to the society to introduce laws to discipline those who were outspoken about the Government’s behaviors.
On the morning of July 7, 2005, Londoners started their day with panicking news. On that day, several explosions occurred on the public transport system in the city of London.
Fifty-six people, including four alleged suicide bombers, died in three explosions on the London underground and one explosion on a London bus.
Within hours, the British Government, the Metropolitan Police, Intelligence agencies and many others started to propagate stories that do not simply add up to common sense.
Nine years on and there is still no clear picture of what happened that day. British officials hoped that time will erode the ambiguities, but they are now turned to snowballs attracting more attention among the public.
Preliminary Events: Coincidence or Planned?
In May 2004, the BBC’s investigative current affairs program “Panorama” had a panel of experts discussing how Britain would react to a terrorist attack just like the future 7/7 bombings. The scenario included three explosions on the London Underground and one of a vehicle.
The program entitled “London Under Attack” depicted a fictional terrorist attack. It was presented in a documentary style as if it were really happening. Surprisingly the simulation was as similar as possible to the real event that happened months later.
On the morning of 7 July 2005, there was one more territory that has caused controversy ever since. Senior Metropolitan police officer Peter Power was conducting a tabletop exercise that morning, that not only envisaged the attacks on the Underground involving three simultaneous explosions at 3 tube stations but a bombing on a bus. Power’s scenario involved the very same underground locations that were attacked in real life that morning.
Israel is Here Again
On the morning of 7/7 In London, Israeli Finance Minister of the time, Benjamin Netanyahu was scheduled for an economic conference in London but he never left his hotel room adjacent to the site of the first explosion. In the confusion after the attacks, Associated Press reported that Scotland Yard had tipped off the Israeli delegation. A senior Israeli official admitted that, minutes before the explosions it had informed the Israeli delegations that it had received warnings of possible terror attacks.
Netanyahu and Scotland Yard have since denied the reports. The story itself was being reported by other sources and traveled right around the world’s media.
The former mayor of New York and staunch Zionist, Rudi Giuliani was also in Britain. On July 6th, he appeared up in Yorkshire, where he gave a rousing pro-war on terror speech. He admired Tony Blair, while deploring the way the world had allowed terrorists to get out of control through failing to take the problem seriously enough.
What was Giuliani doing in London that morning or indeed the UK? No one has ever answered that. Was it a coincidence that Giuliani who was the mayor of New York on 9/11 was in London on just the day the London bombs went off?
The Secret Services Knew about the Threat and Colluded with the Terrorists
Although there have been suspicions and anecdotal evidence of a fifth or more bombers, the official 7/7 story claims that only four home-grown extremists were responsible for the attacks. They were Mohammed Siddique Khan age 30 from Beeston Leeds, accused of the Edgware Road blast. Shehzad Tanweer aged 22 also from Beeston, accused of the Liverpool Aldgate blast. Jamaican-born Germaine Lindsay age 19 from Aylesbury, allegedly set off the bomb at the carriage heading from Russell Square station and Hasib Hussain the youngest at just 18 said to have blown himself up on the number 30 bus outside of Tavistock Square.
One may ask why were all these radicals and potential terrorists with links to networks overseas, residing in Britain in the years leading up to 7/7? That question is a long and complex one that includes elements of collusion by the state and security services with the extremists.
In his book “7/7: What Went Wrong” former British army officer and intelligence expert Crispin Black, wrote of a secret Government policy known as the covenant of security.
He says this refers to the long-standing British habit of providing refuge and welfare to extremists on the unspoken assumption that “if we give them a safe haven they will not attack us.”
Under the covenant Britain spent years harboring preachers like Abu Hamza former Imam of the Finsbury Park mosque and Omar Bakri former leader of “Almuhajeruns” now “Muslims Against Crusades.”
In fact at various stages, both men were assets of the MI5 and the MI6.
Abu Hamza became an informant for special Branch and the MI5 in 1997 and despite his inflammatory sermons and role in recruiting for terrorism he was told that what he was doing fell under freedom of speech.
“You don’t have to worry unless we see blood on the street” the authorities told him.
While they were turning a blind eye, Hamza was training young men how to use AK-47, handguns and mock rocket launchers during country retreats. He was preparing them for the tougher times they could face overseas that the authorities also knew he was funding.
Hamza was so protected on British soil that the French even considered kidnapping him to stop him. Egypt was so concerned that they offered to swap him for a British prisoner, but they were turned down.
Richard Reid the “Shoe Bomber” was a regular attendee of Hamza’s Finsbury Park Mosque before he attempted to down American Airline’s flight 63.
Hamza’s influence also did not escape those surrounding the future 7/7 bombings. Alleged bombers Mohammed Siddique Khan, Shehzad Tanweer and Jermaine Lindsay had all attended his sermons at various stages.
It is hard to understand why there was such a careless policy of appeasement.
Was Britain really in such a position that it was safer to harbour extremists than it was to challenge them? One possibility is that the covenant was really to benefit Britain’s foreign policy goals. It’s easy for the Government to say four Muslims attacked Britain, but things get a lot more complicated when those four Muslims grew up in an extremist environment which the Government themselves permitted.
On the one hand, British citizens were told we’re fighting a war on terror but, on the other hand, their Government helped and supported the terrorists. What’s more worrying is that they may not have learned the lesson about this appeasement and collusion.
Since at least the 90s, the Government and its intelligence agencies put Britain at risk by harboring Wahhabi extremists and allowing them to groom young British men for terror overseas when it suited their foreign policy.
Paving the Way for Attacks
Despite all of the data, on June 2, 2005, just over a month before the attacks, the terror threat level was lowered, and police were moved out of the city. The official announcement stated “at present there is not a group with both the intent and the capability to attack the UK.”
So on the one hand, officials were warning about attacks on the underground and were conducting drills and exercises in preparation, yet on the other hand they lowered the threat level stating nobody was planning to attack, and had since claimed they had no inkling that anything like this was going to take place. Subsequent Government investigations have never adequately addressed this massive contradiction.
Resisting against Transparency
On May 1, 2007, survivors and relatives of those killed on July 7 2005, delivered a letter to the Home Office calling for an independent and impartial public inquiry into the attacks. That was brusquely rejected by the Government.
Perhaps what’s nonsensical and offensive is that survivors and family members of the victims had to wait five years for any judicial hearing.
What did take place was an inquest although it was long overdue. Its scope was limited, and the coroner’s main goal without certain guilt was to determine how the deaths occurred.
This proved extremely difficult because there were no internal post-mortems carried out on the bodies. There was no forensic evidence from the scenes as to what explosives were used. There was no CCTV on the trains or buses to verify the conflicting eyewitness’ reports and even the locations of the blasts in relation to the passengers have not been adequately determined.
The Home Office narrative gives locations for 3 of the alleged bombers on the tube and says that all of them took off their rucksacks containing the bombs, putting them on the floor and blew themselves up and killed those people. But the problem is that the Metropolitan police entered into evidence at the inquest a series of diagrams that do not for the most part, correspond with where the Home Office narrative says the explosions took place. So to talk about the official story of what exactly happened is a falsehood. There isn’t any accurate and clear official story.
The British establishment theory is that there was a conspiracy of four home-grown suicide bombers who were not known to the intelligence agencies, who attacked in London using home-made bombs with no outside help.
The MI5 were not challenged, or cross-examined at the inquest. It rejected recommendations put forward by the families to help prevent this happening in the future.
James Eadie QC arrogantly stated : “The evidence simply does not give rise to any concern about other deaths in the future or continuing risk.”
This echoed the King’s Cross Underground fire of 1987 when the authorities failed to implement recommendations even by 2005.
Consecutive Governments Tried to Hide Something?
Nick Clegg and David Cameron picked up on the events when they were in opposition and scolded Blair for rejecting the public’s wishes.
But now the coalition is in full swing. They too have shown no interest in getting to the truth behind Britain’s most devastating terrorist atrocity. Rather than becoming more transparent about their actions and protocols and more importantly their collusion with the very terrorists that citizens are supposed to be protected from, in November 2011 foreign secretary William Hague revealed plans to restrict further the ability of courts to discuss in public the work of the MI5 and the MI6, who suggested intelligence data should only be discussed in secret court hearing.
If that was the case following 7/7, we may not have been privy to most of the information covered in this report. What exactly are they trying to hide?
Israel and the Palestinians — It’s about Mind Over Matter
By Anthony Lawson | July 6, 2014
Ever since the three Israeli teenagers went missing, police and army units have besieged Palestinian towns and villages in the area; their houses and shops have been ransacked and atrocities have been committed; Gaza has been bombed, and the death toll is still rising, yet international leaders have remained largely silent, when they all know that such reprisals amount to collective-punishment which is a War Crime.
A young Palestinian boy, 16-year-old Mohamed Abu Khdeir, was abducted and killed in a suspected revenge attack by Israelis, on July 2nd. See how Britain’s prime minister reacted to his death.
Ecostream campaign victorious
By Tom Anderson | Corporate Watch | July 1, 2014
Brighton’s Ecostream store has closed down after a two year campaign of demonstrations, street actions and direct action.
Ecostream issued the following statement this morning: “SodaStream confirms that the EcoStream store, located on Western Road in Brighton, closed earlier this week. Following the two year test period, the company has decided to focus its business efforts on other channels, specifically on retail distribution partnerships.”
John Lewis have also informed Corporate Watch today that they will no longer be stocking Sodastream products. According to John Lewis’ Senior Press officer: “John Lewis has stocked Sodastream for the past four years but in light of declining sales we’ve taken the decision to no longer stock the range”. Campaigners have demonstrated repeatedly outside John Lewis stores calling for the chain to discontinue its Sodastream range and for consumers to boycott Sodastream products.
The background
In 2012, Israeli company Soda Club, which owns the Sodastream brandname, opened a new store called Ecostream on Western Road in Brighton.
Sodastream, a manufacturer of machines and refills for making fizzy drinks at home, has a factory in the Mishor Adumim settlement industrial zone. Mishor Adumim is an industrial area attached to the residential settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, East of Jerusalem in the Israeli occupied West Bank.
In 2013, Corporate Watch conducted interviews with Palestinian Bedouin who had been displaced from their land to make way for Mishor Adumim. One of them told us:
“We are not allowed to go near them [the factories]. They took our livelihood to build them and we got evacuated for them to build their factories. After they built them there were no resources to live from for us. The gains are nothing compared to what was lost. They destroyed our lives and then gave a few people a job. It is nothing”.
The campaign
Since the store opened there have been demonstrations outside its doors on a weekly or bi-weekly basis. Activists from Brighton and Hove Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Brighton Jordan Valley Solidarity, Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods, local trade unionists, university students from Palestine solidarity groups and more joined together with the aim of closing the shop down. As well as the weekly pickets, campaigners took the oppurtunity to use the space outside the store to highlight the daily aggression against Palestinians. They talked to the public about Israeli house demolitions, the illegal apartheid wall erected on Palestinian land and Israel’s use of drones to attack people in Gaza.
Mass marches have been held in Brighton against the store. During an Israeli attack on Gaza in 2012 one activist locked himself to the doors of the shop forcing them to close. Last week activists unfurled a huge ‘Free Palestine’ on the wall opposite the shop.
It soon became clear that the pressure was taking its toll and the store remained largely empty even on the busiest of shopping days.
The demonstrations against the store led the Israeli embassy to contact Sussex Police asking them to take measures against the demonstrators. A group called Sussex Friends of Israel formed and has been holding a counter-picket every Saturday. The Zionist and Christian Zionist demonstrators regularly shouted racial abuse at Muslim, Palestinian and Jewish activists opposing the shop. They regularly chanted that there was “no such thing as a Palestinian” and called Jewish activists “self-hating Jews”. In short, SFI used bullying tactics to intimidate people who attended the demonstrations. Their antics caused chaos outside the store every weekend and made it even less likely that people would do their shopping there.
The closure of the Ecostream store is a victory for people power against a corporation profiting from human suffering and shows that the movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israeli apartheid, militarism and occupation is continuing to gather momentum.
Brighton & Hove Palestine Solidarity Campaign today issued the following statement:
“This campaign has taken the message about human rights abuses in occupied Palestine to the people of Brighton, and their response has been fantastic. They have made it clear that they do not want businesses from illegal Israeli settlements trading in their town. The closure of SodaStream’s so-called flagship UK store in Brighton is just one step in a campaign to send a clear message to the Israeli government and the international community that, at the grassroots level, people of conscience are taking action to force Israel to comply with international law and to bring about justice for the Palestinian people. We give notice to the other stockists of SodaStream products in the city that we will continue to take the message about SodaStream to the people of Brighton on behalf of the Palestinian people. Congratulations to the people of Brighton and Hove, who can tell the difference between ethical and unethical.”
Tony Blair ‘to advise’ Egyptian dictatorship
RT | July 2, 2014
Tony Blair has reportedly agreed to advise coup-appointed Egyptian President, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, as part of a United Arab Emirates-funded program which promises lucrative “business opportunities” to those involved.
Blair is set to give Sisi advise on economic reform in tandem with a UAE financed taskforce in Cairo, the Guardian reported on Wednesday. According to the daily, the taskforce is being run by the management consultancy Strategy&, formerly Booz and Co, now part of PricewaterhouseCoopers. The group hopes to attract foreign direct investment to Egypt’s crisis racked economy at an upcoming Egypt donors’ conference, which is being sponsored by oil-rich UAE, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
The former prime minister and Middle East peace envoy supported the coup against Egypt’s democratically elected president Mohamed Morsi last July and continues to generate controversy with his complicated dealings in the region.
A spokeswoman for Blair told the Guardian that his attempts to garner support for Egypt from the international community were not being done “for any personal gain whatsoever.”
“He is giving advice, he will have meetings, that’s all,” she said, stressing that neither Blair nor any organizations associated with him would make money out of Egypt.
She added that he believes the Sisi government “should be supported in its reform agenda and he will help in any way he can, but not as part of a team.”
When pressed on the lucrative “business opportunities” the Egypt project and its Gulf backers promised, she said: “We are not looking at any business opportunities in Egypt.”
A former close political associate, however, told the Guardian that Blair’s role in advising the Egyptian regime would cause “terrible damage to him, the rest of us and New Labour’s legacy.”
The associate said that Blair was able to kill two birds with one stone in Egypt, battling the threat of Islamism while sinking his teeth into “mouth-watering business opportunities” in return for Bush-era advocacy.
He added that it would be a very lucrative business model, but one Blair should not be involving himself with.
“He’s putting himself in hock to a regime that imprisons journalists. He’s digging a deeper and deeper hole for himself and everyone associated with him.”
Alastair Campbell, Blair’s former press secretary who resigned in 2003 over the Iraq Dossier scandal, is also a paid advisor consulting the Sisi government on its public image. When asked by the Guardian on Wednesday if he had been working with Strategy&, Campbell refused to say who he had been working with. Like Blair, Campbell also visited Cairo earlier this year as part of the Gulf-funded program to prop up the regime. Another former Blair employee, Darren Murphy, a so-called special advisor in the Blair government who has traded off the former PM’s name for years, has also been working on the program.
In June, Sisi, Egypt’s former army, won 96.9 percent of the votes in a presidential poll that had all the hallmarks of a dictatorial election.
Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz was the first international leader to congratulate Sisi on his election victory.
King Abdullah hailed Sisi’s ’win as a “historic day” for Egypt, calling for donors a donors conference to help Egypt through its economic troubles.
“To the brothers and friends of Egypt… I invite all to a donors conference… to help it overcome its economic crisis,” he said.
Since the Morsi government was toppled, hundreds of alleged supports of the ex-president and his Muslim Brotherhood movement have been sentenced to death. The persecution of political opponents and crackdown on journalists has pushed US congressional leaders to consider withholding $1.3 billion in military support to Cairo.
Since stepping down as prime minister in 2007, Blair and his companies have worked with a variety of repressive and dictatorial regimes across the world. Blair’s Middle East interest appear to be expanding, with aids confirming last month he was considering opening an office in the UAE capital Abu Dhabi. His work in Egypt could be viewed as even more contentious, due to the bloody nature of the coup and his work as a mediator in the region.
In June, retired diplomats and political enemies came together to demand that Blair be fired as the envoy to the Quartet on the Middle East– the UN, US, Russia and EU – after failing to bring Israel and Palestine closer to a peace deal.
Iraq: The things warmongers said
By Neil Clark | RT | June 27, 2014
Iraq is in turmoil – with ISIS controlling large areas of the country – but the truth is that it’s been in turmoil since the illegal 2003 invasion.
2013 was Iraq’s bloodiest year since 2008, but as I wrote here members of the elite political class and warmongers in the West weren’t interested.
Iraq post-invasion had become the greatest non-news story of the modern era. The people who could not stop talking about Iraq in 2002/3 and telling how much they cared about ordinary Iraqis were strangely silent. Instead they were devoting their energies into propagandizing for another Middle Eastern military ‘intervention’, this time against Syria.
Now that Iraq is back in the western news headlines again, with calls for ‘intervention’ to counter ISIS, it’s worth bearing in mind what the architects of the Iraq war and the cheerleaders for it said in the lead up and during the invasion about the ‘threat’ from Saddam’s WMDs and how toppling a secular dictator would help the so-called ‘war on terror’ and bring peace and security to the region.
Do we really want to take these people’s advice on what ‘we’ should do now in Iraq? Up to a million people have been killed since the illegal invasion and as critics predicted at the time, the war led to enormous chaos and instability and boosted radical Islamic extremism. By their own words, let the warmongers be damned.
WMDs
“He (Saddam) is probably the most dangerous individual in the world today.
Interviewer: Capable of?
Capable of anything. Capable of using weapons of mass destruction against the United States, capable of launching other military maneuvers as soon as he thinks he can get away with it…”
Richard Perle, chairman of the Defense Policy Board, mid-October 2001
***
The threat is very real and it is a threat not just to America or the international community but to Britain.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, 7th September 2002
***
And every indication we have is that he (Saddam) is pursuing, pursuing with abandon, pursuing with every ounce of effort, the establishment of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons.
Benjamin Netanyahu, (then former Israeli Prime Minister) testifies to Congress, 12th September 2002
***
The document discloses that his (Saddam’s) military planning allows for some of the WMD to be ready within 45 minutes of an order to use them.
Tony Blair foreword to the infamous ‘dodgy dossier’: ‘Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction, The Assessment of the British Government, (24th September 2002
***
The evidence produced in the Government’s report shows clearly that Iraq is still pursuing its weapons of mass destruction programme…The Government dossier confirms that Iraq is self-sufficient in biological weapons and that the Iraq military is ready to deploy these and chemical weapons at some 45 minutes’ notice’
British Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan-Smith, 24th September 2002.
***
The dictator of Iraq is not disarming. To the contrary, he is deceiving.
US President George W. Bush, State of the Union address 28th January 2003.
***
For Churchill, this apotheosis came in 1940; for Tony Blair, it will come when Iraq is successfully invaded and hundreds of weapons of mass destruction are unearthed from where they have been hidden by Saddam’s henchmen.”
Andrew Roberts, British neo-con historian, February 2003.
***
He (Saddam) claims to have no chemical or biological weapons, yet we know he continues to hide biological and chemical weapons, moving them to different locations as often as every 12 to 24 hours, and placing them in residential neighbourhoods
Donald Rumsfeld, US Secretary of Defense, Press conference, 12th March 2003.
***
We are asked now seriously to accept that in the last few years—contrary to all history, contrary to all intelligence—Saddam decided unilaterally to destroy those weapons. I say that such a claim is palpably absurd.
Tony Blair, House of Commons, 18th March 2003.
***
But if we leave Iraq with chemical and biological weapons, after 12 years of defiance there is a considerable risk that one day these weapons will fall into the wrong hands and put many more lives at risk than will be lost in overthrowing Saddam.
Former US President Bill Clinton in article, ‘Trust Tony’s Judgement’, 18th March 2003.
***
Saddam Hussein is there- and he’s a dictator and he has weapons of mass destruction and are you going to do something about it or not?
William Kristol, neo-con pundit, chair of The Project for the New American Century and editor of the Weekly Standard, as quoted on BBC Panorama Programme, The War Party, broadcast May 2003.
And when the WMDs did not turn up?
Interviewer: Is it curious to you that given how much control U.S. and coalition forces now have in the country, they haven’t found any weapons of mass destruction?
Not at all…We know where they are. They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.
Donald Rumsfeld, US Defense Secretary, 30th March 2003
***
Before people crow about the absence of weapons of mass destruction I suggest they wait a little bit. I remain confident they will be found.
Tony Blair, 28th April 2003.
Saddam and the war on terror
***
There can be no victory in the war against terrorism if, at the end of it, Saddam Hussein is still in power
Richard Perle, chairman of the Defense Policy Board, mid-October 2001
***
Interviewer: If we go into Iraq and we take down Hussein?
Then I think it’s over for the terrorists.
Richard Perle, chairman of the Defense Policy Board, mid October 2001.
***
I have certainly made up my mind, as indeed any sensible person would that the region in the world, most of all the people of Iraq, would be in a far better position without Saddam Hussein… It will be far better if he was not leading Iraq; the whole of the world would be safer if that were the case.
Tony Blair, television interview, May 2002
***
If you take out Saddam, Saddam’s regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region.
Benjamin Netanyahu, addressing Congress, 12th September 2002
***
We know that Iraq and al-Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade…We’ve learned that Iraq has trained al-Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases.
George W. Bush, 7 October 2002.
***
Some have argued that confronting the threat from Iraq could detract from the war against terror. To the contrary; confronting the threat posed by Iraq is crucial to winning the war on terror. When I spoke to Congress more than a year ago, I said that those who harbor terrorists are as guilty as the terrorists themselves. Saddam Hussein is harboring terrorists and the instruments of terror, the instruments of mass death and destruction.
George W. Bush, 7th October 2002.
***
The idea that this action (war vs Iraq) would become a recruiting sergeant for others to come to the colours of those who are “anti” any nation in the west is, I am afraid, nonsense. The biggest recruiting sergeant of all has been indecision, and the failure to take action to show that such resolve matters.
Iain Duncan-Smith, 18th March 2003
A bad bet
I feel no doubt that he (Saddam) has stockpiled some of the most vile weapons known to man. They include nuclear material. Saddam wants to dominate the Middle East, he wants to terrorise the world.. I would lay my life savings in a bet that information will emerge which proves Iraq helped al-Qaeda in the orchestration of September 11.
Ex-SAS Major Peter Ratcliffe, in the interview with the pro-war British newspaper The Sun, 4th April 2002.
Economic benefits of the war
The greatest thing to come of this to the world economy, if you could put it that way, would be $20 a barrel for oil. That’s bigger than any tax cut in any country.
Pro-war media mogul Rupert Murdoch, interview with The Bulletin magazine, February 2003
The new Hitler
Saddam is no Bismarck. He is more a Hitler. As his fate closed in, Hitler dreamt of terrible weapons. Saddam has done more than dream. He already possesses biological weaponry, including botulinum and anthrax. He does not yet have a missile system which could deliver a biological attack, but hideous damage could be inflicted by a single suicide agent with a suitcase.
Pro-war commentator Bruce Anderson, July 2002
***
A majority of decent and well-meaning people said there was no need to confront Hitler and that those who did were war-mongers..
Tony Blair, 28th February 2003.
Triumphalism
What a wonderful, magnificent, emotional occasion – one that will live in legend like the fall of the Bastille, V-E Day, or the fall of the Berlin Wall….. All those smart Europeans who ridiculed George Bush and denigrated his idea that there was actually a better future for the Iraqi people – they will now have to think again…Thank God for Tony Blair and those other European leaders who defied the axis of complacency
William Shawcross, Wall Street Journal, 10th April 2003 on the toppling of the statue of Saddam.
~
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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The run up to the Iran war exposes inner workings of the US/Israeli deep state
By Justin K.P. | The Dissident | June 9, 2026
Taking a careful look at the run-up to the U.S./Israeli war on Iran exposes the inner workings of the U.S./Israeli deep state and the covert operations that the CIA and Mossad carry out around the world to lay the groundwork for war.
In this article, I will detail how the U.S. and Israel astroturfed protests in Iran, infiltrated them with rioters, and ran an atrocity propaganda campaign about Iran massacring protestors to manufacture consent for war.
This article will be an examination of the deep state’s war on Iran, prior to the full-scale U.S. invasion.
This article will be specific to Iran, but should be seen as a case study for how American, Israeli, and often British intelligence lay the groundwork for targets of empire around the world. … continue
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