People stop searched in UK once a minute; blacks bear the brunt
Press TV – September 24, 2013
New figures show every 58 seconds one person is stopped and searched by the police in England and Wales for drugs, with blacks bearing the brunt of the practice.
According to findings by the London School of Economics published by the charity Release, minority groups, especially blacks and Asians, are disproportionately targeted by the police for drugs stop searches.
The study found there were over one million stop searches in 2011-2012 with half or more being related to drugs, especially for small amounts of narcotics such as cannabis.
According to the analysis on the figures for 2009-2010, overall search rate across England and Wales was 10 in 1,000 while it was 7 in 1,000 for whites, 18 per 1,000 for Asians and a shocking 45 per 1,000 for blacks, that is blacks were targeted 6.3 times more than white people.
This comes as Release said the rate of blacks using drugs was almost half of whites in 2010 (5.8 percent compared to 10.5 percent).
Release added the police discriminatory behavior toward blacks is also seen in treatment of people in possession of drugs.
The charity said in 2009-2010, 78 percent of black people, caught possessing cocaine, were arrested against 22 percent who received cautions while the rate was 44 percent against 56 percent for white offenders.
The charity said key disparities are also seen in the rate of black people subject to court proceedings for drugs possession and facing prison terms, compared to whites.
“Black people are more likely to get a criminal record than white people, are more likely to be taken to court and are more likely to be fined or imprisoned for drug offences because of the way in which they are policed, rather than because they are more likely to use drugs,” Michael Shiner, co-author of the report, said.
Meanwhile, the analysis showed a stunning 140,000 drugs stop searches were carried out on under-21s in 2009-2010 with 16,900 of them conducted on children aged 15 or below.
Related articles
- Half Ounce of Pot Gets Louisiana Man Twenty Years in Prison (dissidentvoice.org)
UK new forced conscription bill: a look
Press TV – September 16, 2013
The British government has launched a new debate on reintroducing mandatory National Service, or conscription, for the 18 to 26-year-olds, 50 years after the last conscripted British soldier ended his service.
The bill was tabled by Conservative MP Philip Hollobone, who said the service can inspire young people with “self-respect, personal reliance, discipline and behavior.”
The legislation was introduced to the parliament for debate on June 24, which is considered its first reading though no debate took place at that stage.
MPs are expected to hold a second reading debate on the bill on February 28, 2014.
The bill predicts the introduction of a year-long charitable or military service that could involve care for the elderly or the disabled, work for the emergency services or service in the armed forces with a necessary “residential element” that requires participants to live away from their homes.
“Every individual who has attained the age of 18 years, and who has not attained the age of 26 years, shall be liable to serve one year of national service at some point between these years unless exempt,” the bill reads.
“Regulations shall provide that the scheme must extend the scope of the National Citizen Service and include the following elements,” it adds.
The bill, if voted into law, makes it a criminal offense to skip National Service.
The reference in the text of the proposed law to the National Citizen Service (NCS), which was introduced by Prime Minister David Cameron for the 16 and 17-year-olds in 2010, raises suspicion that the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government has been planning to reintroduce the long-forgotten National Service early after taking office.
NCS is now in full swing in England and offers voluntary short-time tours for individuals to take part in team projects away from home to help their community.
London first introduced conscription during the First World War in 1916, which lasted until 1919.
Another forced service was launched in 1939 at the beginning of the Second World War, continuing until 1960, with the last conscripted soldiers ending their service in 1963.
The recruitment was named War Service or Military Service during the wars and National Service, as formulated by the National Service Act 1948, between 1948 and 1960.
The second national service period that started in 1939 lasted beyond the World War II (1939-1945) partly because of Britain’s involvement in the Korean War of the 1950’s.
That could be adequate precedence for the British public to fear a decade of military adventurism, including the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya – not to mention the saber-rattling against Syria — has triggered the renewed call for a national service.
Indeed, the public opposition to the bill emerged from the very onset after an e-petition was launched demanding the government to “stop the National Service Bill 2013-2014”. The petition has already collected over 27,000 signatures.
It rejects the mandatory service as “unacceptable”, calling on the government to reject the bill “in its entirety” and “reassure us that non voluntary service and any residential or military style training, or service, will always be a freedom of choice”.
Under the Coalition agreement any e-petition attracting more than 100,000 signatures becomes eligible for a Commons debate.
The public concern over the new initiative has been clearly reflected in the e-petition.
“We do not want our children and grandchildren to fight and die in wars, or in training that they or we have no control over,” the petition says.
There are also concerns that the forced conscription is against the idea of a free society as compulsory recruits will have to spend a year in service with minimum wage at the end of their high school or college, when they could rather start a job or begin university education in anticipation of a difficult future amid Britain’s economic woes.
Related articles
Mind the gap! Democratic deficit in UK, US has never been bigger
By Neil Clark | RT | September 6, 2013
The issue of Syria has demonstrated the massive gap that has opened up between the elite and ordinary people in both the US and Britain.
Poll after poll after poll shows very large majorities against strikes on Syria. People are war-weary, and the last thing they want is for their countries to become embroiled in another Middle-East war.
One Congressman in the US tweeted earlier this week that he had asked 200 people if they supported strikes on Syria and only four said ‘Yes’– that’s just 2 percent. Another said that 99 percent of calls to his office were against military action.
Let’s get one thing straight: the only people who are keen on war with Syria in the US and UK are the elites. Ordinary people on both sides of the Atlantic want absolutely nothing to do with it.
In Britain, the overwhelming majority of people were delighted that our parliament voted against war last week and that enough of our legislators finally listened to the people to defeat the serial warmongers.
A BBC poll showed that 71 percent of people thought parliament had made the right decision. Yet our neocon/’liberal interventionist’ elite is furious that legislators listened to the views of ordinary members of the public and not them. “You’re a disgrace,” screeched neocon Minister Michael Gove at MPs who voted against the government. Behaving like spoilt brats having a temper tantrum because they were not allowed to get their own way, the Permanent War brigade have been calling for a “second vote” in parliament, showing arrogant contempt for the views of the majority of ordinary people who don’t want war with Syria.
Neocon historian Andrew Roberts threw a hissy fit in a newspaper column last Sunday, attacking the “hideously amoral selfishness” of “new Britain” for not supporting war with Syria. Serial warmonger and drama queen Lord Paddy Ashdown declared “In 50 years trying to serve my country I have never felt so depressed/ashamed” – after parliament finally listened to public opinion and not to warmongers like Ashdown.
Nick Cohen, poster boy for Britain’s pro-war faux-left tweeted “Can’t help thinking that the British parliament’s vote will be remembered as a low and mean point in our history.” Have you got that? Parliament listening to ordinary members of the public is a “low and mean point.” Such is the fundamentally undemocratic neocon/liberal interventionist mindset, which says that no point of view on foreign policy counts except their own and that of their neocon pals.
Since last week’s parliamentary vote, UK establishment figures have been lining up to give Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, a jolly good thrashing for daring to defy the War Party’s line on Syria. Writing in The Times, aptly described as ‘The Warmongers Gazette’ by anti-war conservative writer Peter Hitchens, David Aaronovitch called Miliband a ‘political vulture’. Aaronovitch’s attack on Miliband was hailed as ‘devastating’ by Ian Katz, the editor of Newsnight, the BBC’s flagship Current Affairs program, which wheeled out a ‘Dr. Rola’ from ‘Hand in Hand For Syria’ to criticize Miliband’s failure to back the government.
Since the vote Newsnight has promoted a series of pro-intervention figures, seemingly desperate to try and get us plebs to change our minds. What part of ‘WE DON’T WANT WAR WITH SYRIA’ do our elite not understand? Now the high priest of ‘Liberal Interventionism’, the multi-millionaire war criminal Tony Blair, has joined the ‘Get Miliband’ lynch mob, saying that he was “disappointed” that parliament hadn’t supported the government, adding, “This is something where I just have to disagree with the leadership of the [Labour] party.”
For our neocon/liberal interventionist elite, Miliband is a shocker, a bounder, a rotter, and a ‘political vulture’. But most ordinary people in Britain are very pleased that he and his party listened to the public and opposed the government on Syria. You’d never have known it from listening to neocon newspaper columns, but after last week’s vote, bookmakers shortened the odds of Labour winning the next election to 8-13.
If Miliband and his party had voted the way the neocons wanted, then it’s highly likely that earlier this week US and British forces would have launched their attack on Syria. Which is why of course the Permanent War gang are so angry with him.
The pro-war lobby may be numerically tiny, but in both the US and UK it is massively overrepresented in the mainstream media. Despite the Iraq debacle, the same columnists who urged on that particular catastrophe, are still in front of their keyboards, propagandizing for yet another Middle East ‘intervention’, and are still treated with enormous deference whenever they appear on the likes of CNN or the BBC. Which is very, very often.
“Did you know there are people who supported the Iraq War getting invited on news programs to talk about Syria?” tweets comedy writer Graham Linehan. S’TRUE!!!
The disproportionate voice that necons and ‘liberal interventionists’ have in the UK and US media makes it appear that their views are more widely held in the public at large than they are. But in fact their extremist pro-war views are very rarely found outside elite, Establishment circles.
The gap between the elites in the US and the UK is now larger than at any time in the last 100 years. If we do go to war with Syria, despite the overwhelming public opposition, then it will show that democracy is well and truly dead in both our countries.
Are we countries where the views of the majority are listened to, or are we countries where a tiny, unrepresentative, pro-war clique always gets their way? We’re about to find out.
Neil Clark is a journalist, writer and broadcaster. His award winning blog can be found at www.neilclark66.blogspot.com. Follow him on Twitter
Related articles
Against War in Syria: The Great Parliamentary Revolt of 2013
This video, introduced by journalist Joshua Blakeney, offers a selection of the best anti-war speeches delivered during the House of Commons debate on Syria that took place on August 29, 2013. The Con-Dem Coalition had proposed taking Britain into yet another war to help destabilize one of Israel’s adversaries, Syria. However, unlike in 2003 with the Iraq war, a sufficient number of British MPs were able to see through the war propaganda and voted to refrain from deploying UK forces to flight against the people of Syria.
Oded Yinon Plan: http://www.globalresearch.ca/greater-…
London faces calls to make its case for a possible war before parliament
Press TV – August 27, 2013
Opposition to a possible military intervention in Syria has intensified in Britain with the Labour party demanding that the government “make their case” before the parliament.
An alleged chemical attack hit parts of the Syrian capital Damascus on Wednesday killing hundreds of people.
Foreign-backed terrorists in the country claimed that the government forces were behind the assault in the Damascus suburbs of Ain Tarma, Zamalka and Jobar while medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres, which treated those affected in the attack, said it cannot even “scientifically confirm” the use of chemical weapons.
Shadow Foreign Secretary Douglas Alexander said on Monday that the cabinet has to “make their case” in the parliament before they can make a decision whether to go to a new war, if any such decision is to be made.
“Given both the seriousness of the reported chemical weapons strikes in Syria, and the enduring and complex nature of the conflict itself, ahead of any action being taken I would fully expect the Prime Minister to make his case to Parliament,” Alexander said.
“[The Prime Minister must be] open about the objectives, the legal basis, and the anticipated effect of any [British military action],” he added.
Meanwhile, British Conservative MP John Baron, who is leading MPs’ demands for a parliamentary session on the matter, expressed serious concerns about Britain going to war without the approval of the UN Security Council because of a Russian opposition to military intervention in Syria.
“Essentially, it is a civil war. If the West intervenes without a UN resolution … I think there is a more serious risk of this escalating beyond Syrian boundaries,” he said.
This comes as legal experts have seriously questioned the legality of a military move against Syria, saying it would create a “controversial situation”.
“The difficulty here is there’s no threat as I understand it to the security of this country or the United States and therefore on what basis can we intervene?” Michael Caplan, an international lawyer, asked during an interview on BBC Radio 4.
Following the alleged chemical attack in Syria, which government forces say was a false flag attack by foreign-backed militants, Britain, the US and France have been beating drums of war to punish what Washington described as a “moral obscenity” by Bashar al-Asad government in Syria.
Russia has demanded evidence from the three on their claims but no proof has yet been presented or even announced to exist.
The situation has sparked fears that Britain is assisting the US to justify another war based on totally unfounded claims after former British PM Tony Blair tampered with evidence related to Iraq weapons of mass destruction to facilitate the invasion of the country in 2003.
The fears are especially strong because the Syrian government cannot have sensibly carried out a large-scale attack when UN weapons inspectors were stationed almost 20 kilometers away from the site of the attack, waiting to probe earlier claims of poisonous gas strikes.
Qualms are also fueled by sporadic reporting of Syrian foreign-backed militants being in possession of chemical weapons, including a Twitter post by Abdola Al-Jaledi, a former high-ranking member of the Jabaht al-Nusra militant group, which said his colleagues were in possession of chemical weapons.
Related article
- Syrian war drums beat ever louder (morningstaronline.co.uk)
UK ordered Guardian to destroy hard drives in effort to stop Snowden revelations
RT | August 20, 2013
UK authorities reportedly raided the Guardian’s office in London to destroy hard drives in an effort to stop future publications of leaks from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The action is unlikely to prevent new materials coming out.
Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger revealed in a Monday article posted on the British newspaper’s website that intelligence officials from the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) told him that he would either have to hand over all the classified documents or have the newspaper’s hard drives destroyed.
After more talks, two “security experts” from GCHQ – the British version of the National Security Agency – visited the Guardian’s London offices.
Rusbridger wrote that the government officials then watched as computers, which contained classified information passed on by Snowden, were physically destroyed in one of the newspaper building’s basements.
“We can call off the black helicopters,” Rusbridger said one of the officials joked.
Another source familiar with the event confirmed to Reuters that Guardian employees destroyed the computers as UK officials observed.
During negotiations with the government, Rusbridger said that the newspaper could not fulfill its journalistic duty if it satisfied the authorities’ requests.
But GCHQ reportedly responded by telling the Guardian that it had already sparked the debate, which was enough.
“You’ve had your debate. There’s no need to write any more,” Reuters quoted the unnamed official as saying.
In the article, Rusbridger explained that because of existing “international collaborations” between journalists, it was still possible to report the story and “take advantage of the most permissive legal environments.”
“I explained to the man from Whitehall about the nature of international collaborations… Bluntly, we did not have to do our reporting from London. Already most of the NSA stories were being reported and edited out of New York. And had it occurred to him that [reporter Glenn] Greenwald lived in Brazil?” wrote Rusbridger.
“The man was unmoved. And so one of the more bizarre moments in the Guardian’s long history occurred – with two GCHQ security experts overseeing the destruction of hard drives in the Guardian’s basement just to make sure there was nothing in the mangled bits of metal which could possibly be of any interest to passing Chinese agents.”
Rusbridger pointed out that the whole incident felt like a “pointless piece of symbolism that understood nothing about the digital age.”
The news comes after Sunday’s international incident during which David Miranda, the partner of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, was held at Heathrow airport under the UK Terrorism Act for the maximum time allowed before pressing charges. Greenwald was the reporter who exclusively broke the Snowden story.
The editor promised that the Guardian will “continue to do patient, painstaking reporting on the Snowden documents, we just won’t do it in London. The seizure of Miranda’s laptop, phones, hard drives and camera will similarly have no effect on Greenwald’s work.”
Another US security source told Reuters that Miranda’s detention was meant to send a message to those who received Snowden’s classified documents, about how serious the UK is in closing all the leaks in relation to the whistleblower’s revelations.
Greenwald, who first published secrets leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, responded by promising to release more documents. He added that the UK would be “sorry” for detaining his partner for nine hours.
Snowden, who has been granted asylum by Russia, gave Greenwald up to 20,000 documents with details about the US National Security Agency and the UK’s GCHQ surveillance operations.
‘US is the intellectual author behind detention of Miranda’
Lawyer Eva Golinger told RT that the UK has violated all concepts of freedom of the press. “We are talking about a media outlet. Journalists and their spouses and partners being detained and interrogated. So clearly there has been a decision made that everything related to Edward Snowden must be captured no matter what, violating anyone’s right under any country’s laws.”
Golinger believes that government’s pressure on journalists could inspire some to cover the topic of government surveillance even more, instead of discouraging them to do so.
“The more principled the people reporting are, the more they will continue to pursue that work in the face of threat. Such cheap threats and intimidation give people even more reasons to continue doing what they are doing because it shows that those in power are clearly frightened of the information that is being put out,” she explained.
“At the same time it could certainly intimidate other journalists and create the environment of self-censorship, where many would be unwilling to take the risks that are involved with national security reporting, particularly when it comes to the US.”
Golinger argued that US is the “intellectual author behind the detainment of Miranda.”
“We are talking about a search and capture that is going on for Edward Snowden and it is the US that is leading that effort. It is not the UK or other European nations, they are merely abiding by the wishes of the US…What I believe is that Washington has simply put out a request to all of its allies that anyone related to Edward Snowden must be detained if they come into your territory and the UK abided by that and did their duty.”
UK ignores Russian request on former Magnitsky boss Browder – prosecutor
RT | August 20, 2013
Great Britain was the only state that refused to fulfill the official request of Russian law enforcers in the search for William Browder, the former head of an investment fund wanted for embezzlement and tax evasion.
Russia’s Deputy Prosecutor General Aleksandr Zvyagintsev said at a Tuesday press conference in Moscow, “I have signed several requests addressed to Great Britain, Cyprus, Latvia and Estonia. All these countries excluding Great Britain fulfilled the international investigation instructions ahead of time.
“We hope that Great Britain heeds the international community’s call and hands us over the people who have violated the law. In the whole history of Russian-British relations the UK has only handed one person over to us – and this was an ordinary hooligan. As for the rest – the multi-millionaires and billionaires who continue to launder money in Albion – unfortunately, these are not extradited,” Zvyagintsev added.
William Browder is a US-born British citizen who founded the Hermitage Capital Management investment fund – a major firm working with Russian securities since the mid-1990s that earned its owners hundreds of millions of dollars. Browder fled Russia in 2006 after law enforcers showed interest in some of the fund’s financial schemes.
The investigation continued and led to a court process in which Browder was found guilty of large-scale tax evasion and sentenced to nine years in prison in absentia.
Another person convicted in this case is the now famous auditor, the late Sergey Magnitsky, whose name became known after his tragic death in a Moscow pre-trial detention center in 2009. According to forensic report, Magnitsky died of pancreatitis and a heart condition, but Browder and his colleagues have claimed that Russians law enforcers deliberately tortured and killed the accountant.
The case was intensely covered in the mass media and promoted in US political circles, eventually leading to the so-called Magnitsky Act – a US law imposing sanctions on Russian state and justice officials suspected in human rights violations.
Russia blasted the move as an attempt to influence an independent court in a sovereign state and retaliated with its own Guantanamo list – an act imposing sanctions on US officials suspected of violating Human Rights.
The spat between the two countries apparently allowed the General Secretariat of Interpol to refuse Russia’s warrant for Browder in July this year, claiming that the case was influenced by politics. It also ordered to delete all information about Browder from Interpol’s international databases.
Russia’s Interior Ministry replied with a statement that it was “puzzled by Interpol’s General Secretariat’s decision.”
“[The ministry] continues to consider Interpol an organization which is not motivated by political and judgmental decisions in its work, but acts solely in accordance with international law and the organization’s constitution,” the statement read.
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.
Who’s at the top of Britain’s Tory party?
Prime Minister David Cameron shaking hands with Israeli regime’s agent in Britain, Daniel Taub.
By Stuart-Littlewood | Press TV | July 11, 2013
Ten years ago Tam Dalyell, the ‘Father of the House’ (the most senior member of the House of Commons in the British Parliament), sparked a huge row by accusing the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, of “being unduly influenced by a cabal of Jewish advisers.”
In an interview with Vanity Fair, Dalyell named Lord Levy (Blair’s personal envoy on the Middle East), Peter Mandelson (whose father was Jewish), and Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary (who has Jewish ancestry), as three of the leading figures who had influenced Blair’s policies on the Middle East.
He told The Telegraph: “If it is a question of launching an assault on Syria or Iran…. then one has to be candid.” Blair, he said, was also indirectly influenced by Jewish people in the Bush administration, including Richard Perle, a Pentagon adviser, Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defence secretary, and Ari Fleischer, the President’s press secretary.
Dalyell’s remarks were sad and unfounded, said Lord Janner, chairman of the Holocaust Education Trust. “Tony Blair is his own man. He will follow advice if he considers it correct and not otherwise. He has been a good friend of the Jewish people and the Jewish state.”
Dalyell was misguided, said Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain, a spokesman for Britain’s Reform Synagogues. “Concerning Iraq it was crystal clear that Tony Blair was not swayed by popularity or anyone else but by his own deep convictions. It is also obvious that the majority of President Bush’s circle are Christian Evangelicals rather than Jews.”
Ned Temko, the American-born editor of the Jewish Chronicle, said: “I just think these sort of comments are offensive and are a profound misunderstanding of the way foreign policy is made in the United States or here.”
Dalyell also told The Scotsman on Sunday: “Blair and Straw have become far too close to these people and Lord Levy, who is an unaccountable ambassador in the Middle East, is part of this group. They are acting on an extremely Zionist, Likud-nik agenda. In particular I am concerned that some of them are pushing for an attack on Syria, for reasons of Israeli security. ”
MP Louise Ellman, a member of the Inter-Parliamentary Committee Against Anti-Semitism, said: “This absurd proposition implies a Jewish plot in high places…”
Former Foreign Secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind, a senior member of Scotland’s Jewish community, was rudely dismissive: “We all know that Tam gets bees in his bonnet and eight times out of 10 they are nuts but the other two are brilliant. This is, I’m afraid, one of the nutty ones.”
Next day the Guardian reported that Dalyell could face an investigation for inciting racial hatred. Eric Moonman, president of the Zionist Federation, was seeking advice on whether there was a case for referral. “I believe there is,” he said.
Today it is obvious that old Tam was neither nutty nor misguided. He joined the dots and saw the danger, as did many others.
‘The Torah party’
Meanwhile the Jewish cabal flourishes. A few weeks ago Ian Livingston was handpicked by Prime Minister David Cameron for the trade minister job. Cameron, who had previously broken with traditional wisdom and appointed the first Jewish ambassador to Israel, was reported by an ecstatic Times of Israel as having now decided to bring into the government possibly its most committed Jew yet, and certainly its most outspoken supporter of Israel, which Livingston called “the most amazing state in the world.”
Livingston is not elected. He’s appointed. The newspaper went on to name other top Jewish figures in the Conservative party such as co-chairs Lord Feldman and Grant Shapps MP, senior treasurer Howard Leigh, a member of the Jewish Leadership Council; and former party treasurers Richard Harrington MP and Lord Fink, another member of the JLC.
“There are so many Jews at the top of Britain’s Conservative party, Prime Minister David Cameron once quipped, that it should be known as the Torah party rather than the Tory party,” crowed the paper.
And to make the Prime Minister feel thoroughly at home in his Torah party a Jewish scholar, after tracing Cameron’s ancestry, claimed he could be “a direct descendant of Moses or, at least, a cousin”.
In case our American friends are puzzled by this Torah/Tory business, ‘Tory’ is an old 17th century name for the modern Conservative party founded in the 1830s.
Three years ago The Jewish Chronicle published a list of Jewish MPs in Britain’s parliament, naming 24. The Jewish population in the UK at that time was – and probably still is – around 280,000 or just under 0.5%. There are 650 seats in the House of Commons so, on a proportional basis, Jews could expect 3 seats. But with 24 they were 8 times over-represented. Which meant, of course, that other groups were under-represented.
The UK’s Muslim population is about 2.4 million or nearly 4%. Similarly, their quota would be 25 seats but they had only 8 – a serious shortfall. If Muslims were over-represented to the same extent as Jews (i.e. 8 times) they’d have 200 seats. Imagine the hullabaloo.
Israeli flag-waving
Over-representation in the House of Commons is only part of the picture. Many more Jews have been inserted into the House of Lords and other non-elected and unaccountable positions. An even bigger worry is the huge number of non-Jewish Zionists that have infiltrated every level of political and institutional life. They swell the pro-Israel lobby to such an extent that it is believed to account for 80% of the Parliamentary Conservative Party, which now rules with the Liberal Democrats as their junior coalition partner.
Too many pro-Israel MPs speak and act as if they’d rather wave the Israeli flag than the Union Jack. These ‘Israel-firsters’ never condemn the regime’s illegal occupation, apartheid-style policies, war crimes and refusal to sign up to nuclear non-proliferation, inspection and safeguards. They lock Britain (and British foreign policy) into Israel’s sickening ambitions and immorality. Defending the indefensible, as they do, inevitably raises questions for our national security, a deadly serious issue given the sheer number of Zionists now in British public life and the enemies they have made across the world, and continually provoke.
The Jewish Chronicle, in its 2006 special report ‘Team Cameron’s big Jewish backers’, revealed the support that enabled Cameron to suddenly burst into the political limelight, almost unknown, to take the Conservative leadership. With no significant achievement under his belt he was then able to manoeuvre, with the help of his backers, into Britain’s PM slot.
He is also a self-declared Zionist and voted for the war in Iraq, so how trustworthy does that make him? In a speech to Jewish fundraisers in London last year he declared: “There is no contradiction between being a proud Jew, a committed Zionist and a loyal British citizen.” How can someone who so closely aligns himself with a belligerent foreign military power like Israel hope to convince us that he’s 100 percent loyal to Britain and her interests, while once again drawing us unwillingly into conflict with Israel’s enemies, this time Iran and Syria, with whom we have no quarrel?
Cameron’s Foreign Secretary, William Hague, has been a member of Conservative Friends of Israel since he was 15. Hague once said: “The unbroken thread of Conservative Party support for Israel that has run for nearly a century from the Balfour Declaration to the present day will continue.”
Alistair Burt, a former officer of the Parliamentary group of Conservative Friends of Israel, is Foreign Office minister for the Middle East. And David Lidington, who has spoken of being a “staunch defender” of the State of Israel, is Foreign Office minister for Europe.
So the key stooges are safely installed and activated.
Powerless to deliver justice
It is said that becoming a Friend of Israel is a necessary stepping-stone to high office. Consequently fans of Israel are embedded at all levels in the fabric of British political life and at the heart of the Government.
When a group of concerned academics wrote to the Committee on Standards in Public Life complaining about Israel’s “deep penetration”, they were told it was not something the committee could investigate. A closer look revealed that some members of the committee had close links with Friends of Israel.
How do these Israeli flag wavers think it looks, standing shoulder to shoulder with religious fanatics and psychopaths who horribly persecute the Christian and Muslim communities of the Holy Land? It is especially offensive to see them endorsing a pseudo democracy that dishes out thuggish treatment even to children who, says the UN, are arrested by Israeli military and police and systematically subjected to degrading treatment, and often tortured. Read the report and weep.
Thanks to its misplaced admiration for Israel, the British government fails to intervene and stand up for justice. The disgrace is unbearable. Here is just one of many appalling examples. Right now Christians in that once beautiful country are under imminent threat of losing their land, their livelihood, and their way of life because an emergency law cooked up by the illegal occupier Israel, and upheld by an Israeli court, allows the Israelis to seize territory in the Cremisan Valley near Bethlehem. This brazen land-grab opens the way for the hated separation wall (ruled illegal by the International Court of Justice) to be extended across the valley, connecting two Israeli settlements built on stolen Palestinian land in the eastern suburbs of Jerusalem.
The onward construction of the barrier will divide a Salesian Catholic monastery from the neighbouring Salesian Catholic convent, confiscate most of the convent’s property, and cut off 58 Palestinian families from their agricultural lands – including vineyards, olive groves, and pastures. The barrier will also separate families and surround an elementary school on three sides, forcing young children to pass through a checkpoint to go to class.
The ICJ required the wall to be dismantled, not extended. And it reminded all States party to the Fourth Geneva Convention that they are under an obligation “to ensure compliance by Israel with international humanitarian law as embodied in that Convention”. That was 9 years ago. The world is still waiting. The States never act. Compliance never happens. Non-compliance is rife, and highly profitable to Israel.
And Israel’s allies, including Britain, perversely reward its non-compliance. Across the West Bank, continuing restrictions on Palestinian access to agricultural lands have led to the slow abandonment and eventual confiscation of those lands by Israeli authorities.
Israel’s Knesset has approved the first reading of the Prawer Plan to remove 40,000 indigenous Bedouin people from their ancestral homeland in the Negev. This evil scheme clears the way for the $4 billion “Blueprint Negev” project intended to transform the Negev into a majority-Jewish area even though the Bedouin have lived there for thousands of years.
At the same time one of Israel’s most dangerous lunatics, Avigdor Lieberman (chairman of the foreign affairs and defence committee), is calling for Israel, after imposing a vicious 7-year blockade, to conquer the Gaza Strip and carry out “a thorough cleansing”, just because Hamas still hasn’t succumbed to Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian homeland.
Britain could, at a stroke, bring Israel to heel and force the regime to conform to international law or face massive trade penalties.
UK has a CCTV for every 11 people
Press TV – July 10, 2013
Britain has a CCTV camera for every 11 people, a security industry report disclosed, as privacy campaigners criticized the growth of the “surveillance state”.
Britain has a CCTV camera for every 11 people including 750,000 in “sensitive locations” such as schools and hospitals, British Security Industry Authority (BSIA) says.
The BSIA said there are up to 5.9 million closed-circuit cameras across Britain dramatically raising the previous estimates that put the number of cameras somewhere between 1.5 million and four million.
“Because there is no single reliable source of data no number can ever be held as truly accurate however the middle of our range suggests that there are around five million cameras,” Simon Adcock, of the BSIA, said.
The revelations drew angry criticism from privacy campaigners Big Brother Watch who described the CCTV culture as a sign of an ailing democracy in Britain.
“This report is another stark reminder of how out of control our surveillance culture has become,” Big Brother Watch director Nick Pickles said.
“With potentially more than five million CCTV cameras across country, including more than 300,000 cameras in schools, we are being monitored in a way that few people would recognize as a part of a healthy democratic society,” he added.
Pickles also compared the situation to the dystopia represented in George Orwell’s 1984 novel.
“This report should be a wakeup call that in modern Britain there are people in positions of responsibility who seem to think ‘1984’ was an instruction manual,” he said.
The novel pictures a society where every single private move of the citizens in the then future Britain of 1984 is monitored by the eye of the state.
Related article
Featured Video
The American Retreat from Vietnam
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
From the Archives
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
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Documents Suggest Fauci Knew COVID Was Created in Wuhan Lab, and mRNA Vaccines Wouldn’t Work
- No return to pre-war status for Strait of Hormuz – Iran’s top diplomat
- Ex-South Korean President sentenced for trying to provoke conflict with Pyongyang
- US publishes docs on ‘dangerous’ Ukrainian biolabs
- Trump’s ERAM cruise missiles for Ukraine blow up his peace overtures to Russia
- EU state lifts arms embargo on Israel after spy scandal
- French watchdog reveals Israeli propaganda firm meddled in New York, Scottish, African elections
- Trump State Department Moves to Deport Trita Parsi
- UK judge brands Palestine Action activists ‘terrorists’ for storming Israeli weapons company
- Report: US military building new base near Gaza border to support post-war plan
- If Americans Knew
- The Issue of Israel Is Ending Democracy In Michigan
- Israel is stealing homes, livelihoods, and lives in West Bank
- Gaza is not an aberration – Israel planned this genocide decades ago
- Israel is changing the face of Lebanon, mainstream media is normalizing it – 3 articles
- Genocide lobby benefits from EU anti-racist fund
- Watching the World Cup from Gaza
- Israel to Blame for 56% of 22,600+ Civilians Killed by Explosive Weapons Globally Last Year
- Tucker Carlson and John Mearsheimer on Gaza, Ukraine, Iran, Russia & a Potential Nuclear Strike
- 88 attacks against Palestinian Christians recorded since start of year
- US administration investigating Iran war critic Trita Parsi, says report
- No Tricks Zone
- New Study: Significant CO2 Fluxes From Non-Volcanic Sources Are Largely Neglected In Carbon Budgets
- Women Climate Scientists Being Harassed, Insulted By Skeptics, Claims Berkeley Earth Researcher
- Germany’s Longterm Spring Climate Data Show “No Climate Trend”
- New Study: Solar Photovoltaic, Wind Power Fail To Meet Annual Energy Demands 62% Of The Time
- Germany’s Die Welt: “Too Much Is Too Much” … Green Energies Are Cannabalizing Each Other!
- Germany’s Ecological Holocaust… Once Fairy Tale Forests Getting Cleared For Wind Turbines
- A Grand Solar Minimum Has Arrived…Global Cooling Of At Least 1°C Is Expected By The 2030s, 2040s
- European “Expert Commission” Urges COVID-19-Like Global Climate State Of Energency!
- Real-World Observations Do Not Support The Position That Climate Change Is Human-Caused
- Germany’s AfD Party Calls Debunked Climate Scenarios “Greatest Fraud In Human History”
Aletho News 