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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:

  • Number of Israelis killed since the launch of ‘Operation Protective Edge’: 0

  • 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)

July 10, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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?

July 8, 2014 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism | , , , | Leave a comment

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.

July 6, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Video | , , , | Leave a comment

Ecostream campaign victorious

By Tom Anderson | Corporate Watch | July 1, 2014

Ecostreamclosure-225x300Brighton’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.”

July 2, 2014 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

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.

July 2, 2014 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Economics | , , | Leave a comment

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

June 29, 2014 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , | Leave a comment

UN calls for dialogue over Malvinas Islands

Press TV – June 27, 2014

A United Nations committee has approved a resolution calling on Britain and Argentina to negotiate a solution to their dispute over the Malvinas Islands, also known as the Falkland Islands.

On Thursday, the UN Decolonization Committee approved the new resolution, calling for a negotiated solution to the 200-year dispute.

This comes as the world body refuses to recognize the outcome of a 2013 referendum on the political status of Malvinas. According to the vote, the territory claimed by both Argentina and the UK, would remain a British colony.

The British government has so far rejected several UN resolutions and repeated calls from Argentina for negotiations on the sovereignty of the region.

Britain argues that it is up to the islands to decide. But Argentina says the English-speaking islanders are an implanted population kept stagnant for the purpose of occupying the territory.

Argentina’s foreign minister said the dispute is not with the people living in the Malvinas but with the British government.

“Argentina has no problem with citizenship. Our problem is that the United Kingdom is occupying Argentinean territory against international law and the United Nations expressly rejects applying to the Malvinas the principle of self-determination,” Hector Timerman said on Thursday.

Argentina and Britain fought a 74-day-long war in 1982 over the islands. The conflict ended with the British side claiming victory.

Located about 480 kilometers (300 miles) off Argentina’s coast, the Malvinas Islands have been declared part of the British overseas territories since the UK established its colonial rule on the territories in 1833.

June 27, 2014 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

The Jewish Plan for the Middle East and Beyond

By Gilad Atzmon | June 13, 2014

Surely, what’s happening now in Iraq and Syria must serve as a final wake-up call that we have been led into a horrific situation in the Middle East by a powerful Lobby driven by the interests of one tribe and one tribe alone.

Back in 1982, Oded Yinon an Israeli journalist formerly attached to the Israeli Foreign Ministry, published a document titled ‘A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties.’ This Israeli commentator suggested that for Israel to maintain its regional superiority, it must fragment its surrounding Arab states into smaller units. The document, later labelled as ‘Yinon Plan’, implied that Arabs and Muslims killing each other in endless sectarian wars was, in effect, Israel’s insurance policy.

Of course, regardless of the Yinon Plan’s prophesies, one might still argue that this has nothing to do with Jewish lobbying, politics or institutions but is just one more Israeli strategic proposal except that it is impossible to ignore that the Neocon school of thought that pushed the English-speaking Empire into Iraq was largely a Jewish Diaspora, Zionist clan. It’s also no secret that the 2nd Gulf War was fought to serve Israeli interests –  breaking into sectarian units what then seemed to be the last pocket of Arab resistance to Israel.

Similarly, it is well established that when Tony Blair decided to launch that criminal war, Lord Levy was the chief fundraiser for his Government while, in the British media, Jewish Chronicle writers David Aaronovitch and Nick Cohen were busy beating the drums for war. And again, it was the exact same Jewish Lobby that was pushing for intervention in Syria, calling for the USA and NATO to fight alongside those same Jihadi forces that today threaten the last decade’s American ‘achievements’ in Iraq.

Unfortunately, Yinon’s disciples are more common than you might expect. In France, it was the infamous Jewish ‘philosopher’ Bernard Henri Levy who  boasted on TV that ‘as a Jew’ campaigning for NATO intervention, he liberated Libya.

As we can see, a dedicated number of Jewish Zionist activists, commentators and intellectuals have worked relentlessly in many countries pushing for exactly the same cause – the breaking up of Arab and Muslim states into smaller, sectarian units.

But is it just the Zionists who are engaging in such tactics? Not at all.

In fact, the Jewish so-called Left serves the exact same cause, but instead of fragmenting Arabs and Muslims into Shia, Sunnis, Alawites and Kurds they strive to break them into sexually oriented identity groups (Lesbian, Queer, Gays, Heterosexual etc.)

Recently I learned from Sarah Schulman, a NY Jewish Lesbian activist that in her search for funding for a young ‘Palestinian Queer’ USA tour, she was advised to approach George Soros’ Open Society institute. The following account may leave you flabbergasted, as it did me:

A former ACT UP staffer who worked for the Open Society Institute, George Soros’ foundation, suggested that I file an application there for funding for the tour. When I did so it turned out that the person on the other end had known me from when we both attended Hunter [College] High School in New York in the 1970s. He forwarded the application to the Institutes’s office in Amman, Jordan, and I had an amazing one-hour conversation with Hanan Rabani, its director of the Women’s and Gender program for the Middle East region. Hanan told me that this tour would give great visibility to autonomous queer organizations in the region. That it would inspire queer Arabs—especially in Egypt and Iran… for that reason, she said, funding for the tour should come from the Amman office” (Sarah Schulman -Israel/Palestine and the Queer International p. 108).

The message is clear, The Open Society Institutes  (OSI) wires Soros’s money to Jordan, Palestine and then back to the  USA in order to “inspire queer Arabs in Egypt and Iran (sic).”

What we see here is clear evidence of a blatant intervention by George Soros and his institute in an attempt to break Arabs and Muslims and shape their culture. So, while the right-wing Jewish Lobby pushes the Arabs into ethnic sectarian wars, their tribal counterparts within George Soros’ OSI institute, do exactly the same — attempt to break the Arab and Muslims by means of marginal and identity politics.

It is no secret that, as far as recent developments in Iraq are concerned, America, Britain and the West are totally unprepared. So surely, the time is long overdue when we must identify the forces and ideologies within Western society that are pushing us into more and more global conflicts. And all we can hope for is that  America, Britain and France may think twice before they spend trillions of their taxpayers’ money in following the Yinon Plan to fight ruinous, foreign wars imposed upon them by The Lobby.

June 13, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

School witch-hunt fuels UK Islamophobia

By Finian Cunningham | Press TV | June 10, 2014

An official British probe this week into alleged “Islamic extremism” in schools is replete with rumor, hearsay and sensationalist accusations.

But, as it turns out, the government report is based on scant factual evidence.

What this amounts to is a “witch-hunt” against British Muslims fuelled at the highest level of government.

This exercise in fear mongering not only denigrates Muslim communities; it recklessly adds to an already hostile climate of Islamophobia in British society, where ordinary citizens are being targeting by racism and hate crimes.

This week the British government’s regulatory body, Ofsted, released a report into more than 20 schools in the midlands city of Birmingham, where it has been alleged that there is a secret plot to infiltrate the education system with “Islamic extremism.”

Six of the schools investigated have been accused of promoting “intimidation” and “intolerance” of non-Muslims. The British government has now placed the schools on a watch-list, which will involve future no-warning snap inspections.

British Prime Minister David Cameron has vowed “a robust response to protect children” with “an extremism taskforce” that will from now on promote “British values” in schools.

The Birmingham establishments in question may now see their governors and staff sacked, and replaced by government-vetted personnel.

The local education trust that runs the facilities in Birmingham has flatly rejected the Ofsted report and the “baseless allegations.”

A senior member of Parkview Trust, which governs three of the schools investigated, said the government probe has found no evidence to support its claims. Trust chairman David Hughes said:

“This report has been conducted in a climate of suspicion… Ofsted inspectors came to our schools looking for extremism, looking for segregation, looking for proof that our children have religion forced upon them as part of an Islamic plot. The Ofsted reports find absolutely no evidence of this because this is categorically not what is happening at our schools.”

So, what is going on here? The whole affair into alleged extremism in the Birmingham schools, both secondary and primary, began some four years ago when an anonymous teacher supposedly wrote a letter to the British government claiming that there was a “Trojan Horse” plot operating in schools in majority Muslim communities across Birmingham.

That plot was said to involve the takeover of teaching staff at the schools and the infiltration of students with extremist ideology.

The letter has since been widely seen as a hoax. Even right-wing British newspapers, such as The Daily Mail, have acknowledged that the document and its accusations therein are fabrications.

Nevertheless, the allegations have taken on a life of their own and have gained credibility, largely due to incessant media vilification of the schools and Muslim communities in general.

Reprehensibly, senior British government ministers have heightened this climate of fear and the ensuing Islamophobia by giving these groundless claims of extremism credence.

Last week, the interior minister Theresa May and education minister Michael Gove engaged in a bizarre public row, accusing each other of “being soft on Islamic fundamentalism.” Then Conservative party leader David Cameron stepped in to the war of words – not to dismiss the damaging allegations against Muslim majority schools, but to merely discipline his ministers for their public bickering.

There is more than a suspicion that the Conservative ministers, May and Gove, are each exploiting the issue as a way of garnering personal publicity and to further their ambitions for taking over the party leadership from the hapless Cameron. For his part, Cameron seems to be reacting in a heavy-handed way to shore up his image as a “tough leader” instead of being seen as the lame duck premier that he is increasingly appearing to be.

With the release of the Ofsted report this week, Cameron has not challenged the dubious premise of the probe, but has instead promised a “robust response,” thus giving its claims a veneer of veracity.

Teachers, parents and community leaders in Birmingham have roundly condemned the “political agenda” of the government’s so-called probe into Islamic extremism.

Lee Donaghey, a principal at the now black-listed Parkview Academy, said the accusations were “absolutely untrue,” adding: “This is a normal state school, like thousands of others across Britain – 98 percent of our pupils just happen to be Muslims. British Muslims.”

As several local people also pointed out, the schools being targeted by the British government report have staff of different religious faiths, including Muslim and Christian. Some are agnostic.

One parent, Arshad Malik, said the conclusions of the Ofsted report claiming the existence of extremism were “completely alien” to him.

“The only thing extreme about our school is the excellence of student achievement in exams,” he added, saying that Park View had been turned around from an academically failed school into an award-winning one in recent years, thanks to the resilient efforts of the teaching staff.

What forms the basis of the British government probe is nothing but a litany of hearsay and unfounded rumor, which has been pursued with prejudice among the government school-regulators. That is a symptom of the worrying trend of increasing Islamophobia in British society at large, not the existence of “hard-line Islamic” influence in schools.

This very real and unconscionable Islamophobia is now being further whipped up at senior government level for self-serving political reasons that bear no relation to alleged problems.

Furthermore, what is even more deplorable is that the government fuelled anti-Muslim attitude in Britain is placing the lives of ordinary Muslims, including young students, at grave risk. Already, there is disturbing evidence of a soaring number of physical attacks, some of them lethal, on Muslim citizens across Britain. In the mindset of racist street thugs, all Muslims are dehumanized as “terrorists.”

What the British government is doing with its scaremongering reports of “extremist plots” at schools in Muslim communities is setting the stage for even more hate crimes.

Ironically, the one entity that can be most associated with so-called Islamic extremism is the British government itself, with its covert support for terrorists in Syria and Libya, as well as its long-held cozy relationship with the Wahhabi rulers of Saudi Arabia.

Tragically, Muslim communities across Britain are at risk of paying an even bigger price of human suffering for the reckless policies of the British government and its so-called “British values.”

June 10, 2014 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Islamophobia, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Video | | Leave a comment

Intelligence agencies have direct access to telecoms infrastructure, Vodafone reveals

RT | June 6, 2014

Government intelligence agencies have direct access to telecommunication companies’ infrastructure which allows them to spy and record phone calls leaving no paper trail, the UK’s largest mobile phone company Vodafone has revealed.

The British operator said wires have been attached to its phone networks in some of the 29 countries in which it operates in Europe, as well as around the world, the Guardian reported. Governments similarly connect to other telecom groups, reportedly allowing them to listen to or record live conversations. In some cases, the surveillance agencies can also track the whereabouts of a customer.

“For governments to access phone calls at the flick of a switch is unprecedented and terrifying,” Liberty director Shami Chakrabarti told the Guardian. “Snowden revealed the internet was already treated as fair game. Bluster that all is well is wearing pretty thin – our analogue laws need a digital overhaul.”

But now Vodafone is pushing back against government surveillance through direct access to the pipes. On Friday, it will publish its first Law Enforcement Disclosure Report about how governments spy on people through the company’s infrastructure.

“These pipes exist, the direct access model exists,” the telecom giant’s group privacy officer, Stephen Deadman told the Guardian. “We are making a call to end direct access as a means of government agencies obtaining people’s communication data. Without an official warrant, there is no external visibility. If we receive a demand we can push back against the agency. The fact that a government has to issue a piece of paper is an important constraint on how powers are used.”

“We need to debate how we are balancing the needs of law enforcement with the fundamental rights and freedoms of the citizens,” Deadman said.

The problem with many of the laws on the books that governments use to receive the warrants is “most of the legislation on privacy and surveillance predates the internet and needs to be updated,” the Guardian wrote, citing the report’s introduction.

Agencies do not have to identify the targeted customers to the telecom companies in any way, and the direct-access systems do not require warrants.

“These are the nightmare scenarios that we were imagining,” Gus Hosein, executive director of Privacy International, which has brought legal action against the British government over mass surveillance, told the Guardian.

“I never thought the telcos [telecommunications companies] would be so complicit,” he said. “It’s a brave step by Vodafone and hopefully the other telcos will become more brave with disclosure, but what we need is for them to be braver about fighting back against the illegal requests and the laws themselves.”

In its report, the company asks for the direct-access pipes to be disconnected, for countries to outlaw the practice and for governments to “discourage agencies and authorities from seeking direct access to an operator’s communications infrastructure without a lawful mandate.”

Vodafone began working on the report last autumn, in the wake of the first Snowden leaks about government spying. It insists that its comprehensive survey of government warrant applications is not because of consumer backlash, the Guardian reported, though analysts contend that losing customers’ trust could cost the company tens of millions of pounds.

But Vodafone isn’t opening up about everything. One of the first of the Snowden revelations last June was about Project Tempora, which allows the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) spy agency to intercept and store for 30 days huge volumes of data, like emails, social network posts, phone calls and much more, culled from international fiber-optic cables. On the one-year anniversary of the first Snowden leak the location of secret GCHQ bases in Oman tapping into underwater cables was revealed. The Vodafone report makes no mention of revelations about its participation in secret GCHQ operations.

June 6, 2014 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Genetic Testing of Citizens Is a Backdoor into Total Population Surveillance by Governments and Companies

By Helen Wallace | GeneWatch UK | June 5, 2014

The new Chief Executive of the National Health Service (NHS) in England, Simon Stevens, was recently reported arguing that the NHS must be transformed to make people’s personal genetic information the basis of their treatments (1).

His proposition is unsurprising since it is in line with the efforts of successive UK governments to build a DNA database in the NHS in England by stealth. In particular, sequencing every baby at birth and storing whole genomes in electronic medical records is a plan backed by Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt (2). The current version of this plan would involve sharing whole or partial DNA sequences (genomes or genotypes) with companies like Google, which would use genetic information and health data to calculate personal risk assessments for feedback to patients (3). Massive investment from taxpayers would be required as part of a public-private partnership that would allow commercial exploitation of the data.

Building a DNA database within the NHS would be a massive waste of public money. But it would also create a system of total surveillance which would enable the government and private companies to track every individual, not to mention their relatives. This is not speculation; as wikileaks revealed, the United States government is already actively collecting DNA samples and biometric data on foreign officials and populations.

Commercial companies wish to exploit genetic information to market products such as drugs and supplements to healthy people, based on genetic risk assessments. If current trends continue, this will harm, not benefit, health: it is personalised marketing not personalised medicine. The potential for misuse is very high. Doctors could be replaced by computer algorithms used to market medication, massively expanding the drug market to include large numbers of healthy people, rather than smaller numbers of (often poorer) people who are sick. There is also the danger that prescribing would be driven by vested interests, rather than medical need: with high financial costs and more harmful side effects. Genetic risk assessments could also be misused, leading to stigma or discrimination, for example by insurers.

Why does the NHS want to collect genetic information?

There is one element of truth to Simon Stevens’ remarks. Some cancer drugs have been successfully tailored to genetic mutations that arise in the cancer tumour. However, attempts to select drugs for people based on the genetic make-up they are born with (their genome or genotype) have largely been a failure. This is because genetic differences only account for a part of individual differences in metabolism. For example, a recent study found that targeting warfarin treatment based on genetic make-up did not improve health outcomes, although this application was regarded as the ‘poster child’ of this approach (4).

Why did it not work? An important misconception, apparently shared by Simon Stevens, is that genes are good predictors of most diseases and adverse drug reactions in most people. However, contrary to misleading claims made to promote the Human Genome Project, this is not true (5). Moreover, even if it were true, there is no evidence that genetic selection of individuals, for example into high risk and low risk groups, improves outcomes or cuts costs. All of which begs the question of the purpose of taking and storing genetic information as a default medical procedure.

The online gene testing company 23andMe, funded by Google, has been forced to withdraw its gene tests from the US market due to failure to prove they can reliably predict individual risks of many common conditions using computer algorithms. The company now wants to target the UK market, where genetic testing is not regulated (6). Patrick Chung, a 23andMe board member and partner at the venture-capital firm NEA told Fast Company (7): “… 23andMe will make money by partnering with countries that rely on a single-payer health system. “Let’s say you genotype everyone in Canada or the United Kingdom or Abu Dhabi,” he says, “and the government is able to identify those segments of the population that are most at risk for heart disease or breast cancer or Parkinson’s. You can target them with preventative messages, make sure they’re examined more frequently, and in the end live healthier lives, and the government will save massive expenses because they halted someone who’s prediabetic from getting diabetes. 23andMe has been in discussion with a bunch of such societies“. Yet there is not a scrap of evidence that this approach is good for health. This is because genomic tests have limited clinical validity or utility; so in reality there is no health benefit to targeting segments of the population in this way.

Genetic testing remains useful to diagnose rare genetic disorders, mainly in babies and young children, and whole genome sequencing has helped to identify new mutations causing these diseases. Rare familial (largely inherited) forms of many common diseases also exist, including breast cancer, but these account for only a small percentage of cases of these conditions.

Use of genetic testing in the NHS should focus on prioritising resources for the limited applications that do work, not on introducing misleading and harmful screening of the whole population and creating unnecessary, expensive databases. Certainly it should not be driven by ulterior commercial and government interests.

References

(1)   New NHS boss: service must become world leader in personalised medicine. The Guardian. 4th June 2014. http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jun/04/nhs-boss-world-leader-personalised-medicine

(2)   Children could have DNA tested at birth. The Telegraph. 8th December 2013. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/10501788/Children-could-have-DNA-tested-at-birth.html

(3)   GeneWatch UK PR: GeneWatch UK report exposes plans to build a DNA database by stealth in the NHS. 23rd May 2013. http://www.genewatch.org/article.shtml?als[cid]=569352&als[itemid]=572536

(4)   Pharmacogenomic Warfarin Dosing: Worth the Cost? Medscape. 23rd December 2013. http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/818088

(5)   Human Genetic Predispositions – the hidden politics of genomic science. Bioscience Resource Project. http://www.bioscienceresource.org/resources/human-genetic-predisposition/

(6)   Gene startup 23andme casts eyes abroad after U.S. regulatory hurdle. Reuters. 6th May 2014. http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/05/07/23andme-genetictesting-idINL2N0NT05I20140507

(7)   Inside 23andMe founder Anne Wojcicki’s $99 DNA Revolution. Fast Company. 14th October 2013. http://www.fastcompany.com/3018598/for-99-this-ceo-can-tell-you-what-might-kill-you-inside-23andme-founder-anne-wojcickis-dna-r

Dr Helen Wallace is Executive Director of GeneWatch UK

June 6, 2014 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Economics, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

Secret Trials: UK Holds A Secret Terror Trial, As US Appeals Court Holds Secret Hearing In Terror Case

By Mike Masnick | Techdirt | June 5, 2014

To have a functioning judiciary in an open democracy, part of the point is to make sure that court proceedings are open to the public. Yes, there may be certain instances where certain aspects must be kept secret, but the default should be open and public. Unfortunately, in both the US and UK this week, it appears that when it comes to the bogeyman word “terrorism,” courts are willing to go dark. The more serious situation is over in the UK, where it has just come out that a secret terrorism trial is being held — the first one in centuries. Even the names of the two defendants are not known (they’re listed as merely AB and CD). Journalists had even been barred from mentioning the existence of the trial, until a gag order was just overturned. Note that the Guardian’s page linked above had to turn off comments for legal reasons. Journalist Tim Cook has also spoken out eloquently about why this cannot stand.

I cannot say how broken-hearted I am about the prospect of a major criminal trial involving two men charged with serious terrorism offences being held entirely in secret for the first time in modern British legal history. I have spent my entire journalistic life campaigning against courtroom secrecy and this represents a nadir and indication of abject failure.

But the proposal is being contested by the process of law; albeit very limited and garrotted by the lack of a constitutional paradigm for freedom of the media and expression. We have been paying the price for not having a First Amendment for many years. Now we are entering the endgame of something beyond the dissolution of open justice.

Meanwhile, back here in the good, old United States, where we do have a First Amendment, at least we know that Adel Daoud is on trial. But the 7th Circuit Court of appeals kicked everyone out of the courtroom to hold a “secret hearing” with just the DOJ. As we wrote a few months ago, Daoud’s lawyers are asking to actually see the FISA court orders that were used to gather evidence against their client — and the DOJ is flipping out about that. While some of the hearings were held openly, at one point, Judge Richard Posner abruptly kicked everyone but the DOJ out, including Daoud’s lawyers.

As the arguments concluded, Judge Richard Posner announced the public portion of the proceedings had concluded and ordered the stately courtroom cleared so the three-judge panel could hold a “secret hearing.” Daoud’s attorney, Thomas Anthony Durkin, rose to object, but Posner did not acknowledge him. Deputy U.S. marshals then ordered everyone out – including Durkin, his co-counsel and reporters.

Only those with the proper security clearance — including U.S. Attorney Zachary Fardon, his first assistant, Gary Shapiro, and about a dozen FBI and U.S. Department of Justice officials – were allowed back in the courtroom before it was locked for the secret session.

Some reporters tried to ask what was going on, but Posner simply told them “No!” and kicked them out. Daoud’s lawyer was similarly perplexed:

“Not only do I not get to be there, but I didn’t even get to object,” Durkin said. “I had to object over the fact that I couldn’t even make an objection.”

As the article notes, this is highly unusual. While in national security cases, certain information may be filed under seal, or certain portions may be held “in camera” without reporters or the public, it’s not at all common to have just one side present. And while you may say that it makes sense in this case, where the three judge panel has to determine whether or not it’s appropriate to share the FISC orders with Daoud’s lawyers, it’s still somewhat troubling to see the ease with which secret court proceedings may occur.

June 5, 2014 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , , | Leave a comment