I was a bit unmoved when you announced you were rejoining the libdems. I was undecided myself. Having read Andrew Rawnsley’s books recently I realised that however much I objected to much of what especially Blair and Campbell did with regard to Iraq and subsequent systemic mendacity Blair had actually done some good and important things and remarkably had some fine qualities. Brown is also very competent in some areas. However I also feel that many things Labour have done are a step too far to make it alright to say ‘Well we can’t let the Tories get in and that would make it alright.’

What particularly concerns me at this moment is that the financial crisis is yet another instance of proving Marx’s analysis of the problems of capitalism right. (I don’t agree with his solutions). Capitalism is out of control and the Labour party and the Tories are tidying up the deckchairs. Only ole Vince has come out and got angry and for that reason I will after all be voting Libdem.

By the way I have just had Paul Murphy on my doorstep and I gave him a slighly fuller version of this argument and told him that your books were the only place I knew where it was possible to find the truth about the cynicism of New Labour. He did know what I was talking about!

Keep up the good work Craig, you are a light in the darkness.

Craig

Somewhat off-topic but as the most recent relevant posting was a while ago I’ll post it here…

I see from the BBC and Wikipedia that former Brazil and Chelsea boss Luiz Felipe Scolari is currently managing Bunyodkor in Uzbekistan.

Wikipedia is not always accurate but it says that “On 8 June 2009, Scolari revealed that he had signed an 18 month contract with the team. The contract made Scolari the highest paid football manager in the world, earning 13€ million a year.”

Do you know where a small football club in Uzbekistan would get 13€ million a year to pay their manager?

I was thinking when watching that video of the Americans in that Apache helicopter slaughtering all those innocent people, that these Americans were quite stupid individuals.

It became clear though as the video progressed that these Americans were in fact just very evil men, as of course are those ghouls at the BBC who give them journalistic cover.

http://wikileaks.org/

Slaughter such as this would be very much the norm for our American and Israeli friends, but you wouldn’t know that from listening to the BBC.

John D Monkey,

I have posted about it a lot, and the link with Barcelona.

“Please let me know every time you see an incident of the “compound” propagande trick.”

They are referred to as such constantly in the American media, and I have seen one journalist there so far, point out that they are houses. (It might have been Jeremy Scahill or Glenn Greenwald but I’m not sure.) I’ll keep my eyes open and post links.

Craig,

I too get mad when the term ‘insurgent’ is bandied about in news reports.

You must have noted the recent upsurge in the mention of _’Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb’_. This is a handy excuse for the increasing US interventions into North Africa.

It was servile MI6 propagandist Frank Goebbels Gardner who, in the report of Wednesday, 3 June 2009 _Al-Qaeda ‘kills British hostage’_, told us that Briton Edwin Dyer had been ‘sold on to Algerian members of al-Qaeda in Mali.’

‘.

Read what Professor Jeremy Keenan (School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS) London University & Author of: The Dark Sahara: America’s War on Terror in Africa) has to say about the muder of Edwin Dyer here:

http://preview.tinyurl.com/y95kdhe

Professor Keenan believes that the expansion of ‘Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM)’ in the Sahara-Sahel has been largely orchestrated and managed by the DRS (the Algerian security services)

KABUL–American soldiers opened fire on a bus passing through Kandahar province Monday morning, according to Afghan officials and residents, killing at least 4 people and potentially aggravating a population already wary about the influx of thousands of new American troops headed their way.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/13/world/asia/13afghan.html

Massacre is the daily routine for US forces. But ask my mum if she believes that and she will tell you that it’s Islamic propaganda, and dangerous to disagree with the powers that be. I assume that most people’s mothers in this country are about the same as mine. Where’s the fact-finding journalism that we used to find in the Sunday papers and where are the anti-government M.P.s ?

Frank Gardner is biased. His lower limb paralysis at the hands of angry Muslims in Saudi Arabia has not been met with humility and understanding in his heart, so he is a useful propaganda tool for our murderous government. He was spying and he was punished for what he was doing. Only the British public still believe that British citizens working abroad are there for anything but neo-colonialism. The level of world rage against the UK is running near to boiling point thanks to T. Blair and co.

The issues in this election are twain. 1/Usury banking has to end. 2/ M.P.s who vote for war should be ostracised. We had an anti-war option in the LibDems at the last election. Why do we not have this choice now, when the need for such a choice is even greater. We have been completely betrayed by the LibDems and what are you going to do about it, Craig?

Craig – great article as ever. If you can stomach it, there is a repugnant apologist piece on US foreign policy by Timothy Lynch and Nicolas Bouchet at CiF. Linked a lot more prominently than your recent article, no surprises there.

Mervyn,

I agree whole-heartedly. When David Cameron was asked the question, “Why are our troops in Afghanistan?” He replied, to protect us from extremist Muslim terrorism.”

“..there is a small number of extremists and potential terrorists we need to find and deal with, that’s a real problem. We also have to stop the radicalisation of young people and that’s quite a targeted effort. But there is a broader issue that we have to address which is that there are too many people that believe myths like 9/11 was a Mossad plot. You hear it in too wider a circle, we need to address that. We have to knock down some of the myths that are quite widely believed, even by people who have nothing to do with terrorism. That provides a context. It’s a context that provides the sea in which a lot of these people swim.

I was very struck when I visited to the Birmingham Central Mosque, where many people said things to me like ‘Well of course, 9/11 was really a plot by Mossad’ and ‘are you really sure that 7/7 happened’? All good, decent Muslims know that we have to address the issue and deal with it because it is very dangerous for our country.

Vote Conservative – vote conflict, consternation and confusion.

The ‘haveli’ is similar to the traditional Greek/ Roman house – central courtyard, rooms round in a square around the outside, few/ no windows to the street, open on the inside. Yeah, exactly, good point which I hadn’t thought of – they’re not ‘compounds’ any more than a tenement is a (vertical) ‘compound’. They are amazingly cool in hot weather and in winter it’s possible to close the doors and light a ‘sandali’ (under-table brazier) – much preferred, by me anyway, to the sputtering open gas-fired heaters and horrible neon tube-lighting (or now, ugly energy-saving bulbs that stick out from the wall like wounded elephants’ ears) which abound. Yeah, not ‘compounds’; Like tenements, they are abodes of souls.

Anno, I guess mothers are as different as you, I and the next guy. My mother-in-law sees the hand of America (and Britain, and Europe; to her it’s the same hand, a synonymous hand, a koanic hand) in absolutely everything. Sometimes I think, don’t be silly, it can’t be that ‘their’ hands are in everything in that way but then I discover something new and think, oh, she was right after all and it was I who all this time was deluded. Maybe that’s the way with one’s mother.

Unless, of course, we’re talking about the Mothers of Invention.

Good luck in re-igniting Gladstone’s torch!

Having done extensive work in the Helmand region you are absolutely right that most homes are built this way. Although having said that most buildings are built this way, not just homes. Offices and sometimes factories also have that same 4 to 6m high blockwork walls surrounding their perimeter. Some of the smaller offices are actually converted dwellings.

Another point is that many militants used empty homes as a “compound” becuase there are a lot of abandoned buildings out in Afghanistan.

So while I understand where you are coming from and know how indisciminate American soldiers are at attacking and killing civilians in Afghanistan you should also realise that some buildings that may look like homes could be in fact something else.

“Only the British public still believe that British citizens working abroad are there for anything but neo-colonialism.”

That’s not true most british companies that are working in Afghanistan are working direct with Saudi, Pakistani, Afghan and many other governments who are bringing in aid to develop the country. There is a lot of work that is going on there which you don’t know about because you only hear the shit from the media.

The biggest problem in Afghanistan is there are not enough skilled workers to rebuild the country as most fled during the wars and haven’t returned. I tried to recruit afghan architects there for a project based in Helmand and it was impossible to get anyone that was qualified and willing to work outside Kabul so we had to go there ourselves. Most, if not all, of the work in afghanistan is creating a working infrastructure within the country and most of the ordinary Afghans want to see roads and powerstation being built asap and unfortunetly this can only be done with outside help.

You can be cynical about the political motives of countries doing this but the reality is that most do it because there are international agreements that force them to.

A timely reminder, Craig, of the cynical use of language by the militarist boneheads. The dehumanisation of the ‘compound people’ is a game they have been involved in for some years now.

Whereas your stand on many things, especially against torture and totalitarian governments, by being in the so-called Lib Dems makes you a traitor. You should read Daniel Hannan sometime about the EU and it’s corruption.

And as for ‘I stand in the tradition of Gladstone, John Bright and John Stuart Mill. … ‘ . What do the present Lib Dems have in common with those giants of British history ?” absolutely nothing.

Sorry, my previous comment should read:

Murray writes: ‘For those of you who ask why I rejoined the Liberal Democrats, the answer is it is my political home … ‘

Whereas your stand on many things, especially against torture and totalitarian governments is laudable, being in the so-called Lib Dems makes you a traitor. You should read Daniel Hannan sometime about the EU and it’s corruption.

And as for ‘I stand in the tradition of Gladstone, John Bright and John Stuart Mill. … ‘ . What do the present Lib Dems have in common with those giants of British history ?” absolutely nothing.

Chris from Glasgow

Central Birmingham is full of Afghanis and my sister lives half her life with an Afghan family. We know what is going on in Afghanistan, and Iraq as well, thank you very much. The softly softly approach to colonialism through charitable deeds, was first started by colonialists who posed as archaeologists, botanists, explorers, map-makers over 700 years ago. In New Zealand they said that the missionaries brought the book and took the land. You can only fool some of the people some of the time.

Suhayl. I was talking about non-Muslim English mums, not Muslim mums.

Near anough everyone who is killed in Afghanistan is a civilian. That is how counter insurgency works.

The zionists can’t hurt the Taliban because they can’t find them. So the zionists kill women and children, destroy whole towns and villiages.

Anno,

Fair enough but what you are talking about is completely different to today. There are international agreements that require richer nations to set aside some of their GDP for the purpose of rebuilding and supporting poorer nations. I am sure that the UK government would rather spend the £8 billion they set aside for this on people in their own country to help them get re-elected. Sometimes they waste a lot of money on corrupt governments, see DFID’s work in Sierra Leone, and sometimes they spend it well. However, as it is set up with the international community it isn’t for the purpose of colonialism.

The British government still prefer to use the Army for that purpose just like the good old days!

Anno – Suhayl is right, and mothers are by no means the same all around the country (whether Muslim or not!). Mine certainly detests the wholesale slaughter of innocents in these wretched wars perpetrated on foreign people who’ve never done us any harm. She considers Bush and Blair evil, and the plight of the Palestinians heartbreaking. And so on.

Here’s to mothers!!

Unless we’re talking… Neil Reid (‘Mother of Mine’) or (the otherwise extremely talented) Barry Ryan (‘Mama’, a deranged, Oedipal tribute to Marion Ryan) or Daniel O’Donnell (anything). In which case, one is left cringing for eternity. Here is the Top Fifty:

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/mother-of-mine-its-her-day-so-why-not-serenade-her-1921042.html

Apologies for lowering the tone in this way in the middle of a serious post. Just thought a bit of light relief, occasionally…

This is all a bit silly. I mean, Jenny Tonge is a mum and she’s way way out there going against the grain.

And good on her too.

Pity the leadership didn’t have her balls.

The way the country is feeling at the moment, there must be votes in telling the real truth. If we’d a decent electoral system we could consign dictators like Blair and his money-grubbing ilk to history, once and for all.

What the Afghan/Iraqi/younameit people need to do is build their homes in the shape of the World Trade Center. Then maybe we’d get it, we have become terrorists, except (noncowards that we are!) we send unmanned bombs.

– me in us

Mark Golding

When David Cameron referred to people who believe 9/11 was a Mossad plot was he talking about former Italian President, Francesco Cossiga, and former West German secretary of state for defence, Andreas von Bulow?

Dear Craig,

I understand your attitude to men of Gladstone’s caliber. Unfortunately, today, men like him; with his courage, honesty and sense of honour do not exist in politics.

What concerns me about you is that your sense of decency and honour, whilst close to your heroes, sets you appart from the leadership of the modern Liberal party, which is populated by individuals who are virtually indistinguishable from New Labour and the Conservatives. When you find this out I’m worried that you will take this harsh lesson too much to heart and pay a heavy emotional price for your “naivity.” You should prepare yourself for profound disappointment and a sense of betrayal, which for obvious reasons I hope you are steeling yourself for.

The world and society, the values in public life, that produced men like Gladstone and other radically minded Liberals, when Liberal actually meant something; is gone, shattered, and it won’t return anytime soon, unfortunately.

I have lived in Nigeria where people live in compounds, and they are always called compounds. They would never refer to their compound as a house, which refers to a standard western style house.

So the use of the word compound may be more innocent than you suppose.

Apart from that, I agree with everything you say.

“I have lived in Nigeria where people live in compounds, and they are always called compounds. They would never refer to their compound as a house … So the use of the word compound may be more innocent than you suppose.”

Unfortunately not. Because it’s not Nigerians or Afghanis who are being discussed here. It’s the US/UK media. And we all know that in the UK and US people don’t refer to living in compounds, irrespective of where they live.

“Suspected militant compound” in Afghanistan gives you carte blanche for just about anything.

Propaganda. It’s all propaganda. The truth is very powerful, but what’s, in practice more powerful still, is the power to ignore the truth and pretend it never happened and isn’t really there at all. It never really happened.

For example Obama has, when he isn’t threatening to nuke Iran and North Korea, has signed an order giving the CIA the right to assassinate, or murder, an American citizen who is thought to be in Yemen, and who is regarded as a terrorist threat to the United States.

This isn’t just imprisoning men without trial, or using torture; this is Obama crossing a line that Bush didn’t even cross publically, the President’s “right” to order the murder of an American citizen.

This is Obama setting himself up as judge, jury, and executioner, and not of some pesky foreigner but of an American citizen born in New Mexico. This is a massive violation of the US Constitution and US law on a grand scale, but the smooth, silky, smiling, Obama gets away with it, why?

And what’s next, how long before a President, in his role as commander in chief, thinks he has the right to order American citizens killed inside the United States? Today it’s Yeman, tomorrow it’s Chicago… or Boston.

Interesting blog by Adam Curtis.

THE LOST HISTORY OF HELMAND

“When you look at footage of the fighting in Helmand today everyone assumes it is being played out against an ancient background of villages and fields built over the centuries.

“This is not true. If you look beyond the soldiers, and into the distance, what you are really seeing are the ruins of one of the biggest technological projects the United States has ever undertaken. Its aim was to use science to try and change the course of history and produce a modern utopia in Afghanistan. The city of Lashkar Gah was built by the Americans as a model planned city, and the hundreds of miles of canals that the Taliban now hide in were constructed by the same company that built the San Francisco Bay Bridge and Cape Canaveral.”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2009/10/kabul_city_number_one_part_3.html

My mum detests US UK IS violence. It’s just that she doesn’t believe it’s happening, because it’s not on the 10 o clock news and she would like me not to be thinking about such things.

This country is in deep shock to find itself led into these appalling wars with no means of redress or popular sanction. This recession is not just financial bankruptcy, but also emotional bankruptcy that so much evil has been done in our name in such a short time.

If someone writes off my car, I put up with it, but if a hundred cars get floated downstream in a flash flood, one expects there to be some soul-searching and hand-wringing. The po-faced, artificial regret we get from the media chattering classes about our genocides is deeply chilling. Abscence of chatter is supposed to indicate sincerity? What about jumping up and down with rage from INSIDE the television. Oh, sorry, if you do that you don’t get asked again. Our savvy media class is so cool the way they never fall for that one!

Anno – you write: “The po-faced, artificial regret we get from the media chattering classes about our genocides is deeply chilling. Abscence of chatter is supposed to indicate sincerity?”

I get to think about this a lot, particularly when I have to stare at myself in the mirror, such as when shaving. I’m looking directly into the eyes at someone with a comfortable life, while my country is making life simple not survivable for people in another country. They’ve done nothing to me, but I’m killing them – I’m letting it happen, and paying for it to happen. If I met these people, I’d probably find them a lot more interesting than the people in my street, and get on with them fine. But instead, my country’s forces are dropping bombs through their roofs, occupying their country, and killing huge numbers with impunity while pretending it’s all in defence of poor, frightened innocent little-old us.

What am I doing about it? Well, too damned little, obviously, and I find that hard to live with. I’m not doing anything really, nor are most of the people – the vast majority – involved one way or another (armed forces, families thereof, taxpaying enablers, etc.).

But was it ever different? Strewth… when did any people demand a war against another people? And how recent is it, that we can say we don’t support our people’s fight against their people because they did [fill in the blank], and not be thrown in prison or shot for our lack of patriotism? Serious dissent with something as serious as your very own country’s war, while still living unabused there, is a very recent luxury.

*

Craig Murray’s decision to get behind the Lib Dems has given me a lot of pause for thought. I’ve abandoned them not just because Clegg was not my vote in the LD leadership contest, but because of the utterly gutless, Mail – driven approval cravings with which he has comported himself since.

This Blair-wannabe faint-hearted go-along to get-along Clegg who has no actual principles that I can discern, no fire in the belly, no wish for anything but power, seems more interested in positioning himself BETWEEN “new” Labour and the Tories than offering any serious alternative. “I’m a safe alternative to these comprised parties” – perhaps that could be the Lib Dem slogan. Just a touch more money for education, perhaps, and a insignificant change in tax policy – don’t worry about voting for us, we won’t be radical. A safe choice for the status quo.

So maybe it’s wise to get involved, as Mr. Murray has done – not because of a sudden approval in the party’s position, but because it’s the only way to affect real change. The only hope of a change is through an alternative, and we need people like Craig Murray to make change a voteable alternative, by making a party realise that offering something most people want (instead of just the monied classes) really can prove popular. After all, it’s only the interests of about 98% of the electorate you’re appealing to.

*

The most incredible and persistent con in human history, besides religion, is that the majority believe their interests coincide with those of the richest and most powerful.

Craig,

Being quite sure that President depends on your blog to receive regular updates from an informed source – just thought I would use this medium to share with him my views on the delusinal American pursuit of global Empire:-

WAR – OR PEACE!

America must have an external enemy to make war with, because at the core of the US economy is a war machine. The system itself must have a base of justification for spending the largest segment of the US budget on armaments and wars. There is no longer any Soviet Union to justify to the American taxpayer, the reason for the excessive spending on armaments, increasing each year ( even in periods of recession). What is the sustained and increased military expenditure budget’s justification? :- “We need to protect our freedoms”, “we must go over there to get them before they come over here to get us”, “they do not believe in our God and are bad and evil people” ?” but their feelings about being free from occupation, not wanting foreign troops on their soil, or any realisation that it is the reverse of peace-making when “good” is manifested in illegal invasions and “bad” is to be labeled as the resistance to such invasions, must not enter the channels of our minds. To promote thought on the issue of the justification for the “War on terror” the simple question might be posed:-

If any state in the Union were invaded by foreign troops ?” what would the world expect the US citizenry to do, accept the occupation, or fight by any means necessary to see the backs of the foreign troops out of the US?

Of course the answer must be that if the US were invaded with a view to long term occupation, the citizenry would have every right to defend the homeland. So ?” then ?” why doesn’t every other citizenry in the eyes of the American people have that same right when their homeland is invaded and occupied? A good question. A fair question. A question that, unfortunately, will not be asked by the average Joe or Jane. The mainstream media in the US, simply does not raise the premise of such considerations for advancing any serious debate and/or questioning the logic and reasoning behind the official rationale and of advancing global perpetual warfare.

When “good” and “evil” are represented in the kind of narrative that permits one country to invade and occupy others, while delimiting or negating the right of “others” to resist occupation, then this kind of asymmetrical global aggression is given an assumed justification for free reign in the world, or more accurately put ?” given free reign in the minds of the majority of the American people, so that US global military projections can be justified in US citizens minds when military aggression so projected into the world is to be embraced as “right”. The Project for a New American Century (PNAC) started with this ridiculous premise. The kinds of probing questions; the kinds of honest analysis ; or, any honest process of reasoned exchange that questions the imposed dominate military narrative is to be labeled “unpatriotic”, “un-American”, “anti-American”. Any thoughts of global peace, become the nemesis, the counterpoint, the peaceful Omega far removed from the primary Alpha of war. When the average American citizen is conditioned simply to blank from his/her mind any questioning of the war machine’s agenda, then the Alpha of war prevails over the long-term objective of projecting schemas for peace in our world. The logic of sustaining ( or attempting to sustain for eons) this whole process of war and more war and increased military spending, is not to be questioned. Official encouragement is given in the use of language, the media’s dominant themes, the resonant sound of the President’s voice that woes and supports blind patriotism or projected assumptions of a single country’s “exceptionalism” and absolute “right” to do as one country likes ?” unquestioned. Actually ?” why? ?” that is the question. Is the entire world to be prohibited from so questioning? Why doesn’t the average American so question? Because so-called “patriotism” , in effect answers and says in a most unreasoned manner that ‘country and flag ‘ equates to perpetual war ?” and heavy infusions of blind emotions then become a substitute for any process of analytic thought. What rationale? What end? What logical justification? But the citizen ought not to ask ?” ought not to think ?” ought not to question. The logic al steps taken into this state of global perpetual war, ought not to be analysed nor explained. But “Terrorists” had existed throughout the “cold war” and far back in human history. And now the military-industrial complex, directing the elected government, must once again dupe the people:-

1. There is no state that is going to attack the US ?” that is a fact. If any did, they would, to use Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton’s words, be “obliterated”. So, no state actor is setting out to go to war with the US ?”that is a fact. Why then the increased and sustained military expenditures?

2. There being nothing new in the terror bombing of civilians ?” what then makes “terrorism” a new phenomenon? The French facing the resistance in Algeria, have ample instances of the “Black widow” blowing up French civilians. This is a historical instance ( but there are more) of precisely the types of terror attacks that are being hyped as some form of new phenomenon directed against America.

3. When a US drone drops bombs on an Afghan wedding party and kills off the better part of a village or kills a man’s entire family and if the man survives – be he Christian, Muslim, or any religion ( if you were that man):- a) would you have love or resentment in your heart? b) would you have a sense of vengeance or warm and welcoming feelings towards the occupation forces? c) would you violently retaliate against the ones who caused the death of your family and loved ones – or – would you be more inclined peacefully to embrace the occupier – or would you reject their culture, their soldiers occupying your country, their explanation of why they had to bomb your village and your family. The ridiculous aspect of the psych-ops pitch of this whole “War on Terror” ruse, is that the world is to be made to believe that by invading Iraq and Afghanistan, there is some magic war mechanism by which the very cycle of war, violence, vengeance that the invasions and occupations perpetuate, are by way of its own illogic of promoting more wars and resentments going to stop the cycle it started with the illegal invasions and occupations. The great threat to the world of this “terrorism” is supposedly to be stopped by the Guantanamos and drone village bombings, and a sane world, sane people, peace-loving people are to accept this as a rational, an effective, a cost-effective manner in the trillions of dollars and rising ?” of addressing “the enemy” of a nebulous “terrorism”?

It was no less a person than General Eisenhower who correctly stated that “War is a racket”. President Eisenhower had said, ” I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who …. War is a racket.” He was absolutely correct then. Trouble is, not too many people take time out to think or question ?” just how big a racket war still is.

“I think that people want peace so much that one of these days government had better get out of their way and let them have it.”

~Dwight D. Eisenhower

And Ike’s farewell speech, connected the economic mechanisms of the post-Word War 11 era with the military-industrial complex’s motivations and trajectory when he said:-

“Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.” ( view: http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2010/04/the_goebbels_te.html#comments)

The problem is that the effectiveness of the modern mass media has gotten to the American people to the extent that the peace that they ought to want, is so much disguised in war rhetoric and the logic of blind belligerence, that the peaceful trees can’t now so readily be discerned from the war forest.

The more I think about why the big boys want to fight – the more I come in my mind to a greater understanding of just how fucked up a world we live in. Not because there are not good, peace-loving people in it, but because the ones who sell the arms and have the money, set out to stir up the troubles to sell more arms, to perpetuate more wars and keep the cycle going. To accomplish that end, the war-mongers need to convince the ordinary citizens that their war machine and global wars have justification. The justification must be projected into people’s minds as “love of Queen and country”, “love of country”, “love of flag”, “love of our freedoms and the Constitution” ?” while every step of the way projecting hate, war, death and destruction into the world. The end game actually is a perpetuation of the wars the power brokers claim they need to fight (see: UK Guardian – 12th April, 2010). By all means take the steps to prevent the modern day “Black widows”, but don’t pretend that by producing the hatreds that perpetuate war, and make the recruiting grounds for more bombers, that any peace-keeping mission is being advanced. Keep producing the conditions for the recruitment of more bombers, give reasons to them for fighting their “just war” in retaliation to the “injustices” visited upon them, and the war machine is primed to continue the death dealing cycle ( see the UK Guardian of the 15h February, 2006 to get a better understanding of just how it is done).

Pentagon review

America’s Long War

Last week US defence chiefs unveiled their plan for battling global Islamist extremism. They envisage a conflict fought in dozens of countries and for decades to come. Today we look in detail at this seismic shift in strategic thinking, and what it will mean for Britain

Great idea! Love seeing a creative mind work and gain success!!!!!! Hope it continues to grow!

regards.

http://www.cooperburns.co.uk

In respect of Courtenay Barnett’s interesting piece, interested readers might want to check out a book by George Friedman published about five years ago called ‘America’s Secret War’. Friedman is or was the leader of a right wing and private Texan think tank. His book is a fantastic piece of geopolitical analysis however. It is very frank and its fundamental thesis is that the USA invaded Iraq not because of wmd, not even for oil but because they needed a permanent military base in the near east because the Saudis were split between their Americaphilia and fundamentalism and therefore could not be relied upon. Friedman goes on to look from this imperialist perspective at many things the USA have done in recent decades to ensure that they control all nations, mostly Asian ones at this time, especially in terms of their nuclear capability to ensure US influence is globally unimpeded.

At some UN conference a year or two after the Iraq invasion someone accused the US ambassador of ‘empire building’ and the ambassador was so angry he stormed out of the room.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/british-involvement-in-rendition-of-suspects-will-continue-says-straw-1943085.html

Doug,

That’s very interesting and something to consider. However, the oil companies are diving in to plunder Iraq now that it is a little safer. In the next couple of years you will see the likes of BP, Shell, Exxon Mobil, Chevron etc setting up huge bases in Iraq. Most of them will be based in Basra which they’re planning to turn into the new oil capital of the middle east.

You’ll probably find that was more than one reason for the Iraq invasion all of which were not for the benefit of the Iraqi people.

“You’ll probably find that was more than one reason for the Iraq invasion”

Chris from Glasgow

That’s the key.

Big Oil didn’t really want the invasion of Iraq; too unstable a scenario, they prefer other means of imperial leverage; on this, Big Oil was contemptuously over-ruled by the neocons/ Zionist lobby, for the reasons to which Doug Allanson alludes, and for some of the subtextual reasons to which Arsalan Goldberg in other threads has alluded as well. Mearsheimer and Walt write well on this area. But now that it’s happened they most certainly will take advantage of it.

Only part of the reason why this Bastard Pleb will not be voting Liberal…Nor for any of the Other Bastards…

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/8503/

Extract

“Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg (b.1967) started his life in politics physically as well as politically cut off from the British masses, in that oligarchical palace where they openly refer to the mass of the population as ‘plebians’ and ‘bastards’ ?” the European Commission and the European Parliament”

Tony

Doesn’t mean Clegg did, though. Tony, is your current Lib Dem candidate anti-war?

Suhayl,

Shuyl,

If you are interested, my assessment on the question of “oil” and the Iraq invasion is stated in this article :-

“Oil, conflict and the future of global energy supplies” (http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=1781)

Interesting post Mr Barnett, thanks.

Thanks, CB, will check it out.

“Frank Gardner is biased. His lower limb paralysis at the hands of angry Muslims in Saudi Arabia has not been met with humility and understanding in his heart”

Erm…

You mean he didn’t take it well when he was shot?

“Only the British public still believe that British citizens working abroad are there for anything but neo-colonialism.”

That’s just silly.

“The issues in this election are … 1/Usury banking has to end.”

Good luck with that.

Obviously, angrysoba, the guy got blown-up and paralysed, he’s hardly likely to be objective. But the… shall we say, unease with Frank Gardner goes deeper than that and also pre-dates his horrendous injury.

It has been alleged that apart from the systemic problems with the MSM, certain journalists in the MSM actively function as knowing conduits for disinformation peddled by the SIS. David Rose admitted that he was indeed one of those. But his admission, while a welcome glimpse into a murky world, would not have undone the damage that his function during those years may have caused.

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2007/09/mi6-mi5-intelligence-briefings

This is merely a small part of the way in which state intelligence agencies manipulate the media. See next post, please.

There are also ‘journalists’ who are not really journalists, but SIS Officers working undercover. Dominic Lawson (brother of ‘Yum-Yum’ Nigella and brother-in-law of SIS Officer, Anthony Monckton) admitted sending spies into the Balkans as ‘journalists’ for The Spectator.

http://www.bjr.org.uk/data/2000/no2_leighundercover

Then as is self-evident, there are many journalists who are not spies but who simply accept and support the Establishment line on most things and are happy to promulgate it. These are not paid but can be used as ‘agents of influence’. One thinks of the repulsive Max Hastings, but of course there are many, many more of these.

Incidentally, on another note entirely, Hastings reportedly recently was unhappy about venturing to Glasgow to take part in Question Time but always seems very happy to visit the Edinburgh Book Festival to plug whatever pack of elegant lies he’s been scribbling lately! These guys get away with a craven vacuousness that would make the Zeppelin airships seem like 24-carat solid gold.

And when you vote in a few weeks time, you’ll have endorsed and will be endorsing many more 500lb and 1,000lb bombs on a suspected militant “compounds”

I suspect MI5/6 Liason officer “Frank Goebbels Gardner” was not only spying but trying to recruit patsies or even commanding a false-flag ops (Oh Larry…) unit cell in the country.

“Investing the Khobar towers bombing” indeed!

I think he got found out. If the above is true, then it’s understandable that he was shot. His story, a bit like him, was full of holes.

Mmm. I think the problem really, Suhayl, is that many ‘journalists’ are not journalists. They do not research, they do not travel, they do not originate ideas, they do not seek out stories, they do not, when faced with a politician think ‘Why is this lying bastard lying to me’, as Claude Cockburn so succinctly put it. They do not uphold the tradition of ‘speaking truth to power’.

As for acting as a conduit for disinformation; I should think it happens all the time if you’re a hack on the tabloids, especially the beauty pages. But if a journalist knowingly acts as a source of disinformation for the people in power – the government, they are not a journalist. They are lost.

It’s quite wrong that most journalists these days are stuck behind desks churning out press releases. Some are intellectually lazy too, I agree. But as with the Lib Dems, there’s a grand tradition stretching back to Defoe and still here with ‘To Shoot an Elephant’. There are the Express journalists who a few years to ago took their own paper to the IPCC. There are freelance photographers like Marc Vallee. There are any number of bravish people out there, many young, many unpaid, witnessing, and reporting. In other countries, many are getting killed for it.

Otherwise, I thought it sounded a pretty silly for Dominic Lawson to admit to. Your link doesn’t work, and there’s no summary available on the website, so I looked up the original story and found this in the Guardian:

“Mr Lawson yesterday strongly denied both allegations. “It is complete rubbish that I gave journalistic cover to an MI6 officer who wanted to go to Tallin,” he added.”

I’m interested as to why you find Max Hastings so repulsive. I haven’t read his war reporting, or most articles, and don’t know much about him, in fact. Except that he supported the Newbury bypass protests, and a couple of years ago called for more young people to protest about civil liberties on the streets.

Anti-Americanism like anti-semitism is a term used only by scumbags.

It really means nothing more than to disagree with the people who run the American empire building project, as many Americans do disagree. Just as anti-semitism now means nothing more than to disagree with the people who run the Israeli racist policy of ethnic cleansing, illegal annexation of occupied territory and sundry slaughter. Many Israelis and indeed Jews more generally disagree with this too.

There’s nothing anti-American or anti-semitic about it.

It’s anti-scumbag, pure and simple.

I wish someone would remind the repulsive Justin Webb of that simple fact the next time he’s given to dribbling on the matter, and indeed any of the rest of the scumbags who seek to corrupt the language to their own evil ends.

Richard Tomlinson claimed that Dominic Lawson worked for MI6 and his codename was ‘Smallbrow’.

http://aangirfan.blogspot.com/2007/03/dominic-lawson-con-coughlin-and-mi6.html

This is the same “Liberal Democrats” who support war crimes & bombing of hospitals to assist their obscene KLA friends (appoinmted as our police) in massacres, ethnic cleansing, genocide, the sexual enslavement of children & as we now know, the dissection of 1300 innocent human beings, while alive, to steal their organs for our hospitals. The “LibDems, alone of all parties, have made it a requirement of membership that one must support such atrocities, unmatched even by the late Adolf Hitler.

I do not believe, Craig, that you can deny that this is indeed true. That being the case it is clearly impossible for any true liberal to support thse obscene monsterous Nazis.

Yes, I saw that. The trouble is, why would you trust Tomlinson?

“The LibDems, alone of all parties, have made it a requirement of membership that one must support such atrocities, unmatched even by the late Adolf Hitler.”

?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2000/jun/12/pressandpublishing.mondaymediasection

You’re right, techicolour, Lawson didn’t admit it. I stand corrected.

Con Coughlin is allegedly another one.

Oh, Hastings… somewhat tubular and pompous, a sort of Uber-Englishman as designed in antique wax by Madame Tussauds, an aural caricature of his thematic progenitor, William Rees-Mogg. A spitting, Spitting Image, as it were.

He also reportedly recently expressed the view (I paraphrase) that the universe, God and everything important was in London, he didn’t see why anything had to be devolved to the provinces, not even an episode of ‘Question Time’.

This seems to me to be one of the major problems with this country – the lack of real decentralisation of power, in fact, in spite of political devolution to Scotland and Wales, the deliberate erosion of local government over the past three decades, the increased level of concentration of capital, media and arts/ cultural power at the centre, etc.

The BBC is a good example of this. The regions are just there to do ‘regional’ stuff. Anything important has to be commissioned in London by the commissioners who are all based in London. So, in his support for this process of ever-increasing centralisation, Hasting at present for me epitomises that arrogance.

He seems to reek of the men who sounds eminent, critical and reasonable but who back-up hard-power on all important matters, when it really matters.

But I don’t want to make this a personal attack. He’s just one of many, emblematic perhaps.

Here’s another link of import in this area:

http://www.new-diaspora.com/Media/06-%20secret%20services%20embedded%20in%20media.html

Of course, many journalists do excellent work and as you say, in some places, pay with their lives. This is not an attack on journalists, God, no, it’s a reminder about tainted journalists who’ve sold their souls to the secret state (or those who are not journalists in the first place) and an attack on the warmongering corporate state that instrumentalises (my word-of-the-week) some journalists in these manifold ways.

As you suggest, I too sense that there’s also been a decline in the rigour of standards adhered to by some.

“it is the astounding levels of disengage and disinterest and lack of knowledge in the general US population about global issues”

One finds the same thing in the UK of course – in spite of the disaster engulfing the country and its victim nations, in a few weeks time most of those voting will give their support to one branch or other of the three-headed neo-con monster.

A difference I find in America is the extent to which any criticism of their foreign policy is intensely personalised and viewed as an intimate attack, much as if one had questioned their religion or ‘most deeply cherished beliefs’ as the old fraud is called over there. Disapproval of their government’s actions is genuinely shocking to the average American, and likely to be received as gross personal abuse at best, but more often as damnable heresy.

Neil Craig, your website is very interesting to read. Are you a rightist libertarian…?

I’m convinced that the UK and USA were/ are up to no good in the former Yugoslavia. It does seem a tad odd, and somewhat overly convenient perhaps, that Mr M died while in the middle of his trial.

The Oort Cloud fascinates me, too. How about the Bow Shock?

Neil, could you expand and explain your post? In what way were the Lib Dems responsible for Kosovo, for example?

‘He also reportedly recently expressed the view (I paraphrase) that the universe, God and everything important was in London’,

So did Samuel Johnson! But I agree. Even calling them ‘the provinces’ seems wrong. More feedback badly needed from all over. I think people in London are secretly scared by ‘the outside’, actually.

SUHAYL – With your statement at April 13, 2010 6.52 PM “This seems to me to be one of the major problems with this country – the lack of real decentralization of power” I think you have just hit the nail on the head.

The fact is that Great Britain once had a reputation for decentralization of power ?” to its counties, to its cities and to its institutions. Not particularly democratic it had a worldwide reputation for adherence to rule of law, and to civil liberties and was the most decentralized large State in Europe.

And yet there has been radical change. Today, as you so correctly write, the United Kingdom is the most centralized State in the first world.

It is almost as if the highly decentralized Great Britain of yesteryear and the excessively over-centralized United Kingdom of today were two different countries, sharing the same language and geography, but otherwise hardly related. I sometimes wonder if this over centralization of power in London will not in time prove to be the leaver that breaks this country up.

technicolor: “Except that [Hastings] supported the Newbury bypass protests, and a couple of years ago called for more young people to protest about civil liberties on the streets.”

What was he saying, “Down with civil liberties!”?

What he doesn’t realize is that it is only the civil liberties he has which allows him to denounce them in the streets.

Hastings claims to have liberated Port Stanley in the Falkland’s War. I think it only means he wandered into the town before it was officially recaptured.

“somewhat tubular and pompous, a sort of Uber-Englishman”

Hastings is certainly that. Which makes him a risible figure but not, in itself, a hateful one. Although plenty of people no doubt feel the bile start to rise as soon as someone exhibiting “Englishness” appears on TV. Just save your liver and switch it off.

Suhayl: “It has been alleged that apart from the systemic problems with the MSM, certain journalists in the MSM actively function as knowing conduits for disinformation peddled by the SIS.”

I don’t doubt this happens at all. I am sure that there are plenty of journalists who will grasp at a scoop of any kind and when someone approaches them with “inside” information it’s probably too good for them to resist.

This happens with all kinds of “leaks”, I am sure, when something can simply be denied.

But the same was true of journalists who worked for the Soviet Union and others who could be conduits of choice for any number of other governments.

I’m quite sure this happens. The trick is to be aware of the distinction between slanted or misrepresented news and outright fabrications. I am sure that there is plenty of slanted and misrepresented news which is that way for various reasons. Either because a journalist is pedalling a story that has been fed to them or because the newspaper or cable station is competing for an audience (and therefore will be encouraged to sensationalize).

BUT this doesn’t mean that the “Everything You Know is Wrong!” thesis is correct.

Glenn, I am pretty sure that McVeigh was no Republican as the movement he identified with believe that the Republicans and Democrats are two faces of the “New World Order”. (Sound familiar?)

He probably got the idea that Clinton was going to send the FBI round to take everyone’s guns because of a real life incident at Ruby Ridge (Look it up!)

But like every conspiracy theorist he extrapolated massively and thought that some great apocalytpic struggle was on its way very soon. (Sound familiar?)

He read all kinds of conspiracy literature (the Turner Diaries was written by William Pierce who was a full-on neo-Nazi) such as the Spotlight, which was edited by Willis Carto of the “Liberty Lobby” – neo-Nazis and white supremacists, which has now become the American Free Press, etc…etc…

They go on and on about the Bilderberg group, the ZOG (Zionist-Occupied Government), the ensuing New WOrld Order (sound familiar?) the Federal Reserve, etc… etc…

Here, have a read of this if you like (skip the stuff about al-Muhajiroun):

http://angrysoba.blogspot.com/2010/04/them-adventures-with-extremists.html

“BUT this doesn’t mean that the “Everything You Know is Wrong!” thesis is correct.”

*grin*

Everything You Know is Wrong, Including This !

Wow! Just as I had posted that I started reading this review of Aaronovitch’s book, “Voodoo Histories” in which Stephen Walt writes:

“Conspiracy theories take many forms, but they generally have several common features. First, they often claim to expose the secret machinations of a small group of individuals, acting to accomplish some nefarious but largely-hidden purpose. Second, they attribute to the designated group vast and far-reaching powers, including a mysterious ability to control (rather than simply influence) a wide array of institutions. Yet a conspiracy theory (as opposed to a careful institutional analysis) never identifies the precise mechanisms by which this alleged control is achieved and normally fails to provide concrete evidence to justify its far-reaching claims. Alternatively, conspiracy theorists sometimes suggest that “the government” is engaged in some enormously-important but covert activity, like hiding captured alien spacecraft at “Area 51″ or arranging to bring down the World Trade Center while getting it blamed on al Qaeda. In virtually all cases, a good conspiracy theory implies that what you think you know about the world is dead wrong, usually because the people responsible for the conspiracy have managed to convince you that up is down and black is white.”

http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/03/26/on_conspiracy_theories

As you probably know, Stephen Walt was one of the authors of the Israel Lobby, which is sometimes thought of as pretty conspiratorial itself.

“I sometimes wonder if this over centralization of power in London will not in time prove to be the leaver that breaks this country up.”

It is certainly loosening the bonds. Devolution had to be invented to derail Scottish separatism, and it hasn’t worked. It had to be patched by the Calman proposals. These are not yet implemented, perhaps never will be, and even if they are seem likely to create more tension rather than less.

Tempting as it is to believe that the British State will be destroyed by its own corruption, real life is never so poetic.

The precise mechanisms of the Israeli lobby are fairly straightforward.

Carrot and stick.

Money and funding if you please them or smearing and career demolition if you don’t.

‘BUT this doesn’t mean that the “Everything You Know is Wrong!” thesis is correct.’ Angrysoba

I agree entirely. It just calls for utmost discrimination and very broad and deep ‘reading’ of events and information flows and probably an underlying stance (minus knee-jerks) of skepticism.

I know, I go OTT about Max, don’t I? I just see him as a glove-puppet. Anyone remember ‘Lord Charles’? You’re right, thanks, I shall look after my liver!

Max Hastings:

“Today, I feel a respect for the 60s protesters (if not for the decade’s violent extremists) that at the time I lacked the imagination to muster…they were right that the Vietnam war was a barbaric American folly. It was good that they shouted slogans and asked questions, because somebody had to.

It seems bizarre to be promoting the cause of student activism. Yet surely anyone who cares about British democracy should be bothered about our culture of acquiescence, not least in the re-election of a British prime minister who committed the nation to war on the basis of massive falsehoods, some of George Bush’s making but most of his own. Where are the Peter Hains, Jack Straws, Tariq Alis? Where is the fierce, intolerant conviction that old men and women are getting it wrong, that it is time for a new generation to seize the levers?”

Guardian, 2005: full link here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2005/apr/27/studentpolitics.highereducation

Yes, thanks, Technicolour, this demonstrates just how far beyond even the Establishment’s post-WWII norms this current lot of rulers went. Good on Max, what!

Post-Suez, I mean. East of Suez. Whatever. East of Eden. Good band, that.

Yes, I think it was good on Max. And the Newbury bypass protestors have a good word for him too. I remember the Earl of Cardigan being interviewed on an anniversary of the Battle of the Beanfield (when the police launched an all out attack on people who were peacefully on their way to Stonehenge). He was horrified by what he saw, tried to protect them, and spoke out about it. At which point, he said, the Establishment shut him down completely. He said he shouldn’t have been surprised, but he was.

I think Roderick Russell’s made a very good point – we tend to forget how decentralised Britain used to be. We have many to thank for that decentralisation, including some conservatives actually, for their own reasons no doubt, but nonetheless, like Joseph Chamberlain – Neville’s dad, of course.

Btw, I think Walt’s also a conservative, isn’t he? That was one of the things which made his and M’s analysis so powerful. He’s right about the dynamics of extrapolation.

Paleo-conservatives have a lot to commend them. Peter Hitchens, for example.

What’s a paleo-conservative?(will look it up) As for the Hitchens, don’t know much about them either, except that Christopher wrote one of the earliest & best pieces about the US voting machines scandal:

http://makethemaccountable.com/articles/Ohio_s_Odd_Numbers.htm

People can surprise you, whatever their labels, I think.

Paleo-conservatives are distinct from Neo-conservatives. The British and US versions of paleoconservative are also somewhat different from each other.

http://www.conservapedia.com/Paleoconservative

Peter Hitchens, I think, describes himself – or at least is described – as a Paleo-Conservative. Among many other things, they tend not to favour statism, corporatism or wars of aggression.

Peter Hitchens is also very different from his brother. Christopher H used to be very left-wing and then, like so many prominent figures of his ilk, did an abrupt about-turn on most things, most notably wars of aggression. Peter, on the other hand, has remained consistent. I’ve heard through the grapevine – I don’t know him – that on a personal level too Peter Hitchens is a very honourable man.

I see though that Peter H too was a Trot, once on a day. Wasn’t everyone though? (!) I guess that even Trotsky was ‘once a Trot’.

Man you Brits sure don’t have you heads up your arses (a lot of the time).

How pathetic it is to hear you debate the “merits” of voting in more of the same. Why have the displays intelligence which I grew fond of here suddenly melted away ‘cos a stupid ‘n (lets be honest) meaningless election has been called? When are you going to frigging well learn? Jeez you guys sure are cheap. Throw the monkeys some peanuts see them frenzy. No Vote is far more principles than ‘a’ vote, and if you believe the BNP will get in because you don’t vote, then geez, your colon tract’s were far longer than I thought.

As for “Greats” of British Politics, are ANY of them free from involvement in Imperialistic/quazi-Imperialism; that in its machinations is likely to have created a mountain of (predominantly dark skinned) corpses somewhere? And even if that is true, e.g. Gladstone was Great, I echo previous sentiments here in that this bunch of poo-heads are an utter disgrace to politics ->> which should ONLY involve PUBLIC DUTY! both at home – and abroad by the fact Foreign Policy is IMO a greater role of contemporary Govt than Home Office affairs.

Craig, You may be a Liberal, but get yourself away from supporting these plebs. They are a contemptuous bunch of ragamuffins, That Cable chappie’s not too bad but like the miserable England team, one or two star make a world cup winning team.

P.S. Handy Iraq War checker. not.http://www.arabmediawatch.com/amw/MediaLobbying/IraqWarVote/tabid/142/Default.aspx

one or two stars maketh not a world cup winning team.

Hey all, I posted a comment here last night, a reply to Glenn about McVeigh and Gore Vidal and Rachel Maddow, and now it has disappeared. Is this site self-censoring or… ? I could reconstruct what I said, I guess, but if there’s a moderator at hand I would appreciate knowing why my comment has been taken down. Possibilities: An American cannot call their government insane and hideous when the topic is Tim McVeigh. Or, perhaps you can’t link to primary source testimony about FOAI’d proof of CIA involvement, as I did when I linked to Jesse Trentadue’s interview on antiwar radio: http://antiwar.com/radio/2010/03/31/jesse-trentadue-2/

??? Guidance appreciated, thanks.

Like Glenn, I read it this morning, meinus. It was interesting, I meant to post a message saying that, actually. I thought that was what angrysoba was responding to as well. Is it not there, above, at 850pm? Or was there a second post by you?

Anything with more than one link in doesn’t get posted, btw, I think that’s been a common experience, meinus. Try posting one link per post, even if it means having to break-up your paragraphs, etc. Let’s see what happens this time…

Hi Glenn and Suhayl — I see different time stamps than you do, I think — I’m in California. I think I only put the one link in the dropped comment, and since it did post and was read for a while at least… I dunno. I’ll try rewriting what I said last night and post it without links.

First, I said I had read Gore Vidal’s long Vanity Fair article, “The Meaning of Timothy McVeigh,” which was published in September 2001 (and which probably got lost in other September 2001 events. It was something I came across years later, not anything I read at the time.) So I knew that Vidal and McVeigh corresponded, that Vidal had sympathy/empathy for what he believed McVeigh’s motive was, which was kicking back at an out-of-control federal government that used tanks on its own people. McVeigh went to Waco in person during the standoff and watched Waco on TV when the tanks attacked and the compound burned. That set him off. I have heard or read Vidal call McVeigh “a noble boy.” McVeigh wanted Vidal to be at his execution. Vidal was trying to explain McVeigh’s reasoning once on TV and he got cut off–not allowed. Vidal’s article was about the federal coverup of bombing evidence that local people knew very well about. McVeigh’s trial was ludicrous.

Then I wondered that these clumps of McVeigh authorities never seem to integrate. It’s all churned up right now because of Rachel Maddow’s upcoming special next Monday on The McVeigh Tapes, which are interview tapes with McVeigh in prison made by Michel and Herbeck when they were writing their authorized biography of McVeigh, American Terrorist. There’s the clump of Rachel-Michel/Herbeck and wikipedia that seems to be primarily sourced to Michel/Herbeck. Then Vidal is another lonely clump of his own, an afterthought extra reference link at the bottom of the wikipedia entry. Then there’s the clump of Scott Horton (not the Harper’s Scott Horton, a different one) and his guests of witnesses and investigators (including Jesse Trentadue) and sound clip library at antiwar radio, which seem to belie some at least of what Michel and Herbeck reported. And then McVeigh himself even seems like he might be playing each confidant differently. He tells Michel and Herbeck “I did it all myself, there was no John Doe No. 2″ and then also sends a message to Jesse Trentadue (paraphrasing) “Your brother was killed in a federal prison interrogation because he looked like Richard Guthrie”–who is, supposedly, who else, John Doe No. 2. Jesse Trentadue has been FOIAing and litigating for years now to get information on Oklahoma City and FBI, ATF and CIA involvement, and he’s got piles of redacted papers that he tries to get the news media here to break but they won’t. Will Rachel? It doesn’t look like she even knows about him. Rachel’s liberal and Scott Horton is libertarian and they don’t mix well. She makes fun of Ron Paul people and he is a Ron Paul person. It’s curious that I haven’t heard Horton make comments about the upcoming special when he’s made several digs at Rachel’s demonizing coverage of militias and gun-rights people recently. Also Rachel has as a regular anti-militia guest a guy from the Southern Poverty Law Center, while Scott says the SPLC had infiltrated the Elohim City Neo-Nazi ring that was responsible for the Oklahoma bombing and was in some sense responsible itself, that it was working undercover with the FBI or the CIA. A mess!

If this is Rashomon, you’d like them at least to put all the scenes in the same movie.

The other point I made was about the strange disconnect between the promo ads for Rachel’s upcoming McVeigh tapes special, and the excerpts from the special that she’s been playing on her show. Case in point: “Children are fair game.” The ad is ominous and McVeigh is a monster: Sound bite: McVeigh saying “Children are fair game,” with that subtitle, followed by him saying something like he’s not ashamed of what he did, has no regrets…something like that. Since Rachel has made a cottage industry out of jeering at rightwing scare ads that use O Fortuna as the soundtrack, it’s weird to see her turn around and make one of her own.

But then on Monday’s (I think) show, she played that excerpt with that comment in context. And McVeigh was talking about the US GOVERNMENT’S rules of engagement. “Children are fair game?” That’s how the subtitle reads there. Question mark. I’m not sure if he was refering to Gulf War US rules of engagement (he was a decorated vet there) or to Waco, where “Seventy-six people (24 of them British nationals) died in the fire, including more than 20 children, two pregnant women, and Koresh himself.” (wikipedia)

In the ads he’s a monster, in the interviews he’s rational and human. I don’t know how to stop a “hideous, insane” government — but it looks like that’s what he was trying to do.

– me in us

Oh yeah! One more detail, from Jesse Trentadue? Who was the [assistant attorney general?] in the Clinton administration who was charged with covering up what happened to Kenney Trentadue? That information is among the FOIA responses: Obama’s attorney general, Eric Holder.

It’ll take awhile to digest the intriguing info, meinus, yet one of your comments reminds me of something I read somewhere which related to the inlfitration of political organisations (I think it may have been relating to the UK Miners’ Strike of 1984-85) which went something like this:

Eventually, the organisation in question had become so heavily infiltrated that the spies didn’t realise that they were in fact spying mainly on other spies; there were so many of them being run by different state outfits, they no longer knew one another for what they were.

Kafka…?!

Another piece of sly BBC propaganda is the use of qualifiers such as “appears to” in particular contexts. When mobile phone videos were shown of a plane making an emergency landing in the Hudson, we were treated to various views which we were told, “show the plane coming down on the water.” Yet when a policeman was caught violently shoving Ian Tomlinson to the ground, or backhanding a woman in the face before striking her legs with his baton, we’re told that the images merely “appear to show” the policeman shoving, or striking etc. Because the images in both examples were taken by ordinary members of the public, it cannot even be excused as a caveat applied to footage taken by non-professional news cameramen/women. I complained to the BBC, pointing out that the images did not “appear” to show Mr Tomlinson being violently shoved from behind, they DO show him being violently shoved, (and without them the usual police fabrication would have remained unchallenged). No such equivocation was used to describe the scenes of demonstrators appearing to break the windows of a bank in the same street that day. Despite supposedly having taken my complaint into consideration, of course the BBC continues to use this form of bias on a regular basis.

Yes, if the phrase ‘appears to’ is employed for legal reasons, then it, or an equivalent set of phrases, ought to be applied across the board, as you suggest. Otherwise it’s bias.

Suhayl, yes, that was one of the points I think I made in the comment that’s gone missing. That there were so many informants/infiltrators — and maybe even instigators, as guests on antiwar radio believe they were actually running a sting on Elohim City — that Scott Horton wondered whether there were any real terrorists at all at Elohim City. The ATF (Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms) had an informant who rode in a scouting car with the German (apparently working with the CIA and perhaps working as well with the private organization Southern Poverty Law Center, which was perhaps contracted by the FBI to do the infiltration because the FBI itself couldn’t do it because of separation of church and state reasons) past the Murrah Building and later identified that building to her ATF handler–four months prior to the bombing. Everybody knew. A judge after the bombing knew all that because that was testified to, what the ATF handler knew, and immediately the prosecution moved to have that sealed, and it was. It made convicting McVeigh so much “cleaner.” The CIA profoundly helped build the DOJ’s case–something that is outside the CIA’s purview, they’re not supposed to do that. And after the bombing Eric Holder went around tamping down Congress to not hold hearings on Oklahoma City or Kenney Trentadue. That’s in e-mails the Jesse Trentadue recovered through FOIA.

It’s not clean, it’s dirty.

At the end of the antiwar radio show that I linked to in comments above, Scott Horton says,

– snip –

SCOTT HORTON: You still don’t know who killed your brother, do you?

JESSE TRENTADUE: No, no I don’t. But I think I’m closer now than I’ve ever been. This ruling puts this out there too. People are not paying attention to this, but this judge made it clear that there was a foreign element involved in that attack, and one the government has worked pretty hard to keep secret.

SCOTT HORTON: Well I noticed, well I guess you sent me this, Homeland Security Today, HS Today dot US, I guess, you know this is basically read by cops throughout our country: “CIA aided DOJ prosecutors in 1995 Oklahoma bombing case. Secret CIA documents withheld in FOIA suit raise more questions than they answer,” is this headline, so let’s, come on Washington Post and Associated Press, yeah, right, let’s see. We’ll wait and see.

JESSE TRENTADUE: Don’t hold your breath.”

– snip –

I can find that website and two entries, one from March 30 and one from April 1, which because of the linking issue I’ll post in separate comments.

– me in us

– snip –

http://www.hstoday.us/content/view/12726/149/

FOIAs Reveal More on CIA Assist to OKC Bombing Probe

by Anthony L. Kimery

Thursday, 01 April 2010

‘CIA provided pre- and post-blast imagery to facilitate forensic examination’

A Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed with the CIA by Salt Lake City attorney Jesse Trentadue ?” who has been seeking heretofore unknown government documents pertaining to the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City – shows Intelligence Community (IC) imagery assets were used in the investigation.

– snip –

opening paragraph

– snip –

http://www.hstoday.us/content/view/12707/149/

CIA Aided DOJ Prosecutors in 1995 OKC Bombing Case

by Anthony L. Kimery

Tuesday, 30 March 2010

‘Secret’ CIA documents withheld in FOIA suit raise more questions than they answer

Questions about foreign complicity in the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in downtown Oklahoma City for which Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were convicted, were disclosed Friday in a ruling by US District court judge Clark Waddoups on a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the CIA for the CIA’s refusal to completely declassify records it has acknowledged it possesses that pertain to the case.

– snip –

opening paragraph

Suhayl/Technicolour I prefer not to consider myself “rightist” but as a leftist who believes free enterprise works. I am certainly very far to the left of “leftists” like Clare Short who believed in bombing Yugoslav hospitals.

Shortly before Milosevic’s heart attack a blood test proved presence of rifampicine, a prescription anti-leprosy drug never prescribed to those with weak hearts because it destroys heart muscle. The conclusion is inescapable – that he was murdered, almost certainly by the numerous SIS agents seconded to the ICTY, because there was no simply no evidence against him.

The LDs were the most enthusiastic supporters of that criminal war – fought to promote racial genocide. The Foreign Secretary told parliament 2 months before we started bombing that the only genocide was that being carried out by the NATO organised KLA. Subsequently the KLA were appointed as our police & sent out to commit murder, genocide, kidnap schoolgirls & sell them to brothels & kidnap & dissect 1300 innocent human beings, while still alive, to provide organs for our hospitals (the atrocity worse than Hitler’s).

The LibDems expelled me from the party, officially because I am a free market liberal who wants a growing economy but I was subsequently told that the prime reason was because I oppose illegal war & genocide. Therefore, by definition, supporting, or at least not opposing racial genocide is a requirement of membership.

I would like to say If I join the Armed Forces I would be a lot braver than that I can assure all concerned. I would bring honour and glory to her majesty not perpetual shame and dishonour to my country the way these Americans do to theirs.

Yeah, it’s very odd.

Rifampicin is an anti-TB drug, when it’s used for around 9 months or so, or can be used more acutely for Legionnaire’s Disease. It’s an anti-bacterial, usually used in combination with others. It’s not really a chronic illness drug, so in the absence of certain types of acute infections, there’s no (valid) reason as far as I know why Milosevic would’ve been on it.

So then perhaps as you suggest it may have been illicit – though there are far more effective ways of poisoning someone – even slowly poisoning them.

High doses of heavy metals, for example – lead, mercury, cadmium – can cause fast or slow death, depending on the dose. Or a legion of inhaled substances, like toluene or organic solvents. Hexacarbons. Carbamates. Organophosphates. Antimony, arsenic. Inhaled anaesthetics and paralytic agents. There are lots of others, of course; stuff that’ll knacker one’s liver, kidneys, brain – toxicology is a vast subject.

Vitamin K in high doses will make one’s blood clot. Rat poison (warfarin) does the opposite.

Nitrogen dioxide (jet fuel manufacture, some types of welding) kills in 48 hours by the respiratory routes. Ozone and phosgene (war gas), likewise.

Insulin (in a large dose) and potassium chloride, given intravenously together, will cause cardiac arrest and/or irreversible brain damage. Both substances degrade so are very difficult to detect.

Rifampicin would be a very inefficient and uncertain way of trying to engineer a terminal event. Liver damage is the main risk, in fact. It makes one’s saliva, tears, urine and faeces reddish-orange in colour. So you’d soon notice if you were on it! And the rifampicin was detected (as it would be), so pretty ham-fisted as well. But then there’s the interminable news management/ suppression, of course. Anything is possible with imperialism.

The advantage of Rifampicin is that, because it works indirectly causing long term damage to the heart, it is out of the body before the heart stops. It is thus an untracable poison, at least if the victim doesn’t have a blood test much earlier as happened here.

There is no question that he had this poison & it must be clear who gains from having his murder, in the custody of the NATO funded ICTY, going undetected.

Note that if he had been flown, without a lot of warning, to Russia for medical treatment, this would have been discovered. Therefore the murderers knew that the judges were never going to allow him such medical treatment.Who the judges told of their judgement before they made them is certainly something they should be asked. But only if the entire diplomatic, military, judicial & legal systems of the NATO countries aren’t run by genocidal criminals willing to do anything to stop their personal roles in crimes that would shame Hitler obvious.