tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-272757282024-03-13T21:47:53.685+00:00S a b r e t a c h e<p></p>
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<p>Musings from rural Derbyshire</p>Sabretachehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11652655872639394084noreply@blogger.comBlogger176125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27275728.post-53670417078363967562011-03-21T11:09:00.002+00:002011-03-21T11:12:36.731+00:00References to this blogSince Google/Blogger seems to be the only blog-commenting authorisation mechanism that works seamlessly for me, I tend to use my <b>'Sabretache'</b> persona quite often when commenting elsewhere around the internet.<br />
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So, as I am no longer posting to this blog, anyone wondering about the source of such comments beyond the historical content here, should have a quick look at <b><a href="https://wikispooks.com/">WikiSpooks</a></b><br />
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Most of my time is spent on the <b><a href="https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Main_Page">WikiSpooks Project</a></b> these days.Sabretachehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11652655872639394084noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27275728.post-34806465999462705452010-11-19T10:32:00.001+00:002010-11-19T10:41:13.948+00:00AmericaTamil Satire - Global sentiment:<br />
<blockquote><b>Bin Laden is paid to be an enemy ...<br />
God Save us from American Peace and Liberty<br />
... Home-made prison with colour TV"</b></blockquote><br />
And all sung and danced to a Tamil beat and choreography.<br />
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<object height="385" width="480"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/CnlMnf7t4t4?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/CnlMnf7t4t4?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Hat-tip <a href="http://aangirfan.blogspot.com/2010/11/america.html">Aangirfan</a></span>Sabretachehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11652655872639394084noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27275728.post-82488825933727149552010-11-06T08:01:00.002+00:002010-11-19T10:45:23.932+00:00The al Qaeda Khazi<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_WmeRrEDGLfs/TNQXupi8OYI/AAAAAAAAAWU/6eEPtufws9k/s1600/TerroristfromToilet.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_WmeRrEDGLfs/TNQXupi8OYI/AAAAAAAAAWU/6eEPtufws9k/s320/TerroristfromToilet.jpg" width="274" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">al Qaeda</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Following the demise of the Soviet Union, the Anglo-American/NATO Imperial Project (AANIP) was on a high through the early 1990's; but as the decade progressed, expectations of a much vaunted - but elusive - 'peace dividend' put increasing pressure on a fundamental need to crank up its global military capabilities if well-laid plans were to be realised.<br />
<br />
<b>The communist threat</b> was no more and as the decade progressed, the need for a new enemy became pressing; preferably a really evil scary omnipresent one that could keep the masses by turns frightened and outraged - and thus docile and demanding of protection. What better than an "enemy" organised around a group already trained, armed, infiltrated and controlled by Western Intelligence?<br />
<br />
And so it came to pass.<br />
<br />
<b>"al Qaeda"</b> is Arabic for <i>"the Base"</i> - or <i>"database"</i> as, in its Western incarnation, it morphed to refer to the database of foreign (mainly Wahhabi and Sunni Arab) fighters prepared to harass the Russians in Afghanistan through the late 1980's and Chechnya in the 1990's. Then a few years later the Serbs in the former Yugoslavia. All of those campaigns in unwitting service to - and furtherance of - that same AANIP. "al Qaeda" was thus the creation of the CIA and, thoroughly infiltrated manipulated and controlled, it remains so to this day.<br />
<br />
How can we be sure of this? - well the clincher, in the vast array of evidence that says so, lies in the name:<br />
<br />
Arabic, like English and most languages, has its collections of homonyms and it appears that "Toilet" (loo, khazi, WC, gents, john etc.) is a particularly populous one - especially since it must cater for the Western fashion of sitting on a seat with a hole in it, rather than squatting.<br />
<br />
And guess what? <b> "al-Qaeda" is one of them</b> - <i>and the seat-type Western one at that!</i><br />
<br />
<b>So question:</b> Can you imagine a group of terrorists styling themselves <i>"The Red Toilet Faction", "The Toilet Brigades", "The Irish Republican Toilet" ? </i>- Hmmm; me neither.<br />
It sticks out like the bulbous red backside of an Orangutan you might say - and sort of gives the game away. Of course no one outside the gullible western-propagandised sheeple are taken in by it, but that matters little to TPTB in the West. Those who can clearly see that the Emperor has no cloths and who understand the grossness of his deceptions, have neither vote nor voice and thus, so long as there are regular "terrorist" attacks to keep the Western Sheeple outraged and fearful, they can be safely ignored.<br />
Popular perceptions of the "grave risk to our way of life that terrorism (ie al-Qaeda) represents" must be carefully calibrated and, from the <b>1605 Gunpowder Plot</b>, through the <b>1890's "Walsall Bomb Plot"</b> and latter-day <b>"Operation Gladio" outrages</b>, our security services have mastered the art to near perfection.<br />
<br />
I have taken to watching the BBC news occasionally again - strictly for its entertainment value you understand. It is a rare bulletin that does not include at least one of the range of standard-format rah rah pieces about our oh-so-necessary, just , and righteous wars; or the grave threat we face from the barbarian (or rather Muslim) terrorist hordes ranged against us. I have taken to counting the number of "Branches" (Franchises might be a better term) of <b>"The Toilet"</b> (TT) we now need to fret about - TT in Iran; TT in Iraq; TT in Timbuktu - cave-space rental must be costing an arm-and-a-leg. I'm waiting patiently for TT on the moon.<br />
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The latest of course is TT in the Yemen. Apropos the latest shock-horror episode of the toner-cartridge-bombs saga, I was watching Frank Gardner explaining it all on the BBC a few days ago. It was bloody hilarious - really entertaining. <b>"The Toilet" </b>was invoked no less than 9 times in a 3 minute slot with such gems as: <b>"The Toilet in Yemen consists mainly of Toilet Operatives from Saudi Arabia"</b> (and there was I thinking that it was Saudi that imported lowly immigrants to clean their khazis - you live and learn eh?).<br />
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So next time you are forced to endure Mr Gardner, or any other MI5/6 stooge waxing lyrical about "al Qaeda in Iraq", Afghanistan, Saudi, Yemen, Blackburn, Tunbridge Wells, etc etc. remember, <b>everywhere has them!</b> - and every time you hear that dreaded scary<b> "AL-QAEDA!!!"</b> word, just substitute the translation. You'll begin to look forward to the news as a reliable source of hilarity.<br />
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PS native Arabic speakers are cordially invited to correct me - or elaborate.<br />
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(Also posted on <a href="http://www.wikispooks.org/blog/archives/118">WikiSpooks</a>)Sabretachehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11652655872639394084noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27275728.post-56138876562559429222010-11-03T09:46:00.003+00:002010-11-03T12:59:15.169+00:00The 1605 Gunpowder Plot<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_WmeRrEDGLfs/TNEu7tnW62I/AAAAAAAAAWQ/jqgYhLa6tlU/s1600/guy_fawkes_portrait.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_WmeRrEDGLfs/TNEu7tnW62I/AAAAAAAAAWQ/jqgYhLa6tlU/s320/guy_fawkes_portrait.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Guido (Guy) Fawkes</td></tr>
</tbody></table><b>The 405th anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot approaches. </b><br />
Overshadowed somewhat these days by a US commercialised version of “All-Hallows-Eve” – aka “Halloween” when the ghosts, demons, ghouls, and all that is evil, go on a fling before being banished by that now near-forgotten “All-Hallows-Day” aka “All Saints Day”, of the Church Triumphant on 1st November.<br />
Few who cavort on “Halloween” are aware of its origins. Rather more I suspect are aware of the origins of <b>“Bonfire night”</b> on 5th November, when that dastardly popish plotter, <b>Guy Fawkes</b>, is ceremonially burned atop bonfires throughout the land, to celebrate the foiling of his wicked scheme to blow up the Houses of Parliament.<br />
There are bemusing but valuable parallels with our present-day predicament for those with eyes to see:<br />
A certain Robert Cecil – Spymaster extraordinaire to His Majesty King James I of England, VI of Scotland, and<b> “Fidei Defensor”</b> against Popish usurpers – nursed a pressing need to kill off uppity ideas of relief for HM’s persecuted Catholic population, <b>once and for all</b>. As moderator and arch-manipulator of the decisions of Court, he was well placed so to do. He knew well enough who the hot-heads among the dissidents were (the young rangy firebrands, constantly shouting the odds and harboring delusions of rising up against their oppressors); he had them <b>well</b> infiltrated. What better way to destroy them and their co-religionists than to:<br />
<ul><li>sow the idea</li>
<li>nurture and provoke a little</li>
<li>facilitate supplies and logistics etc</li>
<li>make sure Mr Plod doesn’t interdict the hair-brained schemers prematurely</li>
</ul>Then <b>BINGO!!!! SHOCK – HORROR!!</b>! – <i>catch them in the act – and in the nick of time.</i><br />
The population is outraged<i> – “Those wicked <b>WICKED</b> Catholics!!!”; </i>Additional protection and “Security” measures are demanded – ad nauseam……<br />
<div style="text-align: left;"><b>Sound familiar?<br />
</b></div>But naturally enough, we prefer to continue celebrating the exploits of <b>OUR</b> heroic security services and the gross torture and execution of a bunch of stupid manipulated, manufactured “terrorists”, rather than reading the unwelcome and extremely unpleasant writing on the wall. After all they/we are <i><b>British</b></i> and have<i><b> “British Values”</b></i>, so such things are simply unthinkable.<br />
No doubt we’ll be celebrating similar feats of derring do by<b> “our boys”</b> when the horror of our joint destruction of the cradle of civilisation and its peoples fades a little too.<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">After all the Cecils remain a power in the land for their loyalty and service – attributes far and away preferred and valued by the State, than mere honesty and common humanity.</div><div style="text-align: left;">Plus ca change.</div>Sabretachehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11652655872639394084noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27275728.post-62553120736043492532010-09-10T13:43:00.000+01:002010-09-10T13:43:13.427+01:00Ninth Anniversary of 9-11<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_WmeRrEDGLfs/TIom9GYK2GI/AAAAAAAAAV0/BmR4pGbR9IA/s1600/twintowers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_WmeRrEDGLfs/TIom9GYK2GI/AAAAAAAAAV0/BmR4pGbR9IA/s200/twintowers.jpg" width="177" /></a></div><br />
<b>Nine years on and here are a few solid, indisputable facts</b> - courtesy of <a href="http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2010/09/anniversary-of-911.html">Washington's Blog</a><br />
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<u> 9/11 Commissioners</u>:<br />
<ul><li>The 9/11 Commission's co-chairs said that <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/01/AR2006080101300.html?sub=new" target="_blank">the 9/11 Commissioners knew that military officials <span style="font-style: italic;">misrepresented the facts</span> to the Commission, and the Commission considered recommending criminal charges for such<span style="font-style: italic;"> false statements</span></a> (free subscription required)</li>
</ul><ul><li> 9/11 Commission co-chair Lee Hamilton says <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20070108233707/http://www.cbc.ca/sunday/911hamilton.html">"I don't believe for a minute we got everything right", that the Commission was set up to fail, that people should keep asking questions about 9/11, and that the 9/11 debate should continue</a></li>
</ul><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><ul><li>9/11 Commissioner Timothy Roemer said <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/08/02/9-11panel.pentagon/index.html" target="_blank"> "We were extremely frustrated with the false statements we were getting"</a><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />
</span></li>
</ul><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><ul><li>9/11 Commissioner Max Cleland resigned from the Commission, stating: <a href="http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2003/11/21/cleland/index.html?pn=1" target="_blank">"It is a national scandal"</a>; <a href="http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2003/11/13/911_panel_to_get_access_to_withheld_data/" target="_blank">"This investigation is now compromised"</a>; and <a href="http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/03/23/1546256" target="_blank">"One of these days we will have to get the full story because the 9-11 issue is so important to America. But this White House wants to cover it up"</a><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />
</span></li>
</ul><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><ul><li>9/11 Commissioner Bob Kerrey said that <a href="http://salon.com/ent/feature/2006/06/27/911_conspiracies/index4.html" target="_blank">"There are ample reasons to suspect that there may be some alternative to what we outlined in our version . . . We didn't have access . . . ."</a> He also <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/2009/03/13/the-9-11-commission-and-torture.html">said</a> that the investigation depended too heavily on the accounts of Al Qaeda detainees who were physically coerced into talking </li>
</ul><ul><li>And the Senior Counsel to the 9/11 Commission (John Farmer) - who led the 9/11 staff's inquiry - recently <a href="http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/04/senior-counsel-to-911-commission-at.html">said</a> "<span style="font-weight: bold;">At some level of the government, at some point in time...there was an agreement <span style="font-style: italic;">not to tell the truth about what happened</span></span>". He also <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/01/AR2006080101300.html" target="_blank">said</a> "I was <span style="font-weight: bold;">shocked at how different the truth was from the way it was described</span> .... The tapes told a radically different story from what had been told to us and the public for two years.... This is not spin. This is not true." And he <a href="http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1921659,00.html">said</a>: "It's almost a culture of concealment, for lack of a better word. There were interviews made at the FAA's New York center the night of 9/11 and those tapes were destroyed. The CIA tapes of the interrogations were destroyed. <span style="font-weight: bold;">The story of 9/11 itself, to put it mildly, was distorted and was completely different from the way things happened</span>" </li>
</ul><b>If even the 9/11 Commissioners don't buy the official story, why do you?</b><br />
<br />
<u>Senior intelligence officers</u>:<br />
<ul><li>Former military analyst and famed whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg <a href="http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5260#more-5260">said</a> that the case of a certain 9/11 whistleblower is "<span style="font-style: italic;">far more explosive than the Pentagon Papers</span>". He also said that the government is ordering the media to cover up her allegations about 9/11. And he said that some of the claims concerning government involvement in 9/11 are credible, that "very serious questions have been raised about what they [U.S. government officials] knew beforehand and how much involvement there might have been", that engineering 9/11 would not be humanly or psychologically beyond the scope of the current administration, and that there's enough evidence to justify a new, "hard-hitting" investigation into 9/11 with subpoenas and testimony taken under oath (see <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJhWhItqYCc">this</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VirlkZq1pLY">this</a>) </li>
</ul><ul><li>A 27-year CIA veteran, who chaired National Intelligence Estimates and personally delivered intelligence briefings to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, their Vice Presidents, Secretaries of State, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and many other senior government officials (Raymond McGovern) said <a href="http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_alan_mil_070922_seven_cia_veterans_c.htm">“I think at simplest terms, there’s a cover-up. The 9/11 Report is a joke”</a> </li>
</ul><ul><li>A 29-year CIA veteran, former National Intelligence Officer (NIO) and former Director of the CIA's Office of Regional and Political Analysis (William Bill Christison) said <a href="http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_alan_mil_070922_seven_cia_veterans_c.htm">“I now think there is persuasive evidence that the events of September did not unfold as the Bush administration and the 9/11 Commission would have us believe</a> (and see <a href="http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Aug06/Christison14.htm">this</a>)</li>
</ul><ul><li>A number of intelligence officials, including a CIA Operations Officer who co-chaired a CIA multi-agency task force coordinating intelligence efforts among many intelligence and law enforcement agencies (Lynne Larkin) sent a joint letter to Congress expressing their concerns about <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20060615005757/http://www.pogo.org/m/hsp/hsp-911commission-040913.pdf">“serious shortcomings,” “omissions,” and “major flaws” in the 9/11 Commission Report and offering their services for a new investigation (they were ignored)</a> </li>
</ul><ul><li>A decorated 20-year CIA veteran, who Pulitzer-Prize winning investigative reporter Seymour Hersh called "perhaps the best on-the-ground field officer in the Middle East”, and whose astounding career formed the script for the Academy Award winning motion picture Syriana (Robert Baer) said that <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNsSn6D3CP4">"the evidence points at" 9/11 having had aspects of being an inside job </a></li>
</ul><ul><li>The Division Chief of the CIA’s Office of Soviet Affairs, who served as Senior Analyst from 1966 - 1990. He also served as Professor of International Security at the National War College from 1986 - 2004 (Melvin Goodman) said <a href="http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_alan_mil_070922_seven_cia_veterans_c.htm">"The final [9/11 Commission] report is ultimately a coverup"</a></li>
</ul><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tbody>
<tr> </tr>
</tbody></table><b>If even US top intelligence officers don't buy the official story, why do you?</b><br />
<br />
<u>Congressmen</u>:<br />
<ul><li>According to the Co-Chair of the Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 and former Head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Bob Graham, <a href="http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/05/11/con05439.html" target="_blank">an FBI informant had hosted and rented a room to two hijackers in 2000 and that, when the Inquiry sought to interview the informant, the FBI refused outright, and then hid him in an unknown location, and that a high-level FBI official stated these blocking maneuvers were undertaken <span style="font-style: italic;">under orders from the White House</span></a> (<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/08/politics/08graham.html">confirmed here</a>)</li>
</ul><ul><li>Current Democratic U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy said <a href="http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/29/150254" target="_blank">"The two questions that the congress will not ask . . . is why did 9/11 happen on George Bush's watch when he had clear warnings that it was going to happen? Why did they allow it to happen?"</a></li>
</ul><ul><li>Current Republican Congressman Ron Paul <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OumAnh8oWbU">calls for a new 9/11 investigation</a> and states that <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20070121184445/http://www.prisonplanet.tv/audio/170107paul.mp3" target="_blank">"we see the [9/11] investigations that have been done so far as more or less cover-up and no real explanation of what went on"</a></li>
</ul><ul><li>Current Democratic Congressman Dennis Kucinich <a href="http://www.911blogger.com/node/5854" target="_blank">hints that we aren't being told the truth about 9/11</a></li>
</ul><ul><li>Current Republican Congressman Jason Chafetz says that <a class="title loggedin " href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRj3r0fBppI&feature=player_embedded">we need to be vigilant and continue to investigate 9/11</a></li>
</ul><ul><li>Former Democratic Senator Mike Gravel states that <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hE6XLYfAhG0&eurl=http%3A%2F%2F911blogger%2Ecom%2Fnode%2F10561" target="_blank">he supports a new 9/11 investigation and that we don't know the truth about 9/11</a></li>
</ul><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><ul><li>Former Republican Senator Lincoln Chaffee <a href="http://patriotsquestion911.com/#Chafee">endorses a new 9/11 investigation</a></li>
</ul><ul><li>Former U.S. Democratic Congressman Dan Hamburg <a href="http://prisonplanet.com/articles/february2008/022208_congressman_involved.htm">doesn't believe the official version of events</a></li>
</ul><ul><li>Former U.S. Republican Congressman and senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, and who served six years as the Chairman of the Military Research and Development Subcommittee Curt Weldon has shown that the <a href="http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20050917&articleId=965" target="_blank">U.S. tracked hijackers before 9/11</a>, is open to hearing information about explosives in the Twin Towers, and is open to the possibility that <a href="http://www.yourbbsucks.com/forum/showthread.php?t=10365" target="_blank">9/11 was an inside job</a></li>
</ul><b>If there is bipartisan questioning of the official story by US elected representatives, why aren't you questioning it?</b><br />
<br />
<u>Other government officials</u>:<br />
<ul><li>U.S. General, Commanding General of U.S. European Command and Supreme Allied Commander Europe, decorated with the Bronze Star, Silver Star, and Purple Heart (General Wesley Clark) said <a href="http://securingamerica.com/node/692">"We've never finished the investigation of 9/11 and whether the administration actually misused the intelligence information it had. The evidence seems pretty clear to me. I've seen that for a long time"</a></li>
</ul><ul><li>Former Deputy Secretary for Intelligence and Warning under Nixon, Ford, and Carter (Morton Goulder), former Deputy Director to the White House Task Force on Terrorism (Edward L. Peck), and former US Department of State Foreign Service Officer (J. Michael Springmann), as well as a who's who of liberals and independents) jointly <a href="http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20041026093059633" target="_blank">call for a new investigation into 9/11 </a></li>
</ul><ul><li>Former Federal Prosecutor, Office of Special Investigations, U.S. Department of Justice under Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan; former U.S. Army Intelligence officer, and currently a widely-sought media commentator on terrorism and intelligence services (John Loftus) <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2003/sep/06/september11.iraq">says</a> "The information provided by European intelligence services prior to 9/11 was so extensive that it is no longer possible for either the CIA or FBI to assert a defense of incompetence"</li>
</ul><ul><li>The Group Director on matters of national security in the U.S. Government Accountability Office said that <a href="http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/06/04/con06125.html">President Bush did not respond to unprecedented warnings of the 9/11 disaster and conducted a <span style="font-style: italic;">massive cover-up</span> instead of accepting responsibility</a></li>
</ul><ul><li>Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense under President Ronald Reagan (Col. Ronald D. Ray) said that <a href="http://www.propagandamatrix.com/articles/july2006/010706doesnthunt.htm">the official story of 9/11 is "the dog that doesn't hunt"</a></li>
</ul><ul><li>The former director of the FBI (Louis Freeh) <a href="http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2005/11/17/122900.shtml" target="_blank">says there was a cover up by the 9/11 Commission</a></li>
</ul><b>If top US government officials are skeptical, why aren't you?</b><br />
<br />
Numerous other <a href="http://pl911truth.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=47&Itemid=53">politicians</a>, <a href="http://www.l911t.com/">judges, legal scholars, and attorneys</a> also question at least some aspects of the government's version of 9/11.<br />
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<div style="clear: both;"></div></div>Sabretachehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11652655872639394084noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27275728.post-33778943437395743542010-08-02T11:06:00.007+01:002010-08-02T20:17:13.815+01:00Anti-Semitic?<b>Since "Anti-Semitic"</b> has become the reflex, de-rigeur, debate-clinching accusation leveled at any and all criticism of Zionist Israel, it would be useful to try and define just what <b>"Semitism"</b> really is so that we can be sure to avoid being <b>"anti-semitic"</b>.<br />
<ul><li>If "semitism" is stealing your neighbor's land, destroying his house and imprisoning and torturing his family, then yes, I am anti-semitic.</li>
<li>If "semitism" is committing terrible acts of violence and framing someone else for them, then yes, I am anti-semitic. </li>
<li>If "semitism" is compromising the US government through blackmail and other threats, then yes, I am anti-semitic. </li>
<li>If "semitism" is imprisoning millions of impoverished and brutalized people, cutting off all basic necessities for life, then yes, I am antisemitic.</li>
<li>If "semitism" is taking billions in aid from the USA and then murdering Americans with impunity, then yes, I am anti-semitic.</li>
<li>If "semitism" is ignoring all UN Resolutions critical of you and then using the same UN to raise trumped-up charges against an INNOCENT nation, then yes, I am anti-semitic.</li>
<li>If "semitism" is coercing the US government and fooling the American people into attacking an INNOCENT nation, costing millions of innocent lives, including American soldiers, then yes, I am anti-semitic.</li>
<li>If "semitism" is attacking unarmed humanitarian ships in INTERNATIONAL waters, murdering at least nine people, including an American, shot FOUR times in the head, then yes, I am anti-semitic.</li>
<li>If "semitism" is thinking that you are a master and superior race that has to answer to NO one, then yes, I am anti-semitic.</li>
<li>If "semitism" is taking American tax dollars and then spitting in America's face, then yes, I am anti-semitic.</li>
<li>If "semitism" is suppressing any and all discussion of high crimes against humanity then yes, I am anti-semitic.</li>
<li>If "semitism" is constant lying and deception to achieve a goal that is illegal and immoral then yes, I am anti-semitic.</li>
<li>If "semitism" is arming yourself to the teeth, threatening other nations with attack AND attacking other nations because they are supposedly armed to the teeth and threatening you, then yes, I am anti-semitic.</li>
<li>If "semitism" is staging 911 with the help of traitorous Americans in high positions of power, murdering over 3,000 innocent Americans so that the USA will attack your "enemies" blamed for doing 911 (and in the process blackmailing those same officials who helped you pull of 911!) then yes, I am anti-semitic.</li>
<li>If "semitism" is calling anyone critical of you or revealing of your actions "anti-semitic" then yes. I am anti-semitic.</li>
</ul><p>Of course, these are<b> not</b> the real definitions of semitism, but "semitism" has become the cloak to shield vast crimes against humanity!</p><p>One thing is crystal clear to me: It is those who use this accusation in defense of the indefensible that are ones who drag GENUINE semitism though the mud!</p><br />
<p><b>They are the real Anti-Semites! </b></p><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Hat tip to <a href="http://whatreallyhappened.com/x.php?letters">WRH - comments</a></span>Sabretachehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11652655872639394084noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27275728.post-40163865113052794962010-06-13T10:19:00.007+01:002010-06-13T19:26:03.892+01:00Cameron in Afghanistan - "on 911 when the twin towers were blown up"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_WmeRrEDGLfs/TBSeJigNjoI/AAAAAAAAAVY/SxAv7zmXd8c/s1600/cameron_Afghan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_WmeRrEDGLfs/TBSeJigNjoI/AAAAAAAAAVY/SxAv7zmXd8c/s320/cameron_Afghan.jpg" /></a></div>Our shiny new PM did the first of his obligatory 'visit the troops in Afghanistan' on Friday last - 11 June.<br />
<br />
<i>(Pictured right in his desert warfare attire, looking suitably grim and determined.)</i><br />
<br />
All the usual cringe-inducing stuff - although at least he refrained from being pictured with a rictus grin on his face sitting awkwardly behind a machine gun in an attack helicopter, per his predecessor - but some equally crass stuff nonetheless.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_WmeRrEDGLfs/TBSdfp1OrlI/AAAAAAAAAVQ/0kcH1Hm368E/s1600/BrownGun.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_WmeRrEDGLfs/TBSdfp1OrlI/AAAAAAAAAVQ/0kcH1Hm368E/s320/BrownGun.jpg" /></a> Much of it was devoted to telling his audience how wonderfully heroic they are. <a href="http://aangirfan.blogspot.com/2010/06/military-at-centre-of-national-life.html">Aangirfan has a superb skit on it here</a> - juxtaposing his appeal for them to help him <br />
<blockquote style="color: #4c1130;">" ....create a new atmosphere in our country, an atmosphere where we back and revere and support our military.”</blockquote>and telling them <br />
<blockquote style="color: #4c1130;">".... I want to put YOU front and centre of our national life again" </blockquote>- with pictures of Adolph Hitler and his generals patronising their 'Hitler Youth' with similar hyperbole.<br />
<br />
No doubt deeply offensive to those schooled in respect and reverence for their 'betters', but laser accurate analogies that make a telling point.<br />
<br />
And the most deeply Freudian of Freudian slips - or should that be "Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings" ?<br />
<blockquote style="background-color: white; color: #4c1130;">"... and its worth remembering why we're here why we're fighting - what this is all about. This not a war of choice, it is a war of necessity; this not a war of occupation, it's a war of obligation.<br />
<br />
<b>On 9/11, WHEN THE TWIN TOWERS WERE BLOWN UP </b><br />
<br />
and so many BRITISH people died as well as Americans, almost every single person that took part in that attack was trained here in Afghanistan by al Qaeda ...."</blockquote><br />
Followed by more deeply patronising 'Santa Claus and the Tooth fairy' stuff about destroying their bases helping the Afghans to look after themselves before "going home with our heads held high" etc etc.<br />
<br />
God we're a wonderful country eh? <br />
<br />
The brief 911 reference is on <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWWHtC1CIi0&feature=player_embedded">You Tube here</a><br />
<br />
For those with a strong stomach, a video of the entire speech proudly adorns the <a href="http://www.number10.gov.uk/news/latest-news/2010/06/pm-pays-tribute-to-troops-in-afghanistan-51618">Number 10 Downing Street web site here</a>. The 911 bit is around 3 minutes in. It is an object lesson in what is required of our sock-puppet politicians - and David Cameron demonstrates just how much of a master sock-puppet he really is.Sabretachehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11652655872639394084noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27275728.post-23187352550707440792010-06-10T10:19:00.000+01:002010-06-10T10:19:36.413+01:00Schadenfreude anyone?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_WmeRrEDGLfs/TBCq0M3E-0I/AAAAAAAAAVI/0Y-OsGdFQM4/s1600/BP-teeshirt.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_WmeRrEDGLfs/TBCq0M3E-0I/AAAAAAAAAVI/0Y-OsGdFQM4/s320/BP-teeshirt.jpg" /></a></div>The slick, touchy-feely, glossy PR face of BP bites it on the backside.<br />
<br />
- For those with teeny-weeny screens, the tee-shirt strap line reads:<br />
<blockquote><b>"We're bringing oil to American Shores" </b></blockquote>Hmmm - aren't they just?<br />
<br />
Seriously though - If the western world is to maintain its existing "non-negotiable" lifestyle for another 10-15 years or so - let alone there being the remotest prospect of 'making poverty history' by having others aspire to similar profligacy - then deep water drilling such as has produced the still unfolding catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico will have to be dramatically increased.<br />
<br />
<b>Consider the inevitable consequences and weep.</b>Sabretachehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11652655872639394084noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27275728.post-75592736862298283892010-06-06T17:35:00.001+01:002010-06-06T19:46:54.072+01:00Strip Zionist Israel of its UN Membership<blockquote style="color: #4c1130;">We, the undersigned citizens of the world, call on the United Nations General Assembly to rescind Israel's membership in the UN, as a step toward ending Zionist apartheid. <br />
<br />
Israel's attack on a humanitarian aid fleet on Monday May 31, 2010, its murder of 9 human rights activists in international waters and wounding 50 others demonstrate that Israel rejects the structural tenets of our shared humanity, manifested in a global moral consensus and international law. <br />
<br />
Countless UN resolutions call on Israel to respect international law. It abides by none of them. It should therefore lose its place among the global family of nations. <br />
<br />
Israel has been violating international law and the Fourth Geneva Convention in its building of settlements, displacement of the indigenous population of Palestine, invasion of surrounding countries, killing and ethnically cleansing civilians systematically through the use of massacres. Israel has never been held accountable for the massacres of Deir Yassin, Qibya, Sabra and Shatilla, Qana, Gaza, and Jenin, for murdering Rachel Corrie, nor, as of today, for its massacre on the flotilla of international peace activists hoping to break Israel’s siege on the Palestinian people. As of 2007, Gaza has been turned into an open air prison housing 1.5 million people. Since 1948, Palestinians who carry Israeli citizenship do not enjoy equal protection or rights under Israeli law for not being classified as “Jewish Nationals.” Palestinian survivors of ethnic cleansing are denied the right to return. <br />
<br />
We, the citizens of the world, call upon you to shape the 21st century with a new ethic, already enshrined in the United Nations. We call upon you to end Zionist apartheid and racial injustice by stripping Israel of its UN membership.</blockquote><br />
Sign it <a href="http://www.petitiononline.com/is050110/petition.html">here</a>Sabretachehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11652655872639394084noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27275728.post-81767183448366214642010-06-04T10:38:00.002+01:002010-06-04T10:44:37.699+01:00Israeli 'self-defence'<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_WmeRrEDGLfs/TAjGbcJ6nZI/AAAAAAAAAVA/wqTjODLxCWw/s1600/Furkan_Dogan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_WmeRrEDGLfs/TAjGbcJ6nZI/AAAAAAAAAVA/wqTjODLxCWw/s320/Furkan_Dogan.jpg" /></a></div><b>Furkan Dogan was a US citizen</b>. Aged just 19 and a student of social sciences in Keyseri, Turkey, he was aboard the MV Mavi Marmara en-route to Gaza when it was stormed by IDF special forces in the pre-dawn of 31 May 2010.<br />
<br />
He was shot with 4 bullets to the head and 1 to the chest, at close range with a 9mm pistol.<br />
<br />
But he was probably a Muslim - and of course the heroic IDF (the most moral army in the world we are assured) just had to defend themselves, so I guess that'll be OK then.<br />
<br />
He was buried on 3 June 2010. RIP<br />
<br />
And may his killers rot in Hell.Sabretachehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11652655872639394084noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27275728.post-51304308512281425072010-05-31T07:33:00.019+01:002010-06-01T07:31:53.620+01:00The vicious arrogant stupidity of Zionist Israel<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_WmeRrEDGLfs/TAOudXrnJQI/AAAAAAAAAU4/ygvi20GMwr8/s1600/killerisrael.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_WmeRrEDGLfs/TAOudXrnJQI/AAAAAAAAAU4/ygvi20GMwr8/s320/killerisrael.gif" width="320" /></a></div>Early reports said at least 2 people killed; a couple of hours later <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/at-least-10-activists-killed-as-israel-navy-opens-fire-on-gaza-aid-flotilla-1.293089">10 people killed</a> (Haaretz); Al-Jazeera now reports up to <a href="http://english.aljazeera.net//news/middleeast/2010/05/201053133047995359.html">16 people killed </a>- By Israeli helicopter gunship and 'Elite' special forces - Trained psychopathic killers in other words - taking control of the 'Gaza Flotilla' in international waters.<br />
<br />
Frankly, words fail me completely beyond:<br />
<br />
To any objective observer capable of removing their 'Western Official Narrative' blinkers, Zionist Israel is an apartheid state worse than South Africa ever was; it possesses and maintains a nuclear arsenal in flagrant breach of international law by allowing NO IAEA inspections of its nuclear facilities and it has the unmitigated brass-necked gall to accuse Iran over its own compliant nuclear program.<br />
<br />
In its dispossession of the Arab/Palestinian populations within its claimed borders, it has inflicted - and continues to inflict - fatalities in the order of 100 to 1, whilst whining for sympathy with its claim that the gross imbalance of violence represents 'defending itself against terrorism'. The truth is it is 'defending itself' against a dispossessed destitute people whom it has left with NOTHING more to lose.<br />
<br />
If there is ANY justice in this world Zionist Israel has just signed its own dissolution warrant.<br />
<br />
Effing arrogant murderous bastards that they are.<br />
<br />
<b>Update: </b>Death toll now reported at over 20. Ship confirmed in international waters. Imagine if Iran had done something similar - we would be at war by now. Meanwhile the pusillanimous Zionist-fawning BBC pumps out its customary pap, trotting out 'official Israeli Spoksmen' one after another and covering an Israeli government press conference in full - they are WORSE than useless; they might just as well be under the control of the Zionist ministry of propaganda - come to think of it they quite probably are.<br />
<br />
<b>Update 2:</b> This from the the US <a href="http://salon.com/">Salon.com:</a><br />
<blockquote><span style="color: #4c1130;">The one silver lining from these incidents is that the real face of Israel becomes increasingly revealed and undeniable. Not even the most intense propaganda systems can prettify a lethal military attack on ships carrying civilians and humanitarian aid to people living in some of the most wretched and tragic conditions anywhere in the world. It is crystal clear to anyone who looks what Israel has become, and the only question left is how will the rest of the world -- beginning with their American patrons -- will react. </span></blockquote><b>Update 3:</b> <br />
<blockquote><h3 class="posttitle" style="font-size: 16px;">Saddam's WMD found aboard Gaza Freedom flotilla !!!!</h3></blockquote><object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/JvS9PXZ3RWM&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/JvS9PXZ3RWM&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object><br />
<blockquote><i>"This is either: awesomely, epically, tragicomically pathetic; or, it is a huge middle digit proudly erected and waved before the entire world." </i>Richard Seymour - <a href="http://leninology.blogspot.com/2010/05/saddams-wmd-found-aboard-gaza-freedom.html">Lenin's Tomb</a><i><br />
</i></blockquote>Sabretachehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11652655872639394084noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27275728.post-26576986816954218852010-05-22T15:40:00.001+01:002010-05-22T15:45:08.404+01:00WikiSpooksFor those wondering at the lack of posting here this past couple of months, I have a new preoccupation. It's a wiki-based project that is an amalgam of Wikipedia, Cryptome and the Deep Politics Forum.<br />
<br />
Why not pop over and have a look at <a href="http://wikispooks.com"> WikiSpooks </a>Sabretachehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11652655872639394084noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27275728.post-26222477868164272232010-04-01T10:28:00.004+01:002010-04-01T10:35:27.737+01:00More on GoldFurther to previous post: <br />
<br />
The US CFTC hearing on COMEX position limits over the past couple of weeks seems to have set a cat among the pigeons. No idea how it will all shake down but it is satisfying to watch the authorities squirm if nothing else.<br />
<br />
A series of posts from Zero Hedge linkable from <a href="http://www.zerohedge.com/article/uk-treasury-relases-foia-gordon-browns-1998-gold-sale-catches-tony-blair-lying-questions-us-">the latest one here,</a> provides a good run down of what is going on. <br />
<br />
The following (tongue-in-cheek) press release from <a href="http://www.gata.org/">GATA</a> is timely and sums up the deeply patronising, obsessively secretive, smoke and mirrors world of the paper-chase that characterises what we are assured (with straight, earnest faces) is a genuine honest free market in gold.<br />
<blockquote style="color: #4c1130;">The Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee today offered to sell 191.3 tonnes of gold, tonnage equal to that remaining to be sold by the International Monetary Fund, on the same terms offered by the IMF except $100 per ounce below the London PM gold fix price on the day prior to purchase.<br />
<br />
GATA Chairman Bill Murphy said his organization could provide a better price for the metal because it recently had received a gift of expensive hundred-year-old certificate paper originally intended for use as Chinese railroad bonds and because, in selling the gold, the organization, unlike the IMF, would not employ a large staff of publicists to tout the sale to news media throughout the world every day for months in advance. </blockquote><blockquote style="color: #4c1130;">Except for the discounted price, GATA's gold sale terms will match the IMF's:<br />
<ul><li> After selling the gold, GATA will present the buyers with certificates of ownership while continuing to store the gold using vaults in the United States, Britain, France, or India whose locations are known only to GATA.</li>
<li>The gold will be audited by auditors chosen by GATA whose reports will be available only to GATA.</li>
<li>The gold may be resold through GATA as long as it does not leave GATA's vaults.</li>
<li>GATA will use some of the gold sale proceeds to assist developing or financially troubled nations but exactly how much is used for that purpose and what's done with the remainder will be nobody's business.</li>
<li>GATA's sales will be structured to minimize any effect on the world gold market and to this end they will be announced only this once.</li>
<li>For an additional $250 GATA will have a buyer's gold certificate tastefully framed.</li>
<li>Buyers of gold in the amount of $100 million or more will be invited to GATA's annual Christmas party.</li>
</ul></blockquote><blockquote style="color: #4c1130;">Purchasers should send certified checks payable to GATA in care of your secretary/treasurer at the address below. </blockquote>Sabretachehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11652655872639394084noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27275728.post-53543235348578246562010-03-25T08:54:00.005+00:002010-03-25T09:33:02.853+00:00Where's all the Gold?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_WmeRrEDGLfs/S6skK9IMX-I/AAAAAAAAAT8/41ukr4Lzwjo/s1600/goldbarheraeus100gramrev240.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_WmeRrEDGLfs/S6skK9IMX-I/AAAAAAAAAT8/41ukr4Lzwjo/s320/goldbarheraeus100gramrev240.jpg" /></a></div><b>Gold in the news again</b> - Questions about those <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/investing/gold/7511589/Explain-why-you-sold-Britains-gold-Gordon-Brown-told.html">gold sales by Chancellor Brown back in 1999-2002</a> being reported in the UK papers and evidence from <a href="http://www.zerohedge.com/article/did-gordon-brown-sell-uks-gold-keep-aig-and-rothschild-solvent-more-disclosures-how-ny-fed-m">'ZeroHedge'</a> of what was really behind them.<br />
<br />
Since retiring from my trading activities I have not followed the markets as closely as before. However, I have remained a keen student of Gold and its role in economic and monetary affairs. I haven't posted on it recently but have digested a constant drip of credibly sourced articles and commentary, attaining pretty much the status of received insider wisdom, which in summary suggests that the amount of paper claims against ALLOCATED gold, allegedly held by the Banksters, is in the ball-park of 50 times the bullion actually stored in their vaults.<br />
<br />
<i>(Allocated gold you understand is defined as gold which is identifiable by serial number as belonging to a named individual or other owner and which is stored and insured in a particular vault at some charge to the owner).</i><br />
<br />
If this is correct, then everyone who THINKS they own some gold and that it is stored on their behalf in this or that vault - makes no difference where in the Western World - actually only has a claim against the institution that issued them with their paperwork - forget serial numbers, they mean diddly-squat<br />
<br />
The situation is similar to the standard fractional reserve fiat system except that, in the case of ALLOCATED gold, it is illegal (but who among the banksters cares a toss for legal niceties unless they can be used to their advantage?). To symplify, suppose that all allocated gold were stored in the same vault and all those to whom it is 'allocated' were to want to view it - you know, do a sort of audit - on the same day; each viewing could take no more than about 30 minutes in a round the clock operation (10 minutes for an eight hour day) because each viewer would be shown the same physical stuff - serious problems with the logistics of keeping them apart too eh? - and that of course is the nub of the matter. It all rests on the rather naive belief on the part of the 'owners' that they're dealing with honest institutions - oh dear.<br />
<br />
The situation is magnified and complicated by 'non-allocated' gold accounts where it is admitted that the account holder merely has a paper claim and the assets backing it are indeed used in a 'fractional reserve' fashion. The shenanigans here probably dwarf the 50:1 allocated ratio because it involves the Comex and other futures and paper trading operations. And when you factor in credible estimates of <a href="http://www.deepblacklies.co.uk/the_spoils_of_war.htm">'Black Gold'</a> well, the mind boggles. But, so long as the 'owners' do not demand personal physical delivery the fraud will continue. It sure does appear to be creaking at the seams right now though.<br />
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_WmeRrEDGLfs/S6skZvVj-nI/AAAAAAAAAUE/D4anQa1jnyY/s1600/Brown2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_WmeRrEDGLfs/S6skZvVj-nI/AAAAAAAAAUE/D4anQa1jnyY/s320/Brown2.jpg" /></a><br />
As for Gordon Brown, I have no doubt whatsoever that his gold sales were deeply mired in precisely these considerations. The 'official narrative' - as always - is just so simplistically absurd. Which is why that Telegraph article is careful to point out that there is no question of allowing all the paperwork to be made public - weasel-words from the leader of the opposition notwithstanding. If Cameron doesn't know the score by now (highly unlikely in view of his parroting of all the other 'official narratives') it looks like he damn soon will - and anyway, for obvious reasons he can be relied upon to assist in the demolition of Brown who appears to be stumbling into the role of fall-guy. He's privy to some very dangerous knowledge though. His personality type must be worrying to some very powerful interests and I wonder if elevation to a peerage will really be enough shut him up.<br />
<br />
His health isn't looking so good these days either. HmmmSabretachehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11652655872639394084noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27275728.post-22572744642730420272010-02-11T11:18:00.008+00:002010-02-13T08:07:22.464+00:00Espionage, Torture and those seven paragraphs<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_WmeRrEDGLfs/S3RRxhPbVYI/AAAAAAAAATk/CKcJgpco0j0/s1600-h/sheep-dog-trials-im-telling-you-the-man-and-the-do1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="291" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_WmeRrEDGLfs/S3RRxhPbVYI/AAAAAAAAATk/CKcJgpco0j0/s400/sheep-dog-trials-im-telling-you-the-man-and-the-do1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><b>For a telling commentary on yesterdays</b><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/10/binyam-mohamed-torture-ruling-evidence"> Appeal Court decision</a> in the Binyam Mohamed torture evidence case, have a look at <a href="http://www.septicisle.info/2010/02/seven-paragraphs.html">Obsolete's Blog.</a> The whole thing is worth reading but a couple of quotes:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #4c1130;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/10/binyam-mohamed-torture-evidence-paragraphs">Reading the seven paragraphs</a> that have finally been released detailing the CIA's treatment of Binyam Mohamed <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/10/binyam-mohamed-torture-ruling-evidence">after today's ruling by the Court of Appeal</a>, it's initially difficult to know quite why the government was so determined that they should remain secret. They tell us absolutely nothing that we didn't already know: that the US was systematically mistreating almost anyone that came into their custody in either Afghanistan or Pakistan; that this was just the start of the torture regime which Binyam Mohamed found himself under; that the CIA, despite the claims of our security services, had been letting them know just what they were doing to individuals connected to this country; and that despite knowing full well that what the CIA was doing to Mohamed at this early stage would breach our obligations under the European Convention of Human Rights, as found during the 1970s <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_techniques">when the "five techniques" were outlawed in Northern Ireland</a>, they did absolutely nothing to intervene to stop his mistreatment</span></span></blockquote> And....<br />
<blockquote><span style="color: #4c1130; font-size: 130%;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Indeed, the only reason why the Court of Appeal decided that seven paragraphs could today be published was that far more gruesome evidence of the torture which Mohamed underwent was released by a US court in a judgement in November of last year. </span><a href="http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2010/65.html" style="font-family: inherit;">Lord Neuberger quotes from it in his section of today's ruling (paragraph 126)</a><span style="font-family: inherit;">:</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 130%;"></span><br />
<blockquote style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">[Mr Mohamed's] trauma lasted for two long years. During that time, he was physically and psychologically tortured. His genitals were mutilated. He was deprived of sleep and food. He was summarily transported from one prison to another. Captors held him in stress positions for days at a time. He was forced to listen to piercingly loud music and the screams of other prisoners while locked in a pitch-black cell. All the while, he was forced to inculpate himself and others in various plots to imperil Americans.<br />
...<br />
At page 58, she said that "[t]he [US] Government does not challenge or deny the accuracy of [Mr Mohamed's] story of brutal treatment" and repeated that point at pages 62 and 64. On pages 61-2, she said that his "persistence in telling his story" and "very vigorous… and very public ... pursu[ance of] his claims in the British courts" indicated that his evidence was true and "demonstrates his willingness to test the truth of his version of events in both the courts of law and the court of public opinion". In the passage just quoted from page 70 of her Opinion, she referred to Mr Mohamed's "lengthy prior torture" as an established fact. </span></span></blockquote><span style="color: #4c1130; font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Compared to the seven paragraphs we have today, it doesn't really get much more damning.</span></blockquote>It moved me to make the following comment:<br />
<br />
This sort of stuff really is your forte Obsolete. That is one cracking analysis which I wouldn't presume to add to, other than with a rather apposite quotation from Joseph Persico's 'Roosevelt's Secret War: FDR and World War II Espionage' <span style="font-size: x-small;">(hat tip to <a href="http://cryptome.org/">Cryptome</a>)</span><br />
<br />
<b><i>Espionage involves peeking at the other fellow's hand, marking the cards, cooking the books, poisoning the well, breaking the rules, hitting below the belt, cheating, lying, deceiving, defaming, snooping, eavesdropping, prying, stealing, bribing, suborning, burglarizing, forging, misleading, conducting dirty tricks, dirty pool, skulduggery, blackmail, seduction, everything not sporting, not kosher, not cricket. In short, espionage stands virtue on its head and elevates vice instead.</i></b> <br />
<br />
- all to further our mission to do good in the world naturally - so that's OK then.<br />
<br />
Some things never change eh? and despite all the pompous, ridiculous - not to say comical if it weren't so damned depressing - protestations of their apologists (<i>well he would say that wouldn't he?</i> - aka Mandy Rice Davies) the routine behaviour of our own SIS's are most certainly no exception.<br />
<br />
Does ANYONE seriously believe that this will have ANY effect other than to make them and their political puppets - to whom <i>offers may be made that simply cannot be refused</i> - that much more careful, deceptive - and all the other attributes mentioned above - when going about their business of protecting us from their manufactured and calibrated milieu of TERROR?<br />
<br />
After all, <a href="http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/robert_cecil.htm">Robert Cecil</a> is their archetype - and we STILL celebrate his brilliant 'just-in-time' capture and execution of those dastardly gunpowder plotters some 400 years later eh?<br />
<br />
Indeed some thing never NEVER CHANGE and the Sheeple remain as credulous as ever.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Hat tip to <a href="http://www.deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/index.php?">'Deep Politics Forum'</a> for the picture </span><br />
<br />
<b>Update:</b> This post was prompted by 'Obsolete's' take on <b>the '7 paragraphs'</b>. His subsequent posts on the matter are well worth reading too:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.septicisle.info/2010/02/scum-watch-whose-side-are-you-on.html#links">Scum-watch: Whose side are you on?</a> - This is one of his routine demolitions of our appalling tabloid press. The Sun in this case, though there is precious little to choose between them in the utter garbage stakes apart from contrived left-right biases. Of course, like the sheep-dog in the picture above, their real purpose is to herd the sheeple while dividing them over trivia.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.septicisle.info/2010/02/seven-paragraphs-fallout-continues.html#comments">The seven paragraphs fallout continues</a>Sabretachehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11652655872639394084noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27275728.post-41329040777825923882010-01-30T17:26:00.019+00:002010-05-28T07:16:58.112+01:00Craig Murray & 9/11<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_WmeRrEDGLfs/S2RleS5sQ8I/AAAAAAAAATE/sMlmO_7B4ds/s1600-h/CraigMurray.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_WmeRrEDGLfs/S2RleS5sQ8I/AAAAAAAAATE/sMlmO_7B4ds/s320/CraigMurray.jpg" /></a></div><b>The comments sections of <a href="http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/">Craig Murray's blog</a></b> often contain references to issues that Craig considers 'off-topic', to such an extent that he has taken to deleting them whenever they appear. It's his blog of course so he can do exactly as he pleases and, to give him his due, he had issued warnings it would happen.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><b>Anyway, in deference to those who have a problem</b> with the official narrative of the events of 9/11 (the most popular 'off-topic' subject it seems) he has posted <a href="http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/">a piece dedicated to the subject</a>. <b><i>It does NOT measure up to his usual standards</i>.</b> In fact, as a piece of serious analysis, it is on a par with the average 5 year old explaining to a 6-7 year old sibling just why Santa Clause and the Tooth Fairy are stories that simply MUST be believed. As in:<br />
<ul style="color: #4c1130;"><li>I do not believe that the US government, or any of its agencies, were responsible for 9/11. It would just need too many people to be involved. Someone would have objected.</li>
</ul><ul style="color: #4c1130;"><li>I asked a friend in the construction industry what it would take to demolish the twin towers. He replied nine months, 80 men, and 12 miles of cabling. The notion that a small team at night could plant sufficient explosives embedded at key points, is laughable. </li>
</ul>(which begs an obvious question: "why bother employing 80 men for nine months and 12 miles of cabling when, on the basis of Craig's opinion, one big bang and an oxygen-starved kerosene fire will apparently do the job in a few hours from scratch? - a new demolition method has made it's debute eh? - Hit the building with a plane and/or douse it with kerosene toss a match in and it will collapse at free-fall speed into its own footprint in short order - 100% success rate to date - Craig's friend is clearly afraid for his job)<br />
<ul style="color: #4c1130;"><li>The forces of the aircraft impacts must have been amazingly high. I have no difficulty imagining they would bring down the building. As for WTC 7, again the kinetic energy of the collapse of the twin towers must be immense. </li>
</ul> - Duh - amazingly high eh? but what about that WT7 that <b>wasn't hit by an aeroplane? </b>He has the answer:<br />
<ul style="color: #4c1130;"><li>... Unfortunately in construction it is extremely common for contractors not to fix or install properly all the expensive girders, ties and rebar that are supposed to be enclosed in the concrete. Supervising contractors and municipal inspectors can be corrupt. </li>
</ul>That's OK then, planes for the twin towers, corrupt builders for WT7 ... and so it goes on, with just the smigeon of a doubt about what exactly hit the Pentagon.<br />
<br />
To give Craig his due again, he does actually conclude<br />
<blockquote>"<span style="color: #4c1130;">...In my view the real scandal of 9/11 was that it was blowback - the product of a malignant terrorist agency whose origins lay in CIA funding and provision."</span> </blockquote><b>He's getting warm here</b> - with his juxtaposition of 'malignant terrorist agency' and 'CIA', it even crossed my mind that he had recognised the CIA for what it is - nevertheless it is progress of sorts. Craig's problem is that, for some reason, he refuses to connect the dots. Does he really believe that CIA funding, training, arming and general manipulation of radical Muslim groups for its own purposes, stopped with the departure of the Soviets? - <b>REALLY? </b><br />
<br />
<b>Does he</b><b> not understand that the CIA and MI5</b> have more Muslim 'assets' in place in (for example) Leeds and Blackburn - ie people on whom they have extensive files and can influence through one or other of their arsenal of 'make him an offer he can't refuse' methods - than he got votes when he stood for election there?<br />
<br />
<b>False flag operations are far FAR more Machiavellian and far FAR less simplistic</b> than Craig appears to suppose. In spite of our esteemed SIS's careful cultivation of that Boy's-Own James Bond (and US equivalent) image, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquess_of_Queensberry_rules">Marquis of Queensbury rules</a> quite simply do not apply.<br />
<br />
<b>If such an operation</b> (ie a successful devastating attack - <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century#.22New_Pearl_Harbor.22">a 'New Pearl Harbour' </a>- that could and would be instantly and credibly blamed on the required evil enemy) <b>WERE judged necessary</b> in order to prosecute the most momentous, pre-planned project of global militarisation, control and much ballyhooed <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full-spectrum_dominance">'Full Spectrum Dominance'</a>, in history, does Craig <b>REALLY</b> suppose that Deep State Agencies of the US could not or would not arrange for things to play out pretty much exactly as they appear to have done?<br />
<br />
<i>- a bit of agent-provocateuring here - a bit of financing there - a bit of covert obstruction of domestic intelligence/policing functions here - a bit of false trail-laying there - the occasional covert threat here - the odd assassination there - and so on -</i><br />
<br />
<b>IT IS WHAT OUR SIS's ARE THERE FOR for God's sake !!! - It's their raison d'etre - and they are both well practiced and bloody good at it.</b><br />
<br />
<b>You need only the most cursory trawl</b> through the record of CIA involvement in South/Central America, Indonesia, The Philipines etc etc, not to mention our very own European '<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio">Operation Gladio'</a>, to see the depravity they will instigate, promote and foster as a matter of routine in pursuit of their mystical 'National Security Interests'.<br />
<br />
<b>So what of Craig's reluctance to connect the dots?</b> I suggest it is related to the syndrome that afflicts all of us when asked to consider the possibility that our Government and its Agencies might be anything other than <i><b>'the man who wears the white hat'</b></i> of those old Western films, and which cocoons us in what <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McMurtry">John McMurtry</a> dubs the <a href="http://www.911blogger.com/node/10131">boundaries of the Ruling Group Mind</a>. As I commented on a piece dealing with the same subject which I highly recommend on<a href="http://churchofnobody.blogspot.com/2010/01/pearl-harbour-911-and-craig-murrays.html"> 'Nobody's' Blog:</a><br />
<br />
<b>Poor Dear Old Craig indeed</b>. He has tasted the Establishment Good Life in the upper echelons of the British Foreign Service. Being cast adrift must be VERY hard to take and I don't envy him in his need to build an alternative career. He knows as well as anyone the price exacted by effectively challenging the REAL Western Establishment Power Structures and he's clearly not about to open a second front by going native over 911 and such - no matter what the evidence says. In a nutshell, it is near impossible to get any man to see something that his livelihood depends on his NOT seeing and Craig is clearly no exception. Or as that Old Paul Simon song has it "... still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest"<br />
<br />
<b>My guess is he will gradually acquiesce</b> in his co-option back into The Establishment and life will thus gradually become more comfortable etc etc as he continues to respect those boundaries, his past (and present??) nuisance value notwithstanding. After all his principle issue (Government complicity in torture) is one which resonates with the public and which is therefore eminently co-optable with a bit of massaging, pious words and the passage of time. He's sending out the right signals for it and he is arguably too dangerous to be kept in the outer darkness. Silence him or co-opt him; those are the two available options. My money goes on the latter - if only because suiciding and premature deaths have been just a tad overdone this past decade or so and have to be held somewhat in reserve for sudden unforseen major threats like a Dr Kelly Mk2 or some such.Sabretachehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11652655872639394084noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27275728.post-32065801698480527652010-01-25T09:30:00.003+00:002010-01-25T17:47:40.324+00:00UK terrorist threat level raised to 'Severe'<b>So, just what IS the purpose </b>of these 'terrorist attack risk level warnings I ask - somewhat rhetorically? <br />
<br />
<b>Since anyone with a modicum of intelligence</b> can calculate that the odds of being harmed by a 'terrorist attack' are in the same ballpark as winning the National Lottery Jackpot two weeks running, just how is our behaviour supposed to change with a 'raised warning level'?<br />
<br />
<b><i>Are we perhaps supposed to pay 10% more attention to bearded males carrying rucksacks - or maybe 22.5% more? - something like that? - I think we should be told.</i></b><br />
<br />
<b>Anyway in the interests of doing my bit</b> to counter this latest threat level warning so-to-speak, here is a little piece that I'm told first made the rounds at about the time this 'calibrate the Sheeple fear level for purposes yet to become clear' charade of terrorist threat levels first started. It's posted by way of a tonic on the premise that, since you can do bugger all else about their ridiculous patronising crap, you might as well have a damn good laugh at them - and let them know it.<br />
<br />
<b>So, with due apologies for the smug Anglo-Saxon stereotypes</b>, here goes:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #4c1130;">It appears that the English are feeling the pinch in relation to recent terrorist threats and have raised their security level from 'Miffed' to 'Peeved'. Soon, though security levels may be raised yet again to 'Irritated' or even 'A Bit Cross'. Londoners have not been 'A Bit Cross' since 'the blitz' in 1940 when tea supplies all but ran out. Terrorists have been re-categorised from 'Tiresome' to a 'Bit of a Nuisance.' The last time the British issued a 'Bit of a Nuisance' warning level was during the great fire of 1666.<br />
<br />
Also, the French government announced yesterday that it has raised its terror alert level from 'Run' to 'Hide.' The only two higher levels in France are 'Surrender' and 'Collaborate.' The rise was precipitated by a recent fire that destroyed France's white flag factory, effectively paralysing the country's military capability.<br />
<br />
It's not only the English and French that are on a heightened level of alert: Italy has increased the alert level from ' Shout Loudly and Excitedly' to 'Elaborate Military Posturing.' Two more levels remain: 'Ineffective Combat Operations' and 'Change Sides.'<br />
<br />
The Germans also increased their alert state from 'Disdainful Arrogance' to 'Dress in Uniform and Sing Marching Songs.' They also have two higher levels: 'Invade a Neighbour' and 'Lose.'<br />
<br />
Belgians, on the other hand, are all on holiday as usual, and the only threat they are worried about is NATO pulling out of Brussels.<br />
<br />
The Spanish are all excited to see their new submarines ready to deploy. These beautifully designed subs have glass bottoms so the new Spanish navy can get a really good look at the old Spanish navy. <br />
</blockquote>Sabretachehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11652655872639394084noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27275728.post-2070674489472346462010-01-19T10:04:00.004+00:002010-01-24T16:58:49.961+00:00Gun Sights for JesusUS military personnel taking aim at 'the enemy' with their fancy <a href="http://www.trijicon.com/Trijicon.cfm">Trijicon ACOG</a> gun sights can do so secure in the knowledge that they are 'shooting for Jesus'. May be that will make the more religiously-inclined among them feel better about killing <a href="http://theologyinthevineyard.wordpress.com/2007/05/14/slopes-dinks-paki-ragheads-not-worth-much/">'Ragheads'</a>; but what of the locals they claim to be training to do the job for themselves?<br />
<br />
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_WmeRrEDGLfs/S1WAPsueE1I/AAAAAAAAASs/J2KYlQeN3cw/s1600-h/ht_scopes_slide5_ssh.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_WmeRrEDGLfs/S1WAPsueE1I/AAAAAAAAASs/J2KYlQeN3cw/s320/ht_scopes_slide5_ssh.jpg" /></a>The picture is of a group of them - no doubt devout Muslims all - being trained with <b>'Jesus rifles'.</b> Wonder how they're going to feel about that when they find out?<br />
<br />
My guess is that those doing the training will have good reason to feel even less secure in the loyalty and reliability of their charges than they do already.<br />
<br />
Stupid? - Pig-bloody-ignorant? - Is there a a word or phrase in the English language that can adequately describe the insufferable sanctimonious arrogance of the US Military, its sponsors and suppliers?<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=27275728">This from ABC News:</a><br />
<br />
... with additional <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/slideshow?id=9580847">pictures here </a><br />
<blockquote style="color: #4c1130;"><i>Coded references to New Testament Bible passages about Jesus Christ are inscribed on high-powered rifle sights provided to the United States military by a Michigan company, an ABC News investigation has found.</i><br />
<i>The sights are used by U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and in the training of Iraqi and Afghan soldiers. The maker of the sights, Trijicon, has a $660 million multi-year contract to provide up to 800,000 sights to the Marine Corps, and additional contracts to provide sights to the U.S. Army.</i><br />
<i>U.S. military rules specifically prohibit the proselytizing of any religion in Iraq or Afghanistan and were drawn up in order to prevent criticism that the U.S. was embarked on a religious “Crusade” in its war against al Qaeda and Iraqi insurgents.</i><br />
<i>One of the citations on the gun sights, 2COR4:6, is an apparent reference to Second Corinthians 4:6 of the New Testament, which reads: “For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”</i><br />
<i>Other references include citations from the books of Revelation, Matthew and John dealing with Jesus as “the light of the world.” John 8:12, referred to on the gun sights as JN8:12, reads, “Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”</i><br />
<i>Trijicon confirmed to ABCNews.com that it adds the biblical codes to the sights sold to the U.S. military. Tom Munson, director of sales and marketing for Trijicon, which is based in Wixom, Michigan, said the inscriptions “have always been there” and said there was nothing wrong or illegal with adding them. Munson said the issue was being raised by a group that is “not Christian.” The company has said the practice began under its founder, Glyn Bindon, a devout Christian from South Africa who was killed in a 2003 plane crash.</i><br />
<i>The company’s vision is described on its Web site: “Guided by our values, we endeavor to have our products used wherever precision aiming solutions are required to protect individual freedom.”</i><br />
<i>“We believe that America is great when its people are good,” says the Web site. “This goodness has been based on Biblical standards throughout our history, and we will strive to follow those morals.”</i><br />
<i>Spokespeople for the U.S. Army and the Marine Corps both said their services were unaware of the biblical markings. They said officials were discussing what steps, if any, to take in the wake of the ABCNews.com report. It is not known how many Trijicon sights are currently in use by the U.S. military.</i><br />
<i>The biblical references appear in the same type font and size as the model numbers on the company’s Advanced Combat Optical Guides, called the ACOG.</i><br />
<i>A photo on a Department of Defense Web site shows Iraqi soldiers being trained by U.S. troops with a rifle equipped with the bible-coded sights.</i><br />
<i>“It’s wrong, it violates the Constitution, it violates a number of federal laws,” said Michael “Mikey” Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, an advocacy group that seeks to preserve the separation of church and state in the military.</i><br />
<i>‘Firearms of Jesus Christ’</i><br />
<i>“It allows the Mujahedeen, the Taliban, al Qaeda and the insurrectionists and jihadists to claim they’re being shot by Jesus rifles,” he said.</i><br />
<i>Weinstein, an attorney and former Air Force officer, said many members of his group who currently serve in the military have complained about the markings on the sights. He also claims they’ve told him that commanders have referred to weapons with the sights as <b>“spiritually transformed firearm[s] of Jesus Christ.”</b></i><br />
<i>He said coded biblical inscriptions play into the hands of “those who are calling this a Crusade.”</i><br />
<i>According to a government contracting watchdog group, fedspending.org, Trijicon had more than $100 million in government contracts in fiscal year 2008. The Michigan company won a $33 million Pentagon contract in July, 2009 for a new machine gun optic, according to Defense Industry Daily. The company’s earnings from the U.S. military jumped significantly after 2005, when it won a $660 million long-term contract to supply the Marine Corps with sights.</i><br />
<i>“This is probably the best example of violation of the separation of church and state in this country,” said Weinstein. “It’s literally pushing fundamentalist Christianity at the point of a gun against the people that we’re fighting. We’re emboldening an enemy.”</i><br />
</blockquote> <i> <br />
</i>Sabretachehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11652655872639394084noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27275728.post-23290168011034653362010-01-04T20:47:00.011+00:002010-01-13T08:08:50.931+00:00The reward for killing 700 innocent civilians? - A Nobel Peace Prize<div class="wp-caption-text"></div><span style="font-size: large;">The Pakistani daily <a href="http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/pakistan/18-over-700-killed-in-44-drone-strikes-in-2009-am-01">Dawn</a></span> - a pro-US paper not known for its antiwar stance — reports that US drones killed over 700 civilians in 44 bombings since Barak Obama took office in January 2009: <br />
<blockquote style="color: #4c1130;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_WmeRrEDGLfs/S0Gy-_U8wnI/AAAAAAAAAR8/Deg94FBh4Ow/s1600-h/Obama-Nobel-Peace-Prize.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_WmeRrEDGLfs/S0Gy-_U8wnI/AAAAAAAAAR8/Deg94FBh4Ow/s320/Obama-Nobel-Peace-Prize.jpg" /></a><b>PESHAWAR, 2nd January 2010: Of the 44 predator strikes carried out by US drones in the tribal areas of Pakistan over the past 12 months, only five were able to hit their actual targets, killing five key Al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders, but at the cost of over 700 innocent civilians.</b><br />
<span id="more-18413"></span><br />
According to the statistics compiled by Pakistani authorities, the Afghanistan-based US drones killed 708 people in 44 predator attacks targeting the tribal areas between January 1 and December 31, 2009. For each Al Qaeda and Taliban terrorist killed by US drones, 140 innocent Pakistanis were also killed. Over 90 per cent of those killed in the deadly missile strikes were civilians"<br />
</blockquote>In other words, President Obama has surpassed even his <a href="http://pulsemedia.org/2009/04/12/us-drones-have-killed-687-innocents/">predecessor’s murderous record in Pakistan</a>.<br />
<br />
His reward? - The Nobel Peace Prize for 2009.<br />
George Orwell was right - his '1984' was just a little premature, that's all.<br />
<br />
So, as the first decade of the new century closes, <b><i>"War really IS peace. Ignorance really IS strength and Freedom really IS slavery"</i></b> - with the massed sheeple of the Western World still lapping up Big Brother's narrative of the way things are and are meant to be.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://pulsemedia.org/"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Hat-tip to Pulse</span></a>Sabretachehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11652655872639394084noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27275728.post-14617605009246344442010-01-04T13:04:00.006+00:002010-01-04T13:32:10.469+00:00Adverts to help you out of that box - Not allowed in USThese advertisements are turning heads in various UK airports through December and January. Not allowed in the US of course. Can't have people being encouraged to think in the 'Land of the Free' now can we?<br />
<br />
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_WmeRrEDGLfs/S0HloLKFgoI/AAAAAAAAASE/th3Y2jqZFyA/s1600-h/RT-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_WmeRrEDGLfs/S0HloLKFgoI/AAAAAAAAASE/th3Y2jqZFyA/s320/RT-1.jpg" /></a>The full series including flash animations can be <a href="http://rt.com/ads#">viewed here.</a><br />
<br />
<i>Should fear of an unknown menace detract from the presence of the world´s largest nuclear arsenal?</i><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_WmeRrEDGLfs/S0HlshdhdVI/AAAAAAAAASM/vRcUUUJJqLE/s1600-h/RT-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_WmeRrEDGLfs/S0HlshdhdVI/AAAAAAAAASM/vRcUUUJJqLE/s320/RT-2.jpg" /></a><br />
</div><br />
<i>Is the ability to influence minds more potent than a deadly force? <br />
</i><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_WmeRrEDGLfs/S0Hlwll4uFI/AAAAAAAAASU/FCqV1S_Rwfw/s1600-h/RT-3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_WmeRrEDGLfs/S0Hlwll4uFI/AAAAAAAAASU/FCqV1S_Rwfw/s320/RT-3.jpg" /></a><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_WmeRrEDGLfs/S0Hl25dyN2I/AAAAAAAAASc/kvBmXC3sZEQ/s1600-h/RT-4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_WmeRrEDGLfs/S0Hl25dyN2I/AAAAAAAAASc/kvBmXC3sZEQ/s320/RT-4.jpg" /></a><br />
</div><br />
<i>If violence against civilians defines terrorism, then how do people in a war zone distinguish friendly forces?</i><br />
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<i>Should a democratically elected government use violence to control a demonstration?</i>Sabretachehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11652655872639394084noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27275728.post-1703912059543154312010-01-04T08:12:00.003+00:002010-01-04T08:16:14.404+00:00Victory in Afghanistan *!£x$*** ?<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_WmeRrEDGLfs/S0DyHrGg1ZI/AAAAAAAAAR0/jZsZEpr7RRo/s1600-h/general-stanley-mcchrystal.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_WmeRrEDGLfs/S0DyHrGg1ZI/AAAAAAAAAR0/jZsZEpr7RRo/s320/general-stanley-mcchrystal.jpg" /></a><b>General Stanley McChrystal </b><b>- </b>Commander of US / 'International Security Assistance' Forces in Afghanistan and former commander of 'Special Forces' operations in Iraq - is a convert to <i>'winning hearts and minds' </i>- or so he would have us believe.<br />
<br />
<b>Among one of multiple eye-popping items of double-speak, he had this to say to</b> <a href="http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=66983">Stars and Stripes</a> on New Years Day :<br />
<blockquote><div style="color: #4c1130;"><i>“What we are working on is that we’re really focusing on getting counterinsurgency, protecting the people, in the minds of the Afghan people. <b>We are not viewed as occupiers now</b>.”</i><br />
</div></blockquote>In light of the relentless toll on the civilian population by the<a href="http://sabretache.blogspot.com/2009/10/drone-wars.html"> 'Point-Click-kill Brigade' </a>- (or 'Remote Control Warriors' as the US military likes to call them) with their 'Reaper' and 'Predator' drones designed and named especially to 'win hearts and minds' it seems); not to mention Stanley's old buddies who, when there is a smigeon of doubt or they are simply too pumped up to think straight, are inclined to simply <a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/Afghanistan/article6971638.ece">execute children in cold blood</a>, Rick Rozoff's recourse to <a href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/message/43511">Fyodor Dostoevsky seems apposite:</a><br />
<blockquote style="color: #4c1130;">"A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else."<br />
</blockquote>Sabretachehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11652655872639394084noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27275728.post-55241731522792090872010-01-03T10:44:00.011+00:002010-01-05T15:24:36.036+00:00The Cairo Declaration<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_WmeRrEDGLfs/S0CYr_2G0nI/AAAAAAAAARs/EV6-GlTRAPU/s1600-h/undergroundwall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_WmeRrEDGLfs/S0CYr_2G0nI/AAAAAAAAARs/EV6-GlTRAPU/s320/undergroundwall.jpg" /></a><br />
</div><span style="font-size: large;">The 'Gaza Freedom March' has been largely ignored by the Western MSM -<b> <span style="font-size: small;">No surprises there then.</span></b><b> </b></span><br />
<br />
The march organisers are doing their best to draw attention to the continuing barbaric behaviour of Zionist Israel towards Gaza and the Palestinian population in general.<br />
<br />
About 1,400 marchers are currently in Cairo, having been prevented by the Egyptian Authorities from crossing into Gaza. It seems that the Egyptians, having proved themselves useless at fighting Zionist Israel, have decided it would be more profitable for them to do it's dirty work instead. With it's actions against the marchers and the construction of yet another wall (<a href="http://www.uruknet.info/">underground this time</a> - see pic above) Egypt has become something of a Zionist poodle - a bit like the UK relationship with the US really. As a perceptive commentator said recently (can't recall where) <i>"With its surrounding Arab countries as 'enemies', Israel has little need of friends"</i> - ouch!<br />
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My guess is that all this seriously rankles with the average Egyptian. Their Western supported (not to say dictated to) government is sowing the wind. I wonder if it is ready for the whirlwind?<br />
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Anyway, the march has just issued 'The Cairo Declaration' as follows:<br />
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<div style="color: #4c1130;">End Israeli Apartheid<br />
Cairo Declaration<br />
January 1, 2010<br />
<br />
We, international delegates meeting in Cairo during the Gaza Freedom March 2009 in collective response to an initiative from the South African delegation, state:<br />
<br />
In view of:<br />
</div><ul style="color: #4c1130;"><li>Israel`s ongoing collective punishment of Palestinians through the illegal occupation and siege of Gaza;</li>
<li>the illegal occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the continued construction of the illegal Apartheid Wall and settlements;</li>
<li>the new Wall under construction by Egypt and the US which will tighten even further the siege of Gaza;</li>
<li>the contempt for Palestinian democracy shown by Israel, the US, Canada, the EU and others after the Palestinian elections of 2006;</li>
<li>the war crimes committed by Israel during the invasion of Gaza one year ago;</li>
<li>the continuing discrimination and repression faced by Palestinians within Israel;</li>
<li>and the continuing exile of millions of Palestinian refugees;</li>
<li>all of which oppressive acts are based ultimately on the Zionist ideology which underpins Israel;</li>
<li>in the knowledge that our own governments have given Israel direct economic, financial, military and diplomatic support and allowed it to behave with impunity;</li>
<li>and mindful of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (2007)<br />
</li>
</ul><div style="color: #4c1130;">We reaffirm our commitment to:<br />
</div><ul style="color: #4c1130;"><li>Palestinian Self-Determination</li>
<li>Ending the Occupation</li>
<li>Equal Rights for All within historic Palestine</li>
<li>The full Right of Return for Palestinian refugees</li>
</ul><div style="color: #4c1130;">We therefore reaffirm our commitment to the United Palestinian call of July 2005 for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) to compel Israel to comply with international law.<br />
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To that end, we call for and wish to help initiate a global mass, democratic anti-apartheid movement to work in full consultation with Palestinian civil society to implement the Palestinian call for BDS.<br />
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Mindful of the many strong similarities between apartheid Israel and the former apartheid regime in South Africa, we propose:<br />
</div><ol style="color: #4c1130;"><li>An international speaking tour in the first 6 months of 2010 by Palestinian and South African trade unionists and civil society activists, to be joined by trade unionists and activists committed to this programme within the countries toured, to take mass education on BDS directly to the trade union membership and wider public internationally;</li>
<li>Participation in the Israeli Apartheid Week in March 2010;</li>
<li>A systematic unified approach to the boycott of Israeli products, involving consumers, workers and their unions in the retail, warehousing, and transportation sectors;</li>
<li>Developing the Academic, Cultural and Sports boycott;</li>
<li>Campaigns to encourage divestment of trade union and other pension funds from companies directly implicated in the Occupation and/or the Israeli military industries;</li>
<li>Legal actions targeting the external recruitment of soldiers to serve in the Israeli military, and the prosecution of Israeli government war criminals; coordination of Citizen`s Arrest Bureaux to identify, campaign and seek to prosecute Israeli war criminals; support for the Goldstone Report and the implementation of its recommendations;</li>
<li>Campaigns against charitable status of the Jewish National Fund (JNF).</li>
</ol><div style="color: #4c1130;">We appeal to organisations and individuals committed to this declaration to sign it and work with us to make it a reality.<br />
<br />
Please e-mail us at cairodec@gmail.com<br />
</div><div style="color: #4c1130;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #4c1130;"><span style="color: black;">Accompanying my signature and support:</span><br />
</div><div style="color: #4c1130;"><br />
</div>You have my support 100%<br />
<br />
I find the complicity of the Western World (and most especially the Arab World) surreal - unbelievable - almost like living a dream. <br />
<br />
The sheer in-your-face Orwellian inversion of language in almost everything connected with the Israel/Palestine situation when it figures at all in the public utterances of the Western Political Establishment is quite simply breath-taking. How CAN any of them actually believe what they are saying? - I ask somewhat rhetorically. Answer? - THEY DON'T. The High Offices of State in the West require that those appointed or aspiring to them sacrifice any and all principles and considerations of common humanity to the absolute imperative of promoting the OFFICIAL NARRATIVE OF EVENTS (unless there is a 'humanitarian intervention' on the cards of course, in which case their hearts bleed).<br />
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<i>That narrative in summary is of a misunderstood alliance of superior democratic, freedom-loving nations valiantly striving to do good in the world. </i><br />
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To describe it as 'Orwellian' does not do justice to its sheer bloody absurdity - and to maintain the Orwellian fiction, we are lied to systematically and kept in a constant state of fearful compliance by the phoney 'war on terror' - <b>War on Terror? - WAR ON TERROR !! - I ask you - Just who the hell do people think have caused more GENUINE terror and death in civilian populations throughout the world than the US/ISRAELI/UK military this past decade?</b><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>And to cap it all, the man responsible for more terror, death, bombing and general mayhem than any other individual on the planet for the year in question, has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize! - and what's more actually accepted it with a <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/10/barack-obama-nobel-acceptance-speech">toe-curlingly embarrassing justification for perpetual 'just' war.</a><br />
</i></span><br />
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You really couldn't make this stuff up could you? In a rational world any attempt to do so - as a work of fiction say - would simple be laughed at as absurd. But WE are required to live and believe it!<br />
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In my dotage I have learned to be thoroughly ashamed of having to hold a 'British' passport. - and when I see puppets like the fresh-faced boy Milliband earnestly trying to patronise me - let alone that reptile Blair - I could be physically sick.<br />
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Sorry about the rant. It is cathartic - Not to mention TRUE.<br />
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The very best wishes to you and your efforts.Sabretachehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11652655872639394084noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27275728.post-81827128369039362042009-12-30T16:46:00.012+00:002009-12-30T20:57:13.368+00:00Conspiracy and the Morality of Politicians.I've been a regular reader of Jean Michael Greer's Blog - '<a href="http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/">The Archdruid Report'</a> - since its inception. The guy has a handle on the implications of 'peak-oil/energy' for our globalised industrialised economic/political systems that produces regular keen insights into the way things are likely to unfold. His analyses of human societies' handling of unwelcome change is deeply thoughtful and clearly springs from extensive pondering of the issues it raises. Put all that together with with a certain gift of expression and you have a highly informative and readable blog.<br />
<br />
So it happened that I was enjoying<a href="http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2009/12/political-ecology-of-collapse-part.html"> his latest piece </a>when I was struck by a couple of jarring notes. They are the subject of this post.<br />
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Jean Michael is clearly a gentle man who seeks the best in people. I have no issue with that and admire him for it. But it was his repeated use of the term 'Conspiricist' and his assertion (to paraphrase) that politicians are broadly representative of the populations that they spring from - good and bad - that jarred.<br />
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Firstly the term 'Conspiracist'. Like other pejoratives, (Holocaust denier, Anti-semite, Communist, Fascist Flat-Earther etc) its use is generally intended as a debate changer by making those it is applied to appear 'beyond the pale' or 'ridiculous' and thus unworthy of a hearing. So, what is it supposed to mean? and why is it ranked right up there with those other powerful debate changers?<br />
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Jean Michael uses it to dismiss those who he sees as proposing wide-ranging or all-encompassing conspiracies as having a significant role in human affairs. Put that way it seems to me that the 'anti-conspiracists' are the ones with some explaining to do. At the most basic level of meaning, it really ought to be beyond dispute that conspiracy by constituent cliques and cabals prior to <b>ANY</b> type of minuted, publicly accountable meeting or action - from the lowly local club right up to the highest reaches of government decision-making - is actually the driving force behind pretty much any and all collective human endeavour. IOW the Public Agenda is largely driven and determined by hidden, private agendas that are furthered by conspiracy. It is simply the way the world works.<br />
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<b>So why is it that the terms 'conspiracist' and 'conspiracy theorist' have become such powerful debate-clinching pejoratives? </b><br />
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Since it is invariably applied to those suggesting conspiracy and complicity by elements of the State in violence against its own people, I suggest that it has to do with peoples' overwhelming need to believe in the basic good intent of the State, its Government and Agencies. Granted they can be stupid, bungling, incompetent - even corrupt at times, but the idea that they would or could <b>EVER</b> act deliberately and with calculation against the interests of the general population, let alone be involved in persistent gross deception and/or deliberate acts of domestic terrorism, is simply too abhorrent and downright scary to countenance - And that in spite of overwhelming evidence that latter day Western Governments are literally up to their necks in all of those things.<br />
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<b>Which brings me to the morality of politicians.</b><br />
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At the outset of a political career and discounting the allegiances that political dynasties impose, I guess the aggregate of wannabe politicians are indeed representative of the aggregate of the populations they spring from. Self-evident really and in that sense Jean Michael is quite right in his assertion. However, it is the attributes required to produces a 'successful' political career that are the nub of the matter. 'Successful' here meaning one that achieves ministerial/cabinet/Privy Council Rank in the UK or their equivalents elsewhere.<br />
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I suggest that, whatever genuinely altruistic public-service ideals may originally have motivated a politician or 'public servant', it is the progressive compromise and ultimate abandonment of any such principles that is the sine-qua-non of elevation to the high offices of State. The career progression of such an individual can be likened to the degrees of initiation bestowed by a Masonic Order. Following initial elevation by the masses, any further advancement is by invitation and appointment by superior initiates. Ability and merit may have a bearing on the matter but if so, it is ability and merit in the promotion of the official narrative of events and the State's part in them that is the crux of the matter. Such narratives effortlessly accommodate the divisions between the major political parties which boil down to little more than froth. But on their substance, no departure from orthodoxy is tolerated. <br />
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<b><i>Thus, an alliance of superior, freedom-loving democracies is valiantly striving to fight the evil of terrorism and generally to do good in the world; with its heroic armed forces sacrificing their lives selflessly in multiple distant desert countries that we might avoid having to fight their malign evil in our own lands.</i></b><br />
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Take a step back and try to look at that as might a visitor from another world - or better yet as a young innocent staring at his naked Emperor. It is so self-evidently absurd as to be risible, yet it IS the basic official narrative of the early 21st century, lapped up by a fearful, insecure and gullible population. It is trotted out endlessly by mainstream political parties and media of ALL persuasions in the manner almost of a religious creed and woe-betide anyone - especially an ambitious politician - who dares question it.<br />
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It is the sordid realities behind that and other absurd 'official narratives' that the ambitious politician is gradually initiated into such that, by the time the higher degrees are reached, there is little of principle left in the initiate beyond defence of the existing power structures at any price. My latest (somewhat seasonal) analogy for the relationship between the State and its general population is that, as a matter of rigid orthodoxy, communication is conducted around an intellectual and emotional framework not unlike that of a parent and 5 year old child but absent any altruistic/parental bond - such that the official narratives of most events of importance are massaged to a level of factual accuracy resembling those of Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. In other words - in the interests of an over-riding imperative to maintain 'The System' and protect its corrupt, self-serving interests, we are lied to systematically as a matter of time-honoured and sanctified practice - <b>PERIOD</b>. In the immortal words of that venerable Irish muckraker Caud Cockburn therefore: <b><i>"Never believe anything until it has been officially denied"</i></b>.<br />
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On the narrow subject of 'conspiracy theories' and terrorism, I personally doubt more than about 10% of all so-called terrorist outrages in the West occur without deep complicity on the part of our SIS's and their 'assets' - its called '<b><i>calibrating the level of violence and tension the better to further the policy agenda and secure compliance from a fearful population'</i></b>, and anyone who thinks that an exaggeration - or more likely absurd - should first of all read up on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio"><b>'Operation Gladio'</b></a> as a primer before moving onto the more outrageous stuff. The information is readily available; it is just studiously ignored, other than as the occasional butt of ritualised ridicule, by the MSM. <br />
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So personally and in spite of JMG's admonitions, I'll stick with <b>'conspiracy theory'</b> rather than <b>'coincidence theory'</b> as a consistently superior explanation of events, with States, their Governments and especially their SI Agencies - <i>per Spymaster extraordinaire Robert Cecil and his foolhardy dissident victim Guy Fawkes</i> - as the model conspirators.Sabretachehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11652655872639394084noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27275728.post-90787634838020886742009-12-23T10:23:00.025+00:002009-12-24T20:54:59.081+00:00Operation Cast Lead one year onFor those interested in the reality, systematically hidden and obfuscated by the 'Official Narrative', of major events and the motives driving them, <a href="http://leninology.blogspot.com/2009/12/operation-cast-lead-one-year-on.html"> 'Lenin's Tomb' </a>is well worth monitoring. It is run by Richard Seymour whose recent book 'The Liberal Defence of Murder' is an impressive forensic dissection of the pathologies that are manipulated by 'The System' to secure cheer-leading support from otherwise sensible, well meaning people for the West's multiple latter-day imperial wars on those who decline to see things our way.<br />
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Richard is something of an activist himself, apparently believing in the possibility of systemic change for the better through political action - and all power to him for that. I, on the other hand, am a crotchety old grand-dad who has finally come to accept that any such meaningful change is - and will continue to be - fought tooth and nail, with all the means at its disposal (which are mind-bogglingly vast) by our present deeply corrupt, self-serving system. The net effect being that meaningful change will only come about through events of a nature even more cataclysmic than say the French or Russian Revolutions were in their day. Which in turn is to say through massive hardship and the destruction of much of what we pompously imagine to be our oh-so-civilised, 'advanced', and superior way-of-life.<br />
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Reading the Runes I think I divine the stirrings of just such a cataclysm in the making. It manifests in the <a href="http://sabretache.blogspot.com/2009/11/whistling-past-graveyard.html#links"><i>'whistling past the graveyard'</i></a> posturing of just about every Establishment Spokesman and his dog, in face of the relentless convergence of population growth, environmental degradation and peak oil/energy (in fact peak just-about-everything - <b>especially</b> debt). I'm less sure that the real powers behind the throne are <i>'whistling past the graveyard'</i> though. Rather, they are quietly, deceptively but systematically preparing for the cataclysm they know to be immanent. For example: there are some pretty self-evident Police-States in the making; Nato/US/Israel now account for 75% of the world's military expenditure (it's called 'defence' dontcha know?); The US garrisons the entire planet with over 1,000 non-domestic military bases and a military command for every corner of the globe (not to mention space and their shiny new <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Cyber_Command">'Cyber-warfare' command</a>) - '<i><b>the enemy</b></i>' is everywhere you see, and they just gotta seek him out. (They simply <b>HAVE</b> to have enemies and if they seem a bit thin on the ground, why then, they'll just coach, arm and manufacture a few, easy-peasy); The 'Military/Industrial-Wall Street Complex' calls all the shots whilst its budgets remain sacrosanct and the general population suffers a relentlessly grinding decline in its wealth, job/financial security and everything that defines its 'non-negotiable way of life'. <b>The Super-rich get super-richer;</b> Joe Average struggles to stagnate at best; whilst prospects for the vast underclass of globalised humanity ever participating in what the West takes for granted have vanished like the mirage they always were. Meanwhile, the systematic persecution of <b>'Untermenschen'</b> such as the Palestinians (a grimly appropriate term in this context) hardly registers on the delicate but purblind consciences of Western Politicians at all. IOW, if you covet a political career, then there are things; really important things; things vital to the very survival of humanity in fact - that simply cannot be discussed outside an absurd orthodoxy that is rigidly enforced. The Emperor is indeed naked.<br />
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<i><b>AND --- WE - the sheeple are seriously enjoined to believe that all this is part-and-parcel of a 'War on Terror' with a benign, well-intentioned but misunderstood Western Alliance selflessly seeking to do good in the world !!!!</b></i><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b>Jesus H Christ! - talk about Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy to a 5 year old ! - and STILL we lap it up. What the Hell is wrong with us?</b></span><br />
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<b>Anyway, back to Lenin's Tomb and the subject of this post.</b><br />
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<div style="color: #4c1130;">Operation Cast Lead was launched on 27 December 2008 on the <a href="http://leninology.blogspot.com/2008/12/qassam-rockets-myths.html"><span style="font-weight: bold;">spurious pretext</span></a> of preventing Hamas <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10123.shtml"><span style="font-weight: bold;">rocket fire</span></a> into southern Israel. It followed months of pledges by senior Israeli ministers to <a href="http://leninology.blogspot.com/2008/02/israeli-minister-on-case-for-levelling.html"><span style="font-weight: bold;">level </span></a>parts of Gaza, and inflict a <a href="http://leninology.blogspot.com/2008/02/israel-threatens-holocaust-of.html"><span style="font-weight: bold;">"Holocaust"</span></a> on the territory. It followed Israel's most explicit <a href="http://leninology.blogspot.com/2008/12/how-truce-ends.html"><span style="font-weight: bold;">violation</span></a> of a ceasefire agreement on November 4th, when it launched a series of raids on Gaza. It followed the intensitification of a <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/24/israelandthepalestinians-humanrights"><span style="font-weight: bold;">blockade</span></a> that left <a href="http://static.rnw.nl/migratie/www.radionetherlands.nl/currentaffairs/region/middleeast/081202-children-hungry-gaza-redirected"><span style="font-weight: bold;">9 out of 10 Gazans</span></a> living below the poverty line, with some families forced to live on grass to survive. Mary Robinson, a former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and fairly conventional supporter of a two-state settlement, <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7708670.stm"><span style="font-weight: bold;">described</span></a> how the blockade was affecting Gaza: "their whole civilisation has been destroyed, I'm not exaggerating ... It's almost unbelievable that the world doesn't care while this is happening." There is a great deal more to be said about context but, suffice to say, the aggression was merely the latest phase in a war on the civilian population of Gaza, a sustained punishment beating it was enduring for resistance: specifically, for having maintained its elected government despite a successful Israeli-backed Fatah <a href="http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKMAC32084020070614?src=061407_1507_TOPSTORY_crisis_in_gaza"><span style="font-weight: bold;">putsch</span></a> in the West Bank in the summer of 2007, which one would infer had been planned since Hamas' electoral <a href="http://leninology.blogspot.com/2006/01/hamas-and-liberal-terror.html"><span style="font-weight: bold;">victory</span></a> in early 2006. That this punishment is continuing - of which, more later - is reason in itself to revisit the last year's blitzkrieg.<br />
<br />
The brutality of Operation Cast Lead <a href="http://mondoweiss.net/2009/03/realist-roger-cohen-of-course-gaza-travesty-has-granted-legitimacy-to-hamas.html"><span style="font-weight: bold;">shocked</span></a> some of Israel's most devoted supporters, and <a href="http://leninology.blogspot.com/2009/01/is-gaza-attack-driving-wedge-through.html"><span style="font-weight: bold;">divided</span></a> the pro-Israel camp. Even as it was happening, some of the most shocking accounts of IDF conduct were emerging. These <a href="http://news.antiwar.com/2009/01/08/red-cross-israeli-behavior-in-gaza-shocking/"><span style="font-weight: bold;">included</span></a> sealing off a neighbourhood, bombing and shelling it, blocking medical and humanitarian entry, and knowingly leaving children to slowly die next to their already deceased relatives. They <a href="http://heathlander.wordpress.com/2009/01/06/about-those-hamas-targets/"><span style="font-weight: bold;">included</span></a> the targeting of hospitals and <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/04/paramedic-killed-israeli-shell-gaza"><span style="font-weight: bold;">ambulances</span></a>, and the <a href="http://leninology.blogspot.com/2009/01/lie-you-werent-supposed-to-believe.html"><span style="font-weight: bold;">repeated</span></a> targeting of <a href="http://maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=35047"><span style="font-weight: bold;">schools</span></a>. UN casualty statistics reflected a particularly onerous burden on the civilian population - 42% of those killed, they said, were women and children. Some news reports falsely suggested that this meant that 'only' 42% of those killed were civilians, which involved the racist supposition that Palestinian males over 16 no longer count as civilians with the full protection of humanitarian norms and laws. As it happens, the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7811386.stm"><span style="font-weight: bold;">re-definition of the category of 'civilian'</span></a> was integral to Israeli doctrine during the war, and it was essential to their military plans. The 'Dahiya Doctrine', the parameters of which informed Israeli operations in Gaza, involved precisely this shift, as General Gadi Eisenkot <a href="http://leninology.blogspot.com/2009/01/dahiya-doctrine-in-gaza.html"><span style="font-weight: bold;">explained</span></a>:<br />
</div><blockquote style="color: #4c1130;">"What happened in the Dahiya quarter in Beirut in 2006 will happen in every village from which Israel is fired upon. We will apply disproportionate force upon it and cause great damage and destruction there," he said. "<span style="font-style: italic;">From our standpoint, these are not civilian villages, they are military bases</span>."<br />
<br />
“This is not a recommendation. This is a plan. And it has been approved”. [Emphasis added]<br />
</blockquote><span style="color: #4c1130;">Such </span><a href="http://leninology.blogspot.com/2009/01/at-what-point-does-it-become-genocide.html" style="color: #4c1130;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">genocidal logic</span></a><span style="color: #4c1130;">, congruent with the promises of a 'Holocaust', was consistently expressed in Israel's methods and targeting, not to mention the </span><a href="http://leninology.blogspot.com/2009/01/friendly-warning-from-idf.html" style="color: #4c1130;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">uplifting sentiments</span></a> expressed by IDF soldiers while defacing Palestinian homes. Since the end of Operation Cast Lead, we have had numerous reports into Israel's conduct of the operation, though less attention has been paid to the supposed rationale behind the attacks. The <a href="http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/specialsession/9/docs/UNFFMGC_Report.pdf" style="color: #4c1130;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Goldstone Report</span></a><span style="color: #4c1130;"> [pdf] has documented in forensic detail an astonishing level of premeditated and sadistic violence toward civilians. It documented deliberate attacks on hospitals, mosques, and perhaps most chillingly the assault on the al-Samouni area resulting in the calculated massacre of the al-Samouni family. Focusing on 36 specific incidents of such aggression, with detailed consideration of evidence in each case, it concluded that the war had either in whole or in part been against the "people of Gaza as a whole". This was quite remarkable for such a report, produced by a UN team led by a </span><a href="http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1251804583376&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull" style="color: #4c1130;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">"Zionist" who "loves Israel"</span></a><span style="color: #4c1130;">. It also concluded that "the operations were in furtherance of an overall policy aimed at punishing the Gaza population for its resilience and for its apparent support for Hamas". As a consequence of such conclusions, the report demanded that Israel should pay reparations to the Palestinians affected by its actions, noting that its internal structures left few avenues open for Palestinians to sue for reparations themselves. It also encouraged the UN to refer the report to the ICC, and called on the ICC to act on legal appeals from the "Government of Palestine". Predictably, the report was subject to a barrage of ignorant rubbish, suggesting that it was the result of a mission biased against Israel (forgetting that its remit actually included studying alleged war crimes by armed Palestinian groups), and that its findings were based </span><a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article6879387.ece" style="color: #4c1130;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">"largely on interviews with Hamas"</span></a><span style="color: #4c1130;"> (utter garbage). Numerous rebuttal websites have been set up, including a rather slick one by </span><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=CAMERA" style="color: #4c1130;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">CAMERA</span></a><span style="color: #4c1130;">, with the aim of blowing smoke over the findings. But all of this is so much acting out by an increasingly bellicose and shrill minority.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;">One point that the Goldstone report also emphasised was that the punishment of the Palestinian population was continuing in the form of a blockade, which it considered to be "collective punishment". On Sunday, a </span><a href="http://www.amnesty.org.uk/uploads/documents/doc_20012.pdf" style="color: #4c1130;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">new report</span></a><span style="color: #4c1130;"> [pdf] by numerous NGOs including Amnesty, Christian Aid, CAFOD, Oxfam, Trocaire and Medical Aid for the Palestinians looks at the impact of the blockade. Its main conclusions are </span><a href="http://www.icrc.org/web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/htmlall/palestine-gaza-update-211209?opendocument" style="color: #4c1130;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">shared</span></a><span style="color: #4c1130;"> by the International Committee of the Red Cross. It finds that all attempts to regenerate Gazan society and economy since Operation Cast Lead have been frustrated by the ongoing blockade. Most of the $4bn of international donor money has not been spent, not for lack of determination, but because the conditions of the blockade make it impossible to carry out the necessary reconstruction:</span><br />
<blockquote style="color: #4c1130;">"the civilian population and the United Nations and aid agencies that aim to help them are prohibited from importing materials like cement or glass for reconstruction in all but a handful of cases". <br />
</blockquote><span style="color: #4c1130;">The inability to reconstruct damaged homes has left tens of thousands displaced, some living in tents.</span><br />
<blockquote style="color: #4c1130;">"And this is to say nothing of the backlog of need from those homes severely damaged in previous military actions, those new houses left half-built due to lack of materials and existing properties condemned as unhygienic or unsafe to live in that cannot be replaced." <br />
</blockquote><span style="color: #4c1130;">Not only are homes not being rebuilt, but power stations necessary to maintain production, keep hospitals and public services functioning, and maintain sanitary water, remain destroyed. Israel regularly refuses to allow generators into Gaza. And industries are going idle. 120,000 jobs in the private sector were lost because of the blockade. Even before Operation Cast Lead, "98% of industrial operations in Gaza were idle because of the blockade". Because of the destruction to power stations, sewage systems and water piping, 8,000 people lack any access to piped water at all, and the remainder of the population has to suffer sporadic supplies when the power cuts out as it regularly does: water shortages and power cuts are particularly liable to take place during winter. The shortage of clean water is causing a shocking rise in diarrhoea, which is behind 12% of young deaths.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;">The blockade has reduced the categories of goods entering Gaza from approximately 4,000 to about 35, and those items that are theoretically allowed in (some medicines, basic foods and humanitarian supplies) are subject to arbitrarily shifting restrictions. The blockade had also severely restricted agricultural production, and Operation Cast Lead destroyed 17% of cultivated land in Gaza. Israel's imposition of a depopulated 'buffer zone' "inside of the walls and fences surrounding Gaza" has resulted in between "a quarter and a third of Gaza's agricultural land" being subsumed into the 'buffer zone'. The combined effect of Cast Lead and the ongoing blockade has been to put 46% of Gazan agricultural land out of production.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;">While southern Israel </span><a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gziFbElFrDzZYBrIOIcjQi8jE62wD9CISD4O1" style="color: #4c1130;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">"blossoms"</span></a><span style="color: #4c1130;">, Gaza is constantly regressing in its ability to reproduce itself as a society and economy. Earlier this year, a leaked UN report said that the ongoing blockade was resulting in a process of </span><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/18/israel-gaza-blockade-reconstruction" style="color: #4c1130;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">"de-development"</span></a><span style="color: #4c1130;">, with "increased aid dependency" among the population - already, 75% of Gazans depend on food aid to survive. The report by Amnesty et al concludes, with language that is becoming all too familiar, that the blockade amounts to "collective punishment". It is worse than collective punishment, and that tag will simply not do any more. Baruch Kimmerling has characterised Israel's war on the Palestinians as 'politicide': an attempt to wholly destroy the fabric of any potential Palestinian state. But, as Martin Shaw has written, the proliferation of -cides with respect to the crimes of war - femicide, democide, infanticide, etc - really adverts to the genocidal logic that they are all too often embedded in. The logic of Israeli policy vis-a-vis the Palestinians is dictated by its twin drives to maintain control of Gaza and the West Bank with the long term aim of incorporating both as official Israeli territories, and its determination to remain a 'Jewish state' with a substantial Jewish majority. Either the Israeli state must give up one of these goals (and no one is applying sufficient pressure to make it do so), or it must find a way of disposing of the Palestinian population. </span><a href="http://leninology.blogspot.com/2008/03/israel-planning-ethnic-cleansing-in.html" style="color: #4c1130;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Ethnic cleansing</span></a><span style="color: #4c1130;"> is one such means. Imposing conditions such as are intended to make life and its reproduction almost impossible, and unbearable, is another. The war on the population of Gaza is an attempt to break Palestinian resistance by means of destroying, in part, the aforementioned population.</span>Sabretachehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11652655872639394084noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27275728.post-32765276371114605072009-12-19T11:05:00.010+00:002009-12-19T12:19:29.052+00:00Yad Va Shame on You!<div style="color: #4c1130;"><span style="font-size: large;">"Holocaust studies is an emerging pseudo intellectual, academic trend. It basically allows rabid Zionists to elevate their discussions on ‘what is really wrong with the goyim’ into a university qualification."</span><br />
</div><br />
<b>Another typically 'on-the-button' observation</b> from the Jewish jazz musician Gilad Azmon in his latest piece on <a href="http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/12/debunking-antisemitism-studies-and-yehuda-bauer-in-particular/">'Dissident Voice'</a> subtitled: <b>"<span style="font-size: small;">Debunking Antisemitism Studies and Yehuda Bauer in Particular</span></b><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>"</b></span></span>. The piece continues:<br />
<blockquote style="color: #4c1130;">Anti-Semitism Studies has the potential to be a valuable field of research if it could, for example, elaborate and scrutinize Jewish culture and history in an attempt to grasp what it is that evokes anti Jewish feeling. It could try to establish if there is a Jewish ideological, political or cultural pattern that may be amended. In fact, early Zionists<sup><a class="footnote-link footnote-identifier-link" href="http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/12/debunking-antisemitism-studies-and-yehuda-bauer-in-particular/#footnote_0_13038" id="identifier_0_13038" title="Here are a few examples of Early Zionists take on Anti-Semitism: Theodor Herzl, Max Nordau, Ze’ev Jabotinsky">1</a></sup> tried to dwell on the subject. They tried to diagnose the ‘cause’ of Anti-Semitsm so that they might learn why it invariably and repeatedly matured into host cultures regarding Jews as a parasitic force. Early Zionists insisted that Aliya would bring about a new productive, ethical and civilized new Jew. <br />
</blockquote><blockquote style="color: #4c1130;"><i><b>However, contemporary Anti-Semitism scholars have a very different agenda in mind. They build their research on the axiom that Jews are categorically innocent.</b><b> They then try to understand why the Goyim behave immorally and even murderously. But here is a clear embarrassing catch: considering humanity is comprised of Goyim, Anti-Semitism scholars who attempt to grasp ‘what is wrong with the Goyim’ actually ask ‘what is wrong with humanity?’ This is in fact a legitimate question, unless we leave one conspicuous group out.</b></i> <br />
</blockquote><blockquote style="color: #4c1130;">As things stand, in the new Judeo-centric ‘academic’ field namely ‘Anti-Semitism studies,’ a Zionist is there to review the Goy as a pathological case. This is slightly odd to say the least. It is even peculiar that such departments exist in Yale and at a London University. However, since academic institutes thrive on corporate donations and other funding sources, we can no longer expect the academic world to lead intellectual discourse or even commit itself to any form of ethical integrity.<br />
</blockquote>Telling stuff eh? and <a href="http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/12/debunking-antisemitism-studies-and-yehuda-bauer-in-particular/">the whole piece really is worth the read time</a> - as is pretty well all the output from <a href="http://www.gilad.co.uk/">Mr Azmon.</a>Sabretachehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11652655872639394084noreply@blogger.com0