Translated statement

Within hours after the attack, someone using the name "Nur al-Iman" and identified as a "new guest", posted a statement on the Qal3ah website which claimed responsibility on behalf of "The Secret Organisation Group of al-Qaeda of Jihad Organisation in Europe". The following is a translation of the statement:

In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate, may peace be upon the cheerful one and undaunted fighter, Prophet Muhammad, Allah's peace be upon him.

Nations of Islam and Arab nations: Rejoice, for it is time to take revenge against the British Zionist crusader government in retaliation for the massacres Britain is committing in Iraq and Afghanistan. The heroic Mujahideen [holy warriors] have carried out a blessed raid [ghazw] in London. Britain is now burning with fear, terror and panic in its northern, southern, eastern, and western quarters.

We have repeatedly warned the British government and people. We have fulfilled our promise and carried out our blessed military raid in Britain after our Mujahideen exerted strenuous efforts over a long period of time to ensure the success of the raid.

We continue to warn the governments of Denmark and Italy and all the crusader governments that they will be punished in the same way if they do not withdraw their troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. He who warns is excused.

Allah says: "If ye will aid (the cause of) Allah, He will aid you, and plant your feet firmly"

The quotation at the end of the statement is from the Qur'an, in Sura 47:7. The translation of the quotation given here is by Abdullah Yusuf Ali.

The term ghazw, here translated as "raid", has historically often been used in Islamic contexts with the connotations of an attack on the enemies of an Islamic state seen as a meritorious act; those who carry out such attacks (ghazawat) are called ghazis.

This anonymous post has come under dispute as MSNBC TV translator Jacob Keryakes noted that the claim of responsibility contained an error in one of the Quranic verses it cited. That suggests that the claim may be phony, he said. "This is not something al-Qaida would do," he said.

Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades

A second claim of responsibility was posted on the Internet on 9 July, claiming the attacks for another Al Qaeda-linked group, Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades. The group has previously falsely claimed responsibility for events that were the result of technical problems, such as the 2003 London blackout and Northeast Blackout of 2003.

Inquiries Act 2005

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Inquiries Act 2005 (c.12) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It came into effect in the United Kingdom on 7 June 2005. According to the British government, the Act "is designed to provide a framework under which future inquiries, set up by Ministers into events that have caused or have potential to cause public concern, can operate effectively to deliver valuable and practicable recommendations in reasonable time and at a reasonable cost." [1]. The British parliament's Joint Committee on Human Rights has voiced concerns about certain aspects of the Act [2], as have the Law Society of England and Wales.

Amnesty International has asked members of the British judiciary not to serve on any inquiry held under the Act, as they contend that "any inquiry would be controlled by the executive which is empowered to block public scrutiny of state actions." [3]

The family of Pat Finucane, a solicitor killed by loyalist paramilitaries in Belfast in suspicious circumstances, have announced they will not be co-operating with a forthcoming inquiry into the events surrounding his death if it is held under the terms of the Act.

The Canadian Judge Peter Cory, who was commissioned by the British and Irish governments to investigate the possibility of state collusion in six high-profile murders, is also a critic. He recommended public inquiries into four of the killings, but has strongly condemned the legislation that quickly followed. In a letter read at a hearing of the United States House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa, Global Human Rights and International Operations Subcommittee while the legislation was pending, Cory stated:

The chairman of the hearing, Representative Chris Smith, declared that "the bill pending before the British Parliament should be named the 'Public Inquiries Cover-up Bill.'"[4]

Indeed, the Act repealed the entirety Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act 1921 which had allowed Parliament to vote on a resolution establishing a tribunal that had "all such powers, rights, and privileges as are vested in the High Court"[5] and placed the power solely under the control of a Minister.[6]

The policy, devised in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, offered ­guidance to MI5 and MI6 officers ­questioning detainees in Afghanistan who they knew were being mistreated by the US military.

British intelligence officers were given written instructions that they could not "be seen to condone" torture and that they must not "engage in any activity yourself that involves inhumane or degrading treatment of prisoners".

But they were also told they were not under any obligation to intervene to prevent detainees from being mistreated.

"Given that they are not within our ­custody or control, the law does not require you to intervene to prevent this," the policy said.

The policy almost certainly breaches international human rights law, according to Philippe Sands QC, one of the world's leading experts in the field, because it takes no account of Britain's obligations to avoid complicity in torture under the UN convention against torture. Despite this, the secret policy went on to underpin British intelligence's ­relationships with a number of foreign intelligence agencies which had become the UK's allies in the "war against terror".

The policy was set out in written instructions sent to MI5 and MI6 officers in January 2002, which told them they might consider complaining to US officials about the mistreatment of detainees "if circumstances allow".

Blair indicated his awareness of the existence of the policy in the middle of 2004, a few weeks after publication of photographs depicting the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

It was around this time, David ­Miliband, the foreign secretary, told MPs on ­Tuesday, that the policy was changed, becoming more "comprehensive and formal".

In a letter to the intelligence and ­security committee (ISC), the group of MPs and peers that provides political ­oversight of the UK's security and ­intelligence ­services, on May 24 2004, Blair said that rather than considering making a ­complaint, "UK intelligence personnel interviewing or witnessing the interviews of detainees are instructed to report if they believe detainees are being treated in an inhumane or degrading way".

The Guardian has learned from a ­reliable source that MI5 officers are now instructed that if a detainee tells them that he or she is being tortured they should never return to question that person.

It remains unclear what Blair knew of the policy's consequences. The Guardian has repeatedly asked him what role he played in approving the policy, whether he was aware that it had led to people being tortured, and whether he made any attempt to change it.

His spokesman said: "It is completely untrue that Mr Blair has ever authorised the use of torture. He is opposed to it in all circumstances. Neither has he ever been complicit in the use of torture.

"For the record, also, Mr Blair believes that our security services do a superb job of protecting our country in difficult ­circumstances and that it is not surprising following the attacks of September 11 2001 that there was a heightened sense of the dangers the country faced from terrorism. None of this amounts to condoning the use of torture."

When the Guardian pointed out to Blair that it had not suggested he had authorised the use of torture, but had asked whether he had played any role in the approval of a policy that led to people being tortured, his spokesman replied: "Tony Blair does not condone torture, has never authorised it nor colluded in it at any time." But there is growing evidence of MI5's ­collusion in the torture of British ­terrorism suspects in Pakistan, where officers of the Inter-Services Intelligence ­directorate (ISI), an agency whose routine use of ­torture has been widely documented, were asked by MI5 to detain British ­citizens and put questions to them prior to an ­interrogation by MI5 officers.

Two high court judges say they have seen "powerful evidence" of the torture of Binyam Mohamed, the British ­resident who returned from Guantánamo Bay in February, before he was questioned by an MI5 officer in May 2002.

In a separate case, a court has heard that MI5 and Greater Manchester police drew up a list of questions to be put to another man, Rangzieb Ahmed, who was detained by the ISI in August 2006, despite having reason to believe that he was in danger of being tortured.

By the time Ahmed was deported to the UK after a lengthy period of unlawful detention three of his ­fingernails were missing.

Several other men have come forward to say they were questioned by British intelligence officers after suffering brutal torture at the hands of Pakistani agents, and there have been similar allegations of British collusion in the torture of ­British citizens in Egypt, Bangladesh and the United Arab Emirates.

While a small number of the victims were subsequently tried and convicted in the UK, most were released without charge.

International concern about ­Britain's involvement in torture has been ­mounting for some time. In February Martin Scheinin, a UN special rapporteur on human rights, reported that British intelligence ­personnel had "interviewed detainees who were held incommunicado by the Pakistani ISI in so-called safe houses, where they were being tortured".

Scheinin added that this "can be ­reasonably understood as implicitly condoning torture."

In March, after the Guardian disclosed the existence of the interrogation policy, and reported on the growing number of allegations of British collusion in torture, Gordon Brown announced that the policy was to be rewritten by the ISC.

In what was seen at Westminster as an acknowledgement that the secret policy had been open to abuse, Brown also pledged that the rewritten policy would be made public and that a former appeal court judge would monitor the ­intelligence agencies' compliance with it, and report to the prime minister each year.

On Tuesday Miliband said the existing policy, as amended in 2004, would not be published.

But the discovery that Blair was aware of the secret interrogation policy appears certain to fuel the growing demand for an independent inquiry into aspects of the UK's role in torture and rendition.

So far, those who have called for such an inquiry include the Conservative and Liberal ­Democrat leaders David ­Cameron and Nick Clegg; Ken Macdonald, a former director of public prosecutions; Lord ­Carlile of Berriew, the government's ­independent reviewer of counter-­terrorism ­legislation; Lord Howe, who was foreign secretary between 1983 and 1989 in the Thatcher government; and Lord Guthrie, a former chief of defence staff.

Creating a database of the 11million adults who work with children could ruin the lives of innocent people, the privacy watchdog warns today.

Richard Thomas, who is stepping down after more than six years as Britain’s first Information Commissioner, says he has serious concerns about the system being launched in October for the Independent Safeguarding Authority.

The ISA computer will contain detailed files on all the adults who work with children, whether professionally or as volunteers.

But it will not only record criminal convictions, but also any so-called soft intelligence on individuals – which could include unfounded allegations, rumours or gossip passed to the police or social services.

An official working for the ISA will then decide whether or not someone is fit to work with children – without the person knowing what he or she is accused of.

Mr Thomas said the database would contain ‘allegations, some rumour, some speculation’.

He added: ‘If (officials) start making wrong decisions or allows the data to get into the wrong hands the scope for damage to be done both to individuals and the system as a whole is quite considerable.’

Mr Thomas said the combination of treating rumours as relevant and the power to ban an individual from a job had the capacity to damage an innocent person in their ‘career, financially and socially’.

Last month the government quietly published the latest measure of income inequality, the Gini coefficient, for the UK. The figure tells a story of growing exploitation and mounting poverty in Britain.

The Gini coefficient can range from 0 to 1 and provides an objective measure of income inequality, which allows every country to be ranked against others and against its own past performance. A coefficient of 0 would mean income is shared equally between all individuals, whilst a coefficient of 1 would mean one person within the population has all the income and everyone else none. So a higher Gini coefficient figure indicates a higher level of inequality.

Britain’s Gini co-efficient is now 0.36, beyond the normal bounds of inequality seen in developed countries. In the United States the figure is 0.408, putting the largest economy in the world on a par with Mexico in terms of income inequality. But by European standards, the UK figure is exceptionally high. Sweden has a Gini coefficient of 0.23, Germany 0.283 and in France the figure is 0.327.

For the last three decades the Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) has produced a report on the UK Gini coefficient. The latest IFS report shows that the figure has increased from 0.25 when Thatcher came to power. The report also notes that the number of those in relative poverty, which is defined as those with an income less than 60 percent of the median, has risen over the last three years. The figure initially fell when the Labour government came to power in 1997, but is now rising consistently year on year.

“Poverty for working-age adults without dependent children is now at its highest level since the start of our comparable time series in 1961,” according to the IFS report.

Median income was £394 a week. This represents a rise of just £1 on the previous year. Median income is the level which 50 percent of the population is above and 50 percent below.

For the last six years there has been only a slow average rise in take home pay. But the IFS predict “a bleak outlook for income growth in the near future,” because of rising unemployment and stagnant earnings. Income inequality has risen (on most measures) in each of the last three years and is now at its highest level since our comparable time series began in 1961.”

The contrast between rich and poor is even starker when the mean or arithmetical average is considered. The mean earnings figure for 2007-08 was £487 a week. It is calculated that 65 percent of the population earn less than this sum.

A small proportion of the population, 1.2 million, has earnings above £1,500 a week. The incomes of Members of Parliament range up to £1,100 a week, putting them above 91 percent of the population. Only nine percent of households in the UK have a higher income. If their expenses are included in the calculation they have a higher income than 96 percent of the UK population. If they have a working partner, their household income is in the very top income bracket.

Even before the government issued the latest Gini coefficient, a Joseph Rowntree Foundation Report concluded that the measures brought in by the Labour government to address inequality were stalling.

The report issued in February stated that “child poverty remains amongst the highest in Europe,” despite the fact that the government had focused on this area. Health inequalities continued to widen, as did the gap between the top and bottom of the income scale.

“The UK’s experience in the 1980s and 1990s showed that the strategy of hoping that growth in living standards at the top would ‘trickle down’ to those at the bottom did not work. The last decade has shown that a more interventionist ‘pump up’ strategy is hard in an unequal society.”

The author of the report, Professor John Hills, director of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Exclusion, said in a Financial Times article of February 25 that the report “will disappoint those who might have hoped that a Labour government in power for over a decade would decisively reverse the gaps in society that had widened over the previous two decades.”

In 1999 the Labour government set a goal to lift three million children out of poverty. Even the government acknowledges that this target will not be reached. “Meeting the 2010 target is very difficult,” Beverley Hughes, children’s minister told the Guardian. Asked about the likely impact of the recession she said, “It is very difficult to model the impact of the recession on child poverty.”

Even before the recession, charities specializing in child poverty were deeply concerned about the situation in Britain. “Ten years ago the government committed to eradicating child poverty but these figures show progress has stalled,” Hilary Fisher, director of End Child Poverty said. “In the previous two years, child poverty actually rose. Progress has been made on child poverty, but the UK is way off track on its targets. Budget 2009 invested less than a pint of milk per week per child in family incomes and did nothing to narrow the gap.”

The IFS report concludes, “Over the past three years, average living standards have continued to stagnate, though poverty and income inequality both rose. We expect that the current recession will again lead to a change in the course of poverty inequality and average living standards. Unfortunately, the only thing we can be near-certain of is that average living standards will fall, but we cannot be sure how this pain will be shared.”

Judging by past experience it is all too clear how the pain will be shared. It will be inflicted on working people and income inequality can only get worse. There will be even less attempt on the part of government, Labour or Conservative, to assist those in financial difficulties. Money used to bail out the banks has increased government debt levels. The demands are now coming from the representatives of the financial elite that wages must be cut and savage cuts in welfare provision and public services pushed through.

New Labour and the BNP are two sides of the same Zionist coin

Major General Doron Almog, ex-head of Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip, faced private prosecution charges.

The Foreign Office says Mr Straw apologised to Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom "as a courtesy".

"He was saying he was sorry if the incident had embarrassed the Israelis," said a Foreign Office spokesman.

Mr Straw also stressed the UK Government had not played a role in the arrest warrant - which Maj Gen Almog dodged after a tip-off from an Israeli official.

The apology came when Mr Straw met Mr Shalom at the recent United Nations summit in New York.

Lawyers acting for the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights said a UK court had issued a warrant for his arrest.

Solicitors Hickman and Rose said the 54-year-old had been due to be arrested on suspicion of committing a breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention 1949, which is a criminal offence in the UK under the Geneva Conventions Act 1957.

Senior District Judge Timothy Workman had given the police authority to detain Maj Gen Almog during a hearing at Bow Street Magistrates' Court in central London, the law firm added.

The warrant relates to the bulldozing of more than 50 houses in the Rafah refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, when Maj Gen Almog was head of Israel's Southern Command.

Photographs of alleged prisoner abuse which Barack Obama is attempting to censor include images of apparent rape and sexual abuse, it has emerged.

Was Rape an Enhanced Interrogation Technique?

28.05.2009 20:52

Jacob G. Hornberger
Homepage: http://www.fff.org/blog/jghblog2009-05-26.asp

Censormedia source

Emails secured through an Freedom of Information Act request show exchanges between the British Home Office and Phorm, a highly controversial advertising company that secretly worked with British Telecom to illegally spy on users connecting to its Internet service.

Subsequently the EU has initiated legal action against Phorm for violating European privacy and consumer-protection laws.

The emails, which date back to August 2007, show that Phorm influenced the way authorities decided policy guidelines and that the company repeatedly asked the Home Office if it “has no objection to the marketing and operation of the Phorm product in the UK”.

A UK Home Office official also offered advice on how to skirt British law.

“My personal view accords with yours, that even if it is ‘interception,’ which I am doubtful of, it is lawfully authorized under section 3 by virtue of the user’s consent obtained in signing up to the ISPs terms and conditions,” an unnamed Home Office official said in an e-mail dated August 2007, talking to Phorm’s legal representative.

The Home Office wrote to Phorm again, asking: “I should be grateful if you would review the attached document, and let me know what you think.”

Another email from the Home Office stated: “If we agree this, and this becomes our position do you think your clients and their prospective partners will be comforted.”

Liberal Democrat spokeswoman on Home Affairs, Baroness Sue Miller, said: “My jaw dropped when I saw the Freedom of Information exchanges. The fact the Home Office asks the very company they are worried is actually falling outside the laws whether the draft interpretation of the law is correct is completely bizarre.”

My lecture is called “9/11: Time for a Second Look.” In suggesting that it is time for people to take a second look at 9/11, I have in mind primarily people who decided long ago that the attacks of 9/11 happened essentially the way the Bush-Cheney administration and the official reports about 9/11 said they happened, and who therefore decided that the so-called 9/11 Truth Movement, which disputes that account, is comprised of crazy conspiracy theorists with no capacity to evaluate evidence objectively. Having formed these views long ago, such people, including most journalists, have been impervious to any arguments presented by the Truth Movement. They simply roll their eyes and move on.

However, both the Truth Movement and the available evidence have changed dramatically in the past 3 years. Because of these changes, it is not rational to reject the claims of this movement out of hand, without taking a second look. If you are a person who has had such an attitude, you cannot, in the face of these changes, simply roll your eyes without exhibiting the very irrationality of which you accuse the people you dismiss as “conspiracy theorists.”

My lecture is also addressed, albeit indirectly, to fellow members of the Truth Movement. Some members have decided that, now that Bush and Cheney are out of office and the Obama administration has reversed some of their 9/11-based policies, getting the truth about 9/11 revealed is no longer so important. Other members of the movement, seeing that the Obama administration is still presupposing that al-Qaeda attacked America on 9/11, have concluded that there is no hope that this truth will ever be revealed, so we might as well give up. To such people, I suggest that getting the truth revealed is just as important as ever, because many 9/11-based policies, especially the war in Afghanistan, have not been reversed. I also suggest that, because of the changes in the political landscape combined with developments in the 9/11 Truth Movement, we now have, really for the first time, a realistic chance of getting a genuine investigation.

I turn now to my topic: Why official conspiracy theorists should take a second look at 9/11. I use the name “official conspiracy theorists” advisedly. Quite often, people who believe the official theory about 9/11 speak contemptuously of members of the Truth Movement as “conspiracy theorists.” But this is irrational. A conspiracy occurs whenever two or more people plan in secret to do something illegal, such as rob a bank or defraud a corporation’s customers. To hold a conspiracy theory about some event is simply to believe that it resulted from a conspiracy. According to the Bush-Cheney interpretation of 9/11, which became the official account, the attacks resulted from a conspiracy between Osama bin Laden and 19 members of al-Qaeda. This official account is, therefore, a conspiracy theory.

What this means is that everyone holds a conspiracy theory about 9/11. The debate about 9/11 is not, therefore, a debate between conspiracy theorists and anti-conspiracy theorists. It is simply a debate between those who accept the Bush-Cheney administration’s conspiracy theory and those who accept the alternative theory, according to which 9/11 resulted from a conspiracy within the Bush-Cheney administration.

Those who believe the official conspiracy theory, therefore, cannot rationally reject the alternative theory on the grounds that it is a conspiracy theory. To be rational, they must ask: Which theory is better supported by the relevant facts?

Let me make clear that I do not use the term “official conspiracy theorist” as a term of reproach. There’s nothing wrong with believing the official conspiracy theory. I accepted it at one time myself. It is only a problem if you are a “true believer,” meaning that you are so certain that the Bush-Cheney conspiracy theory is true that you cannot look open-mindedly at evidence that may contradict it.

Reasons to be Skeptical of the Bush-Cheney Conspiracy Theory

One reason why it is irrational to keep believing the Bush-Cheney conspiracy theory, without being willing to look at new evidence, is that there are now grounds for being skeptical of that theory that did not exist at the time this theory became imprinted on most minds.

At that time, for example, it was not known that the Bush-Cheney administration would tell enormous lies that would lead to millions of deaths, including thousands of American deaths. But we now know this. Besides the lies about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the White House after 9/11 ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to lie about the air at the World Trade Center site, saying that it was safe to breathe. As a result, about 60 percent of the people who worked in the rescue and clean-up operations are ill, if they have not died already, and the number of those who will die from these illnesses will probably exceed the number of people who died on 9/11 itself. In the face of this information, it would be difficult to claim that the Bush-Cheney administration would have been morally incapable of orchestrating 9/11 and its cover-up.

We also now have reasons, not widely known at the time, to be skeptical of the official reports.

Most people have assumed that the 9/11 Commission was run by its co-chairmen, former Republican governor Thomas Kean and former Democratic Congressman Lee Hamilton. They have thought of it, therefore, as an independent, non-partisan body. But the 9/11 Commission was actually run by Philip Zelikow. He controlled the 85-person staff and was in charge of producing of The 9/11 Commission Report. And yet he was essentially a member of the Bush-Cheney White House, being especially close to Condoleezza Rice, with whom he had co-authored a book. Thanks to a book about the 9/11 Commission by New York Times reporter Philip Shenon, we now know that Zelikow, in spite of promises to the contrary, remained in contact with Rice and also with Karl Rove, the ultimate political operator in the White House. Shenon also revealed that, before his staff had even begun its work, Zelikow had already written a detailed outline of the report that would be issued, complete with “chapter headings, subheadings, and sub-subheadings.” Shenon also revealed that Kean and Hamilton conspired with Zelikow to keep the existence of this outline a secret from the staff.

In a book they wrote about the 9/11 Commission, Kean and Hamilton criticized “conspiracy theorists” because, rather than forming their theories on the basis of the facts, they start with their theories and then look for facts to support them. By contrast, Kean and Hamilton claimed, the 9/11 Commission started with the relevant facts, not with a conclusion: We were “not setting out to advocate one theory or interpretation of 9/11 versus another,” they said. And yet, they admit, Zelikow assigned “the subject of ‘al Qaeda’ to [one of the staff’s teams],” which was told to “tell the story of al Qaeda’s most successful operation---the 9/11 attacks.” If that was not starting with a theory about 9/11, what would have been?

If the 9/11 Commission was not independent of the Bush-Cheney White House, what about NIST---the National Institute of Standards and Technology---which prepared the official reports on the destruction of the World Trade Center? NIST is an agency of the US Department of Commerce. During the years it was preparing its reports, therefore, it was an agency of the Bush-Cheney administration, run by an appointee of that administration.

Recently, a former employee of this agency has spoken out, saying that NIST had been “fully hijacked from the scientific into the political realm.” Scientists working for NIST, he says, “lost [their] scientific independence, and became little more than ‘hired guns.’”

Everything that came from the hired guns was [he added] routinely filtered through the front office, and assessed for political implications before release.

Moreover, he said, NIST’s reports on the World Trade Center also had to be approved by the National Security Agency and the Office of Management and Budget---“an arm of the Executive Office of the President”---which “had a policy person specifically delegated to provide oversight on our work.”

As a result, NIST’s reports, which say the Twin Towers and Building 7 came down without the aid of explosives, are political, not scientific, reports---as any serious examination of these reports will reveal. The authors, with their PhD’s in physics and engineering, could not possibly believe the things they have written.

The New Shape of the 9/11 Truth Movement

If reasons to take a second look at 9/11 are provided by new information about the Bush-Cheney administration and the official reports supporting its conspiracy theory, the same is true of the new shape of the 9/11 Truth Movement. At one time, it was dismissed as “a bunch of kids on the Internet.” Then after I joined the movement by publishing The New Pearl Harbor, it was dismissed as “a bunch of kids on the Internet plus an ageing theologian.” George Monbiot, writing in The Guardian, referred to members of the movement as “morons” and “idiots.” Alexander Cockburn, writing in Counterpunch, The Nation, and Le Monde Diplomatique, referred to the movement’s members as the “9/11 Conspiracy Nuts,” saying that they know nothing about the “real world,” especially about military history. Lacking “any conception of evidence,” he added, they represent “the ascendancy of magic over common sense [and] reason.”

Insofar as critics of the 9/11 movement, ignoring the fact that its early leaders included a pilot, a former police officer, a political economist, and a historian, could portray me as its head---Monbiot referred to me as its “high priest,” another left-wing critic called me its “guru”---they could somewhat plausibly portray it to the general public as a religious movement, comprised of people who know nothing about the real world. As one critic put it, “Griffin, being a theologian, is not qualified to talk about anything except myths and fairy tales.” I did reply that I should, therefore, be eminently qualified to discuss the official conspiracy theory about 9/11. Nevertheless, the 9/11 Truth Movement can be easily dismissed insofar as people retain an image of it that was formed several years ago, when it could be portrayed as led by people who have no expertise in the relevant fields.

Even if that caricature, like most caricatures, contained a grain of truth then, it is now completely false. The intellectual leadership of the 9/11 Truth Movement is now exercised by scientists and other professionals who definitely know something about the real world. Many of these professionals have formed organizations dedicated to discovering and publicizing the truth about 9/11.

A few years ago, some scientists formed the Scientific Panel for the Investigation of 9/11. Others, more recently, formed Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice, the main work of which has been carried out by physicists and chemists. Shortly thereafter, detractors of the Truth Movement said that, if there were any validity to these scientists’ claims about the World Trade Center, they would be able to get papers published in peer-reviewed scientific journals. Over the past year, scientists affiliated with Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice have published 3 papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals. The lead author of the most recent of these papers, which appeared in the Open Chemical Physics Journal, is Niels Harrit, a chemistry professor at the University of Copenhagen. These scientists, who know something about the chemical constituents of the real world, report finding many elements in World Trade Center dust that should not be there if the official theory, according to which nothing but fire and gravity brought the buildings down, were true.

A few years ago, after some physicists and chemists had joined the movement, detractors said: “They don’t really count. The question of what brought down the World Trade Center buildings is a question for engineers, and your movement doesn’t have any.” That was true in 2005. The following year, however, architect Richard Gage formed Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, and by now over 600 licensed architects and engineers have signed its petition calling for a new investigation. These are people who know about that part of the real world that consists of steel-frame high-rise buildings, and they know that the official story---according to which fires caused the Twin Towers and Building 7 to come straight down in virtual free fall---simply cannot be true. For example, Jack Keller, emeritus professor of engineering at Utah State University, who had been given special recognition by Scientific American, has said about the collapse of Building 7: “Obviously it was the result of controlled demolition.” A similar judgment has been offered by two emeritus professors of structural engineering at Switzerland’s Federal Institute of Technology, along with hundreds of other engineers and architects.

Firefighters also have expert knowledge that is relevant to what happened in New York City on 9/11, and this past year brought the formation of Firefighters for 9/11 Truth, who point out, on the basis of their professional expertise, why the NIST reports about the World Trade Center should not be believed.

There is now, moreover, an organization of Veterans for 9/11 Truth, with several former military officers. They probably, I would venture to say, know more about the real world of military affairs than does Alexander Cockburn.

Another professional organization with relevant expertise is Pilots for 9/11 Truth, which includes in its ranks many former commercial and military pilots, who call incredible the official story about why the 9/11 airliners were not intercepted. This organization has also devoted much attention to the Pentagon attack, pointing out many reasons why the official account of that attack cannot be true.

The latest of the professional organizations to form is Intelligence Officers for 9/11 Truth. One of the first people to join was William Christison, a former senior CIA official. If you are one of the many people who “just knows” that the position of the 9/11 Truth Movement is too implausible to be worth a few days of your time to study its evidence, listen to what he wrote in 2006:

I spent the first four and a half years since September 11 utterly unwilling to consider seriously the conspiracy theories surrounding the attacks of that day. . . . [I]n the last half year and after considerable agony, I’ve changed my mind. . . . 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.

The backbone of the 9/11 Truth Movement is now constituted by these professional organizations of scientists, architects, engineers, firefighters, military officers, pilots, and intelligence officers. And there are still more. The past year has witnessed the formation of Medical Professionals for 9/11 Truth, Lawyers for 9/11 Truth, Religious Leaders for 9/11 Truth, and, very recently, Political Leaders for 9/11 Truth, which already includes past or present members of the parliaments of Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Sweden, Europe, and the UK, and also a former United States governor. Accordingly, people who have thought of the movement as constituted by people who can be dismissed as conspiracy nuts, even morons and idiots, need to reevaluate---if they want their opinions to be based on the real world.

Here is the present situation---and if you are going to quote one sentence from my lecture, I would recommend this one: Among independent scientists and professionals in the relevant fields who have studied the evidence, the weight of scientific and professional opinion is now overwhelmingly on the side of the 9/11 Truth Movement. Whereas well over 1,000 such people have gone on record publicly questioning the official theory, there are virtually no scientists or professionals in the relevant fields who have gone on record in support of the official story---except for such people who are not independent, meaning that their whose livelihoods would be threatened if they refused to support the official theory. This caveat is important, because, as Sinclair Lewis famously observed: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” Except for such people, virtually everyone who has expertise in a relevant field, and who has seriously studied the evidence, rejects the official conspiracy theory. It is time, therefore, for journalists and everyone else to take a second look.

New Evidence

Journalists often say that they cannot write about an issue that is considered “old news.” They must have new evidence. Another reason why it is time for a second look at 9/11 is the existence of a wealth of new evidence. There is so much that I can mention only a small portion of it.

New Evidence from the FBI: Some of this new evidence has, amazingly, been supplied by the FBI. Although the FBI was originally the main agency creating and protecting the official account, it has recently provided several revelations that undermine this account.

One example involves one of the central pillars of the official conspiracy theory: the claim that the attacks were authorized by Osama bin Laden. That claim is still used to support the American military effort in Afghanistan, which President Obama recently encouraged Europeans to support more wholeheartedly. But if you will go to the website labeled “Most Wanted Terrorists” and turn to its page on “Usama bin Laden,” you will find that, although he is wanted for various terrorist attacks, the 9/11 attacks are not mentioned. When a member of the 9/11 Truth Movement contacted FBI headquarters to ask why not, the FBI’s Chief of Investigative Publicity replied: “[B]ecause the FBI has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11.”

Another example involves the reported telephone calls from the airliners, through which people on the ground were told that the planes had been hijacked by Middle Eastern terrorists. Some 15 people reported that they had been called by loved ones using mobile phones. United Flight 93---the plane that reportedly crashed in Pennsylvania---was by itself said to have been the source of about a dozen of these mobile phone calls. Deena Burnett alone reported having received 3 or 4 such calls from her husband, Tom Burnett. She knew he was using his mobile phone, she told the FBI, because she looked at her Caller ID and recognized his number. Most of these calls were reportedly made when the airliners were flying at 35,000 or even 40,000 feet.

Pilots and scientists in the 9/11 Truth Movement, however, pointed out that, given the mobile phone technology available in 2001, successful calls from high-altitude airliners were not possible. Defenders of the official conspiracy, such as Popular Mechanics, argued that such calls could indeed be made. But while Popular Mechanics was making this claim, the FBI was pulling the rug out from under it.

In 2006, at the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker, the FBI was required to present evidence about the phone calls from all 4 airliners. Its report said that of the 37 phone calls from Flight 93, mobile phones had been used to make only two of them, which had occurred when the plane, being ready to crash, was at a very low altitude. The FBI, in other words, implicitly supported the Truth Movement’s claim that mobile phone calls from high-altitude airliners were impossible. Popular Mechanics was left with egg on its face.

For our purposes, however, the important point is that the FBI was now saying that people such as Deena Burnett, who were certain that they had been called from mobile phones, were wrong. But how could Deena Burnett have been wrong, given the fact that she had repeatedly recognized Tom’s number on her Caller ID? The FBI, which had taken her testimony on 9/11 without disputing it, did not answer this question. The only possible answer, in any case, seems to be that the calls to Deena were faked. The technology for faking such calls did exist. There are devices with which you can fake any phone number you wish. And the technology of voice morphing had progressed to the point where it was good enough to fool even the spouse of the purported caller. By changing the official story about these phone calls, therefore, the FBI implicitly admitted that the mobile calls had been faked. And if someone was prepared to fake all the mobile calls, then surely all the reported calls were faked.

The FBI contradicted the official story even more seriously in its report on phone calls from Flight 77. The most important of all the “phone calls from the planes” were those from Barbara Olson, a well-known commentator on CNN and the wife of Ted Olson, the Solicitor General at the Department of Justice. He was the attorney who argued successfully before the Supreme Court in 2000 that the Bush-Cheney ticket should be declared the winner of the presidential election in Florida. On 9/11, Olson told CNN and the FBI that his wife, Barbara, who was on American Flight 77---the one that supposedly struck the Pentagon---had called him twice, reporting that hijackers, armed with knives and box-cutters, had hijacked the plane.

This was a very important call. It was taken as evidence that Flight 77 was still in the air, rather than, as some thought, having crashed in Ohio or a nearby state. This meant that it could have been the aircraft that damaged the Pentagon. Most of all, the idea that Muslims had killed Barbara Olson, who was a favorite with the right-wing, was instrumental in creating enthusiasm for the so-called war on terror.

However, the FBI report to the Moussaoui trial did not support Ted Olson’s claim about these calls. In its report on phone calls from Flight 77, it did mention Barbara Olson. But it said that she “attempted” one call, that it was “unconnected,” and that it, therefore, lasted “0 seconds.” This is an amazing story. The FBI is part of the Department of Justice. And yet the FBI’s 2006 report declared, in effect, that the two phone calls reported by the former solicitor general of the Department of Justice never happened. This leaves only two options. Either Ted Olson simply made up this story, or else he, like Deena Burnett and several others, was duped. Either way, one of the official conspiracy theory’s foundational stories was based on a lie.

How many people would still believe this conspiracy theory if they knew about this and the other ways in which it has been undermined by the FBI? Not very many. This illustrates my point---that most people who continue to believe the Bush-Cheney conspiracy theory about 9/11 are unaware of the dozens of facts that contradict this theory.

Building 7 of the World Trade Center

For my final illustration of this point, I will discuss the collapse of Building 7 of the World Trade Center. The Truth Movement has long considered this collapse the official conspiracy theory’s Achilles’ Heel---its most vulnerable element---for several reasons: Building 7 was not hit by a plane; it had fires on only a few floors; and it came straight down in virtual free fall, looking every bit like the kind of controlled demolition known as implosion, in which the building folds in on itself and ends up as a rather compact debris pile. Defenders of the official story clearly did not want the public to focus on the collapse of this building. The 9/11 Commission did not even mention it. After the day of 9/11 itself, this collapse was seldom if ever shown on TV until 2008, when NIST finally issued its report on it. And NIST had delayed this report year after year, releasing it only when the Bush-Cheney administration was about to leave office.

My next book will be about NIST’s report on Building 7. It will show that this report inadvertently reveals that a plausible defense of the official theory about this building, according to which it was brought down by fire alone, is impossible. To attempt this defense, NIST had to ignore various kinds of physical evidence in the World Trade Center dust, such as the existence of particles that could have been formed only at extremely high temperatures---several times higher than could have been caused by fire. It also includes elements that seem explainable only as the residue from nanothermite, which is classified as a high explosive. The dust even includes active thermitic material, discovered by physicist Steven Jones, which appears to be unreacted nanothermite. This is the conclusion of the new paper, which I mentioned earlier, for which the lead author is Copenhagen’s Niels Harrit, who is an expert in nanochemistry.

When NIST was asked whether it had checked the dust for evidence of thermite, it said No. When a reporter asked Michael Newman, a NIST spokesman, why not, he said: “because there was no evidence of that.” This circular answer led the reporter to ask: “But how can you know there’s no evidence if you don’t look for it first?” Newman gave another circular reply, saying: “If you’re looking for something that isn’t there, you’re wasting your time . . . and the taxpayers’ money.”

NIST also ignored and distorted testimonial evidence that explosions had gone off in Building 7. The most important such testimony was given by Barry Jennings of the New York City Housing Authority. As soon as the North Tower was struck that morning at 8:46, Jennings rushed, as he was supposed to do, to the 23rd floor of Building 7, which housed Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s Office of Emergency Management. But when he and Michael Hess, Giuliani’s corporation counsel, got there at about 9:00, they found that everyone had left. Calling to ask what they should do, they were told to leave the building immediately. Finding that the elevator would not work, they started running down the stairs. When they got to the 6th floor, however, a huge explosion blew the landing out from under them. Climbing back up to the 8th floor, Jennings broke a window to call for help, at which time he could see that both of the Twin Towers were still standing.

However, when Giuliani wrote about the 9/11 experience of his friend Michael Hess, he claimed that the big event, which Hess and Jennings had called an explosion, was really just some effects caused by debris from the collapse of the North Tower. It did not collapse until 10:28, so Giuliani put this big event at least an hour later than did Jennings. Giuliani’s version of this event became the official story. It was defended by NIST in its 2005 report on the Twin Towers and then, in 2008, by a BBC special on Building 7.

Jennings had told his story in an interview for the producers of Loose Change Final Cut. But before the film was released, Jennings, fearing that it would cost him his job, asked that his interview not be included, and the producers took it out. Later, however, Jennings told his story in an interview for the BBC. But the BBC placed Jennings’ story within the official timeline, making it appear as if the huge explosion he had reported was really, as the narrator put it, “just debris from a falling skyscraper.” The BBC even made it seem as if Jennings was all by himself, rather than accompanied by Hess, even though Jennings was repeatedly heard saying “we.”

This BBC program aired in July 2008. NIST, whose timeline the BBC had followed, released the first draft of its report on Building 7 the following month. Shortly before this release---evidently only two days before---Barry Jennings, who was 53 years old, died mysteriously. People who have tried to find out the details of his death have been unable to learn anything, beyond the fact that he evidently died in a hospital.

Whatever the cause of his death, it was certainly convenient. He was not around to be interviewed again, perhaps by the Loose Change producers, after the publication of NIST’s report. And the BBC was able to put out a second version of its program on the BBC, this time including Michael Hess, who since 2002 had been the vice chairman of former Mayor Giuliani’s consulting business. Hess, not surprisingly, supported the timeline defended by Giuliani, NIST, and the BBC, along with their claim that no explosions had gone off in Building 7.

To see the falsity of that timeline, however, one only has to look at the interview of Jennings by the Loose Change producers, which is now on the Internet as “Barry Jennings Uncut.” The timely and mysterious death of Jennings, moreover, may well indicate just how threatening the truth about Building 7 is to the official conspiracy theory about 9/11.

In any case, I will point out one more way in which Building 7 has proved to be the Achilles’ Heel of the Bush-Cheney administration’s conspiracy theory about 9/11.

I mentioned earlier that Building 7 came down in virtual free fall. In the first draft of its report, which was issued in August 2008 for public comment, NIST claimed that the collapse took far longer than would a free-fall collapse. It also explained why, given its theory, which is a theory of “progressive collapse,” absolute free fall would have been impossible. But David Chandler, a high-school physics teacher, produced a video showing that the building came down in absolute free fall for over two seconds. Besides putting it on the Internet, Chandler confronted NIST with his evidence at a public meeting, which was broadcast live. In its Final Report, issued in November, NIST, amazingly, conceded that Building 7 had come down in free fall for over 2 seconds. But NIST had not altered its theory. Its Final Report, therefore, NIST admitted free fall as an empirical fact while articulating a theory that simply does not allow for free fall.

This contradiction can well be seen as the ultimate self-destruction of the official conspiracy theory about 9/11, which says that Muslim terrorists brought down three buildings of the World Trade Center by flying planes into two of them.

Conclusion

I will conclude by addressing members of the 9/11 Truth Movement---both old members and any new members that this lecture may have created. Rather than letting up on our efforts to get the truth about 9/11 revealed, now is the time to work even harder. We have a new president in the White House. I suggest that the 9/11 Truth Movement’s efforts should now be directed primarily at him. He has promised to base his policies on good science and good intelligence. He is also a lawyer, a politician, and a religious man, so he may well be moved by learning that these types of people have all formed organizations calling on him to authorize a new investigation. So besides carrying forward our present activities, we should also do everything we can to bring more scientists into the movement and to build up the size of Lawyers for 9/11 Truth, Religious Leaders for 9/11 Truth, Intelligence Officers for 9/11 Truth, and especially Political Leaders for 9/11 Truth---because this is now what is most needed: Pressure from political leaders around the world to authorize a new, truly independent, investigation, through which the truth about 9/11 can be revealed, so that the policies based upon the Bush-Cheney conspiracy theory can be completely abolished.

source

The family of Ian Tomlinson, who died at the G20 protest this month, are planning to file a new complaint to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC). This will deal not with the events that led to his death but with the fog of media misinformation that followed it. It is a complaint that will go to the heart of the way in which the news media operate - to the frequently undeclared relationship between reporters and the press officers on whom they rely and, in turn, the officials on whom these spokesmen rely on for much of their raw material. And it will pose a question that both sides often prefer to ignore: can they trust each other?

There were six days of substantially false coverage about a man who apparently died of a heart attack as he walked home while a screaming mob of anarchists hurled missiles at the police officers who tried to help him. Any inquiry into this media misinformation will want to find out whether that was simply the hyperbole of ignorant reporters or the product of bad practice at the Metropolitan police, the City of London police or the IPCC.

It was the intervention of ordinary people with cameras who provided their own surveillance of the protest that first led to questions about that version of the truth. An investigation by the Guardian suggests that an inquiry may find evidence of officials giving an incomplete picture.

At 7.30pm on Wednesday 1 April, as Mr Tomlinson lay dying on the pavement near the Royal Exchange in the City of London, Sir Paul Stephenson, the commissioner of the Metropolitan police, was several miles away at a party at Peelers restaurant, on the fifth floor of New Scotland Yard, to mark the retirement of the assistant commissioner Alf Hitchcock.

According to one guest: "He kept going out into the corridor, on his mobile. He looked very unhappy, stressed."

Four hours later, at 11.36pm, Scotland Yard issued a press release (see over), that, we now know, was seriously misleading - not because it included a direct falsehood, but because it failed to include the most important part of the truth, that Mr Tomlinson died after apparently being struck and pushed to the ground by a police officer. This press release was the result of some intense argument in the Yard's press bureau, with an earlier draft having been rejected.

The final draft, we have established, was approved over the phone by a regional director at the IPCC. Both Scotland Yard and the IPCC say that the press release was the truth as they knew it that night, that nobody who was involved in producing it knew, or had reason to suspect, that Mr Tomlinson had had any contact with a police officer.

A key task for any inquiry will be to find out why, if that were so, Scotland Yard that night referred the incident to the IPCC at all. That was an unusual move, certainly not one that occurs whenever a man has a heart attack in the street and/or when police officers try to save a man's life.

The IPCC's statutory guidance, however, requires police to refer to them "incidents where persons have died or been seriously injured following some form of direct or indirect contact with the police and there is reason to believe that the contact may have caused or contributed to the death or serious injury". However, both the IPCC and Scotland Yard say there had been no allegation of contact at the time: "It was treated as an unexplained death within the area of a policing operation that would need to be properly investigated and, therefore, the IPCC were informed as is routine practice in these circumstances."

Yet senior figures at Scotland Yard last week insisted, on the condition of anonymity, that the apparent assault on Mr Tomlinson had been detected by the police control room at Cobalt Street, south London, as soon as it happened and also that it had been "phoned in" by a chief inspector on the ground. A spokesman for the Metropolitan police denied this and said that, in response to the Guardian's inquiry, they had checked with every chief inspector in the operation, none of whom said they had called in such a report. On Thursday morning, under IPCC direction, the City of London police began an inquiry into the death. They also began to brief reporters with a line that appears to have surfaced first on the day after Mr Tomlinson's death at a meeting of the Gold Command group of senior officers who had policed the G20 protest. They heard reports from officers who had visited Mr Tomlinson's family that he had been in a poor state of health.

Without waiting for a postmortem to check this, City of London police briefed reporters. "On the Thursday, their line was that the family were not surprised by the death," according to one, "and that we should stop probing because the family didn't want this. He had health problems. 'There's a history there,' they were saying."

We now know that on the following day, Friday 3 April, this idea was substantially challenged from three directions: independent witnesses told the IPCC that police had clashed with Mr Tomlinson before his death; the Guardian warned the IPCC that it had photographs of Mr Tomlinson on the pavement at the feet of riot officers, apparently remonstrating with them; and, late that night, the preliminary report of a postmortem found that Mr Tomlinson had probably died of coronary heart disease but also found a number of injuries and a substantial amount of blood in his abdomen.

On Saturday, City of London police released an account of the pathologist's report, which highlighted the heart attack, but not the injuries or the blood in Mr Tomlinson's abdomen. This reinforced the existing police narrative, with Sunday papers recycling the line that he had died of natural causes. A second postmortem has since suggested that he died as a result of an abdominal haemorrhage. The City of London police press office say that everything it gave journalists was based on the information available at the time.

That Sunday, a senior IPCC official called the Guardian to complain that a reporter had been "doorstepping" the church where the Tomlinson family had gone to mourn the dead man. This was based on information given to the IPCC by the City of London police and accepted on good faith but, on investigation, turned out to be wrong.

Two days later, on the evening of Tuesday 7 April, the Guardian posted on its website the crucial video of Mr Tomlinson being pushed to the ground, and agreed to hand over to the IPCC a copy of the video as well as printed statements from witnesses found by the newspaper.

However, when an IPCC investigator came to the Guardian, with a City of London police exhibits officer, he asked for the video to be removed from the website on the grounds that it could prejudice the police inquiry and would upset the family. The deputy editor-in-chief who met him declined and pointed out that the Tomlinson family at that moment were in another part of the building, talking to Paul Lewis, the reporter who had driven the story, and publicly thanking the paper for its help.

The IPCC was involved in a similar, but tougher, manoeuvre last week when its lawyers attempted to get an injunction to prevent Channel 4 News from using a new video of the incident. A judge refused to grant it. The IPCC last week claimed that there was a particular passage in the footage that caused them concern but declined to identify it.

The IPCC has some history of publishing misleading press releases, often apparently reflecting the police account of an incident.

In the case of a man who died in police custody in Essex in 2005, the IPCC published two press releases containing inaccuracies, which led lawyers to write to them warning that the dead man's family "can be forgiven for coming to the conclusion that those who may have something to fear from the truth are seeking to 'spin' it for public consumption in an exercise in which the IPCC is appearing to play a part". After lengthy correspondence, the IPCC published corrections to both press releases.

In another recent case, the IPCC was forced to scrap a draft press release about a man who had been shot dead by police after the family's solicitor threatened to go to court to challenge its contents as prejudicial.

The solicitor, Tony Murphy of Bhatt Murphy, said: "These reports not only risk prejudicing inquest juries, they also signal a lack of balance and a failure by the IPCC to treat the police account with a healthy degree of scepticism. The IPCC is quick to examine potential motives of the deceased but much slower to probe the police line. This is detrimental to the IPCC's independence and credibility."

The IPCC told us they have no plans to investigate media handling of the incident, whether by themselves or others, but would consider any complaint they received.

Now the home secretary wants private telecoms companies and internet service providers do the government's dirty work

ORIGINAL DOWNING ST SMEARS VICTIM RETURNS TO HAUNT NEW LABOUR

Thatcher Room
Portcullis House
Tuesday 28 April 1.45pm

Formal Evidence Session on UK Complicity in Torture

Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights

Witness: Craig Murray, former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan (currently Rector of the University of Dundee).

In 2004, Craig Murray told us that:

- The British Government was complicit in the most vicious forms of torture
- He had been the victim of a lurid smear campaign initiated by New Labour
- The government was lying about all this

In 2004, much of the public and media was not willing to accept that the government would cooperate with torture or with false allegations against an innocent man. Many still had trust in the basic honesty and decency of government.

The evidence that Craig Murray was telling the truth about torture has now become overwhelming, including from the case of Binyam Mohammed. The UK “benefited” continually from intelligence passed on from the CIA waterboarding programme and from torture in countries including Uzbekistan, Pakistan and Egypt.

Craig Murray suffered the most high profile sacking of any British Ambassador for a century. But in 2005 the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee refused to hear him in evidence, despite allowing Jack Straw to appear and attack him.

Astonishingly, this is the first time Craig Murray will ever have been allowed to give formal evidence in the UK on his grave allegations, and be questioned on the truth of his testimony.

As the Scotland Yard investigation proceeds into MI5 and MI6 collusion in 16 cases of torture, Craig Murray will argue that it is not the security service operatives, but the Ministers who set the policy – and specifically Jack Straw – who should be facing criminal charges.

Contact: Craig Murray on 07979 691085 or craigmurray@mail.ru

Transcript of Craig Murray's formal evidence statement is at

http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/03trying_again_my.html

� June 25, 2008 - 77: There were no explosives

� July 4, 2006 - Fake terrorism broadcasts planned for 7 July 2005

� January 20, 2006 - The London Tube Bombings Fantasy July 7, 2005

� July 3, 2008 - I have a few things to say

Nick Hardwick, chairman of the Independent Police Complaints Commission, gives the first interview about the death of Ian Tomlinson to Krishnan Guru-Murthy.

Hardwick said of the assault:

"We don't have CCTV footage of the incident... there is no CCTV footage, there were no cameras in the location where he was assaulted."

Speaking to More 4 News, the IPCC confirmed Hardwick's comment, saying that the CCTV cameras overlooking the incident were not working.

The investigation into the death of Ian Tomlinson will inevitably lead to an independent inquiry, lawyers say. And they believe new evidence obtained by the Guardian means the case must be referred to the Crown Prosecution Service to consider whether criminal charges should be brought against any police officers.

Tomlinson's death during the G20 protest in the City of London is already under investigation. But the Independent Police Complaints Commission, which is responsible for considering serious incidents or allegations of misconduct, has said that it is not yet carrying out its own inquiry but managing one being undertaken by the City of London police.

"If there are allegations that the death was caused or contributed to by unlawful actions of the police, then a police investigation would not be satisfactory," said Harriet Wistrich of Birnberg Peirce, the solicitors who represented the family of Jean Charles de Menezes.

"The IPCC should clearly run its own independent investigation which could lead to a referral of the case to the Crown Prosecution Service to decide whether to bring a criminal prosecution against the officers.

"If there is evidence of an assault, even if there is evidence to suggest there was a lawful defence to the assault, then it has got to be referred to the CPS."

The conduct of investigations into fatal police incidents has been under scrutiny since the death of De Menezes, who was shot by police at Stockwell tube station in 2005. In that case, an IPCC report identified serious weaknesses in the Metropolitan police's handling of critical information.

Experts fear that crucial evidence from the scene of Tomlinson's death may have been overlooked. "Speed is of the essence," Nick Bowen, a barrister, said. "It is absolutely vital that the IPCC approach every investigation of this nature with a completely open mind. In the De Menezes case, they appear to have leapt to certain conclusions presumably on the basis of information that was provided to them by the police, which they should have been sceptical about."

"If an IPCC investigation is going to be effective, then its investigators should be at the scene of the incident ensuring that evidence is preserved at the very earliest opportunity," said Jules Carey of Tuckers solicitors, who has handled a number of police complaint cases. "Cases are solved by effective early action and in this case the golden hour is long passed."

Critics say recent decisions not to prosecute officers, including the De Menezes case where the CPS decided not to charge individual officers despite the fact that the inquest jury disbelieved key parts of the officers' accounts, suggest a prosecution in the latest instance is unlikely.

Figures obtained by the charity Inquest show that in cases where an inquest has delivered a verdict of unlawful killing, there have been only seven prosecutions of officers since 1990. "If you look at the record of cases where somebody's death has been caused by actions of the police, there have been hardly any prosecutions brought," Wistrich said. "The record is really, really poor.

Questions are also being asked about the conduct of the police in the aftermath of the investigation, when contact between Tomlinson and the police - now clearly shown on the footage obtained by the Guardian - was strenuously denied.

"It is likely that there will be evidential difficulties because the incident was not promptly, immediately and independently investigated," Bowen said. "Information about the identification of the officers involved and crucial evidence relating to who may have struck Mr Tomlinson may have been lost."

As well as the potential for losing time-sensitive evidence, concerns have been raised that initial responses denying Tomlinson's contact with the police may have been misleading.

"An IPCC report on the de Menezes case was critical of what they identified as serious weaknesses by the Metropolitan police in the handling of critical information in the immediate aftermath of the Stockwell shooting," Carey said.

Guardian source

Security measures brought in after September 11 attacks 'undermined the rule of law' 

By Kim Sengupta

Her comments came on the same day as a report published by international jurists suggested that Britain and America have led other countries in "actively undermining" the rule of law and "threatening civil liberties" in the guise of fighting terrorism.

In an interview with the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia, Dame Stella said that a series of increasingly draconian policies have led British citizens to "live in fear and under a police state".

This is not to say Blair is about to be collared and marched to The Hague, where Serbs and Sudanese dictators are far more likely to face a political court set up by the west. However, an international agenda is forming and a process has begun which is as much about legitimacy as the letter of the law, and a reminder from history that the powerful lose wars and empires when legitimacy evaporates. This can happen quickly, as in the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of apartheid South Africa – the latter a spectre for apartheid Israel.

Today, the unreported “good news” is that a worldwide movement is challenging the once-sacrosanct notion that imperial politicians can destroy countless lives in the cause of an ancient piracy, often at a remove in distance and culture, and retain their respectability and immunity from justice. In his masterly Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, R L Stevenson writes in the character of Jekyll: “Men have before hired bravos to transact their crimes, while their own person and reputation sat under shelter . . . I could thus plod in the public eye with a load of genial respectability, and, in a moment, like a schoolboy, strip off these lendings and spring headlong into the sea of liberty. But for me, in my impenetrable mantle, the safety was complete.”

Blair, too, is safe – but for how long? He and his collaborators face a new determination on the part of tenacious non-government bodies that are amassing “an impressive documentary record as to criminal charges”, according to the international law authority Richard Falk. He cites the World Tribunal on Iraq, held in Istanbul in 2005, which heard evidence from 54 witnesses and published rigorous indictments against Blair, Bush and others. At present, the Brussels War Crimes Tribunal and the newly established Blair War Crimes Foundation are building a case for the former prime minister’s prosecution under the Nuremberg Principle and the 1949 Geneva Convention. In a separate indictment, a former judge of the New Zealand Supreme Court, E W Thomas, wrote: “My predisposition was to believe that Mr Blair was deluded, but sincere in his belief. After considerable reading and much reflection, however, my final conclusion is that Mr Blair deliberately and repeatedly misled cabinet, the British Labour Party and the people in a number of respects. It is not possible to hold that he was simply deluded but sincere: a victim of his own self-deception. His deception was deliberate.”

Protected by the fake sinecure of Middle East envoy for the Quartet (the US, EU, UN and Russia), Blair operates largely from a small fortress in the American Colony Hotel in Jerusalem, where he is an apologist for the US in the Middle East and Israel, a difficult task following the bloodbath in Gaza. To assist his mortgages, he recently received an Israeli “peace prize” worth $1m. He, too, is careful where he travels; and it is instructive to watch how he now uses the media. Having concentrated his post-Downing Street apologetics on a BBC series of obsequious interviews with David Aaronovitch, Blair has all but slipped from view in Britain, where polls have long exposed a remarkable loathing for a former prime minister – a sentiment now shared by those in the liberal media elite whose previous promotion of his “project” and crimes is an embarrassment, and preferably forgotten.

On 8 February, Andrew Rawnsley, the Observer’s former leading Blair fan, declared that “this shameful period will not be so smoothly and simply buried”. He demanded, “Did Blair never ask what was going on?” This is an excellent question made relevant with a slight word change: “Did the Andrew Rawnsleys never ask what was going on?” In 2001, Rawnsley alerted his readers to Saddam Hussein’s “contribution to international terrorism” and his “frightening appetite to possess weapons of mass destruction”. Both assertions were false and echoed official Anglo-American propaganda. In 2003, when the destruction of Iraq was launched, Rawnsley described it as a “point of principle” for Blair who, he later wrote, was “fated to be right”. He lamented, “Yes, too many people died in the war. Too many people always die in war. War is nasty and brutish, but at least this conflict was mercifully short.”

In the subsequent six years, at least a million people have been killed. According to the Red Cross, Iraq is now a country of widows and orphans. Yes, war is nasty and brutish, but never for the Blairs and the Rawnsleys.

F­ar from the carping turncoats at home, Blair has lately found a safe media harbour – in Australia, the original Murdochracy. His interviewers exude an unction reminiscent of the promoters of the “mystical” Blair in the Guardian of more than a decade ago, though they also bring to mind Geoffrey Dawson, editor of the Times during the 1930s, who wrote of his infamous grovelling to the Nazis: “I spend my nights taking out anything which will hurt their susceptibilities and dropping in little things which are intended to soothe them.”

With his words as a citation, the finalists for the Geoffrey Dawson Prize for Journalism (Antipodes) are announced. On 8 February, in an interview on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Geraldine Doogue described Blair as “a man who brought religion into power and is now bringing power to religion”. She asked him: “What would the perception be that faith would bring towards a greater stability . . . [sic]?”

A bemused and clearly delighted Blair was allowed to waffle about “values”. Doogue said to him that “it was the bifurcation about right and wrong, that’s what I thought the British found really hard [sic]”, to which Blair replied that “in relation to Iraq I tried every other option [to invasion] there was”. It was his classic lie, and it passed unchallenged.

However, the clear winner of the Geoffrey Dawson Prize is Ginny Dougary of the Sydney Morning Herald and the Times. Dougary recently accompanied Blair on what she described as his “James Bond-ish Gulfstream” where she was privy to his “bionic energy levels”. She wrote: “I ask him the childlike question: does he want to save the world?” Blair replied, well, more or less, aw shucks, yes. The murderous assault on Gaza, which was under way during the interview, was mentioned in passing. “That is war, I’m afraid,” said Blair, “and war is horrible.” No counter came that Gaza was not a war, but a massacre by any measure. As for the Palestinians, noted Dougary, it was Blair’s task “to prepare them for statehood”. The Palestinians will be surprised to hear that. But enough gravitas; her man “has the glow of the newly-in-love: in love with the world and, for the most part, the feeling is reciprocated”. The evidence she offered for this absurdity was that “women from both sides of politics have confessed to me to having the hots for him”.

These are extraordinary times. Blair, a perpetrator of the epic crime of the 21st century, shares a “prayer breakfast” with President Obama, the yes-we-can man now launching more war.

“We pray,” said Blair, “that in acting we do God’s work and follow God’s will.”

To decent people, such pronouncements about Blair’s “faith” represent a contortion of morality and intellect that is a profanation of the basic teachings of Christianity. Those who aided and abetted his great crime and now wish the rest of us to forget their part – or who, like Alastair Campbell, offer their bloody notoriety for the vicarious pleasure of some – might read the first indictment proposed by the Blair War Crimes Foundation: “Deceit and conspiracy for war, and providing false news to incite passions for war, causing in the order of one million deaths, four million refugees, countless maimings and traumas.”

These are indeed extraordinary times.

www.johnpilger.com

Brown gives grudging blessing to his old rival's return to new job at centre of the global stage

His return to the global stage would be a shock to his critics over the Iraq war and dismay many in Europe.

But The Independent on Sunday has learnt that Mr Brown has accepted that his old rival should be in pole position for the appointment, on the basis that Britain needs to have a key figure in the architecture of the "new world order".

BWCF - THE BLAIR WAR CRIMES FOUNDATION

To The President of The United Nations General Assembly, H.E. Father Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, and The Attorney General of the United Kingdom, and their successors in office.

RE ANTHONY CHARLES LYNTON BLAIR

We, the citizens of the United Kingdom and other countries listed, wish to uphold The United Nations Charter, The 1998 Rome Statute of The International Criminal Court, The Hague and Geneva Conventions and the Rule of International Law, especially in respect of:-

1: 1949 Geneva Convention IV: Article 146

The High Contracting Parties undertake to enact any legislation necessary to provide effective penal sanctions for persons committing, or ordering to be committed, any of the grave breaches of the present Convention.

2: 1907 Hague Convention IV: Article 3

A belligerent party which violates the provisions of the said regulations shall, if the case demands, be liable to pay compensation. It shall be responsible for all the acts committed by persons forming part of its armed forces.

We therefore call on you to indict Anthony Charles Lynton Blair in his capacity as recent Prime Minister of the UK, so long as he is able to answer for his actions and however long it takes, in respect of our sample complaints relating to the 2003 Iraq War waged by the UK as ally to the United States of America.

We are concerned that without justice and respect for the rule of law, the future for us and our progeny in a lawless world is bleak, as revealed by recent US declarations about the use of torture and the events of December 2008 in Gaza show.

The following are our sample complaints relating to the Iraq War 2003-2009:

1: Deceit and conspiracy for war, and providing false news to incite passions for war, causing in the order of one million deaths, 4 million refugees, countless maimings and traumas.

2: Employing radioactive ammunition causing long-term destruction of the planetary habitat.

3: Causing the breakdown of civil administration, with consequent lawlessness, especially looting, kidnapping, and violence, and consequent breakdown of womens’ rights, of religious freedom, and child and adult education.

4: Failing to maintain the medical needs of the populace.

5: Despoliation of the cultural heritage of the country.

6: Supporting an ally that employs ‘waterboarding’ and other tortures.

7: Seizing the assets of Iraq.

8: Using inhumane restraints on prisoners, including dogs, hoods, and cable ties.

9: Using Aggressive Patrolling indiscriminately, traumatising women and children and wrecking homes and property.

10: Marking bodies of prisoners with numbers, writing, faeces and other degrading treatment.

11: The use of cluster bombs and other indiscriminate weapons including white phosphorous on “shake and bake” missions.

12: Supporting indiscriminate rocket attacks from F16 fighter planes on women and children in Fallujah in Nov 2004

13: Supporting the shooting up of ambulances and medical personnel in Fallujah in Nov 2004

14: Supporting the expulsion of the entire population of Fallujah save for young men of military age, for a reprisal attack on that city in Nov 2004.

Copy to the Secretary General of The United Nations, Ban Ki-moon

Français -

• European Tour Dates

  • April 14th, 2009 - London
  • April 15th, 2009 - Brussels
  • April 17th, 2009 - Paris
  • April 18th, 2009 - Lausanne
  • April 20th, 2009 - Madrid
  • May 7th, 2009 - Lucerne
  • May 9th, 2009 - Hamburg
  • May 11th, 2009 - Stockholm
  • May 13th, 2009 - Trondheim
  • May 14th, 2009 - Oslo

• David Ray Griffin Books

  • Demi Lune (Français)
  • Interlink Books (English)

• Recommended 9/11 Organisations

  • Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth
  • Firefighters for 9/11 Truth
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  • Medical Professionals for 9/11 Truth
  • Political Leaders for 9/11 Truth
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  • Scholars for 9/11 Truth & Justice

The man who died during last week's G20 protests was "assaulted" by riot police shortly before he suffered a heart attack, according to witness statements received by the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

Investigators are examining a series of corroborative accounts that allege Ian Tomlinson, 47, was a victim of police violence in the moments before he collapsed near the Bank of England in the City of London last Wednesday evening. Three witnesses have told the Observer that Mr Tomlinson was attacked violently as he made his way home from work at a nearby newsagents. One claims he was struck on the head with a baton.

Photographer Anna Branthwaite said: "I can remember seeing Ian Tomlinson. He was rushed from behind by a riot officer with a helmet and shield two or three minutes before he collapsed." Branthwaite, an experienced press photographer, has made a statement to the IPCC.

Another independent statement supports allegations of police violence. Amiri Howe, 24, recalled seeing Mr Tomlinson being hit "near the head" with a police baton. Howe took one of a sequence of photographs that show a clearly dazed Mr Tomlinson being helped by a bystander.

A female protester, who does not want to be named but has given her testimony to the IPCC, said she saw a man she later recognised as Tomlinson being pushed aggressively from behind by officers. "I saw a man violently propelled forward, as though he'd been flung by the arm, and fall forward on his head.

"He hit the top front area of his head on the pavement. I noticed his fall particularly because it struck me as a horrifically forceful push by a policeman and an especially hard fall; it made me wince."

Mr Tomlinson, a married man who lived alone in a bail hostel, was not taking part in the protests. Initially, his death was attributed by a police post mortem to natural causes. A City of London police statement said: "[He] suffered a sudden heart attack while on his way home from work."

But this version of events was challenged after witnesses recognised the dead man from photographs that were published on Friday.

An IPCC statement was due to be released the same day and is understood to have portrayed the death as a tragic accident. However, the statement's release was postponed as the complaints body received information that police officers may have been more involved in events than previously thought. An IPCC spokesman said yesterday that in light of new statements it was "assessing" the information it had received before deciding whether to launch a full investigation.

Part of the commission's inquiries will involve the examination of CCTV footage from the area.

Liberal Democrat MP David Howarth said: "Eventually there will have to be a full inquest with a jury. It is a possibility this death was at police hands."

A police source told the Observer that Mr Tomlinson appears to have become caught between police lines and protesters, with officers chasing back demonstrators during skirmishes. He was seen stumbling before he collapsed and died on Cornhill Street, opposite St Michael's Alley, around 7.25pm.

At around 7.10pm, protesters had gathered outside the police cordon to call for those contained inside - some for hours - to be let out. Officers with batons and shields attempted to clear them from the road.

Around 7.20pm, five riot police, and a line of officers with dogs, emerged from Royal Exchange Square, a pedestrian side street. Three images taken around this time show Mr Tomlinson on the pavement, in front of five riot police, and in apparent distress. He had one arm in the air, and appeared to be in discussion with the officers.

Mr Tomlinson then appears to have been lifted to his feet by a bystander. Minutes later he fell to the ground. "We saw this guy staggering around," said Natalie Langford, 21, a student. "He looked disorientated. About five seconds later he fell, and I grabbed my friends to help him."

Police have claimed that when paramedics tried to move Mr Tomlinson away for urgent treatment, bottles were thrown at them by protesters. He was later pronounced dead at hospital.

Branthwaite added: "He [Mr Tomlinson] was not a mouthy kid or causing problems, but the police seemed to have lost control and were trying to push protesters back. The police had started to filter people into a side street off Cornhill. There were a few stragglers who were just walking through between the police and protesters. Mr Tomlinson was one of those."

The police tactics during the G20 protests were condemned in the aftermath of the demonstrations. The clearance of a climate camp along Bishopsgate by riot police with batons and dogs after nightfall on Wednesday came in for particular criticism.

Protesters marched to Bethnal Green police station in east London yesterday to demand a public inquiry into Mr Tomlinson's death.

Guardian source

As the saga of the home secretary's second home takes another twist with the revelation that adult videos were included in her expenses, we list some of the items she claimed for.

Last month it emerged that Smith was facing a parliamentary "sleaze" investigation over her taxpayer-funded second home allowance claims.

She claimed at least £116,000 of the commons second home allowance on her constituency home in Redditch, where her family live, by designating her sister's house in south-east London as her main home.

Smith insisted she had done nothing wrong and said her accommodation arrangements were fully in line with commons rules.

But yesterday the home secretary was again in the firing line when she had to apologise for an expenses claim which included two adult films viewed at their home.

The Sunday Express said documents going back to 2001 show Smith had claimed £150,304 for the cost of running a second home since 2001, including the films.

The expenses covered council tax, utilities and insurance but also included:

• a Habitat stone kitchen sink worth £550
• a dining room table worth £460
• a sofa bed at £704
• a reclaimed antique-style fireplace costing £1,000
• a £399 Hotpoint cooker plus £15 connection
• a £189 Hotpoint tumble dryer
• two washing machines, worth £550 over two years
• home entertainment included DVD players, two Samsung widescreen TVs and two digital set-top boxes worth more than £1,100
• an 88p bath plug
• the bill from Virgin Media which included the two 18-rated "additional features" which cost £5 each to view. The phrase is said to be used as a euphemism for films with adult content
• the Virgin Media bill also shows the film Ocean 13 starring George Clooney was viewed on two nights at £3.75 a time plus the film Surf's Up which cost £3.50

Tucked away at Page 15 of its annual Human Rights report, the FCO has finally made a public admission of its use of intelligence from torture. Despite the Orwellian doublespeak about "unreserved condemnation of torture", this is the clearest statement the government has ever made that it, as a policy, employs intelligence from torture.

"One example is the question of the use of intelligence provided to the UK by other countries. The provenance of such intelligence is often unclear – partners rarely share details of their sources. All intelligence received, whatever its source, is carefully evaluated, particularly where it is clear
that it has been obtained from individuals in  detention. The use of intelligence possibly derived through torture presents a very real dilemma, given our unreserved condemnation of torture and our efforts to eradicate it. Where there is intelligence that bears on threats to life, we cannot reject it out of hand. What is quite clear, however, is that information obtained as a result of torture would not be admissible as evidence in any criminal or civil proceedings in the UK. It does not matter whether the evidence was obtained here or abroad."

http://www.fco.gov.uk/resources/en/pdf/pdf15/human-rights-2008

Let us take this apart.

Let me start by noting that it confirms precisely the response I was given by the FCO when I tried to stop this back in 2003.
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/documents/Wood.pdf

It is worth noting two things. First it follows not just the precise legal distinctions made by Sir Michael Wood between intelligence and evidence, but it also very carefully mirrors the heading of his letter by referring to "Intelligence possibly obtained under torture" - even where there really was no actual doubt.

Secondly, it deploys the argument that you cannot be sure if the intelligence was obtained by torture or not, because the intelligence report does not give you the source. As I explain in my evidence statement to the Joint Commission on Human Rights, that is a deliberate double blind. The name of the source is always omitted from the intelligence report, on purpose so you cannot prove they were tortured to give that intelligence.
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/03/trying_again_my.html

I might pause here to say that this stunning new admission by the FCO proves I was telling the truth all along. Given that Jack Straw in particular and the FCO in general have been calling me mad and a liar for the last five years, I hope you might forgive me for asking you to dwell on that for a moment.

Now let me return to analyse what the FCO statement means. It is a piece of mind-blowing hypocrisy. You cannot, in the same paragraph, argue our unreserved condemnation of torture, and that it save lives so we use intelligence from it. I would add that it is also an outright lie. Not a single one of the many pieces of torture intelligence I saw in Uzbekistan had the slightest bearing on saving lives in the UK. In fact the "intelligence" was, on the whole and in detail, highly misleading. Yet the FCO made a very definite policy decision to continue to receive it- because it came from the CIA.

The FCO has in fact under New Labour never rejected any intelligence on the grounds that it came from torture.

The fact that the government accepts that it cannot use such intelligence as evidence in court, is not of great comfort when instead it is used to have people kidnapped and sent on extraordinary rendition, or severely beaten and detained without charge, or deported to home countries where they will be murdered.

The ticking bomb scenario is a Hollywood myth. 99 per cent of the tens of thousands of cases of torture in the War on Terror have been "Fishing expedition". Torture does not work. The tortured individual will not tell you the truth, but will tell whatever he or she thinks will satisfy the torturer and stop the pain. We know this from history. People confessed under torture that their cat was the Devil and they flew on broomsticks. In my time in Uzbekistan children were tortured in front of their parents and dissidents were boiled alive.

Yet by accepting torture material for "Careful evaluation" we create a market for it. We increase the amount of torture in the World by putting a value on its result. And we are breaking international law by complicity in torture, which is plainly against Article 4 of the UN Convention Against Torture.

The government has set up its usual planned exoneration by allowing their cronies at Scotland Yard to conduct a highly circumscribed investigation into the MI5 agents involved in the torture of Binyan Mohammed.

In fact the guilt lies plainly with those who set this policy of compliance with evil. The most guilty is Jack Straw.

Teachers are to be trained how to spot potential terrorists before the youngsters become radicalised.

They will be taught alongside doctors and nurses to recognise vulnerable people who could be turned to terror.

Council bosses are concerned that if potential extremists are not rooted out at a young age they could go on to kill They believe Sussex’s health and education experts could be a key weapon in their war on homegrown terrorism.

The proposals from West Sussex County Council will be discussed on Wednesday – just as it emerged that another suspected terrorist from Crawley was quizzed for a week in a London police station.

In the report to WSCC’s public protection select committee, Richard Perry, the council’s director of operations for community services, and Jeff Fullard, head of community safety, proposed that some of the £121,000 of funding received from the Home Office should be used to train professionals to “raise awareness of hate crime and culture awareness”.

Mr Perry said: “Since the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, the United Kingdom has faced a severe threat from international terrorism. While West Sussex is considered a safe and pleasant place to live and work and there is no reason to think that residents of West Sussex are more likely to display radicalised tendencies here than anywhere else, we cannot ignore the risk.

“To this end it is therefore proposed to develop a strategy that focuses preventative activity in a measured way on a wide range of institutions, schools, colleges and health-based establishments.”

Their proposals include ensuring a wide range of employees, including doctors, health care professionals and teachers, receive the training over the next 18 months.

The report also suggests that the risks which could be faced if the area of work is not adopted could include: “Radicalisation of extremist views among vulnerable people; social exclusion and discrimination not being combated; anxieties and grievances within communities not being dealt with, which could lead to tensions.”

Peter Evans, lead councillor for public protection for WSCC, said: “This is part of an overall strategy that the Government is asking to be employed throughout the UK.

“This impacts on WSCC through our community safety partnership, which is ideally placed to help develop the ‘Perform’ part of the strategy, which is really there to counter the problems that we face in society now with various groups throughout the country.

“Nowadays we are looking at extremism and that can be both religious and also against the state.

“This is to counter that and to train people and make them aware of the problems that can come up and divide society.”

The spectre of terrorism has loomed over West Sussex for ten years. In April 2008, Simon Keeler, 36, from Crawley, became the first white British Muslim to be convicted of terrorism. He was jailed for four-and-a-half years for inciting terrorism overseas and terrorist fundraising.

In May 2007 three Muslim men who grew up and worshipped in Crawley were sentenced to life in prison for plotting to commit mass murder.

Omar Khyam and Jawad Akbar, who attended Hazelwick School in Three Bridges, Crawley, worshipped alongside terror plotter Waheed Mahmood at the town’s Langley Green Mosque.

But their interest in radical Islam came from the preachings of extremist group al-Muhajiroun, who use Crawley as a recruiting ground.

They were all convicted of scheming to blow up a nightclub and a shopping centre with a massive bomb made from fertiliser.

After their conviction school friends expressed surprise that men who had been interested in normal activities, including football and cricket, could become radicalised.

Laura Moffatt, MP for Crawley, said she was “very supportive of this preventative work” and said the whole community had responded with “enormous dignity” to the town’s sad association with the terror plotters.

She added: “It is always very difficult to try and express just what the threat might be, so it is difficult work to do.

“Crawley Borough Council has also received some funding to work with students outside of school and in my briefings with the local authorities I am utterly convinced this is worthwhile.”

A spokeswoman for the BMA, which represents doctors, said: “Staff on the front line need to be trained.

“Increased vigilance is something we would not be opposed to.”

A 27-year-old man from Crawley was detained at Gatwick on March 18 as he tried to leave the country.

He was later arrested and taken to a London police station for questioning. A Metropolitan Police spokesman confirmed an address in Crawley was searched as part of the investigation. The man has since been released without charge.

Millions of Britons who use social networking sites such as Facebook could soon have their every move monitored by the Government and saved on a "Big Brother" database.

Ministers faced a civil liberties outcry last night over the plans, with accusations of excessive snooping on the private lives of law-abiding citizens.

The idea to police MySpace, Bebo and Facebook comes on top of plans to store information about every phone call, email and internet visit made by everyone in the United Kingdom. Almost half the British population – some 25 million people – are thought to use social networking sites. There are already proposals under a European Union directive – dating back to after the 7 July 2005 bombs – for emails and internet usage to be monitored and added to a planned database to track terror plots.

But technology has moved on in the past three years, and the use of social networking sites has boomed – so security services fear that that has left a loophole for terrorists and criminal gangs to exploit.

To close this loophole, Vernon Coaker, the Home Office minister, has disclosed that social networking sites could be forced to retain information about users' web-browsing habits. They could be required to hold data about every person users correspond with via the sites, although the contents of messages sent would not be collected. Mr Coaker said: "Social networking sites, such as MySpace or Bebo, are not covered by the directive. That is one reason why the Government are looking at what we should do about the intercept modernisation programme because there are certain aspects of communications which are not covered by the directive."

In exchanges with the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Tom Brake, he insisted: "I accept this is an extremely difficult area. The interface between retaining data, private security and all such issues of privacy is extremely important. It is absolutely right to point out the difficulty of ensuring we maintain a capability and a capacity to deal with crime and issues of national security – and where that butts up against issues of privacy."

Facebook boasts 17 million Britons as members. Bebo, which caters mainly for teenagers and young adults, has more than 10 million users. A similar number of music fans are thought to use MySpace.

Moves to include the sites in mass surveillance of Britons' internet habits has provoked alarm among MPs, civil liberties groups and security experts.

Mr Brake said: "Plans to monitor our phone and email records threaten to be the most expensive snooper's charter in history. It is deeply worrying that they now intend to monitor social networking sites which contain very sensitive data like sexual orientation, religious beliefs and political views. Given the Government's disastrous record with large IT projects and data security, it is likely that data will leak out of every memory stick, port and disk drive when they start monitoring Facebook, Bebo and MySpace."

Isabella Sankey, policy director at Liberty, said: "Even before you throw Facebook and other social networking sites into the mix, the proposed central communications database is a terrifying prospect. It would allow the Government to record every email, text message and phone call and would turn millions of innocent Britons into permanent suspects."

Richard Clayton, a computer security expert at Cambridge University, said: "What they are doing is looking at who you communicate with and who your friends are, which is greatly intrusive into your private life."

Chris Kelly, Facebook's chief privacy officer, said yesterday that it was considering lobbying ministers over the proposal, which he called "overkill".

A Home Office spokeswoman said the Government was not interested in the content of emails, texts, conversations or social networking sites. She added: "We have been clear that communications revolution has been rapid in this country and the way in which we collect communications data needs to change so law enforcement agencies can maintain their ability to tackle terrorism and gather evidence."

A contest to take over a safe Labour seat is turning into a rerun of the worst days of the Blair- Brown party infighting.

One of the candidates on the Erith and Thamesmead shortlist is Georgia Gould, 22-year-old daughter of one of Tony Blair's closest advisers.

Her campaign, which was described yesterday as a New Labour stitch-up, is being masterminded by former Downing Street spin doctor Alastair Campbell.

Miss Gould is the daughter of Lord Gould, who was Mr Blair's polling guru, and has an impeccable New Labour background.

She attended Lord Mandelson's former Oxford college of St Catherines, building up a formidable reputation as a brilliant debater, and now works part-time for Mr Blair's Faith Foundation.

Her mother is Gail Rebuck, the multimillionaire chief executive of Random House publishers - who paid Mr Campbell a reported £1million for his diaries.

The Goulds are close friends of Mr Campbell and his partner Fiona Millar, who is Cherie Blair's former adviser, and they regularly go on holiday together. 

Mr Campbell is said to have personally hit the phones to secure support for Miss Gould, who has reportedly won backing from two wards.

Her supporters also include Baroness McDonagh, the former Labour general secretary, and her sister Siobhan, a Labour MP who was sacked as a whip last year after calling for a leadership challenge to Mr Brown.

Lord Gould, given a peerage by Mr Blair for pioneering the focus group surveys used to mould New Labour in the 1980s, said his daughter was the victim of a smear campaign. 

He said: 'It is absolutely untrue that she has had any preferential treatment. She is doing this on her own. I am hugely proud of her.'

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has proclaimed a "national crusade" to encourage upward social mobility from the working class into the middle class. Former Minister Alan Milburn is to head a governmental commission on the issue, with a view to push ideas and policies they believe will encourage upwards mobility.

The right wing press have tried ridiculously to paint such measures as a return to "class politics" by Labour. In reality the promotion of the idea of a meritocracy is not designed to create equality, but to legitimise a society based on grotesque and growing levels of inequality.

Britain's ruling class have long been aware of the neccesity to promote the idea that those with talent can get on. In the midst of an economic crisis whose magnitude has revolutionary implications, these efforts to legitimise the profit system must be restated. However, it has become increasingly obvious that the children of workers will, almost certainly, live and die in the same social class to which they are born, regardless of their effort and intellect.

The employment minister claimed the money under rules which are meant to help MPs fund a second home if they have to travel a long way to Westminster from their constituency. 

But his constituency is Harrow East - around 11 miles from Westminster.

One in four of the major government databases is almost certainly illegal and should be scrapped, a report says. The national DNA database, the proposed national identity database and the ContactPoint system, which will hold records of all children in England, are among the systems singled out for fundamental reform or abolition.

Researchers called for 11 systems assessed as "almost certainly illegal" under human rights or data protection law to be scrapped or substantially redesigned.

The study, by the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, also pointed to significant legal and practical problems with a further 29 databases, including the national childhood obesity one and the planned NHS summary care record system, and said they should be reviewed independently. Privacy experts were asked to compile the report after two discs listing the entire child benefit database went missing in 2007. Researchers said data-sharing should be authorised only for strictly defined purposes, and said sensitive personal information should be collected and shared only with the individual's consent.

The report's co-author, Professor Ross Anderson of Cambridge University, said: "Britain's database state has become a financial, ethical and administrative disaster which is penalising some of the most vulnerable members of our society. Often, computerisation has been used as a substitute for public service reform rather than a means of enabling reform. Little thought is given to safety, privacy and value for money."

Researchers highlighted legal problems with systems that held sensitive data where there was "no effective opt-out" such as ContactPoint, the index planned to record English children's relationship with public services. The report said: "Many question the consequences of giving increasing numbers of civil servants daily access to our personal information. Objections range from cost through efficiency to privacy. The emphasis on data capture, form-filling, mechanical assessment and profiling damages professional responsibility and alienates the citizen from the state."

A Home Office spokeswoman said: "We recognise the absolute necessity of striking the balance between the rights and privacy of the individual and the ability to disrupt, prevent and investigate crime effectively. That is why the Home Secretary [Jacqui Smith] has made it clear that a 'common sense' test must be applied to every action in this area to make sure it is proportionate, transparent and robust safeguards are in place.

"For example, the National Identity Scheme and ID cards will have independent oversight built in from the start, with every citizen given the right to see their data and who has accessed it. Technology such as DNA and CCTV is providing clear benefits in deterring and detecting crime, securing convictions and reducing fear of crime."

'Criminal' records Singled out for abolition

*National DNA Database

Holds 4 million individual profiles

ContactPoint

A national index of all children in England

*The NHS Secondary Users Service

Summaries of hospital and other treatments

*The Common Assessment Framework

Children's welfare needs

*ONSET

A Home Office system used to determine whether young people are at risk of offending

*Dept for Work and Pensions data sharing programme

Matches data with government and outside agencies

*Audit Commission National Fraud Initiative

Matches data within central and local government bodies to detect fraud and error

*The Prum framework

An international agreement which allows police information to be shared

PROPOSED

*Communications database Would bring together details of emails, telephone calls and web use

*National Identity Register Will store biographical information and biometric data linked to ID cards

*The NHS Detailed Care Record Will hold GP and hospital records

Jack Straw urged to drop plans to allow inquests without a jury

• Coroners' rulings must remain transparent, say MPs
• Secrecy would 'lead to accusations of cover-ups'

Jack Straw, the justice secretary, was today urged by a committee of MPs and peers to drop plans to allow some inquests to be held in private, without a jury.

The cross-party joint committee on human rights said ministers had given no proper explanation as to why the plans were needed.

Andrew Dismore, the Labour MP who chairs the committee, said: "Whilst the government has attempted to modify the proposals, no proper justification has ever been put forward and the secret inquest plan should just be scrapped.

"Any investigation into the way a loved one has died – especially in circumstances involving the state – must remain transparent and accountable, and the bereaved must retain the right to be involved in the proceedings."

Military families have raised concerns about the plans, which they fear could lead to bereaved relatives being unable to hear details of the death of their loved ones in war zones.

In its report, the committee said there was a "significant risk" that the government's plans would operate in a way that was "incompatible" with article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees the right to life and places a duty on governments to allow an effective investigation into a person's death in certain circumstances.

Straw originally included the plan for inquests to be held without a jury in some cases involving national security in the counter-terrorism bill last year. But he withdrew it from that bill and instead included it in the coroners and justice bill, which is currently going through parliament.

The committee said that, although Straw has amended his proposals since they were first announced last year, they were still "broadly the same" and that the objections the committee raised last year still applied.

Amnesty International's campaigns director, Tim Hancock, said: "Coroners' inquests should not be conducted in secret on the say so of the government.

"When someone has lost their life at the hands of the state, it's essential – and required by international law – that an independent and impartial inquiry finds out how and why it happened.

"Coroners can already decide, independently, to exclude the public from part of an inquest on grounds of national security.

"Letting the government make this decision will lead to accusations of cover-ups and could deny both the public and the victim's family their right to know what happened."

Gullible's (Endless) Travels

Have journalists learnt nothing from recent history? It truly is a wonder when a reporter can assert in public, on the BBC News no less, that "Tony Blair passionately believed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and posed a grave threat." (BBC1, Six O'Clock News, February 24, 2009). When BBC reporter Reeta Chakrabarti was challenged on this remarkable display of naïveté, she compounded her grievous error by responding:

"I said Mr Blair passionately believed Iraq had wmd because he has consistently said so. When challenged he has stuck to his guns." (Email posted on the Media Lens Message Board, March 2, 2009)

So when a demonstrably mendacious leader claims he "passionately believed" in a lie, the media has to take him at his word. This is the same brand of journalistic gullibility that has had such tragic consequences for the people of Iraq. This is the endless, uncritical obedience to power that boosted the warmongering agenda of London and Washington, allowing them to fit 'facts' to a pre-ordained policy of launching a war of aggression. Such an act, sold by the BBC as Blair's "passionate belief", is the supreme international crime, as judged by the 1946 Nuremberg Tribunal.

And a similar tragic fate may yet befall the people of Iran, if the corporate media portrayal of Iran as a rogue state lorded over by "ruling mullahs", desperate to get their hands on nuclear weapons, goes unchallenged.

A Nuclear Programme Under Close Surveillance

At the end of 2007, a thorough assessment by the United States concluded that Iran's nuclear weapons programme had already halted in 2003. The National Intelligence Estimate was the consensus view of all 16 US spy agencies. (Mark Mazzeti, 'U.S. Says Iran Ended Atomic Arms Work,' New York Times, December 3, 2007)

In its latest report on Iran, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) strengthened this assessment when it stated it had "been able to continue to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material [for possible military purposes] in Iran." (IAEA, 'Introductory Statement to the Board of Governors by IAEA Director General Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei,' March 2, 2009; http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/ Statements/2009/ebsp2009n002.html)

But under pressure from powerful Western countries, in particular the United States, the UN Security Council and the IAEA have been demanding that Iran suspend the enrichment of uranium "until Iran's peaceful intentions can be fully established." (BBC online, 'Q&A: Iran and the nuclear issue,' 10:39 GMT, February 25, 2009; http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4031603.stm)

Under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), a country has the right to enrich uranium as fuel for civil nuclear power, although it must remain under inspection by the IAEA. The agency says in its latest report that although Iran is continuing to enrich uranium, it is doing so at a reduced rate.

The IAEA also reported that it had found an increase in Iran's stockpile of low-enriched uranium (LEU) to 1,010 kg. This figure was over one-third greater than the estimate that had been provided by Iran. However, the IAEA emphasised that "Iran is cooperating well with U.N. nuclear inspectors to help ensure it does not again understate the amount of uranium it has enriched."

News agency Reuters made an important observation:

"The IAEA statement seemed aimed at quashing any impressions... that the accounting shortfall might have been deliberate evasion."

According to IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming:

"The (IAEA) has no reason at all to believe that the estimates of LEU produced in the (Natanz) facility were an intentional error by Iran. They are inherent in the early commissioning phases of such a facility when it is not known in advance how it will perform in practice."

She emphasised:

"Iran has provided good cooperation on this matter and will be working to improve its future estimates.

"No nuclear material could have been removed from the facility without the agency's knowledge since the facility is subject to video surveillance and the nuclear material has been kept under seal." (Mark Heinrich, 'Iran cooperates after understating atom stocks-IAEA,' Reuters, February 22, 2009; http://in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/ idINIndia-38148320090222?sp=true)

The IAEA stated that it is seeking improved transparency and further information about Iran's nuclear programme. But it also noted that:

"[T]he apparent fresh approach by the international community to dialogue with Iran will give new impetus to the efforts to resolve this long-standing issue in a way that provides the required assurances about the peaceful nature of Iran's nuclear programme, while assuring Iran of its right to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes." (IAEA, op.cit.)

Scaremongers R Us

However, for many years, the corporate media has been amplifying supposed "fear" in the West about Iran becoming a nuclear-armed nation alongside the US, the UK, France, Russia - and Israel.

Compare the sane and sober IAEA analysis above with the Daily Telegraph's reporting last month of "fears in Israel and the US that Iran is approaching the point of no return in its ability to build atom bomb." Use of "the point of no return" is a classic scare tactic intended to induce a sense of panic. Time is running out! Soon it will be too late! As though warmongering propaganda over Iraq had taken place in a parallel universe, the paper blithely asserted that "Israeli and Western intelligence agencies believe the 20-year-old programme, which was a secret until 2002, is designed to give the ruling mullahs an atom bomb." (Philip Sherwell, 'Israel launches covert war against Iran,' Daily Telegraph, February 16, 2009; http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast /israel/4640052/Israel-launches- covert-war-against-Iran.html)

"Ruling mullahs" is another trigger phrase intended to resonate in the public mind alongside "mad mullahs," "Islamic fundamentalism" and "militant Islam".

Remarkably, the BBC told the public, who pay for the broadcaster:

"Germany has warned Iran that it would support tougher sanctions if diplomatic efforts to stop the Iranians acquiring nuclear weapons broke down." (BBC online, 'Germany warns Iran over sanctions,' 15:39 GMT, February 7, 2009; http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7876659.stm)

So according to the BBC, Iran is indeed trying to acquire nuclear weapons. The corporation's famed "impartiality" really is a joke.

Meanwhile, the Times maintained its own tragicomic tradition of balanced coverage (see Media Lens Media Alert, 'Selling the Fireball', June 25, 2008).

The paper's chief foreign commentator, Bronwen Maddox, inaccurately described Iran's nuclear programme as "accelerating." In her column, Iran was portrayed as "ambitious" and keen to upset "the balance of power even further in a region already tense about Tehran's overbearing ways." (Bronwen Maddox, 'Ambitious Iran is bent on tilting the balance of power,' The Times, February 27, 2009). There was no hint that it is the US which is "ambitious" and "overbearing" - with a long and shameful record of aggression towards Iran and many other countries in the region - and a proven eagerness to assert its dominance.

It is par for the course, and closely aligned with Western state priorities, for the corporate media to portray Iran as a threat; its "ruling mullahs" desperate to build nuclear weapons or arm "militants" targeted by the US in its "war on terror."

The 'liberal' Guardian plays its part in the same propaganda system. A recent piece by the Guardian's Rory McCarthy about a new Amnesty report on arms in the Middle East wrongly implicated Iran in the supply of weapons to Hamas in Gaza. McCarthy wrote:

"For their part, Palestinian militants in Gaza were arming themselves with 'unsophisticated weapons' including rockets made in Russia, Iran and China, it said." (McCarthy, 'Suspend military aid to Israel, Amnesty urges Obama after detailing US weapons used in Gaza,' The Guardian, February 23, 2009; http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/ feb/23/military-aid-israel-amnesty)

This then, according to McCarthy, is what "it", Amnesty, said.
 
But in fact Amnesty was +not+ the source of allegations about the origins of Palestinian rockets. Amnesty had merely cited the publication 'Janes Defence Weekly' and was not itself in a position to verify the claims. Worse for the Guardian, as the Amnesty report made clear, the claims actually originate from Israeli and Egyptian security and police sources. Such claims should be treated with extreme caution and, at the very least, be correctly attributed by the Guardian.

Worse still, Amnesty had this to say on the claim that rockets have been supplied from Iran:

"There have been several reports that Iran has provided military equipment and munitions, including rockets, to Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups but Amnesty International has not seen any evidence to verify these allegations." (Amnesty International, 'Fuelling conflict: Foreign arms supplies to Israel/Gaza,' AI Index: MDE 15/012/2009, February 23, 2009; http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/ info/MDE15/012/2009/en; page 31)

We wrote to both Rory McCarthy and Siobhain Butterworth, the readers' editor, suggesting they publish a prompt correction in the Guardian. As usual, we received only silence in response.

Friendly Nukes - Israel Doesn't Threaten Anyone, Never Did

No sane person wants nuclear conflict. What single act could be more monstrous than that of instantly incinerating a city full of men, women and children? This is what America did, twice, in its atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (See David Cromwell, 'Racing Towards The Abyss,' Media Lens Cogitations, January 15, 2008)

Who could argue with the United Nations' "goal of establishing in the Middle East a zone free from weapons of mass destruction and all missiles for their delivery"? (UN resolution 687, April 3, 1991; http://www.fas.org/news/un/iraq/sres/sres0687.htm)

But the stoked-up fears, and media hype, over Iran generally overlook the fact that there is already a nation in the region armed with nuclear weapons - Israel. But Israel is a western ally and therefore to be regarded as essentially benign.

Estimates for Israel's nuclear weapons stockpile range from 70 to 400 warheads. An assessment published by the Federation of American Scientists in 2007 concluded that the most likely number lay in the range 100-200. (Steven Aftergood and Hans M. Kristensen, 'Nuclear weapons - Israel,' Federation of American Scientists, updated January 8, 2007; http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/israel/nuke/)

In 2008, the BBC reported former US President Jimmy Carter's statement that Israel has "150 or more" nuclear weapons. (BBC online, 'Israel "has 150 nuclear weapons",' 20:26 GMT, May 26, 2008;  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7420573.stm)

Unlike Iran, Israel is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Also unlike Iran, Israel does not allow international inspection of its nuclear facilities. In fact, Israel has never formally admitted that it possesses nuclear weapons, instead following a "policy of ambiguity." However, in an embarrassing slip, Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert told a German television interviewer in 2006 that Iran was "aspiring to have a nuclear weapon as America, France, Israel and Russia."

Olmert reacted angrily when asked if Israel's alleged nuclear programme weakened the Western case against Iran, insisting no such comparisons could be made:

"Israel is a democracy, Israel doesn't threaten any country with anything, never did."

He said Iran could not be compared to the US, Russia, France and the UK, as Iran had threatened "to wipe Israel off the map." (For a refutation of this mistranslation from Farsi, see Jonathan Steele, 'Lost in translation,' The Guardian, June 14, 2006; http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/ 2006/jun/14/post155)

Olmert explained in all seriousness:

"You are talking about civilized countries that do not threaten the foundations of the world [and] that do not threaten other countries that they will use the nuclear weapons in order to destroy them. That is why there is a big difference." (Associated Press and Ynet, 'Olmert: Iran wants nuclear weapons like Israel,' December 12, 2006; http://www.ynetnews.com/ articles/0,7340,L-3338783,00.html)

In 2006, US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates told a Senate committee that Israel possessed nuclear weapons and that these might provide Iran with the motivation to acquire its own. He even recognised that Iran faced a potential US threat:

"They [Iran] are surrounded by powers with nuclear weapons - Pakistan to their east, the Russians to the north, the Israelis to the west and us in the Persian Gulf." (Associated Press, 'Incoming U.S. Defense Secretary tells Senate panel Israel has nuclear weapons,' Ha'aretz, December 9, 2006; http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/798405.html)

Orwell's Memory Hole

One searches in vain for any corporate media analysis focusing on Israel's large stockpile of over 150 nuclear weapons. Where is the in-depth discussion that Israel might have a reason to divert attention from its own nuclear arms by cynically manipulating fears over Iran?

At best, there is an occasional subtle nod in the direction of uncomfortable truth. For instance, the Guardian's Middle East editor, Ian Black, noted blandly that:

"Israel, which has its own undeclared nuclear weapons arsenal, has been warning for some time that Iran is far closer than believed in the west to being able to build a bomb." (Ian Black, 'US fears that Iran has capability to build a nuclear bomb,' The Guardian, March 2, 2009)

But has Israel been simply "warning", in the manner of a responsible citizen phoning the police about a mad gunman roaming the streets? Or has it, perhaps, been hyping fears about Iran for its own ends - and those of US power?

It is now almost unmentioned in media coverage that Israel carried out a massive military exercise in the eastern Mediterranean last June. This involved 100 bombers, rescue helicopters and midair refuelling planes over Crete, 1,400 kilometres from Israel - about the same distance separating Israel from Iran's uranium enrichment facility at Natanz.

A few days after the exercise, Israel's deputy prime minister, Shaul Mofaz, said:

"If Iran continues its programme to develop nuclear weapons, we will attack it. The window of opportunity has closed. The sanctions are not effective. There will be no alternative but to attack Iran in order to stop the Iranian nuclear programme." (Jonathan Steele, 'Israel asked US green light to bomb Iran,' The Guardian, September 26, 2008)

Around the same time, the US announced that it would sell Israel 1,000 bunker-busting "smart" bombs, capable of penetrating 90 cm of steel-reinforced concrete. It was reported in passing that the US and Israel were in advanced talks about upgrading Israel's Arrow II ballistic missile shield.

In 2007, Israeli forces conducted an air raid against an alleged Syrian nuclear facility. Seemingly unable to obtain US backing for similar strikes against Iran, Israel has launched a "covert war" involving hitmen, sabotage, front companies and double agents to stop "the regime's illicit weapons project." (Sherwell, op. cit.)

Although these developments have been given limited coverage, they invariably, and rapidly, disappear down the Orwellian 'memory hole.' Inconvenient facts are forgotten or overlooked. Somehow, the dots - the West's long record of criminal actions, its current threats and longstanding strategic interests - are never joined. Somehow, there is no in-depth reporting or analysis of Israel's hugely threatening stock of nuclear weapons; or of "our ally's" threat to regional and global instability. Somehow, the West's (particularly the US's) massive financial, diplomatic and ideological support for a nuclear-armed Israel is not part of the story.

All of this is simply not discussed in any meaningful, sustained way by 'mainstream' broadcasters and newspapers. And so, like many others in the region, the people of Iran remain in the crosshairs of Western firepower; just as the Iraqis were.

Sadly, this deadly cocktail of media silence and diversion will likely yield yet more corpses, more mutilations, more victims demented by grief, fear and misery.

Whatever steps each of us can take to challenge the agenda of power propagated through the media are well worth the effort.

medialens source

Adam Osman Mohammed, 32, was gunned down in his home in front of his wife and four-year-old son just days after arriving in his village in south Darfur.

The case is to be used by asylum campaigners to counter Home Office attempts to lift the ban on the removal and deportation to Sudan of failed asylum-seekers. Next month, government lawyers are expected to go to court to argue that it is safe to return as many as 3,000 people to Khartoum.

But lawyers for the campaigners will tell the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal that people who are returned to Sudan face imprisonment, torture and death. Mr Mohammed, a non-Arab Darfuri, came to Britain in 2005 seeking sanctuary from persecution in Sudan, where he said his life was in danger. The village where he was a farmer had been raided twice by the Janjaweed, the ethnic Arab militia, forcing him and his wife and child to flee their home.

His family in Britain told The Independent that Mr Mohammed witnessed many villagers being killed and became separated from his wife during a second attack on the village a few weeks later. He escaped to Chad before making his way to the UK in 2005.

But last year his appeal for asylum was finally turned down and he was told that he faced deportation. In August last year he was flown to Khartoum under the Home Office's assisted voluntary return programme, in which refugees are paid to go back to their country of origin. He stayed in Khartoum for a few months and then, when he believed it was safe, he travelled to Darfur to be reunited with his family.

Mohamed Elzaki Obubeker, Mr Mohammed's cousin and chairman of the Darfur Union in the UK, said: "The government security forces had followed him to another village, Calgoo, where his wife and child had sought help. They came to the village to find him and then targeted him. They shot him in front of his wife and son."

Independent continues

The Metropolitan police today agreed to pay £60,000 damages to a British Muslim after a high court admission that officers had subjected him to "serious, gratuitous and prolonged" attack.

The court was told that Babar Ahmad, who is accused of raising funds for terrorism, had been punched, kicked and throttled during his arrest by officers from the force's territorial support group in December 2003.

The Met had repeatedly denied the claims, saying officers had used reasonable force during the arrest.

However, lawyers for the force's commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson, today admitted at the high court that Ahmad had been the victim of gratuitous and sustained violence at his home in Tooting, south-west London.

"The commissioner has today admitted that his officers subjected Babar Ahmad to grave abuse tantamount to torture during his arrest," Ahmad's solicitor, Fiona Murphy, said outside the court.

During the hearing, it emerged that the Met had lost "a number of large mail sacks" containing details of other similar allegations against the officers who assaulted Ahmad.

Murphy said the few documents that had not been mislaid should have triggered a thorough investigation.

"The horrifying nature and volume of complaints against these officers should have provoked an effective response from the Metropolitan police and the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) long ago," she said.

"Instead, it has fallen to Babar Ahmad to bring these proceedings to achieve public recognition of the wrong that was done to him."

She said other crucial documents relating to the case were also lost.

They included all the officers' contemporaneous notebooks and the taped recording of an interview with the senior officer in the case.

Murphy added: "The papers will be referred to the director of public prosecutions for urgent consideration of criminal charges against the officers concerned and for an investigation as to whether events surrounding the mislaid mail sacks constitute evidence of a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice."

During his arrest, Ahmad was punched, kicked and throttled, the court heard.

Officers stamped on the 34-year-old's feet and repeatedly punched him in the head before he was forced into the Muslim prayer position and they shouted: "Where is your God now? Pray to him."

After a sustained attack, he was forced into the back of a police van, where he was again beaten and punched before being put in a "life-threatening" neck hold and told: "You will remember this day for the rest of your life."

At one stage, one of the officers grabbed his testicles and he was also deliberately wrenched by his handcuffs – a technique known to cause intense pain.

Outside the court, Ahmad's brother-in-law, Fahad Ahmad, read out a statement on his behalf in which he said he was pleased the police had finally admitted what had happened.

"This abuse took place not in Guantánamo Bay or a secret torture chamber but in Tooting, south London," the statement said.

"The path to justice is long and difficult but, as long as you remain steadfast upon it, you will get there in the end."

Ahmad has been in detention since he was rearrested in 2004 after a request from the US government over claims he helped raise money to fund terrorist campaigns.

The court heard that no evidence had been produced against Ahmad, and he had never been charged with any offence.

He is now fighting extradition to the US in the European courts.

An IPCC investigation in 2007 ended with no action being taken against any officer.

Tony Blair and David Blunkett - although there are also many other reasons - deserve to swing for the treasonous extradition treaty with the U.S. How dare they have such contempt for the rights of British subjects and Brown-nose to America under Bush.

Allegations of British collusion in torture have widened to Egypt, where a young British man says he suffered appalling mistreatment during a week of illegal detention while being interrogated on the basis of information that he says can only have come from the UK.

The development comes after the Conservative leader, David Cameron, said there needed to be a full inquiry, not just to discover whether crimes had been committed by British officials but to establish whether the government's "moral authority" has been maintained.

Azhar Khan, a 26-year-old who has seen a number of friends jailed for terrorist offences, says Egyptian intelligence officers who detained him when he flew into the country last July forced him to stand on the same spot for five days, with little rest, while beating him and subjecting him to electric shocks. Throughout this time, he says, he was asked detailed questions about his friends and associates in the UK.

The Foreign Office has confirmed that Khan was detained in Egypt for a week last July and, after being pressed repeatedly, admitted that it knew that Khan had subsequently complained that he had been tortured. The Guardian understands that Khan's allegations of mistreatment are supported by medical evidence.

Khan says he was handcuffed and his feet shackled throughout the five days he was tortured, and that he was naked but for a hood kept over his head. He also says he could hear other detainees being tortured in the same large room, including one man with a British accent. The Guardian has learned from a reliable source that MI5 had an interest in another person who was in detention in Egypt at the same time as Khan, and that the security service knew that there was every possibility that this individual would be tortured.

The allegations will fuel calls for an independent inquiry into the conduct of Britain's security and intelligence officers in the so-called war on terror.

Guardian continues

Under pressure: the FCO explanation

Pakistan's government has said a sacked Supreme Court chief justice will be reinstated, prompting the opposition to call off a major rally in the capital.

Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani said Iftikhar Chaudhry would resume his old post later in March.

Opposition leader Nawaz Sharif had joined campaigning lawyers in demanding the judge's reinstatement.

Announcing that the march on Islamabad had been called off, Mr Sharif urged supporters to celebrate "with dignity".

"From here, God willing, the fate of this nation will change," Mr Sharif said.

Mr Gilani said Mr Chaudhry would resume his post following the resignation of the current Chief Justice Abdul Hameed Dogar on 21 March.

"I announce the restoration of all deposed judges including Mr Iftikhar Chaudhry," Mr Gilani said.

The unrest has alarmed Western powers, and the US envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke, hailed the decision.

He was quoted by the New York Times as saying the US applauded "the statesmanlike act by President [Asif Ali] Zardari" and hoped it would "defuse a dangerous confrontation".

Jubilation

Mr Chaudhry and 60 other judges were dismissed by former President Pervez Musharraf in 2007.

Most have since been reinstated but Mr Chaudhry and a handful have not been allowed to return to their old posts.

Overturning the amnesty could leave Mr Zardari, the widower of former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, exposed to corruption charges.

Mr Gilani's announcement, broadcast on television, triggered scenes of jubilation from Mr Chaudhry's supporters outside his home in Islamabad.

The BBC's Barbara Plett, who was at the scene, says the gathered lawyers and activists were in exultant mood, regarding this as the triumph of two years of struggle against both military and civilian governments.

Mr Gilani also said opposition activists and leaders detained over the past week of mounting disturbances would be freed and a ban on demonstrations in the capital and several provinces lifted.

"This is a victory for the people of this country," said Baz Mohammad Kakar, a leader of the lawyers' movement.

"Chaudhry is the first chief justice in the history of Pakistan who has proved himself to be a judge for the people, as a chief justice for the people."

Our correspondent says the development is also a victory for Mr Sharif, a long-time opponent of President Zardari.

He was mobbed by supporters in Gujranwala, about 80km (50 miles) north-west of Lahore, telling them: "We have said that we will restore the judges and the independent judiciary and by the grace of Allah we have achieved it.

A leftist television journalist who has been elected El Salvador's new president promised reconciliation today after his party of former Marxist guerrillas ended two decades of conservative rule.

Mauricio Funes made history on Sunday by leading the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) to power, completing a leftwing surge in central America that has peacefully toppled traditional Washington allies.

The president-elect, a 49-year-old moderate who was never a guerrilla himself, moved to soothe opponents fearing a lurch to socialism and score-settling.

"This is not the time for revenge. This is time for political understanding," he told a rally of cheering supporters. "The time has come for the excluded. The opportunity has arrived for genuine democrats, for men and women who believe in social justice and solidarity."

Associated Press

WASHINGTON The Obama administration argued in court documents filed Friday that four former detainees at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp who have sued over their treatment have no constitutional rights.

The suit was brought by four British men who say they were beaten, shackled in painful stress positions, threatened by dogs and subjected to extreme medical care during their time in the lockup at the U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba.

They also say they were harassed while practicing their religion, including forced shaving of their beards, banning or interrupting their prayers, denying them prayer mats and copies of the Koran and throwing a copy of the Koran in a toilet.

They contend in their lawsuit that the treatment violated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which provides that the ``government shall not substantially burden a person's exercise of religion.''

The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal for the District of Columbia unanimously ruled against them early last year, saying because the men were foreigners held outside the United States, they are not covered by the definition of ''person'' protected by the act.

Later in 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Guantánamo detainees have some rights under the Constitution. So the Supreme Court instructed the appeals court to reconsider the lawsuit in light of their decision.

Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which is supporting the detainees, said the group is disappointed the new administration ``squandered this opportunity to separate themselves from the policies of the past and to speak with moral force about torture and religious freedom.''

The Justice Department argued in its filing that the detainees had no constitutional rights and that, even if they did, military officers should not be held liable in this case because detainees' rights were not clearly established at the time of their detention. The government also argued that holding military officials liable could cause them to make future decisions based on fear of litigation rather than appropriate military policy.

Miami Herald continues

Human rights campaigner and former hostage Terry Waite has called on the US to drop charges against British computer hacker Gary McKinnon(born February 10, 1966).

Glasgow-born Mr McKinnon, 42, from Wood Green, north London, faces up to 70 years in prison if found guilty in the US of breaking into military computers.

He has Asperger's Syndrome and claims he was looking for details of UFOs.

Mr Waite, a hostage in Lebanon for four years, called the motives "harmless" and said "common sense" was needed.

He said the Pentagon ought to thank the self-confessed hacker for "exposing" the vulnerability of its computer security.

Mr Waite said Mr McKinnon's illness, a form of autism, made him "irrationally obsessive" and added that it was a waste of time to pursue him.

"No nation under the sun ought to convict an individual whose behaviour is occasioned by illness," he said.

"Gary is clearly a very clever chap.

"Was Gary a spy? Was he attempting to bring down the mighty military force of the USA? As far as I know he was not. He was simply looking for little green men.

"Anyone who has the slightest acquaintance with [Asperger's Syndrome] will know that while the sufferer can be, and indeed often is, brilliant in certain logical processes they can become irrationally obsessive in other directions."

BBC continues

Tony Blair and David Blunkett - although there are also many other reasons - deserve to swing for the treasonous extradition treaty with the U.S. How dare they have such contempt for the rights of British subjects and Brown-nose to America under Bush.

A Tooting man awaiting extradition to the US on terror charges is suing the Metropolitan Police for assault - but two officers involved in the case have refused to give evidence “because they are too scared”.

Babar Ahmad, 34, claims officers kicked and punched him repeatedly, mocked his religion and held him in a neck-hold to the point of unconsciousness when they arrested him at his home in December 2003.

Police claim his injuries were self-inflicted.

Mr Ahmad - who was the inmate at the centre of the MP bugging row last year - appeared by video link from prison to hear the case open at the High Court in London this morning.

Phillippa Kaufmann QC said her client never resisted arrest when police from the Territorial Support Group raided the house at 5.40am.

She said officers kicked and punched him, stamped on his feet and forced him on to his knees in the Muslim prayer position.

She said: “One officer said 'where is your God now?' and instructed him to pray.”

In a van on the way to Charing Cross police station Mr Ahmad was subjected to more beatings and held twice in a neck-hold, Mr Ahmad alleges.

“He thought he was about to become unconscious,” Ms Kaufmann said, adding one officer told Mr Ahmad in the van “you will remember this day for the rest of your life”.

Two officers involved in the case have refused to give evidence “because they say they are too scared to do so”, she said.

Ms Kaufmann added: “They say they are too scared even though the defendant's [The Metropolitan Police] own assessment is that there is no basis for their fears.”

The European Court of Justice is due to rule shortly on whether a decision to extradite Mr Ahmad to stand trial for terror charges in the US contravenes the Human Rights Act.

Tony Blair and David Blunkett - although there are also many other reasons - deserve to swing for the treasonous extradition treaty with the U.S. How dare they have such contempt for the rights of British subjects and Brown-nose to America under Bush.

Films and details of campaigners and journalists may breach Human Rights Act

Paul Lewis and Marc Vallée

Shocking footage shot by police, accompanied by their own critical commentary, shows how their officers monitored campaigners and the media – and demanded personal information – at last August's climate camp demonstration in Kent Link to this video

Police are targeting thousands of political campaigners in surveillance operations and storing their details on a database for at least seven years, an investigation by the Guardian can reveal.

Photographs, names and video ­footage of people attending protests are ­routinely obtained by surveillance units and stored on an "intelligence system". The ­Metropolitan police, which has ­pioneered surveillance at demonstrations and advises other forces on the tactic, stores details of protesters on Crimint, the general database used daily by all police staff to catalogue criminal intelligence. It lists campaigners by name, allowing police to search which demonstrations or political meetings individuals have attended.

Disclosures through the Freedom of Information Act, court testimony, an interview with a senior Met officer and police surveillance footage obtained by the Guardian have ­established that ­private information about activists ­gathered through surveillance is being stored without the knowledge of the people monitored.

Police surveillance teams are also ­targeting journalists who cover demonstrations, and are believed to have ­monitored members of the press during at least eight protests over the last year.

The Guardian has found:

• Activists "seen on a regular basis" as well as those deemed on the "periphery" of demonstrations are included on the police databases, regardless of whether they have been convicted or arrested.

• Names, political associations and photographs of protesters from across the political spectrum – from campaigners against the third runway at Heathrow to anti-war activists – are catalogued.

• Police forces are exchanging information about pro­testers stored on their intelligence systems, enabling officers from different forces to search which political events an individual has attended.

Lawyers said tonight they expect the Guardian's investigation to form the basis of a legal challenge against the use of police surveillance tactics.

Liberty, the human rights group, is challenging the police surveillance tactics in a judicial review at the court of appeal. But police appear not to have disclosed to the court that they were transferring private details of campaigners to a database.

Corinna Ferguson, Liberty's legal officer, said: "A searchable database containing photographs of people who are not even suspected of criminal activity may well violate privacy rights under article 8 of the Human Rights Act. It is particularly worrying if peaceful protesters are being singled out for surveillance."

Police surveillance footage from the climate camp demonstration in Kent last August, obtained by the Guardian, reveals how journalists are monitored as well as the often clumsy nature of the ­surveillance.

It shows police are interested in the names, clothing, whereabouts, and personal details of protesters and journalists. Three members of an ITV news crew, a Sky News cameraman and several photo­graphers were among members of the press monitored as they left the camp. Later in the day journalists at a protest against the Kingsnorth coal-fired power station, were followed by ­surveillance officers to a McDonald's restaurant. Police filmed them as they used the restaurant's Wi-Fi ­connection to file their material.

Kent police have already apologised after official complaints about the incident and intrusive stop and searches of journalists covering the demonstration.

The National Union of Journalists has been assured ­that members of the press were not being ­targeted after it took concerns to the Home Office and senior police ­officers. The union documented at least eight ­protests since last March where its ­members were "routinely" photographed and filmed by police. Several journalists said police officers they had never met knew their names. "We have put this to police and the Home Office several times but they have always denied the practice or sought to avoid answering the question," said Jeremy Dear, the union's general secretary. "With this evidence there is no credibility in doing so any longer."

Police have not disclosed the number of activists on the database. But court testimony by surveillance officers has confirmed the existence of a large intelligence system which, according to one officer, contains "thousands" of campaigners.

Overt surveillance by police forward intelligence teams (Fits) or evidence ­gatherers (EGs) is designed to record potential criminal activity and gather ­useful intelligence. Pioneered by the Met's public order branch in the late 1990s, the technique is used regularly across the country. Surveillance officers use ­"spotter cards" to identify activists. Police have always denied surveillance is conducted for the purposes of storing information on a database.

Information released by Scotland Yard under the Freedom of Information Act has revealed that while raw surveillance material is stored in a warehouse, material on certain individuals "is added to a corporate intelligence database". Scotland Yard's disclosure, in response to questions from NUJ lawyers , stated "generally, records are retained for seven years".

Superintendent David Hartshorn, from the Met's public order branch, conceded law-abiding campaigners were being added to the database. He said individuals on the system included people convicted or suspected of public order offences.

But he added "people we have seen on a regular basis involved but may not have been charged or arrested" were also stored on the database. He added that the data was reviewed every year. "In relation to what we can keep on databases, we are governed quite strictly on that. Obviously you've got the Data Protection Act but also, in terms of intelligence, we have to justify what we are able to keep."

Guardian source

The U.S. war in Afghanistan began in 2001 as a war of aggression similar to the attack on Iraq. Prior to the start of that war on Oct. 7, 2001, the Taliban government in Kabul offered to hand over Osama Bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader, if the U.S. provided proof he was responsible for the 9/11 attacks.

Bush deemed Kabul’s response insufficient and he attacked without adequately seeking an alternative or peaceful way to resolve differences…and the UN was not given a proper role. This attack violated Article 2 of the UN Charter that states “All members shall refrain…from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity…of any state…”

Neither Afghanistan nor Iraq attacked the United States, so neither war was based on self-defense. Preemptive war is not an accepted form of self-defense under international law.

The list of U.S. war crimes committed in Afghanistan alone documented in my book include the following:

# The U.S. bombed the children’s hospital in Kabul and a hospital in Herat, resulting in 100 deaths. This violated the Red Cross Convention of 1864 that established even military hospitals as “neutral” and that must be “respected by belligerents.”

# Clearly marked Red Cross warehouses were bombed on three occasions in the Afghan War during October 2001, a violation of the Geneva Convention of 1929 that protects “the personnel of Voluntary Aid Societies.”

# During its 2001 offensive in Afghanistan, at least 1,000 civilians were killed by U.S. carpet bombing. This violates Protocol 1 to the Geneva Conventions prohibiting “indiscriminate attacks” against civilians.

# While the Hague Convention of 1899 requires that prisoners be “humanely treated,” this was often not the case in Afghanistan where the conditions in the prisons were so shocking that Canadian forces stopped sending prisoners to the American-run prisons at the end of 2005, preferring to send them to facilities run by the Afghan government.

# Although the Geneva Convention of 1949 forbids “violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds,” captives were murdered in Afghanistan’s prisons. Some were chained naked to the ceiling, cell doors, and the floor. One man, Ait Idr, had his face forced into a toilet that was repeatedly flushed. Another, Mohammed Ahmed Said Haidel, was hit with his arms tied behind his back until his head began to bleed. Another, Ahmed Darabi, was hung by his arms and repeatedly beaten, though he survived---unlike (a) taxicab driver (named) Dilawar, who died from the same treatment.

# Prisoners of war “shall be lodged in buildings or in barracks,” says the POW Convention of 1929 but many cells at American-run prisons in Afghanistan lack windows and adequate ventilation. Some prisons lacked heat during cold weather so that prisoners died of exposure. What’s more, some prisoners have been held in solitary confinement for years.

# Where the Geneva Convention decrees sick or wounded prisoners “shall not be transferred as long as their recovery may be endangered by the journey,” some prisoners transferred in Afghanistan were thrown to the ground from helicopters and badly injured. Still others were kicked or beaten en route and others died while stuffed into sealed cargo containers. Not surprisingly, the deaths of some Afghan prisoners have never been recorded, another war crimes violation.

Aggressive war was first declared to be illegal when the U.S. and France coauthored and later ratified the multilateral Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928, thus incorporating that document into what the U.S. Constitution calls ”the law of the land.” Furthermore, the U.S. is a signatory to both the United Nations Charter and the Nuremberg Charter of 1945, and the Tokyo Charter of 1946.

The Nuremberg Charter, for example, defines crimes against peace as “planning, preparation, initiation or the waging of a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties…,” a definition that fits U.S. actions in Afghanistan during 2001.

It is not only the peoples of Afghanistan and Iraq whose rights have been trampled, for today the globe is being transformed into an unchecked superpower playpen where might appears to make right. Hundreds of years of human rights progress are in serious jeopardy as long as governmental war criminals live blissfully in the knowledge that they will never be accountable for their crimes.

The more the public observes reference in the news to possible war crimes violations, the more decision makers will be accountable. Otherwise, the impunity of high Bush administration officials for the immense violations documented….threatens to turn back the clock on human progress by shredding the Magna Carta, the American Constitution, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Hague and Geneva Conventions, and similar agreements that have advanced humanity from barbarism toward civilized behavior.

Bush has accomplished a transformed United States where leaders have abandoned democratic principles and loyal citizens are profoundly ashamed of how the ideals of the country they love so much have been abandoned. Something must be done or Americans will believe that whatever Bush has done was right.

Bringing George W. Bush and his administration to justice for war crimes is the most compelling way in which to dispel the fiction that what has been done was necessary and proper. Otherwise, the specter of war crimes will continue to haunt the world, and civilization itself will unravel helplessly.

George W. Bush, former President of the United States of America (U.S.) and Commander in Chief of the Armed Force, is reported to be coming to Calgary Alberta on March 17, 2009 to speak at a private function. Evidence of Bush's involvement in torture and other war crimes and crimes against humanity has triggered Canada's legal duty to bar Bush from entering Canada and if he enters, to prosecute him for torture.

LAW has advised the Prime Minister of Canada, the Attorney General and the Ministers of Immigration, Public Safety and Foreign Affairs that George W. Bush is inadmissible to Canada under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

Section 35(1) (a) states that a foreign national is inadmissible on grounds of violating human or international rights or for committing an act outside Canada that constitutes an offence referred to in sections 4 to 7 of the Crimes against Humanity and War Crimes Act. Also inadmissiable (s.35 (1)(b)) are persons who are, or were, senior officials "in the service of a government that, in the opinion of the Minister, engages or has engaged in gross human rights violations…"

Under sections 4 to 7 of the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act:

"crimes against humanity" includes murder, enforced disappearance, deportation, imprisonment, torture, imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law, committed against any civilian population or any identifiable group. "war crime" includes wilfull killing, torture and inhuman treatment, unlawful confinement, willfully depriving a prisoner of war or other protected person of fair trial rights, intentionally launching that the attack will cause incidental loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects or widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment which would be clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall military advantage anticipated.

If there are reasonable grounds to believe a person has been complicit in any of these crimes, entry to Canada must be denied. The Supreme Court of Canada says reasonable grounds are "something more than suspicion but less than…proof on the balance of probabilities."

source

� June 11, 2007 - The rules of the game have changed again UPDATED 11/6/07

The big story will be told. In many ways the big story has been told. It is an approach, a method, a parallax. There is a deep mine of knowledge in the public domain. Use the keys, join the dots as Blair once said. Now for some enlightenment. It is over for Bliar & Co and the Labour party. They have been undone. There is plenty more out there for the finding. Here's another small part of that big story. I don't know what will happen although there are some very strong hints. At least people will have a plausible alternative narrative. At least they will have the opportunity to hold corrupt politicians and other evil men accountable for their actions. I hope that the Fascist bastards will be imprisoned although it extends far beyond a few Fascist politicians. If we - as the population - are expected to abide by so-called 'democracy' and the rule of law then we need the rule of law imposed on these Fascist war criminals, mass-murderers, child murderers and paedophiles. We as a population need to stop the bastards murdering us and we cannot tolerate any more Fascist bullshit e.g. Fascist murderers being promoted as a calculated insult by the Metropolitan Police Authority. When events are so wierd that they defy understanding, it is a good sign that you're outside the relevant discourse. Find the appropriate discourse and suddenly everything makes sense... I bought a deck of Thoth tarot cards about eight weeks ago. Learning the tarot seems to be an excellent way of learning Kabbalah's 'tree of life' which the tarot is based on. I've only done one general reading so far and am still interpreting the results. They are very powerful cards, including the Ace of Swords and The Tower. I am inspired by truth-seekers chasing lightning. Storms and lightening are worth chasing. According to mythology Thor, the Norse god of thunder and lightning had an awesome hammer called Mjolnir and according to Christian mythology there was lightning when the fallen angel Lucifer (not often called Lucifer in the Christian discourse), bright son of the morning, was ejected from heaven. "I saw Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning." (Luke 10:18) "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!" (Isaiah 14:12, King James version). Thor's legend has influenced some of the tarot cards. Aleister Crowley had this to say on "the description of" the Lovers or Brothers "card in its primitive form".   This is a mystery of the sixth key of the Tarot, which ought not to be called The Lovers, but The Brothers.   In the middle of the card stands Cain; in his right hand is the Hammer of Thor with which he hath slain his brother, and it is all wet with his blood. And his left hand he holdeth open as a sign of innocence. On his right hand is his mother Eve, around whom the serpent is entwined with his hood spread behind her head; and on his left hand is a figure somewhat like the Hindoo Kali, but much more seductive. Yet I know it to be Lilith. And above him is the Great Sigil of the Arrow, downward, but it is struck through the heart of the child. This child also is Abel. And the meaning of this part of the card is obscure, but that is the correct drawing of the Tarot card; and that is the correct magical fable from which the Hebrew scribes, who were not complete Initiates, stole their legend of the Fall and the subsequent events. [Here's yet another dot for Ant and others. Did you catch that Ant? His hand was open signifying innocence (and his shoes were removed signifying one disposessed of property. Today that would be called a bankrupt. Do you read images? ;)] Joining the dots as Tony Blair suggested that we should, we have this The News of the World, quoting a Whitehall source, claims Mr Abdulkahar was shot accidentally by his 20-year-old brother, who is being held at Paddington Green police station. Notice that it is a Whitehall source that is claiming that he was shot by his brother. This is consistent over many instances - that it is Whitehall i.e. Tony Blair's press office that is pushing the esoteric interpretations.   7/6/07 I want to get on with painting the big picture so I'll return to the Forest Gate raid. Manic has a good roundup of corporate reportage, including a link to the NOTW article. There is yet another brother ... The NOTW article appears to be Blair's government i.e. Blair reassuring the police that they will not be prosecuted. Notice that he's not so tough on crime and the causes of crime when it's him, his government and the oppressive state apparatus operating under his and his government's orders that are the criminals. June 2006 archive, Blair & Co having a kicking. Not Anticipated or Imagined by Craig Murray I have just been sickened by John Reid putting his new anti-liberty proposals to parliament. "Terrible things are threatening" he gravely warned us "which had not been anticipated or imagined" when our liberties were adopted. Just what are these "terrible things" that we can't imagine? Reid's flight of rhetoric is reminiscent of King Lear: I will do such things, What they are yet I know not; but they shall be The terrors of the earth The point is, of course, that Shakespeare's Lear was supposed to be illustrating his descent into madness by this crazed rambling: whereas Reid's daft statement comes from a supposedly rational man, intent on destroying the civil liberties of our country. What terrorism we have seen to date in this country has been, in execution, not unimaginable or even particularly surprising. This is a tough and resilient country. We saw off Hitler, we saw off the IRA, and we can see this smaller threat off too. But we can do it better without Reid gnawing at our social sinews. Terrible things have indeed happened in this country which I had neither anticipated nor imagined. In November 2005 the British government fought a case all the way to the House of Lords, to try to reintroduce, after three hundred years, the use in court of evidence obtained under torture. I never imagined or anticipated that would happen in my lifetime. Nor did I imagine or anticipate that, as a matter of policy, our intelligence services would regularly use intelligence obtained under torture, nor that people would be held for years in British jails without charge or trial, nor that we would introduce house arrest. I never imagined or anticipated it would become illegal to read names of the dead at the cenotaph, nor wave a copy of Vanity Fair outside the gates of Downing St. I never imagined or anticipated that a Brazilian electrician could be executed on the London Underground. ... Returning to our theme of the tarot or events reflecting events portreyed in the tarot ... 8/6/07 Pictured left is the Tower or War card from Aleister Crowley's Thoth tarot deck (painted by Lady Freida Harris). Crowley describes the card XVI. THE TOWER [OR: WAR] This card is attributed to the letter Peh, which means a mouth; it refers to the planet Mars. In its simplest interpretation it refers to the manifestation of cosmic energy in its grossest form. The picture shows the destruction of existing material by fire. It may be taken as the preface to Atu XX, the Last Judgment, i.e., the Coming of a New Aeon. This being so, it seems to indicate the quintessential quality of the Lord of the Aeon. [See Liber AL III. 3-9; II - 13; 17-18; 23-29; 46; 49-60; 70-72.]   At the bottom part of the card, therefore, is shown the destruction of the old-established Aeon by lightning, flames, engines of war. In the right-hand corner are the jaws of Dis, belching flame at the root of the structure. Falling from the tower are broken figures of the garrison. It will be noticed that they have lost their human shape. They have become mere geometrical expressions. This suggests another (and totally different) interpretation of the card. To understand this, it is necessary to refer to the doctrines of Yoga, especially those most widely current in Southern India, where the cult of Shiva, the Destroyer, is paramount. Shiva is represented as dancing upon the bodies of his devotees. To understand this is not easy for most western minds. Briefly, the doctrine is that the ultimate reality (which is Perfection) is Nothingness. Hence all manifestations, however glorious, however delightful, are stains. To obtain perfection, all existing things must be annihilated. The destruction of the garrison may therefore be taken to mean their emancipation from the prison of organized life, which was confining them. It was their unwisdom to cling to it. The above should make it clear that magical symbols must always be understood in a double sense, each contradictory of the other. These ideas blend naturally with the higher and deeper significance of the card. There is a direct reference to this card in the Book of the Law. In Chapter I, verse 57, the goddess Nuith speaks: “Invoke me under my stars! Love is the law, love under will. Nor let the fools mistake love; for there are love and love. There is the dove, and there is the serpent. Choose ye well! He, my prophet, hath chosen, knowing the law of the fortress, and the great mystery of the House of God”.   [For this reason the ancient title, to-day not very intelligible, has been retained. Otherwise, it might have been called War.] The dominating feature of this card is the Eye of Horus. This is also the Eye of Shiva, on the opening of which, according to the legend of this cult, the Universe is destroyed. Besides this, there is a special technical magical meaning, which is explained openly only to initiates of the Eleventh degree of the O.T.O.; a grade so secret that it is not even listed in the official documents. It is not even to be understood by study of the Eye in Atu XV. Perhaps it is lawful to mention that the Arab sages and the Persian poets have written, not always guardedly, on the subject. Bathed in the effulgence of this Eye (which now assumes even a third sense, that indicated in Atu XV) are the Dove bearing an olive branch and the Serpent: as in the above quotation. The Serpent is portrayed as the Lion-Serpent Xnoubis or Abraxas. These represent the two forms of desire; what Schopenhauer would have called the Will to Live and the Will to Die. They represent the feminine and masculine impulses; the nobility of the latter is possibly based upon recognition of the futility of the former. This is perhaps why the renunciation of love in all the ordinary senses of the word has been so constantly announced as the first step towards initiation. This is an unnecessarily rigid view. This Trump is not the only card in the Pack, nor are the “will to live” and the “will to die” incompatible. This becomes clear as soon as life and death are understood (See Atu XIII) as phases of a single manifestation of energy. In the first quoted paragraph above, Crowley refers to the coming of a New Aeon and that the card "seems to indicate the quintessential quality of the Lord of the Aeon." There's lightning again, this time concerned with destruction. There's the idea of the coming of a new Aeon through the destruction of the old. The Lord of the Aeon would be the New Lord of course. I wonder who that could be ... and I wonder who opened the eye ... Gematria of languages derived from Latin using Agrippa's Code has been revealed as one of the secrets of the related esoteric societies. Search and you will find that Agrippa's Code is often used to convey hidden meanings. Being in the light or in darkness sometimes refers to conveying messages simply (or plainly) or hidden. I find the widespread use of Agrippa's Code odd since it is not a particularly secret code. Many people are familiar with it although it was perhaps once a secret to the higher orders or degrees of esoteric groups. Search engine results suggest that it may be only very recently that using Agrippa's Code became widely known. I don't know. There is the concept of destruction of the old to make way for the new. This same concept is seen in operation in many recent wars. So-called world leaders claim that these wars are about spreading - the alleged - freedom and democracy of the West to the invaded and occupied nations. This argument is instantly exposed as bullshit. If it's about providing freedom and democracy, why does there need to be such destruction, why do uncounted thousand have to be slaughtered? What has that got to do with freedom and democracy? My conclusions suggest that war is a necessity for the bankrupt economic system known as Capitalism. There must be destruction for the construction companies to profit. War i.e. mass-murder, is profitable to a world economic system in crisis. 8/6/07 2nd update Pictured left are the Tower or Blasted-tower cards from the Rider-Weite and Golden Dawn tarots. The Russian at the bottom of the Golden Dawn Tower is Russian for Tower. Lightning is featured in the Rider-Waite card. The 'Jaws of dis' are at the base of the tower in the Golden Dawn card as they were with the earlier Thoth card. The Golden Dawn card features Kabbalah's 'Tree of Life' to the right of the tower (the one with white circles) and a different tree is pictured on the left. The symbol striking the tower is the symbol of Mars which is associated with this card. The Serpent is seen coiling around the tower. The Serpent is seen in all three cards. 'Lord of the hosts of the mighty' 9/6/07 'Lord of the hosts of the mighty'. What we have with the Blasted-Tower card is a centuries old narrative that can be applied to the 911 atrocity. The narrative of the blasted tower will have been recognised by many on the day as events developed. The trees in the Golden Dawn card remind me of the phrase It is an effort to hide the forest with one tree - using the controversy over a single incident to obscure the fact that the entire case for war was a lie. You can almost see the tower as a tree, a plane tree. I don't know all the details of 911 but I know enough. Buildings considered undestructable and specially designed and constructed to withstand the impact of aeroplanes 'collapse'. The 'Solomon building' or WTC7 collapsed even without a plane hitting it. The BBC announcement of its collapse some 23 minutes early shows that a script was being followed. The BBC follows the orders of UK minsters in times of emergency. The script was not a script written by Islamic Jihadists. I suspect that the name Solomon is relevant as is the three demolished buildings in New York. 911 has never been adequately investigated and there are very strong signs of a cover-up. It happened shortly after George Bush's dubious election and hugely increased his popularity. It happened two months after a UK general election and ensured that Tony Blair did not have to face the wrath of the Trades Unions' Congress. Blair did not return to the TUC until 2004 when the unions were silenced by the general election of 2005. 9/11/2001 9 + 11 + 1 = 21 > 3 9 + 2 + 1 = 12 > 3 10/6/07 Astral chart for 8.46 a.m. New York 11 September 2001 (thanks to astrobot). Notice that Mars is on the cusp of Capricorn, the Goat and Sagittarius, the Archer near the bottom of the chart. Wikipedia: Heavenly bodies located on the cusp of a sign ... are said to possess the attributes of both the sign it is leaving and the sign it is entering. 11/6/07 While we're on astral charts, here's one of Jean Charles de Menezes' murder. More on de Menezes later. The picture that proves 'torture flights' are STILL landing in the UK By GLEN OWEN - Last updated at 09:07am on 10th June 2007 The row over CIA 'torture flights' using British airports has deepened following fresh evidence that a plane repeatedly linked to the controversial programme landed in the UK just days ago. The plane was logged arriving at RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk last weekend, and watching aviation experts said the aircraft, piloted by crew clad in desert fatigues, was immediately surrounded on the runway by armed American security forces.   This flight was spotted landing at a UK airport - proof that 'rendition ' flights are still taking place Its registration number, clearly visible on the fuselage, identifies it as a plane which the European Parliament says has been involved in 'ghost flights' to smuggle terrorist suspects to shadowy interrogation centres abroad. Records show the plane is owned by Blackwater USA, a CIA contractor described as "the most secretive and powerful mercenary army on the planet". An eyewitness, who previously worked as an RAF electronic warfare expert, said that as the plane - a CASA-212 Aviocar - taxied to a stop on the runway it was met by a US military Humvee. The vehicle contained four US security policemen armed with M16 assault rifles, who accompanied the camouflaged crew to the airport terminal. The man, who did not want to be identified, added: "I thought it was curious that they would give a civilian plane an armed guard." Another spotter, who took the picture of it landing, recorded it touching down at 4.36pm on Saturday. The disclosure follows damning findings by the Council of Europe human rights organisation, which accused Tony Blair on Friday of colluding in a CIA operation to run secret prisons in Poland and Romania by allowing the agency to use UK airports. The study was contradicted on the same day by a report from the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), which concluded that there was no evidence to support the claims. But the director of the human rights group Liberty revealed that ACPO had admitted it restricted its inquiry to a review of media reports on the issue. She accused them of rushing out their ‘cursory’ findings as part of a politically-motivated 'spin' operation. The US plane's arrival was also logged by Touchdown News, a group of enthusiasts who record the movements of military aircraft at RAF Mildenhall and RAF Lakenheath. The group said the plane used its civilian call sign when talking to air traffic control and took off again early on the morning of Sunday June 3, flying east. ... The Mail on Sunday article continues Simon Murden's got one too. The alleged sword gives it away. Simon Murden's story has never been told. Simon 219, anti-war. Murden 72 = 360 / 5. I am confident that Simon Murden was a 23 - as Jean Charles de Menezes was - although I'm not able to find his date of birth to confirm this. You can't argue with de Menezes' earlier chart. This one is not quite so clear. Murden was a committed Christian. What they've done is arrange to murder him so that he's a star hanging on a cross (as Jesus was crucified). The Sun, Venus and Mars on cusps. Moon at the base of the pentagram at 21°3. Venus, Saturn, the Sun and possibly Mars on cusps on the earlier de Menezes chart. I need to learn more astrology and may be missing something obvious. That's what I forgot. In the 911 chart there is a small triangle centred on Venus. It's for the eye - see US dollar bills. unfinished and continuing

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About Me Militant blog by a UK political dissident. � Archives FAKE MANUFACTURED TERRORISM � FAKE MANUFACTURED TERRORISM: Hmm � FAKE MANUFACTURED TERRORISM: BACKGROUND: Keep off the grass! � FAKE MANUFACTURED TERRORISM: We don't do God. I'm sorry. We don't do God. � FAKE MANUFACTURED TERRORISM: Myrobella Ho (is 666) � FAKE MANUFACTURED TERRORISM: The Pet Goat � FAKE MANUFACTURED TERRORISM: John Reid on "fascist individuals" � FAKE MANUFACTURED TERRORISM: "extremist internet types" THE UNOFFICIAL NARRATIVE � MORE UNOFFICIAL NARRATIVE: Deeper and Darker: Why? � MORE UNOFFICIAL NARRATIVE: Poll Tax Riot � MORE UNOFFICIAL NARRATIVE: Their Cyns � MORE UNOFFICIAL NARRATIVE: Full Spectrum Dominance, Introduction � MORE UNOFFICIAL NARRATIVE: Full Spectrum Dominance � News management LAST UPDATED 7 Sept 2006 � Craig Murray on the alleged terror plot � Blair's government and Metropolitan Police policy dictated by the Jerusalem Post � The London Tube Bombings Fantasy July 7, 2005 � Danger of dust explosions on the London Underground � Ignition for the London explosions � Fake terrorism broadcasts planned for 7 July 2005 � The War on Truth � Sorry to keep you waiting � Background: UK's shoot-to-kill policy #LAST UPDATED 19/09/05 � Background: The London Police's Mossad-style Execution of a 'Suspect' � THE UNOFFICIAL NARRATIVE: Introduction � THE UNOFFICIAL NARRATIVE: 20 November 2003. March and rally to 'unwelcome' Dubya Bush to London � THE UNOFFICIAL NARRATIVE: Three 'suspected terrorists' � THE UNOFFICIAL NARRATIVE: Three 'suspected terrorists UPDATED' � THE UNOFFICIAL NARRATIVE: deep � THE UNOFFICIAL NARRATIVE: deep � THE UNOFFICIAL NARRATIVE: How we know they are hunting deep � EXCLUSIVE: "We got Genghis Khan" and other 7/7 bullshit � Call for 7 July 2005 London Explosions Enquiry � Digging deeper #1 � The cost of telling the truth � Manic New Labour's outlaws � John Reid's tenuous grasp on reality rivals Blair's � Evil Fascist John Reid is just plain wrong � De Menezes officers 'should face a jury' � THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE: Find that name � School students tell Blair to go � Ludicrous Diversion � EXCLUSIVE: Ken and Bob � Tony reaps a whirlwind � UK authorities refuse to investigate Met Police boss for murder charges � Bloody Metropolitan Police Authority � Fascism UK � Fascism � An elephant in the room and bodies under the carpets � Lying, Torturing, Murdering Bastards � Tony Blair's Narcissistic Personality Disorder � Blairs' intolerable Fascism � Fascist Neo Labour to abandon the need for evidence � Reid and New Labour abandon the need for evidence again � John Reid on "fascist individuals" � THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE: Reality is negotiated � What happens to Fascists � Planet Blair Hypocrisy #3 � Planet Blair Hypocrisy #2 � Planet Blair Hypocrisy #1 � The World according to Leo Blair � Can you trust this man with anything? � Spot the nutters � Let's crucify Tony Blair. He'll love it Recent Posts � The rules of the game have changed again UPDATED 11/6/07 � Big Brother Britain: Government and councils to spy on ALL our phones � Miliband talks crap � Jacqui Smith talks crap � Bush prepares for 'greenwashing' climate summit � Bush threatened nations opposed to Iraq war: Report � Labour cronyism sees independent bodies filled with party supporters � Joining the dots #1 � Millions in flight: the Iraqi refugee crisis � Anguish over 7/7 inquest delays � The swarm � Fascist War (Labour) Party Conference 2007 � Control orders are goatshit(2) � Craig Murray and Tim Ireland's Bloggerheads sites down � Craig Murray and Tim Ireland's Bloggerheads sites down (Part 2) � Jean Charles de Menezes vandalism � US student tortured for asking John Kerry a question � Bush setting America up for war with Iran � UN nuclear boss warns warmongers over Iran � Salmon escape from Isle of Lewis fish farm � BLOGGING THE BIG STORY: #Why an inquiry would be a 'ludicrous diversion' #1 MORE NAMES � BLOGGING THE BIG STORY: Flight 93 � MI5 and MI6 to be sued for first time over torture � Crusaders can shame Labour � Rising Labour star accused of telling voters: my opponent is a paedophile � BLOGGING THE BIG STORY: 911 Introduction � Haneef police transcript exposes Australian government’s “terrorist conspiracy” claims � BLOGGING THE BIG STORY: #Why an inquiry would be a 'ludicrous diversion' #1 � BLOGGING THE BIG STORY: #1 Blair � BLOGGING THE BIG STORY: Introduction � Working On � A short introduction to the ROTA � Military commanders tell Brown to withdraw from Iraq without delay � FAKE MANUFACTURED TERRORISM � FAKE MANUFACTURED TERRORISM: Radiographer Mala Trivedi � Arctic sea ice set to hit new low � Hmm � Joy for protesters as Heathrow is denied 'mother of all injunctions' � Brian Haw: 'It is strange that they are spending so much money prosecuting me' � Millions left homeless by Asia's monsoon floods � No Inquest into the Death of Dr. David Kelly � Historical False-Flag Operations: Lockerbie � De Menezes shooting investigation 'like an episode of Fawlty Towers', says Brian Paddick � Wallet and phone proved victim was not terrorist � Whistleblower: Surgeon breaks cover over NHS beds crisis � Spin � Heathrow attacks human rights � FAKE MANUFACTURED TERRORISM: 'Mirror' reporters held over fake bomb � FAKE MANUFACTURED TERRORISM: Officers wrote names in Haneef's diary � Majority of super-rich pay no income tax � Lessons for Gordon Brown � No charges expected in cash for honours inquiry � How Murdoch had a hotline to the PM in the run-up to Iraq war � EPA misled public on 9/11 pollution � Gap between rich and poor 'widest in 40 years' � Historical False-Flag Operations: Operation Northwoods � Some Links � The Civil Contingencies Act � Union leader cites "terrible legacy" of Tony Blair � Coming soon: An EXCLUSIVE Necromancy Special UPDATED 12/7/07 � July 2005 � Was the Mile End tube derailment a dust explosion? � Bullshit by Canon Andrew White � Fairford trials � FAKE MANUFACTURED TERRORISM: Cars are bombs � Good riddance � The curious case of Richmal Oates Whitehead � CORRECTED: Deal to name Blair as Middle East envoy delayed � Working on � If it looks like a duck ... � Tony Blair "morally corrupt" � Theseus � A Scorpion � The Earth today stands in imminent peril � Conspiraloon Central poetry � Tony Blair: Nothing is my fault � Insane Tony Blair � Have I got the time about right? � Reflections on Religion � The Raven Recommended UK Pro-Democracy Blogs Anything that defies my sense of reason Are you listening? BackingBlair Blairwatch codshit.com Chicken Yoghurt Craig Murray Deficient Brain Disillusioned Kid UK Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Blog gizmonaut.net blog James Hammerton's Blog Jultra July 7th Truth Campaign Labour Watch The Mysterious Case Of The Non-Existent Train Time PJC Journal Obsolete perfect.co.uk Postman Patel Revulsion SpyBlog Terrorism News

Britain on brink of becoming database police state, speakers tell Convention on Modern Liberty

The government and the courts are collabarating in shaving away freedoms and pushing Britain to the brink of becoming a "database" police state, a series of sold-out conferences across the UK heard today.

In a day of speeches and discussions, academics, politicians, lawyers, writers, journalists and pop stars joined civil liberty campaigners to issue a call to arms for Britons to defend their democratic rights.

More than 1,500 people attended the Convention on Modern Liberty in Bloomsbury, central London, which was linked by video to parallel events in Glasgow, Belfast, Bristol, Manchester, Cardiff and Cambridge.

...

In her speech, Kennedy said she felt fear was being used as a weapon to break down civil liberties.

"There is a general feeling that in creating a climate of fear people have been writing a blank cheque to government. People feel the fear of terrorism is being used to take away a lot of rights."

She said voters were anxious that their communities were "being alienated" by the use of powers that were originally designed to protect national security but were now being used outside that remit. Now was the time for the electorate to make its feelings known to government, before the next election.

She said: "People are fearful of the general business of collecting too much information about individuals".

High on the list of concerns of many at the convention were the recent allegations against the British security services by the Guantànamo Bay torture victim Binyam Mohamed, plans for ID cards, DNA databases and surveillance powers being used by civil servants as well as the government.

The Convention on Modern Liberty, sponsored by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, openDemocracy, Liberty, NO2ID and the Guardian, was launched as an umberella campaign last month under the statement of purpose: "A call to all concerned with attacks on our fundamental rights and freedoms under pressure from counter-terrorism, financial breakdown and the database state".

David Miliband and Jacqui Smith have both refused to appear before Parliament's human rights committee to answer questions about allegations of British collusion in the torture of British citizens and residents detained during counter-terrorism operations in Pakistan.

In a move that dismayed members of the Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR), a joint letter from the foreign secretary and home secretary is also said to have failed to answer any of the eight questions that the committee asked about legal provisions offering MI5 officers immunity in the UK for crimes committed overseas. The JCHR is now asking Jonathan Evans, the director-general of MI5, to appear before it to be questioned about the agency's policy and the conduct of his officers.

MPs and peers on the committee are also expected to demand again that Miliband and Smith answer their questions, while its chairman, Andrew Dismore, says the ministers' refusal may trigger demands for an independent inquiry into the allegations. Dismore said it was "deeply disappointing" that neither minister had agreed to appear before the committee, but added: "This inquiry isn't over yet." He said MPs may wish to consider an independent inquiry modelled along the lines of one held in Canada, which examined official collusion in the US rendition programme and recommended changes in the supervision of Canadian intelligence services. "We don't want to hang people out to dry, this isn't about pointing the finger, but we do want to get at the truth," Dismore said. "If people have been tortured, we can't untorture them, but we can make recommendations about how this can be avoided in the future."

The JCHR opened its inquiry after hearing evidence from the Guardian, which has been investigating allegations that British intelligence officers have colluded in the torture of terrorism suspects, and Human Rights Watch, which says the allegations have been confirmed by officials in the UK and Pakistan. Tom Porteous, London director of Human Rights Watch, said yesterday of Miliband and Smith: "What are they afraid of? There are serious questions here about allegations of UK involvement in torture. The ministers are really inviting speculation that the UK government has something to hide." A number of suspects have been questioned by British intelligence officials, including MI5 officers, after periods of alleged torture by interrogators from Pakistan's notorious Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Directorate.

According to evidence heard at the high court during proceedings brought on behalf of Binyam Mohamed, the British resident who was freed from Guantanamo Bay last week, an interrogation policy which subsequently led to detainees being tortured in Pakistan was devised by MI5 lawyers and figures in government.

Ministers have admitted they handed over terror suspects in Iraq to US authorities, sparking claims of collusion in extraordinary rendition.

Defence secretary John Hutton said two men detained in 2004 were transferred to US custody and were then transported to Afghanistan, where they remain.

He said he was reassured they had been treated humanely but apologised for past incorrect answers given to MPs.

The Tories said the UK faced charges of being "complicit with serious abuse".

The Lib Dems said Mr Hutton's comments raised "as many questions as answers" and called for all relevant documents in the case to be published.

Mr Hutton said that contrary to previous statements he now knew UK officials were aware that the two men, understood to be Pakistani nationals, had been transferred to US custody in 2004 but that no action had been taken on the issue.

BBC continues

By Ann Talbot
26 February 2009

The UK Justice Secretary Jack Straw has vetoed a ruling made under the Freedom of Information Act instructing the government to release the minutes of two key cabinet meetings on March 13 and 17, 2003, when the decision to go to war against Iraq was discussed.

This is the first time that the government has used its veto to prevent the release of information under the Act, which came into force in 2005.

"It is a necessary decision to protect the public interest in effective cabinet government," Straw told the House of Commons. He asserted that "to permit the commissioner's and tribunal's view of the public interest to prevail would in my judgement risk serious damage to cabinet government; an essential principle of British parliamentary democracy. That eventuality is not in the public interest."

The request for the minutes was made in December 2006, and the Cabinet Office refused to release them. An appeal hearing of the Information Tribunal opened in November 2008. In January of this year it ruled by a majority that it was in the public interest to release the minutes.

"We have decided that the public interest in maintaining the confidentiality of the formal minutes of two cabinet meetings at which ministers decided to commit forces to military action in Iraq did not, at the time when the Cabinet Office refused a request for disclosure in April 2007, outweigh the public interest in disclosure."

The minutes of cabinet meetings that decided on such a momentous question as going to war presented, the tribunal concluded, "an exceptional case," which would not create a precedent. Other cabinet minutes and confidential government papers that are normally kept secret for 30 years before being released to the National Archives would not have been affected by the ruling.

Under these circumstances, Straw's response underlines the determination of the UK government to keep the process by which it decided to launch a predatory war of aggression entirely secret. Straw has used his veto conscious of the fact that he and other government ministers may yet face war crimes charges for their actions.

It was at the cabinet meeting on March 17 that the Attorney General Lord Goldsmith gave his opinion that the war against Iraq was legal, after maintaining for the previous year that it would be illegal. Initially, Goldsmith did not believe that United Nations resolution 1441 provided an automatic trigger for war and thought that a second resolution would be necessary if the war was to legal.

Goldsmith was not alone in this view. The entire Foreign Office legal team had made it clear to Straw, who was then foreign secretary that without a second resolution the war would be illegal. They appealed to Goldsmith for support, and he gave them no indication that he thought 1441 was an adequate basis for war. According to the journalist John Kampfner, Goldsmith sent Prime Minister Tony Blair a memo in January 2003 in which he expressed his concerns.

Weeks later Goldsmith went to Washington where he met with the US Attorney General John Ashcroft and John Bellinger, senior associate counsel to the president and legal adviser to the National Security Council. On his return from Washington, Goldsmith prepared a 13-page report on the legal case for war. When it was sent to the Chief of Defence Staff Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, he found it equivocal and demanded a more definitive ruling on the legality of the war before he agreed to commit troops.

On March 17 Goldsmith was called to the cabinet to give his view on the legality of the war. According to accounts leaked to the press by those present, he made a brief statement saying that the war was legal. No questions were permitted and Blair moved on to next business. On the same day a statement was made in the Commons.

When the attorney general's advice was later published, it amounted to one A4 sheet of paper declaring the war legal without a second resolution. It contained no explanation of the legal reasoning behind this dramatic change in Goldsmith's views. [Was there was no legal basis for war and Blair, Brown, Straw & Co, Labour Party Fascists and American brown-nosers are war criminals?]

wsws.org continues

No column in The Independent again this morning, as they weren't overly keen on the issue I was writing about, which is connected to the Viva Palestina convoy of trucks, that left London on February 14th to deliver food and medicine to Gaza.

The convoy was financed by collections throughout the country, which were enough to fund 110 vehicles on a journey to across the channel, through France, Spain, across North Africa and hopefully through Egypt into Gaza. This, you might imagine, is the sort of charitable venture that would be publicised across the media as a chirpy feelgood tale, perhaps involving a regular feature on Blue Peter and at some point resulting in Cat Deeley squealing 'The response has been AMAZING, you've been ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC'.

But in the tradition that anyone's permitted to carry out crazy wacky acts as long as it involves charity, the police decided to contribute to the event with a spectacular lark. Early in the morning, on the day the convoy left, they arrested nine people on the M65 under the Terrorism Act, who were on their way to Hyde Park, where the journey was due to begin. They blocked off an entire section of motorway, and grabbed their suspects with what was described in the local newspaper as "Dozens of police cars, vans, 4x4 vehicles and a helicopter."

The first I knew of this episode was from that afternoon's BBC news, on which it was the main item. Which is as you might expect, with nine suspected terrorists being pounced on by an operation that included a helicopter. To be fair, the BBC journalists didn't have to work too hard to find the story, as the police informed them in advance, and in addition, by a splendid coincidence, a press photographer happened to be on hand to record this successful swoop.

Maybe this is how the police plan to fund themselves from now on. They'll follow the practice of celebrities and stage their events so they can be sold to OK and Hello. Major criminals will find themselves lying on the floor in handcuffs, while a photographer claps his hands and calls out "That's lovely, now can we do the arrest one more time while the Inspector stands just behind kissing his wife, and then have a profile of the murderer's assistant on a sheepskin rug in front of a coal fire."

The news reported that the terrorists were on the way to join the Viva Palestina convoy, which straight away seemed a little peculiar. Why would terrorists be on the way to join such an event? What would they be planning to attack? The convoy of trucks heading for Gaza? And what sort of Jihadist terrorist would say "I know how we'll move around without being noticed - we'll drive down the motorway in three vans with Palestinian flags flapping from the windows and a fucking great 'Viva Palestina' logo painted on the side."

The story was reported in almost every Sunday paper, with headlines such as “Galloway’s Aid Convoy linked to three terror suspects”, in the Mail on Sunday. And they had the effect of reducing contributions to the charity by eighty per cent, as the astute might have been able to predict. But the nine men, six from Blackburn and three from Burnley, were questioned, and the lorries, which were full of children's toys, were searched. And presumably the head of the anti-terrorist squad stood there throughout saying "Check that Bratz for semtex." By the next morning six were released without any charges, and a few days later the other three were released as well, the police appearing to be duly embarrassed to the extent they've paid the fares so the wrongly arrested men could catch up with the convoy, which by now was moving into Algeria.

The local councillor for the arrested men in Burnley is Wajid Khan, described how they were “Well respected men in the community, seen in a positive light.”

Presumably then, all the broadcasters and newspapers who considered it a major story that the police had successfully pulled off this anti-terrorist operation will now make it an equally prominent story that the arrests had no validity whatsoever. Apart from anything else there must be many people who saw that story, and are wondering why they've heard nothing about it since, assuming a bunch of terrorists have escaped and are running round on the loose. They may even indulge in some investigative work, which will show that three of the arrested men are defence witnesses in a separate trial, which may, or may not be a coincidence.

It appears the police are as accomplished at "spin" as any duplicitous politician.

Let me briefly pass the baton on to someone much more capable than I of illustrating a classic example of police spin... George Monbiot writing in the Guardian in December 2008, "Otter-spotting and birdwatching: the dark heart of the eco-terrorist peril", in which he explains that:

NETCU aren't of course the only element of the police capable of such trickery.

The place: Kingsnorth, in Kent. The scene: last year's Climate Camp. And police claiming to have found a weapons cache "hidden in trees and undergrowth around the site". No hard evidence offered of course that actually connects this alleged "find" of "an assortment of knives, a pointed throwing star, shields and chains" to the protesters.

We also have police raiding the campsite and seizing a variety of items (which included perfectly normal kitchen utensils... only to be expected on a site that anticipated catering for upwards of 1500 people for a week or so), the whole of which (these and the alleged "find") were then, by a bit of verbal trickery, obfuscation, and a conveniently laid-on (for the benefit of the media) "display", used to suggest that "if you look at the equipment we have seized, it is clear the plan was to use these items for criminal purposes", in the words of Assistant Chief Constable Gary Beautridge.

How's that for a neat bit of legerdemain then?

Naturally the campers were quick to respond...

But the damage had already been done. The "find" and accompanying police interpretation had already been reported in the mainstream media (The Independent, the BBC etc) thus worming its way into the consciousness of the public at large. The majority of whom, having little or no first-hand knowledge of Climate Camp protesters, will just swallow the whole lot hook, line, and sinker. After all, the police always tell the truth... don't they?

So in the minds of the Great British Public protesters (and particularly environmental protesters) become just another bunch of criminals or, even worse (shriek, horror), terrorists! And of course we need all those lovely new laws to protect us from them... don't we?

(The fact that all those lovely new laws succeed where the "real" terrorists dismally failed... in increasingly curtailing our freedoms... is neither here nor there of course!)

But what of the reality? Well, for starters you could do worse than read this article by Gareth Dale, who spent two or three days at the Camp. Or indeed my own account of my week there.

Nor are such misrepresentations by the police a new phenomenon. Even back in 1999 they were accusing protesters of "acting in a quasi terrorist mode"!

So, in this process of the criminalisation of protest, on the one hand we have the police twisting, distorting, and manipulating the "facts" to create a false impression of protesters (and no doubt throwing in the occasional downright untruth to boot). 

And on the other hand we have all the new legislation being brought in that is misused by the police to obstruct legitimate protest (contrary to their oft-touted claim of seeking to "facilitate lawful protest"), and intimidate legitimate protesters. New legislation, moreover, that on the face of it was never intended for such application.

So have the police simply been handed, unasked, these new laws by a naive Government that, in the rarified atmosphere of Parliament, well removed from the real world, innocently believes they will only be used in the quest to waylay the potential suicide bomber and suchlike? Or have the police actively sought such new laws?

I am reminded of something I encountered a while ago. A sentence so rich in irony that I felt compelled to adopt it as the tagline for my blog...

It actually comes from an article in The Guardian of November 2006 wherein it was reported that...

the full quote being...

Ostensibly this lobbying of the Attorney General by the police (a rather questionable act in itself) was prompted by concerns about the alleged growing threat of "Islamic extremists" and the incitement to racial hatred... with the implied connection to terrorist acts of course (to say nothing of that ridiculously worded offence of "glorifying terrorism").

But given the police track record for consistently misusing the "Anti-Terrorism Laws" I'm not giving prizes for guessing how such new powers against demonstrations etc would actually be used.

And whilst we're considering whether or not the police have actively sought new or increased powers, lets not forget all that furore over the extended period of detention for suspected "terrorists".

Quoting from the Select Committee on Home Affairs Written Evidence:

The whole controversy over an extended detention period was generally discussed, as I seem to recollect, exclusively in the context of the type of individual that would likely find themselves ending up in Guantanamo Bay.

Er... no... let's not get into the injustices of that particular establishment, or the "extraordinary rendition" techniques that appeared to help populate it and its kind. The point being, it was discussed in the context of the so-called "Jihadist", the "Islamist terrorist", the budding suicide bomber.

I honestly cannot recollect one single occasion where it was openly discussed in the context of how it might be applied against the demonstrator, the protester, the political activist.

And yet I know of nothing that specifically excludes that possibility; a crucial consideration given the well-documented police penchant for confusing non-violent protesters with terrorists.

By re-branding the protester an "extremist" or "domestic terrorist", which is of course one of the consequences of using (misusing?) the "Anti-Terrorism Laws" against such protesters, then all the pieces are in place to clamp down on virtually any form of dissent.

Let me just remind you of part of that Wikipedia definition:

Union in secret deal to save Labour from bankruptcy

The party admits that it was in a perilous financial predicament over the summer, with outstanding loans topping £15 million and pressure from donors to return money totalling £1.5 million.

A Labour source said that the party detailed accounts to the auditors Horwath Clark Whitehill, who approached lenders, including Unite, for “reassurance” that they would continue funding. The party said that this was “legally absolutely different” from guarantees of specific loans that must be declared to the commission.

Francis Maude, the Shadow Cabinet Office Minister, said: “The public have a right to know that, if a deal was struck between Unite and the Labour Party, what were the terms and conditions of any agreement?”

Fighting for Jobs (his own and about 5 others)

"I wonder if any of you can spot a recurring theme in the latest issue of 'United', the Unite Spring newsletter which arrived, entirely coincidentally, in the middle of the balloting period for the Unite Joint General Secretary post?

Front Cover - an heroic photograph of Joint General Secretary Derek Simpson with a megaphone
Page 2 - a 'With You In The Dark Days' column by Joint General Secretary Simpson, accompanied by a photograph, plus photograph of Simpson with the Prime Minister underneath.
Page 5 - Two photographs of Joint General Secretary Simpson, one with the Prime Minister, another looking attentive. Three articles on this page, all of which include quotes from Simpson
Page 7 - Another photograph of Joint General Secretary Simpson with the Prime Minister
Page 11 - Joint General Secretary Simpson quoted in an article
Page 12 - Joint General Secretary Simpson quoted in an article
Page 15 - a photograph of Joint General Secretary Simpson with the Prime Minister
Page 16 - Joint General Secretary Simpson quoted in an article
Page 20 - Joint General Secretary Simpson quoted in an article
Page 21 - Joint General Secretary Simpson quoted in an article
Page 22 - Joint General Secretary Simpson quoted in an article
Page 24 - Joint General Secretary Simpson quoted in an article
Page 27 - Photo of Joint General Secretary Simpson
Page 28 - Joint General Secretary Simpson quoted in an article
Page 29 - Joint General Secretary Simpson quoted in an article
Page 30 - Joint General Secretary Simpson quoted in an article
Page 32 - Joint General Secretary Simpson quoted in an article
Page 38 - Joint General Secretary Simpson quoted in an article
Page 45 - Seven letters, six of which speak for or have positive mentions of Joint General Secretary Simpson."

This tactic will be familiar to members who remember General Secretary Roger Lyons, or who live in any Central African republic. 

Uncertain of the source, available here

The government's rescue of some of Britain's biggest banks will more than double the national debt at a stroke after government statisticians decided to classify Lloyds and Royal Bank of Scotland as public corporations. Their liabilities – up to £1.5tn – will be added to the taxpayer's balance sheet.

That could push the country's debt levels up to 150% of national income, from a three-decade high of 48% now. The public sector net debt has already been swollen by £90bn of Northern Rock liabilities and, as of yesterday, £50bn of Bradford & Bingley's liabilities. But the two latest additions, which the ONS estimates could total between £1tn and £1.5tn, would dwarf those.

It was already widely expected that RBS's liabilities would come onto the public balance sheet since it is now 70% owned by the taxpayer but it is a surprise that Lloyds, which recently swallowed Halifax Bank of Scotland, has been classified as a public corporation given that it is only 43% owned by the state.

ONS statisticians said, though, that it was not ownership that mattered but "ability to control" a company, and for that reason it had decided Lloyds should join RBS in the public sector.

They said the ONS had taken the decision "based on a judgment that government has the ability to control the respective banks' general corporate policy through the conditions associated with the agreements signed relating to recapitalisation".

They added they would continue to publish two measures of the national debt – one including the various banks' liabilities and one excluding them – as it does now.

The ONS said it did not yet have accurate numbers for the true extent of the banks' liabilities since they were such complex instititutions and said it would take months to work out a true figure. But the hit to the public finances will be back-dated to last October when the recapitalisations were announced.

RBS owns Dutch bank ABN Amro, Natwest, several insurers and rolling stock companies. The ONS will exclude an overseas liabilities that the banks may have. Importantly, it will also exclude the banks' assets, other than very short term ones like government bonds or cash holdings. This is because of international statistical rules which insist full liabilities be counted for public corporations but only short-term assets.

Shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, Philip Hammond, said: "This is just the beginning of Gordon Brown's debt crisis. Even on his own figures our national debt is set to double to more than one trillion pounds. This is the true legacy of the government's economic failures, and our children will be paying it off for a generation."

"Once the liabilities of the bailed out banks are included, our true national debt is now significantly larger than our national income, adding to the risks facing the economy and the burden on future generations."

George Galloway MP, the leader of the 110 vehicle British aid convoy currently in Morroco and bound for Gaza, this afternoon spoke of his anger at the high profile Lancashire Constabulary police action which led to the arrest of nine innocent men who were bound to join the Viva Palestina convoy last Friday.

Six of the nine were released without charge some days ago and are now heading for Tunis in three vehicles laden with humanitarian supplies for the people of Gaza.

But three more were detained in custody for almost a week before being released without charge this afternoon.

George Galloway condemned the timing of the arrests, the arrests themselves and the deliberate efforts of the police to create a story in the press the purposes of which appears to have been to discredit the aid convoy to Gaza. Viva Palestina reports that there was a drop of 80% in donations following the broadcast of the arrests and