yet another blog

Y’see, miracles are possible! In a breathtaking change of tactic for once the American mainstream media (MSNBC at least) are broadcasting common sense. Its a pity our own lot here in the UK aren’t following their example…

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In these days of lying governments, Western-sponsored terrorism, the UK and the US rapidly turning into police states, we all need to be especially cautious about alleged “terrorist incidents” allegedly threatening our lives and safety…

The London Car-Bomb and the Need for Intelligent Skepticism - The Smirking Chimp

Also see this…

Beavis and Butthead in London jihad
Huh-huh-huh, let’s break somethin’
By Thomas C Greene in Dublin
Published Friday 29th June 2007 17:51 GMT
The Register

Police and securocrats know that there aren’t enough real terrorists in the world, which is why they have to keep manufacturing them. This is because citizens tire of being watched by cameras, frisked and x-rayed, having their belongings searched, giving fingerprints to so-called friendly nations on entry, contemplating the myriad government databases where their details and activities are preserved, and wondering if some dour little bureaucrat is reading their email or listening to them on the phone.

Citizens tire also of reading the rolls of the war dead fraudulently sacrificed in the name of counterterrorist “victory”, and of seeing hundreds of billions spent on surveillance and private security, ridiculous wars, and security-related gimmicks and gizmos, when it could be so much better spent on, oh, needs like housing, medicine and pensions, and mitigating actual mass threats to life via such non-sexy routes as traffic safety, fire safety, vaccinations, buildings and infrastructure inspection, water treatment, and food safety.

But the guys with the guns and cameras and listening devices have been on a roll since 9/11, embarrassing their clip-board-toting rivals in the race for public money, even though, collectively, they’ve taken or made meaner far more lives than they can ever hope to protect with their strategy of violence in the name of peace, and fascism in the name of liberty.

To keep the billions rolling in, they’ve got to produce a terrorist every now and then. Only real terrorists are hard to come by, so clowns and stooges with harebrained schemes end up doing bin Laden’s perp walk periodically.

Today we have news from London, where a “big [explosive] device” was discovered inside a parked car near Piccadilly Circus. The device consisted of petrol, propane gas cylinders, and nails. The car containing it had been abandoned after its driver was observed piloting it erratically, crashing it, then running off, like a true professional. Ambulance workers called to assist nearby noticed what they initially thought was smoke inside the car, but which likely was petrol vapour, and contacted police.

Bomb disposal specialists made it safe, and police officials and politicians began slyly invoking the terrorist bogeyman. Heaven forbid the public should be starved of their regular fear rations.

“As the police and security services have said on so many occasions, we face a serious and continuous threat to our country”, day-old PM Gordon Brown said. “But this incident does recall the need for us to be vigilant at all times and the public to be alert at any potential incidents.”

And what an incident. “It is obvious that if the device had detonated there could have been serious injury or loss of life”, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke intoned gravely.

Ah, if it had detonated. Yes, it could have been a real horror. Only, the device could not have detonated. Not under any circumstances. You see, the terrorist wannabe clown who built it left out a crucial element: an oxidiser. The device was pure pre-teen boy fantasy.

“We’ll heat up these propane cylinders with burning petrol, and they’ll go off like bombs”, boys the world over have remarked with glee. They don’t realise that air is a poor oxidiser, and the only “explosion” they will get is when gas pressure inside the cylinders is great enough to burst them. Then the propane will ignite, and a nice fireball will blossom. A fireball, not an explosion.

Oh, the Piccadilly fireball would have blown the car’s windows out, and popped its doors open, and sent various bits like mirrors and so forth into the air at velocities possibly fatal to people nearby. It would have looked really cool, that’s for sure. But an explosive event…a detonation? Not in a million years. Sorry lads: you failed car bombing 101; you did not attend a single lecture; you did not even open the textbook.

Some stupid people did a stupid thing. Yes, they might have injured or killed one or two passers-by, but any body count would have come in spite of them, not as a product of their efforts. You and I are more likely to have been killed accidentally by the lousy driver than intentionally by his Beavis and Butthead car bomb.

This should have been dismissed for what it is: an event on the level of some teenagers getting a tremendously foolish notion, and being drunk enough for it to appeal to them. But we’re hearing whispers of terrorism instead - much as we heard from the Americans when they foiled a “terrorist plot” to blow up fuel storage tanks at Kennedy International. It would have been devastating, prosecutors told us. Only that “plot” had the same hole in it: air makes a lousy oxidiser. If it had been carried out, it would certainly have made a bigger fireball than the one in London would have made. But that’s about it.

So why is this such big news? Because clowns have got to be passed off as terrorists. Because a vast industry depends on terrorists, real and imagined, to justify its existence. We live now in the grip of the security-industrial complex, and that hungry beast demands to be fed. We feed it money hand over fist, and in return, it feeds us fear biscuits, which we are expected to accept with gratitude.

Roll over. Sit up and beg. See the bad man? Good citizen; here’s your bickie. ®

And even more on this…

Absurd London “Bomb Plot” Inaugurates “Control Freak” Brown

A short time ago I had a little rant about the al-Qaeda myth that lots of folk seem to have bought into¹ . Inspired me to think about assembling all the various bits and pieces of stuff I’ve amassed over the years and putting it all up on the main website (I’m still thinking about it at the mo’, mainly cos I really don’t relish the task of having to trawl through all the files I appear to have acquired!).

Anyway - talk about synchronicity - what should happen to pop up on MySpace today? This intriguing little clip; apparently its an excerpt from the documentary “The Power of Nightmares” that was broadcast by the BBC in 2004 - available in three parts on Google Video² …

Replay video | Share video | Watch more videos

Listening to how Osama bin Laden became demonised into some sort of fiendish mastermind started ringing bells for me, a la “working to a tried and tested formula” so to speak. Anyone remember the Fu Manchu series of novels by Sax Rohmer?Returning to the 9/11 theme, I remain unconvinced that the attack could have been planned, organised, implemented, and indeed co-ordinated to such a remarkable degree (to say nothing of the events immediately following the initial attacks) absent State backing at a high level. And by”State backing” I refer at the very least to the support of one or more State intelligence organisations.Moreover, my understanding is that there’s perhaps only a half-dozen or so countries running Intelligence Agencies that’d be up to the task - and the only Middle Eastern country that’s included in that “half-dozen or so” is Israel; i.e., not Iraq, not Iran, not Syria, etc etc. And of the others, we’re looking at the likes of the US, the UK, etc.Here’s a possible clue… look at which countries have been cashing in most on the events of 9/11 to ramp up their security budgets, introduce seemingly endless legislation restricting the rights of their citizens, introduce even more seemingly endless legislation giving ever greater powers to the State, and so on.Go figure!Looking at how the mainstream media are so quick to debunk and discredit “conspiracy theories” one can’t help wonder why they’ve so avidly bought into the al-Qaeda myth (when just basic research would raise some very penetrating questions) which is arguably one of the biggest conspiracy theories doing the rounds.

1. al-Qaeda a front for something else? [↩]
2. The Power of Nightmares [↩]

Seen on the Counter Currents blog…

Counter Currents Blog » Blog Archive » The BBC’s Neocon Propaganda War

The BBC’s approach to war and world affairs is, first and foremost, a reflection of the British puppet state’s viewpoint. It is questionable that the BBC was ever an independent organization. But, along with the widespread damage to civil and judicial freedoms caused by the noxious Blair de facto dictatorship, the BBC’s reputation has dropped to an all-time low of news-whoring.

Superb comment on the latter-day decline of the BBC to little more than a mouthpiece, not just for Blair’s government, but for the entire so-called “neocon” agenda.

Read the full article here.

Just the other day I was pointed in the direction of an absolutely superb video… how its managed to elude my notice so far I really don’t know.

Essentially its a “fast-paced 64-minute documentary that covers the world politics of power, war, corporations, deception and exploitation… It visualizes the words of Arundhati Roy, specifically her famous “Come September” speech, where she spoke on such things as the war on terror, corporate globalisation, justice and the growing civil unrest.“

Although I’d heard of her previously (particularly during all the antiwar stuff I was doing prior to Bush’s invasion of Iraq) I can’t recollect ever having seen her on the screen or wherever.
Now I have… I’m totally enamoured! Ms Roy’s presentation is superb and her “presence” (even through the medium of a miserable .wmv file) comes across really strongly. I cannot now imagine anyone presenting this vitally important subject-matter more compellingly.

The video’s a definite “must see” (if you haven’t done so already) and I’m sure that both the hardened activist and those new to the experience of “politicisation” (as the Met Police recently complained about!) will find it equally informative.

Below is a short preview (courtesy of YouTube) but the whole thing can be watched as streaming video on Google, or downloaded as a .wmv file from weroy.org.

I’ve set up a dedicated page for it on the main TaW site, which has all the access info.

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Another Day in the Empire

It is sincerely mysterious “al-Qaeda” has a knack of showing up in places targeted by the neocons. For instance, Africa, in particular Somalia and, more recently, Algeria. “Terrorist bomb attacks in Algeria yesterday show al-Qaeda and its allies pose a ‘very real threat’ in North Africa, the U.S. State Department said,” reports Bloomberg. “Al-Qaeda is a ‘current and persistent’ threat in the region, department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters in Washington yesterday…. Islamic militants are becoming more active in North Africa, particularly in the Maghreb region of Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria where they have joined forces with al-Qaeda.”

more…

Hmm… this reminds me… I’ve never totally bought into the “al-Qaeda” myth. Goes right back to the very early days of Bush’s “War on Terror”… I recollect reading a number of articles exploring the genesis of this mysterious “terrorist organisation” most of which, as I remember, seemed to tie it in to certain unsavoury types in the American Establishment.

I’ll see if I can locate them. Might make for an interesting “Briefing” page on the main TaW site.

All this fuss about whether or not the MoD will allow the captured Services personnel to publish their stories¹ could be seen as a response by the government to public opinion. Well, that’s a good thing, and practically unprecedented for this particular government.

However, there could be a rather more Machiavellian plot at work here. For what all the hullaballoo’s also doing is keeping the issue in the forefront of public awareness. And with the added bonus (for the government and its anti-Iranian agenda) of helping to obfuscate the fact that’s there’s actually very little real meat to this story at all - very little real meat to feed the anti-Iranian propaganda machine that is.

Let’s just remind ourselves of what the story’s all about: a handful of British service personnel were “captured” (why not “detained” or “arrested” I wonder?) by the Iranians in disputed territorial waters, held by the Iranian government for about two weeks, and then released. Whilst in captivity they were subjected to treatment which, when compared to the treatment handed out by certain allies of the UK to arguably illegally detained “suspects”, seems quite reasonable and understandable given the circumstances. One could even argue that the experience these individuals went through should actually be regarded as no more than an occupational hazard, given where they were. So what’s the big deal?

And frankly, I’ve very little interest in hearing, as Faye Turney put it: “I want everyone out there to know my story from my side, see what I went through.”²

Had she been subjected to brutal physical torture, rape, etc I might feel differently, but compare her experience to the experiences of those incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay - not for thirteen days, but for five years plus!

And where’s the ongoing huge press coverage of that, I ask myself?

So they played a few mind games with you Ms Turney? Well, how would you like to spend five years as an incarceree in Guantanamo - or an even more secret CIA prison? And perhaps you should think yourself lucky the Iranians didn’t ship you off to some less civilised State for interrogation; “rendition”, is it called?

For as long as there’s no huge public outcry in the media, and from the government, about the human rights abuses that are daily committed by the “allies” Blair has tied us to we’re hardly in any position to criticise the Iranians for the relatively well-mannered treatment of their detainees.

[Addendum 10.04.07: Read this…

“…we must now look at the behavior of counties [sic] like Iran through the lens of “black sites,” CIA renditions, torture memos, Abu Ghraib, water boarding, habeas-stripping statutes, military commissions, and indefinite detentions. Iran’s 15-day detention of British sailors and marines and the subsequent ham-fisted propaganda stunts by the Iranian government look pretty tame by comparison.”

From the JURIST Legal News and Research]

1. Browne under fire after media ban - Yahoo News [↩]
2. MoD ban sailors from selling stories - Yahoo News [↩]

So the MoD is going to let the British sailors and marines captured by the Iranians sell their stories to the press is it?¹
Well, it strikes me that this unprecedented and seedy move is probably prompted more by a desire to spin the story out a bit and puff it up into something more than it actually was, just to stir up even more anti-Iranian sentiment.
(And how much of that largesse is prompted by behind-the-scenes influence from 10 Downing Street I wonder?)

For let’s face it, the “ordeal” they supposedly endured was pretty trivial in the grand scheme of things, wasn’t it?
(And just to put this in context… I too have been held at gunpoint and fully expected my time to be ended at that moment. Sure, it was a scary experience, but come next day it’d passed and I’d gotten over it - and I didn’t even have the benefit of a military training!)

Compare it for example to this account…

“…subjecting them to psychological torture day and night. Lights were kept on in their cell around the clock. They endured solitary confinement. They had only thin plastic mattresses on concrete for sleeping. Meals were of powdered milk and bread or rice and chicken, but interrupted by selective deprivation of food and water. Ceaseless heavy metal and country music screamed in their ears for hours on end… They lived through ‘conditions of confinement and interrogation tantamount to torture… Their interrogators utilised the types of physically and mentally coercive tactics that are supposedly reserved for terrorists and so-called enemy combatants.”²

- no, not more Iranian misdeeds, but the hospitality extended by the US military.

Nor let’s forget the treatment handed out by British soldiers to their captives in Northern Ireland until fairly recent times.

I really am getting a bit bored with all the hypocrisy and double standards that both the US and our own government so blatantly indulge.

And before anyone argues that the examples aren’t comparable, just bear this in mind…

From the Iranians viewpoint we could legitimately be described as foreign insurgents fomenting discord and bloodshed in a neighbouring country.

And incidentally, whatever happened to that law Blair’s government recently introduced about “glorifying terrorism”?
From any rational point of view our military aggression toward a nation that represented no threat to us whatsoever surely places the mantle of terrorism upon our own shoulders, a notion reinforced by our overthrowing of the elected government of that sovereign nation by force of arms (an act expressly forbidden by the UN Charter I believe).
Had we not committed such an act of international terrorism those captured Brits wouldn’t have been where they were in the first place. So surely, by endeavouring to cast their experience in a sympathetic light we are in fact glorifying an act of terrorism.

Now I’m no scholar, no academic able to elucidate the finer points of an argument, or persuasively score telling debating points, but I do believe I’m able to distinguish between what is morally right and wrong, and its perfectly clear to me that our entire handling of Middle East situations is somewhat more than tainted with the promotion of self-interest over humanitarian concern and respect for the Rule of Law.
And it seems to me that if we continue on this path the only possible outcome is yet more bloodshed and suffering.

Try, for just a brief moment, to imagine that suffering and bloodshed visited upon your loved ones. The loss of a dearly-loved spouse. Or the body of a cherished son or daughter maimed, disfigured, forever. How would you feel?
So how the hell can we countenance our government visiting this fate upon others, simply because they live on the other side of the world?

We (and by that I mean the government and the media) made such a big fuss about the 7/7 bombings in London yet, thanks to the rogue Bush regime in America and our Prime Minister’s support of them, that sort of experience is a daily occurrence in Iraq nowadays. And we’re responsible. Why? Because we haven’t yet ousted Blair and his kind.
Because we haven’t spoken loudly enough; because we haven’t acted radically enough. Because we’re too wrapped up in our own petty concerns and basically don’t give a toss about anyone else.
So the next time it happens to us, how the hell can there be a great wailing about the suffering of “innocent victims”, for we’re all bloody guilty!
The very least we can do, now that Iran is top of the hit list, is to resist this with every means at our disposal, else we deserve all that’ll be visited upon us!

So disregard all anti-Iranian propaganda you encounter. Complain to the media about the bias and spin. Write to your MP. If need be even become an activist! But do something!

And if the military doesn’t want history to cast them in the same mold as Hitler’s SS, then its about time they conjured up the courage to refuse to obey orders that disregard both International Law and common morality.
Remember the Nazis’ standard excuse? “But I was only obeying orders.” Where the f*** is these soldiers’ and sailors’ humanity?

I often speculate what it would take to put our country back on the right track… why does the film “V for Vendetta” spring to mind I wonder?

1. ”Naval captives can sell stories” news.bbc.co.uk [↩]
2. ”My Name Used to Be #200343″ www.alternet.org [↩]

AFP.com | Agence France-Presse, a global news agency

ROYAL MARINES BASE CHIVENOR, England AFP - The 15 British naval personnel held by Iran told Friday how they were stripped, blindfolded and handcuffed as part of “psychological” intimidation during their detention.

more

Seems to me they can count themselves fortunate that their captors were the Iranians and not the CIA. On the other hand, should Blair have insisted, during the period of captivity, that the precedent set by the US government for the treatment of prisoners be rigorously applied?

Or for that matter the treatment some British squaddies have seen fit to dish out to Iraqis in their own country.

Not totally irrelevant is this superbly insightful article by Gilad Atzmon: Between Good and Evil

The ongoing story…

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed “Confessed” To Attacking Bank Founded After His Arrest

Khalid Shaikh Mohammeds alleged confession testimony has been thoroughly discredited after it emerged that one of the targets he identified, the Plaza Bank, was not founded until 2006, four years after the alleged Al-Qaeda masterminds arrest.In his confession, KSM claims, “I was responsible for planning, training, surveying, and financing for the New or Second Wave of attacks against the following skyscrapers after 9/11: …Plaza Bank, Washington state.”

KSM was arrested in March 2003. According to the Plaza Banks website, the organization was founded in early 2006, making it impossible for KSM to have even known of the banks existence before 2003, never mind plotted against it.

Skepticism about the legitimacy of KSMs confession has gushed forth from all quarters, leaving the credibility of the Pentagon and the process of military tribunals in ruins and provoking additional questions about why the alleged Al-Qaeda mastermind admitted to involvement in such a vast range of plots.

more…

Well, what a surprise! (See my earlier posts)