Monthly Archives: April 2007

>There’s been a trial ongoing in the UK since late 2005 concerning a leaked memo that detailed Bush and Blair’s plan to bomb al-Jazeerah offices in Qatar. Civil servant David Keogh and MP’s researcher Leo O’Connor are accused of breaching the official secrets act, a concept that one would think has no place in any bone fide democracy.

Keogh is said to have passed the record of the meeting to researcher O’Connor. The details of the minutes, deemed too “secret” to reveal in court, include Bush and Blair’s chat about how best to bomb the offices of al-Jazeerah and make it appear as a justifiable act under the bogus war on terror.

In making the case against the two men, (who in any just society would be lauded as heroes) Blair’s foreign policy adviser Sir Nigel Sheinwald said a leak would have “sparked worldwide anger, put UK forces at risk, and had the potential to “raise international tensions”, to which I can only reply “no shit sherlock, and for very good reasons!” You see, in Blair’s fascist state, black is white, up is down and anyone revealing that the government is planning to engage in what amount to war crimes is the criminal, rather than those who are planning to engage in the war crimes. Get it? Do you understand now? Perhaps the point needs to be clarified.

Over in Iraq, the same psychopathic ‘morality’ is being passed off as ‘normal’ where a US commander of the appropriately named ‘Camp Cropper’ has been arrested for “aiding the enemy”. Camp Cropper is a US military gulag and torture center for innocent Iraqi civilians outside Baghdad and Lt Col William Steele apparenlty had the audacity to give Iraqi detainees there free use of a mobile phone. String him up I say! I mean, we can’t have US military personnel showing ANY human kindness to the tens of thousands of desperate Iraqis languishing at Bush’s pleasure in Iraq or any other ‘theatre’ of the war on terror.

Meanwhile the global propaganda campaign that is designed to create the ‘reality’ of a ‘clash of civilisations’ proceeds apace with a different “leaked report”, this time one that does not result in the leakers appearing in court, mainly because this one helps to prop up the Israel-US-British war on terror rather than expose it for psychopathic war-mongering that it is.

The report, carefully concocted out of thin air by the British Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC), which is basically MI5’s false flag terror central, claims that Al-Qaeda leaders in Iraq are planning the first “large-scale” terrorist attacks on Britain and other western targets. The “leakers” were, of course, careful to include the claim that the “al-Qaeda” operation was to be carried out “with the help of supporters in Iran. Surprise surprise.

Just for good measure, the back room boys at MI5 thought it would be a good idea to claim that “one operative had said he was planning an attack on a par with Hiroshima and Nagasaki”, just to tie in the nuke connection and therefore Iran. Of course, the terror masters at MI5 are confident that the news just in that Iran is at least 8 years from making ONE nuke is no threat to the British and world public swallowing this latest piece of nonsense. In a final attempt to validate the claim, one UK “counter terrorism source” said

“It could be just a reference to a huge explosion,” said a counter-terrorist source. “They (al-Qaeda) have got to do something soon that is radical otherwise they start losing credibility.

It’s strange, but for some reason I imagined the words “Bush-Blair-Olmert) in the brackets in the paragraph above and suddenly it all made sense.

The claim, it is claimed, was contained in a letter, allegedly written by someone called Abdul al-Hadi al-Iraqi, “an Iraqi Kurd and senior al-Qaeda commander”, or so we are told, and asked to believe wholesale with no real evidence. In fact, the only yardstick we have for assessing scary letters from terrorists is when Bush and the CIA were caught fabricating a letter from “al-qaeda” that claimed that they were nearing defeat.

Of course, all of this talk of leaked memos also reminds us the infamous leaked Downing street memo, where Blair’s war fanatics decided to fabricate all sorts of claims about Saddam, including the ridiculous assertion that Saddam could attack Britain with a long range missile within 45 minutes!

To complete the recent glut of bogus ‘terror alerts’, a senior commander of the Taliban stated a few days ago that Osama bin Laden is orchestrating militants’ operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“He is drawing plans in Iraq and Afghanistan … Praise God he is alive,” Mullah Dadullah told Al Jazeera television.

The first problem here is that it is very, very probable that Bin Laden has been doing little more than pushing up daisies in some remote area of an Islamabad or Riyadh graveyard for the past few years, at least Saudi intelligence appears to be convinced of that fact. But they’re not the only ones.

Back in November 2001, French intelligence reported that in July that year, Osama had checked into the American hospital in Dubai for Dialysis, where he was visited, incidentally, by the local CIA station chief. Such was the state of the health of Bush’s nemesis, that in 2000 he had his own personal dialysis machine shipped to his “base” (a nice two story house) at Kandahar in Afghanistan.

One month later, citing a Taliban leader, the Pakistan Observer stated that Osama had died a peaceful death due to an untreated lung complication.

On the airing of a tape of Bin Laden in early 2002, CNN “terrorism expert” didn’t need his “terrorism expert” credentials to be enable him to state the obvious:

This is a man who was clearly not well. I mean, as you see from these pictures here, he’s really, by December he’s looking pretty terrible. But by December, of course, that tape that was aired then, he’s barely moving the left side of his body. So he’s clearly got diabetes. He has low blood pressure. He’s got a wound in his foot. He’s apparently got dialysis … for kidney problems

Apparently reluctant to take the word of a “terrorism expert” on medical matters, CNN decided that they needed an honest to god doctor, so they dragged one, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, who opined:

You can look [at pictures from a December 2001 video] and notice that he has what some doctors refer to as sort of a frosting over of his features — his sort of grayness of beard, his paleness of skin, very gaunt sort of features. A lot of times people associate this with chronic illness. Doctors can certainly look at that and determine some clinical features.

But even more than that, it’s sometimes possible to differentiate the specific type of disease or illness that he may be suffering from. The sort of frosting of the appearance is something that people a lot of times associate with chronic kidney failure, renal failure, certainly someone who is requiring dialysis would have that.

Later that year (2002) even US puppet President of Afghanistan (or should that be mayor of Kabul) couldn’t hold his tongue any longer and blurted out that Osama was a goner.

Then it was the turn of FBI Terrorism… I mean eh…Counter-Terrorism Chief US Federal Bureau of Investigation’s counter-terrorism chief, Dale Watson, to state the frustratingly obvious:

“Is (Bin Laden) alive or is he dead?” Mr Watson said. “I am not really sure of the answer… I personally think he is probably not with us anymore but I have no evidence to support that.”

Still, the skeptics were not convinced, so close friends and confidants, understandably miffed at the repeated knocks to the credibility and mortality of their departed brother, decided to send Bin Laden’s will to a few news agencies in an attempt to close the case.

Finally, the CIA took the hint last year and, according to the NY Times, closed a unit that for a decade had the mission of hunting Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants. The unit, known as Alec Station, was disbanded late last year and its analysts reassigned within the C.I.A. Counterterrorist Center, the officials said.

Despite all of this, Mullah Dadullah (is that really his name, or is that his CIA pet name?) had no qualms about waxing flowery about the exploits of Osama’s ghost:

“Do you remember the martyrdom operation inside the Bagram base which targeted a senior American official … this operation was the result of blessed plans put by him,” Dadullah said. Jazeera said the U.S. official Dadullah was referring to was Cheney.

“He (bin Laden) guided us through it,” he said, adding that no Afghan would have been able to penetrate the base if it was not for the world’s most wanted militant.

Yes, you see Osama is the only Islamic militant who drags a dialysis machine behind him. He is also dead. A dead guy dragging a dialysis machine is a very effective way to create a distraction while the other more corporal militants get on with the job of trying to off the walking hate-sack Dick Cheney. Seriously who is this “Mullah Dadullah”?

Funny you should ask.

He was captured in May last year by international troops (i.e. US troops), and probably given the run down on what was expected of him for the coming 2006-2007 WOT season in his role as scariest terrorist in Afghanistan. Then he was let go again.

Funnily enough, two days before Mullah Dadullah’s implausible claims about Bin Laden were broadcast, he was busy being surrounded by 200 “coalition” troops as he and others gathered for a meeting in the mountain village of Keshay in Uruzgan province on Saturday last. The result of the apparently short-lived siege, according to the Pakistani press, was 11 members of the Taleban killed, including Mullah Dadullah.

All of which sets the scene for even more fake war on terror hilarity when we find ourselves reading reports (which we surely will) about two dead men vouching for each others unbelievable feats of derring-do in the ZioCons fantasmagorical war on terror.

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Al-sarafiya bridge which, until two days ago, spanned the Tigris in Baghdad, linking Shia and Sunni neighborhoods of the city.

“Suicide bombings” are a daily occurrence in Iraq, and are the major propaganda tool used by the US government and its mainstream media to convince the world that there is still some “freedom and Democracy” work to be done by US troops in Iraq. But what if they are a cover for something else?

Read this excerpt from a news report from July 2006:

Violence may bring partition of Baghdad

UK Telegraph
22/07/2006

Iraq’s politicians [i.e. Pentagon and Israeli officials] were reported yesterday to be drawing up provisional plans to divide Baghdad into Sunni and Shia halves after a week of bloodshed that has left the government’s security plan to pacify the capital in tatters.

The proposal would mean an acceptance that the country could not be held together and would mark a dramatic failure for the American policy of fostering national unity.

The Tigris river, which would become the dividing line between the predominately Sunni districts of west Baghdad and the majority Shia in the east.

Now read this report of an event that occurred two days ago:

Suicide bomb collapses Baghdad bridge At least 10 killed

Canadian Press
April 12, 2007

BAGHDAD – A suicide truck bomb exploded on a major bridge in Baghdad early Thursday, collapsing the steel structure and sending cars tumbling into the Tigris River below, police and witnesses said. At least 10 people were killed.

The al-Sarafiya bridge connected two northern Baghdad neighborhoods – Waziriyah, a mostly Sunni enclave, and Utafiyah, a Shiite area. After more than a year of massacres of Sunni and Shia civilians by US-sponsored death squads working out of the Iraqi interior ministry, both Sunni and Shia civilians have fled neighborhoods where they were originally in the majority or where there was a mix of the two groups.

Before the al-Sarafiya bridge was destroyed, nine spans across the Tigris linked western and eastern Baghdad. Now there are eight. How long will they last?

The Tigris river now serves as a de facto dividing line between the mostly Shiite east and the largely Sunni west of the city, with the bridges the only connection between them. It’s called “counter insurgency strategy” – divide and conquer.

The reports that a “truck suicide bomb” had been detonated on the bridge came from the US military. No independent Iraqi or other source was able to verify this claim. In fact, AP Television News video showed the bridge broken in two places suggesting two blasts.

Other Iraqi eyewitnesses claim that a US attack helicopter fired two missiles at the bridge, but with the mainstream media parroting only the official US military line that it was “suicide truck bomb” these eyewitness reports are never heard.

The fact is, the al-Sarafiya bridge was built by the British in the early part of the 20th century, so since it belonged to the occupation army, it was theirs to blow up.

Suffice to say that, from now on, it would be wise when reading reports about daily bombings in Iraq to replace the words “suicide bomber” with “US military”.

Robert Fisk recently commented on the US military plan for “gated communities” in Baghdad:

Faced with an ever-more ruthless insurgency in Baghdad – despite President George Bush’s “surge” in troops – US forces in the city are now planning a massive and highly controversial counter-insurgency operation that will seal off vast areas of the city, enclosing whole neighbourhoods with barricades and allowing only Iraqis with newly issued ID cards to enter.

The campaign of “gated communities” – whose genesis was in the Vietnam War – will involve up to 30 of the city’s 89 official districts and will be the most ambitious counter-insurgency programme yet mounted by the US in Iraq.

The system has been used – and has spectacularly failed – in the past, and its inauguration in Iraq is as much a sign of American desperation at the country’s continued descent into civil conflict as it is of US determination to “win” the war against an Iraqi insurgency that has cost the lives of more than 3,200 American troops. The system of “gating” areas under foreign occupation failed during the French war against FLN insurgents in Algeria and again during the American war in Vietnam. Israel has employed similar practices during its occupation of Palestinian territory – again, with little success.

But the campaign has far wider military ambitions than the pacification of Baghdad. It now appears that the US military intends to place as many as five mechanised brigades – comprising about 40,000 men – south and east of Baghdad, at least three of them positioned between the capital and the Iranian border. This would present Iran with a powerful – and potentially aggressive – American military force close to its border in the event of a US or Israeli military strike against its nuclear facilities later this year.

The latest “security” plan, of which The Independent has learnt the details, was concocted by General David Petraeus, the current US commander in Baghdad, during a six-month command and staff course at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. Those attending the course – American army generals serving in Iraq and top officers from the US Marine Corps, along with, according to some reports, at least four senior Israeli officers – participated in a series of debates to determine how best to “turn round” the disastrous war in Iraq.

So far, the Baghdad campaign has involved only the creation of a few US positions within several civilian areas of the city but the new project will involve joint American and Iraqi “support bases” in nine of the 30 districts to be “gated” off. From these bases – in fortified buildings – US-Iraqi forces will supposedly clear militias from civilian streets which will then be walled off and the occupants issued with ID cards. Only the occupants will be allowed into these “gated communities” and there will be continuous patrolling by US-Iraqi forces. There are likely to be pass systems, “visitor” registration and restrictions on movement outside the “gated communities”. Civilians may find themselves inside a “controlled population” prison.

The senior generals who constructed the new “security” plan for Baghdad were largely responsible for the seminal – but officially “restricted” – field manual on counter-insurgency produced by the Department of the Army in December of last year, code-numbered FM 3-24. While not specifically advocating the “gated communities” campaign, one of its principles is the unification of civilian and military activities, citing “civil operations and revolutionary development support teams” in South Vietnam, assistance to Kurdish refugees in northern Iraq in 1991 and the “provincial reconstruction teams” in Afghanistan – a project widely condemned for linking military co-operation and humanitarian aid.

FM 3-24 is harsh in its analysis of what counter-insurgency forces must do to eliminate violence in Iraq. “With good intelligence,” it says, “counter-insurgents are like surgeons cutting out cancerous tissue while keeping other vital organs intact.” But another former senior US officer has produced his own pessimistic conclusions about the “gated” neighbourhood project.

“Once the additional troops are in place the insurrectionists will cut the lines of communication from Kuwait to the greatest extent they are able,” he told The Independent. “They will do the same inside Baghdad, forcing more use of helicopters. The helicopters will be vulnerable coming into the patrol bases, and the enemy will destroy as many as they can. The second part of their plan will be to attempt to destroy one of the patrol bases. They will begin that process by utilising their people inside the ‘gated communities’ to help them enter. They will choose bases where the Iraqi troops either will not fight or will actually support them.

“The American reaction will be to use massive firepower, which will destroy the neighbourhood that is being ‘protected’.”

So that’s what is ultimately in store for the Iraqi people – mass murder by the US military when they finally realise that they are not fighting “terrorists” or even an “insurgency”, but the entire Iraqi people who, like occupied peoples throughout history, will never stop resisting illegal and brutal occupation of their land.

The most disturbing fact however, is that the military and civilian architects of this war have always known this.

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By now, anyone with two neurons still firing, has understood that “terrorist attacks” have long term benefits for the Israeli, British and American governments. It’s not just the fact of a “terror attack” however that can be and is used to scare the public into accepting ever more authoritarianism from their leaders, but also the memory of “terror attacks”.

How often have members of the US, UK and Israeli governments reminded us of 9/11, the London bombings or any of the so-called “Palestinian suicide bombings” when attempting to justify their war-mongering? Indeed the rationale for the continuation of the “war on terror” is based entirely on the purported existence of “world wide Islamic terrorism”. The reality however is that if Islamic terrorism were ever to be widely and publicly exposed for the fiction that it is, the game would be up and the “leaders of the free world” in Washington, Tel Aviv and London exposed for the psychopathic monsters that they are.

Before “Worldwide Islamic terrorism”, what was there?

A desire, a plan, an agenda; that’s what.

In Washington, the Ziocons stated it explicitly in a, by now well-known ‘thinktank’ document entitled: Rebuilding America’s Defences: Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century, in which the architects of illegal war called for American power to be “projected around the world”.

In Israel too there was a need, a desire, an agenda, but there was also fear. Fear that peace might soon break out and Zionist leaders would be forced to the negotiating table with the Palestinians, a table at which they would be forced to provide evidence for their claim that they truly desired peace, and give back the land stolen from the Palestinians. In 1993, there was the Oslo accords. In 2000 there was the Camp David Peace initiative. Both were setting a scene that would see the Zionist dream of domination of all of Palestine and the greater Middle East destroyed.

In both cases then, the need was for an enemy. An enemy so great, so pervasive, so “evil”, that an endless war could be launched and endless brutality against innocent people justified in the process of destroying this “evil”.

Yet no such enemy existed. What to do? For the psychopathic mind, the answer was clear: create one, give it a name and ideology and, over the course of the following 6 years, perpetrate inhuman attacks against innocent people around the world and blame it all on “Worldwide Islamic Terrorism”.

Today, the Israeli internal security service “Shin Bet” announced that in late March, they arrested 19 members of a Hamas “cell” that were planning a major “suicide bombing” over Easter week. A day or two previously (the specific timing is not given) we are told that a “Palestinian suicide bomber” drove his car (or truck, there are conflicting reports) into the outskirts of Tel Aviv, and then for some unknown reason, decided to abandon his mission and return to the West Bank town of Qalqilya from whence he allegedly came. Once there, he parked his car (or truck) behind a house and sometime later the bomb exploded injuring no one. Israeli internal intelligence, Shin Bet, say that the car (or truck) was carrying 100 kilos of explosives. Palestinian police who were on the scene after the explosion state categorically that the car (and it was a car, not a truck) contained no more than 2 pounds of explosives. Hamas, not in the habit of denying anything for which they are truly responsible and often being accused of attacks for which they are not, denied that they had anything to do with the incident.

The point of this latest piece of Israeli government propaganda seems to be to instill suspicion and hatred for Israeli Arabs living in Israel in the minds of Israeli Jews. The would be “suicide bomber”, you see, was allegedly the holder of an Israeli ID and was able, we are told, to pass freely across the border into Israel. This fact has been heavily played up in news reports to the extent that it appears to be the main point, with the standard demonisation of Hamas (and indirectly their coalition partners, the Palestinian Authority) coming a close second.

From the Zionist point of view you see, Palestinians can never be allowed to present themselves as an honorable people with a justified grievance against Israel, and they and their political leaders must be continually demonised as “terrorists”.

The stench of Deputy Israeli PM Avigdor Lieberman (along with the Shin Bet) is all over this latest episode of Zionist duplicity. It was Lieberman, after all, who suggested that Arab Israelis be forced to swear an oath of allegiance to Israel or have their citizenship revoked, adding that 90 percent of Israel’s one million Arabs would “have to find a new Arab entity” in which to live beyond Israel’s borders. “They have no place here. They can take their bundles and get lost”, he said. It was Lieberman who stated that Palestinians should be given the ultimatum that: “at 8am we’ll bomb all the commercial centers…at noon we’ll bomb their gas stations…at two we’ll bomb their banks….” It was Lieberman who called for thousands of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel (most of them innocent of any crime) to be drowned in the Dead Sea, while kindly offering to provide the buses to take them there.

In November 2006, Lieberman called for the execution of any Arab Members of Knesset who meet with representatives of the Palestinian government, saying:

“World War II ended with the Nuremberg trials. The heads of the Nazi regime, along with their collaborators, were executed. I hope this will be the fate of the collaborators in the Knesset.”

And this guy is slated to be the next Israeli PM (unless the equally racist Benjamin Netanyahu is chosen instead).

As for the Shin Bet; according to Uri Avnery, its chief recently declared that the “Israeli Arabs”, a fifth of Israel’s population, constitute a danger to the state and requested permission for the General Security Service to act against anyone who aims at changing the official designation of Israel as a “Jewish and democratic state” – even if they use nothing but completely legal means. Could it possibly be a coincidence then that this attempted “Passover bombing” presents Israeli Arabs as aiding and abetting terrorism?

The fundamental problem here appears to be the fact that the Zionist regime in Israel had recently received some bad press resulting from its flippant rejection of any chance of talks with the newly formed (March 19th) coalition Palestinian government (Hamas and the PA), and its rejection of the March 27th revived Saudi peace plan.

In relation to Palestinian Coalition, Olmert stated:

“We can’t have contact with members of a government that justifies resistance, or in other words, terror” – the right of any occupied people to resistance as laid down by the Geneva convention being the same as “terrorism” in the Zionist lexicon.

Olmert also rejected talks with Hamas on the basis that they “do not recognise Israel’s right to exist. In doing so, Olmert ignored the fact that the coalition platform of Hamas and the PA implicitly recognizes Israel by calling for a Palestinian state on lands that Israel stole in 1967, in contrast with Hamas’ past calls to eliminate Israel altogether. Indeed, there is no moral or conscience-based reason for Palestinians to “recognise Israel’s right to exist”, since Israel as it is today, is defined by its occupation and brutalisation of Palestinian land and its people. Who, in all conscience, could sanction such inhumanity by recognising its right to exist? Such inhumanity has no place in a just and peaceful world. Stop the persecution of Palestinians and the world will recognise Israel’s right to exist. But the Zionist regime will never do so, because Israel does not want peace.

As regards the revived Saudi peace plan. 14 Arab states, including the PA-lead Palestinian coalition, offered normalisation of relations (i.e. peace) with Israel in return for the return to the pre-1967 war borders and the right of Palestinian refugees and their descendants to return to lands they inhabited before the state of Israel was formed.

Flexibility was inherent in the Saudi peace plan and it was designed as a starting point for negotiations. Yet the Zionist regime rejected outright any possibility of the right of Palestinians to return to the lands from which they were cleansed, be it in 1948 or 1967. From this it was clearly understood that Israel not only rejects the right of return but also any idea that it would give back land stolen from Palestinians since the formation of the state of Israel in 1948, and with this any idea of the creation of a viable Palestinian state.

Again, in short, Israel does not want peace.

Of particular note is the fact that this latest “suicide bombing” propaganda, coming as it does immediately after an Israeli PM rejected a peace offer from Arab states, almost exactly mirrors the original Saudi Peace summit offer of Easter week 2002. On that occasion, the print was hardly dry before a “Palestinian suicide bomber” allegedly detonated his explosives in the Park Hotel in Netanya on March 27th 2002, killing 20 old people, almost exactly 5 years ago. Like so many other alleged “Palestinian suicide bombings”, the details of that attack are open to interpretation. All that is really known is that a man walked into the Park hotel with a suitcase and the suitcase exploded. It literally could have been anyone, even someone unaware of the fate that awaited him.

How convenient it was then, with the then Israeli government of Ariel Sharon under pressure to accept the Saudi peace plan or face losing the ‘moral’ high ground, that the Palestinians, yet again, appeared to shoot themselves in the foot and present the Zionists with a way to not only reject the peace plan, but to pitch the Palestinians as the enemy of peace.

The Park Hotel attack in 2002 is remembered as the “Passover Suicide bombing”. Today, several Israeli news sources carry a variation of the headline: “Passover massacre foiled“.

You see how this works.

March 27th 2002: Pan-Arab Peace Plan offered to Israel. Immediately thereafter: “Passover Suicide bombing”

March 27th 2007: Pan Arab Peace Plan offered to Israel
Immediately thereafter: “Passover Suicide bombing narrowly averted”.

There is a definite ominous air around recent events in the Middle East and in particular the pressure on Israel over the Hamas/PA coalition government and the resurrected Saudi peace plan. History seems to be repeating itself. The Zionists do not take ‘peace pressure’ very well. It disturbs them greatly. As already noted, during the Clinton years, significant efforts had been made to bring the plight of the Palestinian people and the need for a just solution to the Middle East conflict to the attention of the international community. While Israel had successfully scuppered the Camp David peace talks by making demands that they knew the Palestinian people, and therefore Arafat, could not accept, Israel was finding itself increasingly isolated and increasingly pressured to make the concessions that peace required.

Then 9/11 ‘happened’, and all bets were off.

Salvation from a “Passover massacre” has strong religious overtones for Jewish people, evoking as it does, the fictitious original “Passover” when Yahweh passed over the houses of the chosen Israelites in his rampage and murder of the first born of lesser peoples (or so the story goes). To be spared the fate of others, Israelites were instructed to smear the lintels of their doors with the blood of the “Passover sacrifice”.

While few Israelis continue with this tradition today, perhaps there are those who privately believe, as the Israeli media seems to be suggesting, that this Passover, ‘Yahweh’ once again spared them from the carnage that he has been wreaking for the past 60 years on the ‘lesser’ peoples of the Middle East. After all, enough Palestinian and Arab blood has been spilled by the American and Israeli governments to anoint the door of every Israeli household – but will it suffice to spare the Israeli Jews from the results of the warmongering of their leaders?

The truth of the matter is that history does not repeat itself – history is deliberately repeated, because human beings have still not awoken to the truth of the world that surrounds them, and who, or what, controls it. History is repeated because what worked once, will work again. History is repeated because the psychopaths that were in power, 10, 50, 100, 200 years ago, are still there today. And history will continue to be repeated, until they are removed.

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©Martin Rowson

Release of Iranian Diplomat exposes US and British origin of Iraqi death squads and “sectarian” bombings

The 15 British Marines (who were in fact spying on Iran) were barely off the plane yesterday morning before Blair, Smeagol-like, turned on the Iranians and, with no evidence whatsoever, accused them of being responsible for the – timely from Blair’s point of view – deaths of 4 British soldiers in Iraq.

As disingenuous as ever, Blair squeaked:

“It’s far too early [to point to any Iranian involvement in that particular attack], but the general picture, as I have said before, is there are elements at least of the Iranian regime that are backing, financing, arming terrorism in Iraq.”

Blair’s “general picture” of Iraq and who is responsible for the daily carnage there is surreal indeed and like all surrealist works, diverges greatly from actual reality. The fact is, there is not one shred of objective unbiased evidence that Iran is involved in any way with attacks on US or any other illegal forces in occupied Iraq, and before anyone suggests it, US intelligence reports have long since ceased to be anything but the deranged imaginings of the Ziocons, so don’t even go there.

Along with his contemptible attack on the Iranians, Blair insisted that there had been “no deals” done to secure the release of the 15 British spies, a statement which, you will be unsurprised to learn, is also a barefaced lie and a clear attempt to save his pompous English ass from ending up on the already overflowing scrapheap of British political history and thereby joining the long list of sorry excuses for human beings that define it.

Two days ago, Jalal Sharafi, the second secretary of the Iranian embassy in Iraq, who was abducted from his car in Baghdad in early February, just happened to walk out of captivity and into the Iranian embassy earlier this week at the height of the “hostage crisis”. Coincidence? Why, of course it is!

At the time of his abduction by men wearing Iraqi army uniforms, US military spokesman in Baghdad, US army Lt Col Christopher Garver stated: “we’ve checked with our units and it was not a [multinational forces – Iraq] unit that participated in that event”. Yet Sharafi walks free in Baghdad in the Middle of the negotiations over the 15 British spies.

You ‘do the logic’, and then realise that lying is standard operation procedure for government officials. For more on the death squads in Iraq and who is behind them, see this SOTT editorial.

Then today, Blair set the damage control spin machine into overdrive with a “news conference” for the 15 released British spies, complete with that heart-warming symbol of centuries of brutality – the Union Jack flag.

At the top of the sheet given to the sailors by the Ministry of Defence the words “READ THIS” in big bold letters was written.

And like the trained monkeys that they are, the Marines had no choice but to comply. Here’s what they said:

“On arrival at a small Iranian naval base we were blindfolded, stripped of all our kit and led to a room where I (Lieutenant Carman) declared myself as the officer in charge and was introduced to their local commander.

Two hours later, we were moved to a second location and throughout the night were subjected to random interrogation.

The following morning, we were flown to Tehran and transported to a prison – where the atmosphere changed completely.

We were blindfolded, our hands were bound, we were forced up against the wall. Throughout our ordeal we faced constant psychological pressure.

Later, we were stripped and dressed in pyjamas. The next few nights were spent in stone cells approximately 8ft by 6ft, sleeping on piles of blankets.

All of us were kept in isolation. We were interrogated most nights and presented with two options.

If we admitted we had strayed, we would be back on a plane to the UK pretty soon. If we didn’t, we faced up to seven years in prison.

None of the guards spoke English, we were blindfolded at all times and kept in isolation from each other.

Watch the video where Lt. Felix Carman reads from a prepared script at this link.

Does anyone know what 12 days solitary confinement in a stone cell with blindfolds, bound hands, little or no sleep, regular interrogation and “constant psychological and emotional pressure” looks like?

Put it this way, regardless of how staged these pictures were or were not, it doesn’t leave you looking like this:

Day 5

Day 7

Day 11

Day 12

A number of people have pointed out the fact that in the photos of the “hostages” in Iran, some were smiling and waving while others were not. This is due to the fact that there were a mix of Marines and Sailors among the 15, and it was, more or less, all of the sailors that were smiling and waving, while the marines were stern faced. This fact reflects the difference in training and job profile between the Sailors and Marines and how aware each group was of the reality of what they were doing in the Persian Gulf.

Basically, the Marines know that their job is to attack and undermine the Iranians. To the Marines, the Iranians are the enemy, which is reflected in their demeanour.

From the sailors POV, they are there to “help” with stopping smugglers, which could also be of benefit to the Iranians. So to the Sailors then, the Iranians were not necessarily the enemy, which is reflected in their demeanour.

The official story that they were just doing their job of searching for “smugglers” is of course, laughable. Such activities are undertaken in countries where normal conditions prevail, NOT in a country like Iraq, which is as war torn as any. “Searching for smugglers” is no one’s priority in Iraq, but serves the MOD well as a cover story because it appears to the British public that “their boys” are carrying out innocent, heck! even helpful activities in Iraq, and darn those Iraqis for not being grateful!

So to be convincing, they searched the odd boat that was unloading cars or whatever, and the gormless sailors were there to make it look convincing, and indeed the sailors themselves, dupes that they are, actually believed that this was the extent of what they were involved in, if only as a cover.

The Marines were there to do the real job – spying on Iraq, planning/setting up infiltrations into Iran – keeping in contact with British assassination (SAS) teams already in Iran – passing details to US teams in Iran and to the US government etc.

In short, they are very clearly engaged in hostile acts towards Iran, and if the tables had been turned, and Iranians had been caught in America doing the same thing, they would now be being tortured in Guantanamo. No doubt WHATSOEVER.

The main point at this stage however is that the spin machine has gone into action in an attempt to undo the Iranian “coup de media”. For example, the Scotsman reports:

The Iranian soldiers had changed out of military uniforms and were now dressed all in black, their faces masked. For the 14 male hostages, the worst moment of their ordeal had arrived. The belief that they were being taken to the British Embassy in Tehran for imminent release had evaporated. Instead, at a detention centre, blindfolded and with their hands secured with plastic cuffs, they were all made to face a brick wall.

Then guns were cocked and a British captive cried out: “Lads, lads. I think we are going to be executed.” At that point, one of the hostages vomited: at least one of the others thought someone had just had their throat cut, and that it was blood hitting the floor.

Hmmmm…. now why would any of the British hostages automatically associate the sound of vomit hitting the floor with someone’s throat being cut? Are British children reared to instinctively know and associate these sounds with one another? Of course, I forget! They were in “Arablandia”, where people cut each other’s throats as a matter of course and on a daily basis.

The poster boy for the gormlessness of the Sailors has to be Sailor Arthur Batchelor. From my brief analysis of the ‘cut of his gib’, I have decided that this poor misguided child would have cracked if an Iranian Republican Guard has so much as looked at him in the wrong way, and his bright and sunny disposition therefore constitutes reasonable evidence that it is unlikely that there was any mal-treatment.

Indeed, it is exactly Batchelor’s likely naivety that we can rely on to get the closest approximation to the truth of what conditions were really like. He stated:

“Iranian behaviour was humane, we were fed, watered 3 times a day”

which is far cry from “constant psychological pressure”, blindfolds, handcuffs, stone cells, “gun-cocking” etc. as reported by his superiors who were given the job of spreading lies and disinformation once they arrived home.

On a lighter note; I had to chuckle at the fact that Batchelor was so short and hobbit-like that there wasn’t a suit in all of Iran to be found to fit him.

Smiling British Marines leave Tehran on their way back home. US and British Prisoners in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay meet a different fate.

It doesn’t get much better than this folks. With a smile, handshakes and a lesson in family values, a member of the “axis of evil” and alleged 21st century “Hitler” today destroyed years of hard work and scurrilous propaganda by the American, Israeli and British governments.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran said Wednesday that the country had “pardoned” and would release the 15 British sailors and marines who have been held there for nearly two weeks.

Speaking at a news conference in Tehran, Ahmadinejad said that the captives would be taken to Tehran airport immediately after he finished his remarks. “They are free after this meeting, and can go back to their families,” he said.

He also criticized Britain for its involvement in the war in Iraq. “We are sorry that British troops remain in Iraq and their sailors and being arrested in Iran,” the president said.

Other countries “must recognize that Iran will protect its right and its land and as it did in the past it will in the future,” Ahmadinejad said. “We are sorry that the British troops remain in Iraq and their sailors are being arrested in Iran. We are sorry of this event.”

Ahmadinejad said that the captured Britons had all confessed to trespassing in Iranian waters and that Iran had “every right” to put them on trial, but had decided not to. “I want to give them as a present to the British people, to see that they are free,” he said.

Afterward, he greeted the captives one by one and shook their hands.

The Iranian president said the decision to release the captured sailors and marines was not part of a swap for Iranian prisoners held by the United States in Iraq.

“We approached the subject on a humanitarian basis,” he said. “It was a unilateral decision on our end.”

He also said the British government sent a letter to the Iranian foreign ministry that “said that this will not happen again.” But he said that the decision to release the naval personnel “was not related to that letter. When we think of Islamic kindness, we are not expecting anything in return.”

Ahmadinejad was shown on live television greeting the British sailors, who were wearing suit jackets. The president said the release was being made on the occasion of the “birthday of the great Prophet of Islam,” in the words of the translator.

Ahmadinejad wished them success.

“Thank you very much,” said one.

“We are very grateful for your forgiveness” said another. “We would like to thank yourself and the Iranian people.”

Another said: “I am fine thank you,” to the president. “Your people have been very kind to us and I appreciate that very much.”

The Iranian President criticized Britain for deploying Leading Seaman Faye Turney, one of the 15 detainees, in the Gulf, pointing out that she is a woman with a child.

“Why is it that the most difficult missions, naval inspections, be given to a mother, who is carrying out a mission thousands of miles away from her child?” he said.

“How can you justify seeing a mother away from her home, her children? Why don’t they respect family values in the West?” he asked of the British government.