HIGNFY Spreads More Lies about Russian Interference in American Election

The Beeb really does seem as determined as possible to spread as much Tory and right-wing American lies as they can, even if it brings us closer to a needless war with Russia.

Mike has already commented yesterday on the Beeb’s highly biased reporting of the sexual abuse scandal now engulfing parliament. The Beeb has seized on the Kelvin Hopkins story, and has been banging on about this, while casually ignoring the even bigger scandal about the number of Tory MPs, who sexually harass staff. Hopkins was briefly a member of Corbyn’s shadow cabinet before retiring to the backbenches. He is accused of harassing Ava Etamadzadeh, to whom he allegedly sent an inappropriate message, and held his body close to hers when they shrugged. The major question here is whether Corbyn knew about the allegations when he appointed Hopkins to the shadow cabinet.

The Beeb has been endlessly promoting this story, with Corbyn stopped in the street by a Beeb reporter. And Laura ‘Arnalda Mussolini’ Kuenssberg, who tweeted thirteen times about the allegations but has made no mention of the far greater number of Tory MPs accused of sexual harassment.

While it’s unclear if Corbyn knew anything about Hopkins, the MPs has been suspended from the party and the Labour whip withdrawn. Unlike the Tory party, where Theresa May certainly knew about the unwelcome attentions 36 of her MPs were foisting on their staff in a weekly reported nicknamed ‘the Ins and Outs’. So far, none of the MPs accused have been suspended and they are not being investigated. The only casualty so far seems to have been Michael Fallon, who resigned from his role as Defence Secretary. But Kuensberg wasn’t interested in this, preferring – as good Tory propagandist – to continue harping on about Hopkins instead.

http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2017/11/03/the-bbc-has-turned-the-kelvin-hopkins-sexual-assault-allegation-into-a-story-about-its-own-bias/

Then last night the Beeb decided it was going to retail once again Killary’s lies that she lost the election due Russian hacking and meddling in the US election on Have I Got News For You. They reported that Trump’s aides Papadopoulos and Paul Manafort were arrested for their corrupt links with Russia and Ukraine.

This is debatable. I can’t comment on Papadopoulos, but the FBI file on Manafort only mentions Ukraine. It doesn’t mention Russia.

The show also claimed that all the files that incriminated Hillary, showing her corrupt dealings in the Democrat party and her connections to Wall Street, were also released through Russian hacking.

They weren’t. As WikiLeaks themselves have said, and indeed the former British diplomat who took custody of the documents for them, the information was leaked by a disgruntled Democratic insider. Russia had nothing to do with it.

Now there’s probably a big story there about Manafort’s connections with Ukraine. Ronald Reagan patronised and supported the ex-pat Ukrainian organisations during the Cold War, giving their leaders posts in the various anti-Communist propaganda departments. These organisations and their leader, Vladimir Stetso, were former Nazi collaborators with a virulent hatred of Jews. Just as the current ruling Ukrainian coalition contains fully paid up, unreconstructed Nazis from the Pravy Sektor.

But we ain’t supposed to know about them. It might put us off the lie that the Maidan Revolution of 2012 was entirely spontaneous and democratic, instead of being stage-managed by Obama’s State Department under Victoria Nuland, George Soros, and the National Endowment for Democracy, which took over the CIA’s task of engineering ‘regime change’ when the Agency became too notorious for fomenting coups.

As for Killary, when in government she was one of the most hawkish members of Obama’s team, and was needlessly ramping up tensions with Russia and China. And the people backing her story about how it was due to the Russians, rather than her own venality and colossal lack of sympathy for the American people, are another bunch of sordid Nazis. They include the Von Mises Society, which is dedicated to privatising the state and destroying what little is left of American welfare provision. They also used to subscribe to eugenics and pseudoscientific racism. That means, they published a series of pamphlets and other literature intended to demonstrate that Blacks were thicker than Whites, and that America should not set up a welfare state, because this would simply be a waste of money. If people were poor, it was because they were biologically unfit. Particularly Blacks.

This is the kind of people, who are promoting Hillary’s lies about the Russians stealing the American election. And the Beeb seems happy to repeat this garbage, even if it means creating another wretched Cold War of the time that dam’ nearly destroyed the world the last time under Reagan.

I don’t know why the Beeb is actually doing this, apart from the issue of right-wing bias within the Corporation. Possibly its part of the whole Atlanticist mindset, which permeates much of the British governing class since America superseded us as a world power after the Second World War. We can only be a major force on the world stage by riding on America’s coat-tails. Everything they do, we have to follow. One British ambassador was told by his superiors in the Foreign Office that his job in Washington was to get up the Americans’ backside and stay there. And so Blair enthusiastically joined Bush in invading Iraq, creating the ‘dodgy dossier’ and lying about weapons of mass destruction in order to do so. And certain NATO generals were predicting that by May this year we would be already fighting Putin’s forces in the Baltic States.

That fortunately hasn’t happened, but I wonder if the generals, civil servants and politicians, who promoted this feel disappointed.

As it stands, it certainly looks like the Beeb are keen to defend Killary, even to the point of lying about Russian involvement and ratcheting up the Cold War a further notch or two.

And showing further that you cannot trust the Beeb to tell the truth about either the Labour party or the real state of affairs in eastern Europe.

Guy Verhofstadt and Other MEPs Call for Boris To Be Sacked

Here’s something a little more positive from the EU, and yes, it’s another video from RT. MEPs, including Guy Verhofstadt and Manfred Weber from the German European People’s Party, have called for Theresa May to sack Boris Johnson. They state that it’s not clear who’s in charge of the Brexit negotiations – her, Boris or David Davis. They want a clear line of authority and know who is really in charge. And so they call on her to sack the blond buffoon.

I couldn’t agree more. And it isn’t just because he’s trying to dictate the terms under which Britain leaves the EU himself, simply to make himself that bit more popular and bring himself just a little closer to 10 Downing Street.

It’s because he’s a clown with a complete lack of tact, who is completely insensitive to the feelings of others and the delicate and nuanced language required for effective diplomacy. On Sunday Channel 4 showed footage of the British ambassador to Myanmar, Andrew Jenkins, doing his best to save Anglo-Burmese relations when BoJo started reciting The Road to Mandalay on an official visit to Myanmar’s holiest Buddhist temple, Shwedagog Temple, in Yangon, the country’s capital.

Johnson couldn’t see that reciting a poem from one of the great literary figures of British imperialism, Rudyard Kipling, in their holiest place, might not be welcome to his hosts or the country’s people.

And then he told the Tory conference that Sirte in Libya could be next Dubai, ‘once they’ve cleared the bodies away’. As Mike has pointed out in his blog, Sirte was the site of a battle between the Libyan government and the Islamists, that left over 100 police officers dead and hundreds of innocent bystanders killed or wounded in the crossfire. Again, some might argue that treating the carnage that occurred so casually was again insensitive. And it says much about the mentality of his audience that the Tories there had a jolly guffaw and chuckle at his comments.

Now imagine the outrage if he had shown the same apparent lack of tact over a similar battle, in which a hundred or so British squaddies and members of the general public were killed. Not that I don’t think Boris isn’t capable of that either. He’d be just as likely to say it – but only if the bodies were those of proles – and his wretched gang of sycophants and admirers just as likely to laugh, if this did happen. He’d then try to pass it off as just him being a bit inept again, but look, he’s a lovable clown. Just a bit accident prone. He didn’t mean any harm.

He clearly is someone who doesn’t care what he says, nor what offence he may needlessly cause.

As for Sirte becoming the next Dubai or similar luxury travel destination in the Middle East, I don’t know how much real benefit that will bring the Libyans themselves. Gaddafi was a thug and a dictator. However, under him the Libyan people had free education and healthcare, and something like a welfare state. And while he certainly used the Islamists to assassinate his foreign enemies in Africa and the Middle East, they were very definitely not tolerated on Libyan soil. All that seems to have gone, thanks the Neocons in the American government and Killary, who giggled when announcing the dictator’s death.

She was a war-hungry maniac, who palled up with the unindicted war criminal Henry Kissinger, and wanted to expand more chaos and death further around the Middle East, while ramping up tensions with Russia and China. She shouldn’t have been allowed anywhere near America’s foreign policy.

And neither should Boris. He’s a liability. He’ll sacrifice this country’s prosperity and the possibility of good relations with the EU and the rest of the Commonwealth simply for the sake of his vain ambition to become PM. It’s time he was shown the door. If not the boot.

Boris’ Views on Brexit and Massive Lack of Tact in Myanmar Show Why He Should Not Be In Politics

Here’s another Tory politician, who should by rights be firmly ejected from the House, or at least barred from any position of governmental responsibility: Boris Johnson. BoJo would just love to be prime minister, and so has tried to scheme his way there, joining the Leave campaign after he initially backed the ‘Stay’ group, and then stabbed the former Tory leader, David Cameron, and his fellow Tory, Michael Gove, in the back.

As the Tories have complained, he’s trying to drive government policy over Brexit from the backseat. On Saturday, Mike put up an article reporting how the Tories’ Blond Ambition had laid down a set of four conditions that need to be met for a good Brexit deal. One of the experts on politics, who commented about it on Twitter, Ian Dunt, immediately demolished all of them.

It’s not hard to see parallels with the Kippers in this. UKIP are rapidly falling into obscurity. They were a single issue party, pressing for Britain’s withdrawal from the EU. And now that’s happening, they’ve lost their entire raison d’etre. So they tried a few months ago to lay down their conditions for Britain’s negotiations over Brexit with the EU. Almost needless to say, they were also rubbish and nobody took any notice of them either.

But it gets worse. For some reason, BoJo the Clown is Britain’s Foreign Secretary, a position for which he is entirely unsuited, for all he likes to boast that his Turkish grandfather was the last vizier of Ottoman Turkey, who was hanged by his outraged people in protest at one of the treaties breaking up Europe in the aftermath of the Great War.

Diplomacy, as part of international relations, requires and prizes very careful, guarded speech in order to prevent avoidable offence, offence which can easily rapidly escalate into disastrous breakdowns in international relations. And in serious cases, war. We talk about ‘tact and diplomacy’, and when describing actions or comments that may cause serious offence, often say, ‘Wars have been fought for less’. BoJo, like Trump, seems to possess none of these qualities.

Covering his official visit to the Shwedagon temple, the holiest Buddhist shrine in Myanmar’s capital, Yangon, Channel 4 showed the tousled twat start to recite the opening line from Kipling’s The Road to Mandalay, about the temple bells calling back an English soldier to the Burmese girl he kissed. Britain ruled Myanmar, then called Burma, from 1824 to 1948. And it’s fair odds that its people just might be somewhat sensitive about our occupation of their country. You can easily understand why reciting a poem by a writer renowned as one of the poets of British imperialism, in the country’s most sacred temple, might just be taken as a slight. The documentary, which included the incident, was shown last night on Channel 4. Fortunately, the British ambassador, Andrew Jenkins, was on hand to stop Johnson. The clip shows Johnson asking him why, to which Jenkins simply answers ‘It’s not appropriate’.

http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2017/09/30/boris-johnson-is-out-of-control-again-heres-why-as-if-you-needed-to-see-the-reasons/

It says much about Boris’ complete lack of sensitivity and self-awareness, that he had to ask Jenkins why he shouldn’t recite it. He clearly saw nothing wrong in it, an attitude that could easily be interpreted by his Burmese hosts as imperial arrogance.

This isn’t the first time the Tories have said or done something, that has sparked an international row. I vaguely remember that BoJo managed to upset the Russians, when he went on a diplomatic visit to the Baltic states a year or so ago. And it wasn’t that long ago that Modi’s India accused Britain of colonialist condescension.

If Boris did, by some horrendous mistake of history, get into 10 Downing Street, then it’s clear that within a very short period his lack of tact would have torn the Commonwealth apart, having insulted and alienated as many of its members states as possible, and joined Trump in ramping up international tensions with Russia, Iran, North Korea or whoever into a full-blown shooting war.

Brexit is likely to seriously damage the British economy. True, Boris wasn’t responsible for the Leave campaign, but he did add his weight to it for no good reason than his own, over-vaulting ambition. And now his utter unsuitability for any kind of role in the Foreign Office is amply demonstrated yet again.

Get this oaf, and the other Tories, out of office as quickly as possible.

The Case for Prosecuting Blair as War Criminal for Iraq Invasion

War Crime or Just War? The Iraq War 2003-2005: The Case against Blair, by Nicholas Wood, edited by Anabella Pellens (London: South Hill Press 2005).

This is another book I’ve picked up in one of the secondhand bookshops in Cheltenham. It’s an angry and impassioned book, whose author is deeply outraged by Blair’s unprovoked and illegal invasion, the consequent carnage and looting and the massive human rights abuses committed by us and the Americans. William Blum in one of his books states that following the Iraq War there was an attempt by Greek, British and Canadian human rights lawyers to have Bush, Blair and other senior politicians and official brought to the international war crimes court in the Hague for prosecution for their crimes against humanity. This books presents a convincing case for such a prosecution, citing the relevant human rights and war crimes legislation, and presenting a history of Iraq and its despoliation by us, the British, from Henry Layard seizing the archaeological remains at Nineveh in 1845 to the Iraq War and the brutalisation of its citizens.

The blurb on the back cover reads:

After conversations with Rob Murthwaite, human rights law lecturer, the author presents a claim for investigation by The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Maanweg 174, 2516 AB The Hague, The Netherlands, that there have been breaches of the ICC Statute by members of the UK Government and Military in the run up to and conduct of the war with Iraq. That there is also prima facie evidence that the Hague and Geneva conventions, the Nuremberg and the United Nations Charters have been breached, and that this evidence may allow members of the UK and US Governments, without state immunity or statute of limitations, to be extradited to account for themselves. The use of hoods, cable ties, torture, mercenaries, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, aggressive patrols and dogs, is examined. Questions are raised over the religious nature of the war, the seizure of the oil fields, Britain’s continuous use of the RAF to bomb Iraq in 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1990s archaeologists acting as spies, the destruction of Fallujah, the burning and looting of libraries, museums and historic monuments; and the contempt shown towards Iraqis living, dead and injured.

In his preface Wood states that the conversation he had with Rob Murthwaite out of which the book grew, was when they were composing a letter for the Stop the War Coalition, which they were going to send to the International Criminal Court at the Hague. Wood himself is an archaeologist, and states that he is particularly shocked at the imposition of American culture in Saudi Arabia. The book’s editor, Anabella Pellens, is Argentinian and so ‘knows what imprisonment and disappearance mean’.

In his introduction Wood argues that there were four reasons for the invasion of Iraq. The first was to introduce democracy to the country. Here he points out that to Americans, democracy also means free markets and privatisation for American commercial interests. The second was to seized its oil supplies and break OPEC’s power. The third was Israel. The United States and Israel for several years before the War had been considering various projects for a water pipeline from the Euphrates to Israel. The Israelis also favoured setting up a Kurdish state, which would be friendly to them. They were also concerned about Hussein supplying money to the Palestinians and the Scuds launched against Israel during the 1992 Gulf War. And then there are the plans of the extreme Zionists, which I’ve blogged about elsewhere, to expand Israel eastwards into Iraq itself. The fourth motive is the establishment of American military power. Here Wood argues that in the aftermath of 9/11 it was not enough simply to invade Afghanistan: another country had to be invaded and destroyed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the American military machine.

Chapter 1 is a brief history of Iraq and its oil, with a commentary on the tragedy of the country, discussing the Gulf War and the Iraq invasion in the context of British imperialism, with another section on British imperialism and Kuwait.

Chapter 2 is a summary of the laws and customs of war, which also includes the relevant clauses from the regulations it cites. This includes

Habeas Corpus in the Magna Carta of 1215

The establishment of the Geneva Convention and the Red Cross

The Hague Convention of 1907: Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land
This includes a summary of the main clauses, and states the contents of the regulations.

The United Nations Charter of 1945

The Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal, 1945
This sections shows how the judgements are relevant to the British invasion and occupation of Iraq. It also gives a summary of the judgments passed at the Nuremberg trials, beginning with the indictment, and the individual verdicts against Goering, Hess, Ribbentrop, Keitel, Kaltenbrunner, Frick, Streicher, Rosenberg, Frank, Funk, Schacht, Doenitz, Raeder, Von Schirack, Sauckel, Jodl, Von Papen, Seyss-Inquart, Speer, Von Neurath, Fritzsche, and Borman.

The Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Protocols, containing extracts from
Convention 1 – For the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in the Armed Forces in the Field; Convention III – Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War; IV – Relative to the Protection of Civilian persons in Times of War.

There are also extracts from

The Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, 1954;

Protocol 1 Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and Relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts, 1977.

Protocols to the Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons Which May Be Deemed to Be Excessively Injurious Or to Have Indiscriminate Effects, Geneva 1980.

The 1997 Ottawa Convention and the treaty banning mines.

A summary of the rules of engagement for the 1991 Gulf War, which was issued as a pocket card to be carried by US soldiers.

The 1993 Hague Convention.

The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, 2002.

The International Criminal Court Act of 2001 and the incorporation of the Rome Statute into British law. This gives both the aims of the act and a summary of the act itself.

Lastly there are a few paragraphs on the Pinochet case of 1998, and extradition as a method of bringing justice.

Chapter 3 is on allies in war as partners in war crimes committed.

Chapter 4 is on the deception and conspiracy by Bush and Blair, which resulted in their invasion. This begins by discussing the American plans in the 1970s for an invasion of the Middle East to seize their oil supplies during the oil crisis provoked by the Six Day War. In this chapter Wood reproduces some of the relevant correspondence cited in the debates in this period, including a letter by Clare short.

Chapter 5 describes how Clare Short’s own experience of the Prime Minister’s recklessness, where it was shown he hadn’t a clue what to do once the country was conquered, led her to resign from the cabinet. Wood states very clearly in his title to this chapter how it violates one of the fundamental lessons of the great Prussian militarist, Clausewitz, that you must always know what to do with a conquered nation or territory.

Chapter 6: A Ruthless Government describes the vicious persecution of the government’s critics and their removal from office. Among Blair’s victims were the weapons scientist Dr David Kelly, who killed himself after questioning by the Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee and MOD and an intense attempt by Blair and his cabinet to discredit him; the Director General of the BBC, Greg Dyke, Gavin Davies, the Beeb’s chairman, and the reporter, Andrew Gilligan. Others target for attack and vilification included Katherine Gun, a translator at GCHQ, the head of the nuclear, chemical and biological branch of the Defence Intelligence Staff, Dr Brian Jones, Elizabeth Wilmshurst, a Deputy Legal Advisor to Foreign Office, George Galloway, Paul Bigley, the brother of the kidnap victim Ken Bigley, and Clare Short. Bigley’s apartment in Belgium was ransacked by MI6 and the RFBI and his computer removed because he blamed Blair for his brother’s kidnap and beheading by an Iraqi military faction. There is a subsection in this chapter on the case of Craig Murray. Murray is the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, who got the boot because he told the government that the president was an evil dictator, who had boiled someone alive. This was most definitely not something Blair wanted to hear.

Chapter 7 is a series of cases studies. Each case has its own section, which includes the relevant Human Rights and war crimes legislation.

7A is on the breakdown of the country’s civil administration and political persecution. The two are linked, as Blair and Bush had all members of the Baath party dismissed from their posts. However, membership of the party was a requirement for employment in public posts across a wide range of fields. Wood points out that you could not even be a junior university lecturer without being a member of the party. As a result, the country was immediately plunged into chaos as the people who ran it were removed from their positions without anyone to take over. In this chapter Wood also discusses the unemployment caused by the war, and the disastrous effect the invasion had on the position of women.

7B is on the destruction of services infrastructure.

7C is on damage to hospitals and attacks on medical facilities.

7D is on the destruction and looting of museums, libraries and archaeological sites. Remember the outrage when ISIS levelled Nineveh and destroyed priceless antiquities in Mosul? The US and Britain are hardly innocent of similar crimes against this most ancient of nation’s heritage. The Americans caused considerable damage to Babylon when they decided to make it their base. This included breaking up the city’s very bricks, stamped with the names of ancient kings, for use as sand for their barricades around it. Remind me who the barbarians are again, please?

7E – Seizing the Assets is on the American and British corporate looting of the country through the privatisation and seizure of state-owned industries, particularly oil. This is very much in contravention of international law.

7F – Stealing their plants. This was covered in Private Eye at the time, though I’m not sure if it was mentioned anywhere else. Iraq has some of the oldest varieties of food crops in the world, among other biological treasures. These are varieties of plants that haven’t change since humans first settled down to farm 7-8 thousand years ago. Monsanto and the other GM firms desperately wanted to get their mitts on them. So they patented them, thus making the traditional crops Iraqi farmers had grown since time immemorial theirs, for which the farmers had to pay.

7G describes how the Christian religious element in the war gave it the nature of a Crusade, and religious persecution. The aggressive patrols and tactics used to humiliate and break suspects involve the violation of their religious beliefs. For example, dogs are unclean animals to Muslims, and would never be allowed inside a house. So dogs are used to inspect suspect’s houses, even the bedrooms, by the aggressive patrols. Muslims have their religious items confiscated, in contravention of their rules of war. One man was also forced to eat pork and drink alcohol, which is was against his religion as a Muslim. The message by some of the army ministers and preachers that Islam is an evil religion means that Iraqis, as Muslims, are demonised and that instead of being viewed as people to be liberated they are cast as enemies.

There are several sections on the restraint of suspects. These include the use of cable ties, hoods, which have resulted in the death of at least two people, setting dogs on people, standing for hours and other tortures, which includes a list of the types of torture permitted by Donald Rumsfeld, aggressive patrolling, killing and wounding treacherously – which means, amongst other things, pretending to surrender and then shooting the victims after they have let their guard down, marking the bodies of victims in order to humiliate them, the deliberate targeting of the house owned by the Hamoodi family of Chemical Ali, the mass shooting from aircraft of a wedding party in the Iraqi desert by the Americans, but supported by the British; another incident in which people gathered in a street in Haifa around a burning US vehicle were shot and massacred; cluster bombs, including evidence that these were used at Hilla; the use of depleted uranium. Thanks to the use of this material to increase the penetrating power of shells, the incidence of leukaemia and other cancers and birth defects has rocketed in parts of Iraq. Children have been born without heads or limbs. One doctor has said that women are afraid to get pregnant because of the widespread incidence of such deformities; the use of mercenaries. Private military contractors have been used extensively by the occupying armies. Counterpunch has attacked their use along with other magazines, like Private Eye, because of their lawlessness. As they’re not actually part of the army, their casualties also don’t feature among the figures for allied casualties, thus making it seem that there are fewer of them than there actually is. They also have the advantage in that such mercenaries are not covered by the Geneva and other conventions. Revenge killings by British forces in the attacks on Fallujah. 7W discusses the way the Blair regime refused to provide figures for the real number of people killed by the war, and criticised the respected British medical journal, the Lancet, when it said it could have been as many as 100,000.

In the conclusion Wood discusses the occupation of Iraq and the political motivations for it and its connection to other historical abuses by the British and Americans, such as the genocide of the Indians in North America. He describes the horrific experiences of some Iraqi civilians, including a little girl, who saw her sisters and thirteen year old brother killed by British soldiers. He states that he hopes the book will stimulate debate, and provides a scenario in which Blair goes to Jordan on holiday, only to be arrested and extradited to be tried as a war criminal for a prosecution brought by the farmers of Hilla province. The book has a stop press, listing further developments up to 2005, and a timeline of the war from 2003-5.

The book appears to me, admittedly a layman, to build a very strong case for the prosecution of Tony Blair for his part in the invasion of Iraq. Wood shows that the war and the policies adopted by the occupying powers were illegal and unjust, and documents the horrific brutality and atrocities committed by British and US troops.

Unfortunately, as Bloom has discussed on his website and in his books, Bush, Blair and the other monsters were not prosecuted, as there was political pressure put on the ICC prosecutor and chief justice. Nevertheless, the breaches of international law were so clear, that in 2004 Donald Rumsfeld was forced to cancel a proposed holiday in Germany. German law provided that he could indeed be arrested for his part in these war crimes, and extradited to face trial. To which I can only salute the new Germany and its people for their commitment to democracy and peace!

While there’s little chance that Blair will face judgement for his crimes, the book is still useful, along with other books on the Iraq invasion like Greg Palast’s Armed Madhouse, and the works of William Bloom, in showing why this mass murderer should not be given any support whatsoever, and his attempt to return to politics, supposedly to lead a revival of the political centre ground, is grotesque and disgusting.

The book notes that millions of ordinary Brits opposed the war and marched against it. Between 100 and 150 MPs also voted against it. One of those who didn’t, was Iain Duncan Smith, who shouted ‘Saddam must go!’ Somehow, given Smith’s subsequent term in the DWP overseeing the deaths of tens or hundreds of thousands of benefit claims after their benefits were stopped, this didn’t surprise. He is clearly a militarist, despite his own manifest unfitness for any form of leadership, military or civil.

Syria Chemical Weapons Attacks Were ‘False Flag’ Operations Intended to Draw America into Civil War

Last week there came a report that Assad’s government had attacked its own people, using poison gas. About 60 people had died. After the Syrian president and his government had been condemned for this atrocity, Trump declared that he was not tolerating it and launched a missile attack in reprisal at a Syrian air force base. And the world came one step closer yet again to World War III. Or at least another bloody western invasion of a middle eastern country.

We are being told that such attacks are to defend the Syrian people from a murderous regime. Our governments are also supplying funding, training and arms to a plethora of rebel groups fighting Assad. These are Islamist groups, such as the al-Nusra Front, who are basically the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda. Nevertheless, we are being assured that these rebels are moderates, who want to create a democratic Syria.

This is all lies. The so-called moderates are no such thing, and the weapons and funding that’s given to them sooner or later gets passed on to their more extreme allies. This includes ISIS, who is also being funded by part of the American military complex. The bland reassurances that this proxy war is being fought to establish democracy is also bogus. The Neocons have been itching to remove Assad since the early days of the century, because he’s an ally of Russia and Iran. And the real reason for the determined campaign to have him removed is because of his opposition to an oil pipeline that would pass from Saudi Arabia, through Qatar, Jordan and Syria, into Turkey and thence into Europe. Assad objects to this as it would damage another pipeline his Russian allies wish to build from Central Asia.

This is not about democracy. This is about the right of massive oil companies and American corporations to butcher and loot another country and its people in the name of big profits, just like they butchered and looted Iraq.

And looked at closely, the chemical weapon attack supposedly launched by Assad in the week starts to look like nothing of the sort. Instead, there is a good evidence that it was deliberately set up by al-Nusra to draw America and the West into the war on their side. The alleged victims of the attack may instead have been people al-Nusra murdered after they kidnapped them from two pro-government towns

The Syrian rebels have previous form on this, as does the American government. In this video below, the American comedian Jimmy Dore reads and comments on the sceptical reports about a similar gas attack four years ago in 2013. The first piece he analyses is by the respected American journalist Seymour Hersh. Hersh describes how members of the intelligence services he talked to were frustrated by Obama’s decision that Assad was responsible for the attack, and that he had overstepped the line. They made it clear to Hersh that there was absolutely no evidence that the attack had been launched by Assad. They also informed him that he had altered the timing of the intelligence reports, so that it appeared that the analysis was occurring at the same time as the attacks. This reminded Hersh of the Gulf of Tonkin affair. This was the notorious ‘false flag’ incident which provided the pretext for the Americans to begin bombing North Vietnam right at the beginning of the Vietnam War.

Obama then retreated from his threat to bomb Syria, after Assad offered to relinquish his chemical weapons. Hersh notes that if this was done, then the only people in Syria to possess them would be the rebels – al-Qaeda and its allies. Obama’s sudden volte-face also suggested to Dore that Obama had received convincing information that Assad was not responsible.

He then cites another report, which was reprinted from Counterpunch. Two delegates from the Republican People’s Party, CHP, in the Turkish parliament, Erdem and Seker, had come forward and stated that the gas attack had been staged by the Turkish intelligence services in order to provoke America into entering the war on the rebels’ side.

In this second video, Dore moves on to commenting on this past week’s poison gas attack. He notes how the EU’s High Representative, Federica Mogherini, had declared that it had been launched by Assad even though this claim could not be independently verified. Furthermore, the photograph of the al-Nusra affiliated White Helmets handling the bodies of the victims is highly suspicious. The dead were supposed to have been killed by Sarin nerve gas. The first effects of the gas is to make the victims lose control of their bowels and bladders and begin vomiting. It is so toxic that protective clothing needs to be worn even when handling the victims. Yet the White Helmets were shown using their bare hands, without protective gloves, and with only gas masks for protection. Attacks using this gas kill thousands of people.

Dore also quotes a number of Tweets from people, who smell a rat about the doctor claiming that his hospital was being inundated by the victims of the assault. The doctor was Tweeting and texting this information, and even offering to provide a video about it later. They point out how suspicious it is that he has time to blog about this supposed crisis. Dore also notes that the doctor himself is hardly a trustworthy source. The doctor, Shajul Islam, was ‘disbarred’ in London for ‘semi-terrorism’ actions, according to Dore.

Dore also reports that last week, 250 people from Majdul and Khattab were kidnapped by al-Qaeda terrorists. Local people have said that many of the dead were the terrorists’ kidnapped victims.

The photograph of the location of the attack also looks suspicious. The buildings are carved directly into the rock. This doesn’t look like the area, where the attacks were alleged to have occurred so much as one particular al-Qaeda base. Further evidence that this has all been set up is provided by the opposition television service, Orient TV. This announced that Russian and Syrian planes had launched a gas attack hours before the attack actually happened. Dore also makes the point that, for the attack, the timing of the attack is nonsensical. Assad and the Russians are actually winning. It would therefore be foolish for them to jeopardise their gains through a completely unnecessary gas attack, whose result would only be to strengthen international opposition against them. This is especially true now, on the eve of a conference on Syria in Brussels, and a week before peace negotiations are due to begin. The report on which Dore is commenting states that this looks like another false-flag operation, similar to the 2013 Khan al-Assal attack.

Other cogent observations came from social media. One woman, Partisangirl, asked why the White Helmets would receive Sarin suits only a month before the attack, when Syria did not have any Sarin? Charles Shoebridge, who had been a Scotland Yard detective, counter-terrorism intelligence officer and international politics graduate and lawyer, pointedly observed that the attack had made Trump’s change in attitude towards Assad apparent to the attack’s beneficiaries. By which he meant the various rebel terrorist groups. Dore plays Trump’s response, mocking the hypocrisy behind the president’s outrage that little babies have been killed, when America and its allies have done the same in Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan and other places in the Middle East. Dore also asks if the corporatist Democrats and their shills, like Rachel Maddow, are also happy. They’ve got the war they wanted, a war which will also lead to military confrontation with Russia, because Russian troops are also on Syrian bases. Responding to Mr Shoebridge, Peter Ford, the former British ambassador to Syria, reminds his viewers on Sky that Trump had repudiated Obama’s policy of wanting to unseat Assad. His administration was much more eager to tackle ISIS. Ford states that if the Syrian terrorist groups wanted to prevent Trump’s policy becoming more sensible, ‘they could not have done better than to create a piece of fake news like this.’

Dore makes the point that this information is not going to appear on the mainstream news. And the propaganda effect of the attack is working. He reads out Tweets from people, who are now convinced that America needs to enter the war, as well as from those, who are pointing out how stupid and insane this policy is.

Dore ends the vide with an appeal to his viewers to help fund them through Patreon, as YouTube and its advertisers will demonetise this and other videos. He states that he knew this video would be demonetised even before he began filming it, but he’s doing it anyway because it’s an issue he wants to continue covering. He states that his show is being hit, just like all the other news shows.

Mass Rallies Across State Capitols in America Tomorrow to Persuade Republicans against Installing Trump

This is awesome. In this video from TYT Politics, The Young Turks interview Kai Newkirk and Tania Maduro, the spokespeople for Democracy Spring, about the mass rallies that are set to be held tomorrow to persuade Republican electors not to install Donald Trump as the next president of the US.

The blurb for the protests states

In order for Republican Electors to vote tomorrow, Dec. 19 on whether or not to install Donald Trump as the United States president, they will need to go to their state capitols where concerned citizens will be waiting to greet them, hoping turn them against the reality-TV start turned demagogue turned president-Elect. Kai Newkirk and Tania Maduro of Democracy Spring and December19.us explain their strategy to use 51 public demonstrations to remind the Electors of their Constitutional duty to deliberate upon whether or not the electoral vote leader is fit to hold the highest office in the land.

Their argument includes (1) reports from the FBI and the CIA that Russian spies intervened in the election to help Trump win, (2) Trump has failed to disclose financial conflicts of interest that may prevent him from protecting the interests of the United States, and (3) Donald Trump lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million ballots.

Newkirk and Maduro state that Trump should not be president, not just because of his racism and sexism, but because of his unstable, aggressive character. They fear that when he gets into power, he will install an official, who will try to ban Democracy Spring and its efforts to get corporate money out of politics. They state that they will try to engage with Republican electors by saying that they have to vote with their conscience, but Trump is not just a danger to people like them (the protesters) but to all Americans, to the world, and to the climate. They realise that many Republicans are unhappy about vile character and its defects.

Interspersed with the interview is clips showing the Orange Fuhrer actually beating someone up at a wrestling or boxing match, and a Saturday Night Live sketch in which Putin describes him as ‘the best candidate … the Manchurian candidate’. They not that the Electoral College was put in to protect America from potential Manchurian candidates. The organisers also show how you can join the protests by logging on to their website and looking up one near you.

I’m fully behind Democracy Spring and their efforts to oust Trump.I don’t believe that he is a Manchurian candidate, and indeed the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, has said that all the material published by WikiLeaks did not come from the Russians, but by disgruntled Democratic insiders. Similarly, the Electoral College was set up to preserve the power of the slave states, who did not want their slaves counted as full human beings.

But the organisers are right: Trump is a vicious bigot, who has drawn any number of Fascists and misogynists out of the woodwork and put them in his cabinet. He is indeed a danger to America, the environment and the world. And there are a number of Republican Electors, who have already decided that he is too much for their stomachs to bear. I hope tomorrow we will see many more of them.

Daily Mail: Democrat Party WikiLeaks Information Was Not Hacked by Russians

Now this is a very strange story, as it seems the Daily Mail may just about have done some independent reporting, rather than just following the anti-Russian line the Clintonite Democrats and their allies in the media have been trying to whip up.

Strange days, indeed.

In this video from The Jimmy Dore Show, Dore and his guests discuss an article in the Daily Mail, which reports that Craig Murray, a former British ambassador closely involved with WikiLeaks, has come forward to claim that the material published by the organisation came from an insider from within the party, and not from Russian hackers. Mr Murray is the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, who was relieved of his post and then charged with misconduct, of which he was cleared. He is a close associate of Julian Assange. He stated that he was handed the material published by WikiLeaks in a wooded area of a park in Washington D.C. by a member of the Democrat Party, who was disgusted with the corruption of the Clinton team and the Party’s bias against Bernie Sanders.

This contradicts Killary herself, and the CIA, who have claimed that the material was obtained by Russian hackers. Murray states that the Russians may have hacked the Democrat Party, but they weren’t the source of the information published by WikiLeaks.

Dore and his production team discuss how the Democrats have tried to blame everybody except themselves for the leak, and for losing the election to Trump. The latest excuse is that the material was obtained after John Podesta, one of Killary’s aides, fell for a Nigerian phishing scam. You know, the type where a Nigerian prince or somebody claims that he has all this money lying around, which he would like to put into your account for safekeeping, if only you would give him the details. Dore makes the point that if the story was true, then it would raise the question of what a grown man, who was taken in by such a blatant piece of fraud, was doing holding a position so far up in the party. He also notes Podesta also lost of his mobile phone in a taxi, and it took a day for that to be returned.

Dore makes the point that all these comments and accusations about Russian hackers were an attempt by the Clinton team to deflect attention away from the embarrassing content of the leaked material itself. He concludes this piece by wondering if anyone in the media will now go to Murray himself for this side of the story. He bets they won’t.

Dore doesn’t mention it in the video, but Murray is a rare example of a high level civil servant with an independent conscience. He was relieved of his ambassadorial post as he spoke out about the brutal, corrupt nature of the Uzbek regime and made it very clear that he did not think her majesty’s government should be supporting such a despotism. This was at the precisely the time when the British government was very keen to support the regime, especially through trade deals, which I think were to secure oil contracts. Murray also has his own website, giving his profound and controversial views on international politics and its corruption. I also think he’s contributed at least one article to Counterpunch.

This article should also embarrass Killary and her team, as well as the CIA, as Hillary has been using the accusations of Russian hacking not only to attack Trump, but also to whip up hatred against the Russians and the independent media. She was so incensed about being hacked by the Russians – despite the fact that there was no evidence – that she wanted a military response. And last week the Washington Post ran a piece by Craig Timberg which seems to have drawn on material from the Democrat Party, Ukrainian Fascists and a pseudo-scientific eugenicist and biological racist think tank listing 200 different alternative news organisations and journalists. These were smeared as the promoters of Russian propaganda. Just as the Ukrainian Ministry of Truth has smeared independent journalists there.

Now Mr Murray has shown that this is based on another lie. It’s a lie intended to stop serious discussion about what is wrong with the Democrat Party, the corruption and mendacity of the Clintons, and which is adding to the plethora of other lies, bringing us dangerously close to war with Russia.

As I said, it’s a bizarre thing to say, but this time the Daily Mail may have done the right thing and the world a service.