Despite Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's in-your-face attempts to sabotage President Obama's foreign policy, Official Washington's liberal establishment is on bended knee in an obsequious show of obeisance, apparently in line with Hillary Clinton's political wishes, writes ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.

By Paul R. Pillar

November 08, 2015 “Information Clearing House” –  On the eve of a visit by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Washington, we have gotten yet another of the statements from members of his government that are sufficiently unrestrained or unhinged to cause a flap both in the United States and Israel.

While Netanyahu's own comment about the Holocaust being a Palestinian idea is still fresh in our minds, the latest ear-catching remarks come from Ran Baratz, an inhabitant of a West Bank settlement whom Netanyahu has chosen to be chief of hasbara, the selling of Israeli policies overseas. Baratz has posted a trail of entries on Facebook that have insulted, among others, President Rivlin of Israel, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, whom Baratz says has the mental capacity of a 12-year-old, and President Barack Obama, whom he accuses of being anti-Semitic.

Netanyahu has reacted to the flap by saying that these postings do not represent the views of his government and that he will be reviewing the appointment of Baratz. But whether Baratz keeps or loses the job of chief propagandist doesn't really matter. The backtracking that customarily follows these sorts of Israeli comments (including Netanyahu's sort-of retraction of his assertion about the origin of the Holocaust) are less representative of what this Israeli government is about than were the original comments.

The government's insulting or embarrassing of senior U.S. officials is nothing new and has happened repeatedly in the past, such as when it announced new construction of settlements in East Jerusalem while Vice President Joe Biden was visiting Israel. The playing of the anti-Semitism card as a response to criticism of Israeli government policy is habitual, on the part of not only the Israeli government but also some of its most loyal supporters in the United States.

Throughout the history of Netanyahu occasionally being pushed into saying something that could be interpreted as support for a Palestinian state, his more genuine statements, as indicated by their consistency with his actual policies, have come when he has not been pushed — such as his statementmost recently that he intended to "control all of the territory" and "live forever by the sword."

Rather than seeking a meaningless retraction or apology or mouthing of words we would like to hear, we should accept the original statements for what they are and not try to pretend that they were some sort of slip of the tongue.

Statements that denigrate others may not be a slip at all but rather part of a pattern of shifting blame, even when a particular accusation is patently false. There is the pattern of placing all blame for the violence and endless continuation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on Palestinians, even when this includes asserting that Palestinians in general have genocidal aspirations. There is the pattern of attributing opposition to Israeli policies to ethnic bias, even when this includes calling Barack Obama an anti-Jewish bigot.

Statements that refer to Israel's own intentions should be taken as truthful and not as a slip when they reflect Israel's actual policies and practices on the ground. This certainly is true of a statement by the Israeli prime minister expressing his intention to cling forever to the occupied territories, using military force as necessary to do so.

There will be much evaluation of Netanyahu's meetings in Washington in terms of whether frictions between the two governments have been smoothed over, at least as far as the public face that they present is concerned. There already has been much commentary ahead of the visit that has essentially adopted that standard for assessing the meetings. But the kumbaya scale is not the right means for measuring success or failure of the visit. And harmonious U.S.-Israeli relations per se do not have value; harmony is valuable only if it advances U.S. interests.

Pretending there is more harmony of interests than there really is only obscures and confuses the diplomatic work that can and should be done. Such pretending also carries the additional disadvantage for the United States of associating it all the more closely with the actions of the other party in the relationship, including actions that are contrary to U.S. interests and that the rest of the world understandably condemns.

As with any bilateral relationship, being honest about differing interests and objectives provides an accurate basis on which to address problems that need to be addressed. It also clarifies where there are truly convergent interests that can be the basis of mutually beneficial cooperation.

Major, substantial differences exist between U.S. interests and Israeli interests — at least given how the latter are defined by the current Israeli government. The differences were in full display with the strenuous efforts by Netanyahu's government to sabotage a major U.S. foreign policy priority: the multilateral agreement to restrict Iran's nuclear program.

The underlying difference on that issue was between on one hand the U.S. interest in using all available diplomatic tools to pursue nonproliferation and other goals consistent with improving regional stability, and on the other hand the Netanyahu government's objective of keeping a competitor for regional influence isolated and maintaining conflict with Iran as a bête noire in perpetuity.

Certainly major differences of interest also persist regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. More generally, the gulf between the United States and Israel has grown even wider insofar as Israel (including the territory it occupies) has become an increasingly intolerant place in which civil and political rights are apportioned according to ethnicity and religious belief.

About the best outcome from the U.S. standpoint — which is the standpoint that ought to matter to Americans — of Netanyahu's meetings that could reasonably be expected given the circumstances would be for the two sides to issue a communiqué saying that they had a "frank, businesslike exchange of views."

That is the sort of language that typically describes dialogue between governments with major differences that nonetheless are willing to talk honestly about those differences and to explore ways of possibly reducing them.

The public statements that actually will come out of the meetings probably will sound much more kumbaya-like than that. Netanyahu has a strong interest in making it appear that, despite all the attempted sabotage of U.S. policy and the pokes in U.S. eyes, his government is in good graces in Washington.

We all are familiar with the realities of U.S. politics that lead players in the United States to go along with him in maintaining such an appearance. With this month's visit even a paragon of the liberal establishment such as the Center for American Progress is welcoming Netanyahu into its spaces, despite all his blatant interference in U.S. politics in a direction opposed to what CAP stands for.

That decision probably has mostly to do with how Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign sees its near-term interests. But that is distinctly different from the interests of the United States — and even, over the long term and looking beyond the current government, the interests of Israel.

Paul R. Pillar is Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Center for Security Studies at Georgetown University and Nonresident Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution.  He is a contributing editor to The National Interest, where he writes a blog.

©2015 The National Interest.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article43365.htm

Further Revelations – "Bombshells". "Burning" the Evidence

By Felicity Arbuthnot

November 08, 2015 “Information Clearing House” – “GR” – "I think most people who have dealt with me think I am a pretty straight sort of guy, and I am." (Tony Blair, 21st October 2011, BBC1.)

Given the ongoing revelations on the extent of Tony Blair's duplicitous collusion in the illegal bombing and invasion of Iraq, it seems – to muddle metaphors – the "bunker busters" and Cruise missiles are finally coming home to roost.

In what has been dubbed "an apology" Blair even took to CNN in an interview with his pal Fareed Zakaria to – sort of – explain himself. It was no "apology", but a weasel worded damage limitation exercise as more and more revelations as to disregard for law – and to hell with public opinion – surface. The fault was that "… the intelligence we received was wrong", there were "mistakes in planning" and a failure to understand: "what would happen once you removed the regime", said Mr. Tony. Statements entirely untrue. It is also now known he plotted with George W Bush in April 2002, a year before the onslaught, to invade, come what may.

He also found it: "hard to apologise for removing Saddam." Sorry Mr. Blair, the all was lawless, illegitimate and criminal – and Saddam Hussein was not "removed", he was lynched, his sons and fifteen year old grandson extra-judicially slaughtered in a hail of US bullets – the all in a country whose "sovereignty and territorial integrity" was guaranteed by the UN.

Whatever opinions of the former Iraqi government, the crimes committed by the US-UK war of aggression and aftermath, make the worst excesses of which Saddam Hussein's Administration were accused pale by comparison.

Blair brushed off the mention of a war crimes trial and made it clear that he would trash Syria as Iraq, had he the chance. To this barrister (attorney) by training, legality is clearly inconsequential.

Now no less than the UK's former Director of Public Prosecutions (2003-2008) Sir Ken Macdonald has weighed in against Blair. That he held the post for five years during the Blair regime (Blair resigned in 2007) makes his onslaught interesting. Ironically Macdonald has his legal practice at London's Matrix Chambers, which he founded with Blair's barrister wife Cherie, who also continues to practice from Matrix Chambers.

In a scathing attack, Sir Ken states (1):

"The degree of deceit involved in our decision to go to war on Iraq becomes steadily clearer. This was a foreign policy disgrace of epic proportions …" Referring to the CNN interview he witheringly dismissed Blair's performance saying: "… playing footsie on Sunday morning television does nothing to repair the damage."

Moreover: "It is now very difficult to avoid the conclusion that Tony Blair engaged in an alarming subterfuge with his partner, George Bush, and went on to mislead and cajole the British people into a deadly war they had made perfectly clear they didn't want, and on a basis that it's increasingly hard to believe even he found truly credible."

Macdonald cuttingly cited Blair's: "sycophancy towards power" being unable to resist the "glamour" he attracted in Washington.

"In this sense he was weak and, as we can see, he remains so." Ouch.

"Since those sorry days we have frequently heard him repeating the self-regarding mantra that 'hand on heart, I only did what I thought was right'. But this is a narcissist's defence, and self-belief is no answer to misjudgment: it is certainly no answer to death." No wonder Sir Ken had headed the country's legal prosecuting service.

Macdonald's broadside coincides with further "bombshell revelation" in the Mail on Sunday (2) revealing that "on the eve of war" Blair's Downing Street "descended in to panic" on being told by the Attorney General Lord Goldsmith that "the conflict could be challenged under international law."

There was "pandemonium", Blair was "horrified" and the limited number of Ministers and officials who had a copy of the written opinion "were told 'burn it, destroy it'" alleges the Mail.

The "burning" hysteria centered on Lord Goldmith's thirteen page legal opinion of 7th March 2003 – just twenty days before the attack on Iraq. The "pandemonium" related to the fact that at this late juncture with: "… the date the war was supposed to start already in the diary", Goldsmith was still: " saying it could be challenged under international law."

It is not known who gave the "burn", "destroy" order, but the Mail quotes their information as coming from a former senior figure in Blair's government. They then "got to work on" Lord Goldsmith. Ten days alter His Lordship produced an advice stating the war was legal. It started three days later, leading eminent international law Professor Philippe Sands to comment memorably: "We went to war on a sheet of A4."

A spokesman for Tony Blair called the claims or orders to destroy "nonsense" adding that it would be: "… quite absurd to think that anyone could destroy such a document." With what is now known re the lies, dodging and diving related to all to do with Iraq under Blair, the realist would surely respond: "Oh no it wouldn't."

The US of course stole and destroyed or redacted most of the around 12,000 pages of Iraq's accounting for their near non-existent weapons, delivered to the UN on 7th December 2002 and Blair seemingly faithfully obeyed his Master's voice or actions.

In context of the lies and subterfuge of enormity being told both sides of the Atlantic at the time, it is worth remembering George W. Bush, that same December, on the eve of a NATO summit, addressing students and comparing the challenge of the Iraqi President to the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938, which led to World War II.

We face … perils we've never seen before. They're just as dangerous as those perils that your fathers and mothers and grandfathers and grandmothers faced.

On 1st November this year, in an interview on BBC1, Blair was asked: "If you had known then that there were no WMDs, would you still have gone on?"

He replied: "I would still have thought it right to remove (Saddam Hussein.")

Adding: "I mean obviously you would have had to use and deploy different arguments about the nature of the threat."

Thus he would, seemingly, have concocted a different set of lies to justify the assassination of a sovereign head of State.

Perhaps he had forgotten the last line of Attorney General Goldsmith's legal advice of 12th February 2003: "… regime change cannot be the objective of military action." (3)

So is Charles Anthony Lynton Blair, QC. finally headed for handcuffs and a trial at The Hague? Ian Williams, Senior Analyst with Foreign Policy in Focus, New York, has a view. He believes:

… it's increasingly serious enough to be worrying to him. And I think Tony Blair is rapidly joining Henry Kissinger and Chilean Dictator Salvador Allende and other people around the world.

Now, he's got to consult international lawyers as well as travel agents, before he travels anywhere, because there's said, (may be) prima facie case for his prosecution either in British courts or foreign courts under universal jurisdiction or with the International Criminal Court, because there is clear evidence now that he is somebody who waged an illegal war of aggression, violating United Nations' Charter and was responsible for all of those deaths.

Justice, inadequate as it might be given the enormity of the crime, may be finally edging closer for the people of Iraq as international jurisprudence slowly encroaches on Tony Blair.

Notes

1. http://stopwar.org.uk/index.php/news/how-tony-blair-lied-misled-and-cajoled-the-british-people-into-a-war-they-didn-t-want
2. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3298498/Burn-destroy-Pressure-builds-Blair-Chilcot-report-s-revealed-ministers-told-destroy-key-evidence-eve-conflict-showed-Iraq-War-ILLEGAL.html
3. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/how-goldsmith-changed-advice-on-legality-of-war-2015252.html
4. http://presstv.ir/Detail/2015/10/26/435016/UK-Iraq-War-Tony-Blair-UN-Williams

Copyright © Felicity Arbuthnot, Global Research, 2015

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article43363.htm

U.S. ground troops are being sent to Syria without congressional authorization. Why are so few members speaking up?

By John Nichols

November 06, 2015 “Information Clearing House” – “The Nation”–  Congressman Peter Welch has done his due diligence. He has studied the circumstances on the ground in Syria and surrounding countries. He has traveled to the region as part of a congressional oversight trip. He has visited centers for refugees on the Syrian-Turkey border. The Vermont Democrat, who serves on the Subcommittee on National Security, Homeland Defense, and Foreign Operations of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, has gone out of his way to engage in debates, discussions, and inquiries regarding US policy in the region.

So the congressman's words should carry particular weight when he discusses last week's decision by President Obama to put US troops on the ground in Syria. After the president—who once declared, unequivocally, that "we're not considering any boots-on-the-ground approach" in Syria—ordered several dozen Special Operations troops into Syria for what The New York Times describes as "the first open-ended mission by United States ground forces in that country," Welch said: "Make no mistake about it, this is a war."

It is not, however, a clearly declared or authorized war.

As Welch observes: "The legal framework justifying this war is loosely tied to the fumes of a Congressional authorization approved in response to the 9/11 attack on America over 14 years ago."

That's an absurd construct, argues Welch.

"A civil war in Syria did not exist 14 years ago. ISIS did not exist 14 years ago. Neither the United States nor Russia were conducting military operations in Syria 14 years ago," notes the congressman, who says it is time for Congress to focus on the question of whether the United States should be engaged in a new war in the Middle East.

"The biggest question raised by [deployment] announcement is, 'When will Congress finally accept its responsibility?'" says Welch, who adds that "The Constitution is clear that only Congress can authorize war."

Welch is not alone in expressing concern about a military intervention that is expanding in scope and character—in Syria and in Iraq—without adequate approval or oversight from Congress.

"I am deeply concerned by escalating mission creep in Syria, especially since Congress has yet to debate the costs and consequences of this military operation,"says Congresswoman Barbara Lee, D-California, a longtime supporter of the president who served as a Representative of the United States to the 68th Session of the General Assembly of the United Nations. "The Constitution is clear: the power to declare war rests with Congress. We serve as the voice of the American people—our actions in Congress should reflect that sacred responsibility."

Senator Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, decries the decision to dispatch troops to Syria as "a strategic mistake."

"The Administration's announcement that it will deploy Special Operations Forces into Syria to combat ISIL marks a major shift in US policy—a shift that is occurring without congressional debate—is unlikely to succeed in achieving our objective of defeating ISIL and instead threatens to embroil the United States in Syria's civil war and could bring us into direct confrontation with the Russian Federation military and Syrian government forces,"says Schatz. "In the 16-months since the United States began its participation in the regional fight against ISIL, our military involvement has escalated without a clear sense of how our escalating involvement will achieve our strategic objectives. With ISIL's control of northern Syria, we cannot reasonably expect that the deployment of Special Operations Forces would be limited in scope or duration."

This is a big issue, yet it has received scant attention from media and political elites. As such, many Americans are unaware of the seriousness, and the potential consequences, of the Obama administration's policy shift.

There should be no question that a congressional debate is required—and needed. Americans should be brought into this discussion, and the way to do that is by raising the issue in Congress. The House and Senate should reject the flimsy excuse of a 14-year-old AUMF and vote on whether to authorize the growing intervention that the administration is now implementing across Iraq and Syria.

"Congress must act immediately to repeal the 2001 and 2002 authorizations for military force (AUMFs), which continue to be used as blank checks for endless war,"says Congresswoman Lee. "It is past time for our elected officials to recognize that there is no military solution to the problems in the region. Only a comprehensive, regionally-led strategy that addresses the underlying political, economic, humanitarian and diplomatic challenges can ultimately degrade and dismantle ISIL."

It is not certain that Congress would say "no" to intervention of the sort that Obama proposes—even if there are contingents on both the Democratic and Republican parties that believe, as Senator Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, does, that "the fighting on the ground needs to be done by the people who live there."

There are genuine divisions on this issue. "The senator believes that the crisis in Syria will be solved diplomatically, not militarily,"says the campaign of Democratic president campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders, while the campaign of Hillary Clinton says the former secretary of state "sees merit in the targeted use of special operations personnel to support our partners in the fight against ISIS, including in Syria."

This debate can, and should, be had on the campaign trail.

But it must be had in Congress.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article43358.htm

By Finian Cunningham

November 08, 2015 “Information Clearing House” – “SCF” — Like a good laundering machine, the Western media operate an efficient spin cycle for rinsing out dirty water. No sooner had Russia's foreign ministry issued a fairly straightforward statement on Syria's political future this week, then Western media news outlets were getting all in a lather with the spin that Moscow was preparing to hang Syrian President Bashar al-Assad out to dry. What that reaction shows is that these outlets are dutifully laundering the political agenda of their governments. That agenda seems to involve getting Russia to implement, unwittingly, the Western objective of regime change in Damascus.

Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova was quoted by Russian news agency ITAR-TASS as saying that the Syrian leader's hold on power was not a matter of principle for Moscow. She also spoke about other important issues: the imperative to respect the sovereign right of the Syrian people to decide the political future of their country; and that regime change in Syria would usher in even greater disaster from terrorism and refugees.

However, it was the words on Assad that got picked up and thrown into the spin cycle with haste. Britain's state broadcaster, the BBC, issued a breaking news flash with the headline: 'Russia says keeping Assad not crucial'. While American channel CNNadverted that: 'Russian leaders were opening the door for Assad's exit'.

Such so-called news items are laughably becoming more like commercial breaks. Commercial breaks between, well, more commercial breaks. Low on intelligent content and pitched to get viewers to buy somebody's tawdry product.

There was nothing further to back up either report on BBC or CNN – only a selective, speculative interpretation of the words from the Russian foreign ministry. There was no mention of the sovereign right of the Syrian nation nor of the global-scale disaster if regime change were to take place. Just a seemingly puerile gaze at the words about Assad's staying in power not being «a matter of principle» for Moscow.

What the Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman actually said was this: «We have never said Assad’s staying in power is a principled aspect. We are saying that the change of regime in Syria could become a disaster not only on a local or even regional scale, but, with account for that problem with refugees that we have now, this could become a big black hole».

Russia had already warned about Western media «juggling with its words» over Syria, and in particular on attempts to wilfully distort its policy. Following the Vienna summit last weekend on Syria, there was Western speculation that Moscow had tacitly agreed  to  Assad  relinquishing  power. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov sternly dismissed then what he called were «rumours».

«I heard that the rumours are being spread already that it has been or will be agreed that Assad will step down in some period of time. This is not the case,» said Lavrov.

If Western media were to provide a journalistic service instead of laundering their governments' political agenda then they might have reported that Russia's position is rightly centred on the sovereignty of Syria and on the defeat of foreign-backed terrorism in that country. That Moscow is saying that the question of Bashar al-Assad staying in power, or not, is not a matter of principle is simply stating that Russia does not view the Syrian leader as a life-long president. Assad's presidency will be subject to the democratic will of the people, which is the all-important sovereign point. What is so controversial or enigmatic about stating that? Nothing, unless there is a mischievous will to misconstrue.

Put another way, if Russia had said instead that Assad staying in power was a matter of principle for Moscow, then the Western media would no doubt have gone into double-spin mode and claimed that the Kremlin was dictating that the Syrian leader must remain in presidential office forever – regardless of the will of the electorate. One can imagine the headlines in that scenario: 'Putin lays down law to Syrian people' and so on.

Of course, Western media spinning is hardly new and the consequences of the latest dash to misinterpret will no doubt be as fleeting as a soapy bubble. But the alacrity with which Western media outlets operated on the issue is instructive.

As argued in a previous column, what appears to be the underlying purpose of Washington and its allies in the recently convened so-called peace talks over Syria is that these powers are seeking their illicit objective of regime change by alternative means. The talks are decidedly less about seeking peace or conflict resolution, as Western media advertise, quoting Western government leaders at face value.

Russia's military operation in Syria to protect the state and its sovereignty from foreign-orchestrated mercenary terror groups has dealt a devastating blow to Washington's covert military agenda of regime change. That agenda, instrumented by the deployment of mercenary terror groups, predates the outbreak of violence in Syria in March 2011 by several years, as uncovered by American journalist Seymour Hersh. Also as disclosed by former French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas, as well as leaked US diplomaticcables indicate from as early as 2009.

Washington and its allies are now being compelled to use a political means to achieve what they couldn't otherwise pull off by covert military means – because of Vladimir Putin's bold intervention in Syria, beginning on September 30.

Recall, too, that US Secretary of State John Kerry demanded last month, with typical haughtiness, for Russia to «bring Assad to the negotiating table». Not that there is much to discuss as far as Washington, London or Paris are concerned. Assad has to go, in their arrogant view, sooner or later.

By going into so-called «diplomacy mode», as opposed to covert terrorist-supporting mode, what the Western imperial overlords expect is for Russia to comply with a political framework concocted in order to push Assad from power. That modus operandi is a negation of Syrian sovereignty, of course. And Russia is much too intelligent to be hoodwinked by these Western charlatans.

Nevertheless, we can expect all sorts of chicanery and inducements from the West to inveigle Russia into, in effect, acceding to its regime change agenda. Notably, John Kerry appeared to be angling for such concessions from Russia this week when he said that the United States would consider cooperating militarily with Moscow against the Islamic State terror group in return for «progress» on the issue of «political transition» in Syria.

One aspect of chicanery will be continued Western claims aimed at undermining Russia's military operations in Syria. Russia's operations have inflicted severe blows against various terror groups. But those significant gains, rather than being welcomed, have perversely prompted the Western media to carry unverified reports of civilian casualties from Russia's air strikes. Last week, Western media, citing US sources, claimed that Russian strikes had hit six hospitals – claims which turned out to be false.

Also, on the day that the talks opened in Vienna last Friday, Western media reports pointedly claimed that a multiple-rocket attack on the Damascus suburb of Douma was caused by Russia's Syrian government ally. But there have been no follow-up reports on the atrocity which reportedly claimed nearly 100 lives. It would not be the first time that a massacre has been stealthily perpetrated by foreign-backed mercenaries with the intention of smearing the Assad government. (See for example the Ghouta chemical gas attack in August 2013, or the Houla massacre in May 2012, both initially blamed on government militia but later found to be likely the work of Turk or Saudi-backed al Qaeda-linked extremists.)

As the Vienna talks proceed over the coming weeks, the Western media will no doubt carry out more laundry services for Washington and its allies. High on the list will be attempts to misrepresent Russia's political position on Syria with a view to cajoling Moscow into cutting off Syria's Assad.

Western governments and their complicit media have so corrupted international law over the past two decades and more, from criminal interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Ukraine, among other countries, that they no longer know the meaning of principle. They only think of price. Everybody and everything can be bought for a price, in their debased view.

Or as the Irish playwright Oscar Wilde once said, «they know the price of everything, but the value of nothing».

Russia, by contrast, has conducted its policy on Syria with principle and integrity. It is standing by the sovereign right of the Syrian people, as international law obliges. In that case, Western laundering and spinning of its foul articles will simply not wash.

© Strategic Culture Foundation

The World Order: New Rules Or No Rules

Speech of Russian President Vladimir Putin given to audience at Valdai International Discussion Club XI session on 24 October 2014 in Sochi city.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article43359.htm

Introduction by Michel Chossudovsky

Fake intelligence, plagiarism contained in an official intelligence report which was used to justify war on Iraq in 2003.

Glen Rangwala's Submission to the House of Commons Select Committee on Foreign Affairs (June 2003). Introduction by Michel Chossudovsky (November 8, 2015)

Introduction

The damning evidence presented by Cambridge Lecturer Dr. Glen Rangwala was first revealed by Britain's Channel 4 TV on February 6, 2003, on the day following Secretary of State Colin Powell's historic Iraq WMD presentation to the UN Security Council: 

"I would call my colleagues' attention to the fine paper that the United Kingdom distributed . . . which describes in exquisite detail Iraqi deception activities."

Powell was referring to "Iraq Its Infrastructure Of Concealment, Deception And Intimidation", published on January 30, 2003.

According to Rangwala, the  British intelligence document was fake. It had not been prepared by British intelligence. It was copied and pasted from the internet by members of Tony Blair's office:   

The Downing Street authors state they drew "upon a number of sources, including intelligence material" (p.1, first sentence). In fact, they copied material from at least three different authors and gave no credit to them. Indeed, they plagiarized, directly cutting and pasting or near quoting.

A close textual analysis suggests that the UK authors had little access to first-hand intelligence sources and instead based their work on academic papers, which they selectively distorted. Some of the papers used were considerably out of date. This leads the reader to wonder about the reliability and veracity of the Downing Street document.

It was a fake document prepared on the instructions of prime minister Blair with a view to building a "credible" justification to wage war on Iraq.  

Rangwala's analysis was more than a smoking gun. It revealed the Big Lie. It invalidated Colin's Powell's presentation to the UN Security Council. In many regards, it was far more important than the leak of the Secret July 2002 Downing Street Memo:  

C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.

The "WMD facts" had to be "documented". Did British intelligence refuse to comply with Tony Blair's demands to produce a fast track report which would "fix the facts"?  

The "facts" were put together in a hurry (not by MI6) by Tony Blair's public relations' officials.

The report was finalized one week before Colin Powell's presentation to the UN Security Council; the "facts" and supporting quotations were copied and pasted from the internet and inserted in an official and authoritative document.  

Plagiarism had become a means to waging war on Iraq. 

The Rangwala revelation was the "unspoken truth". It was not the object of subsequent media coverage.  It had to be suppressed because the war on Iraq had already been scheduled for March 2003

The Role of Colin Powell in Planning the War on Iraq

In retrospect, the Rangwala findings also bring to the forefront the insidious and complicit role of Colin Powell, who organized the Crawford Texas meetings in early April 2002 between Bush and Blair, as confirmed by the recently leaked emails (see below).

What these emails suggest is that Colin Powell had been entrusted in setting the stage for the war on Iraq, initially at the Bush-Blair Crawford meetings on April 5-7, 2002, leading up to his presentation of the British intelligence dossier on Iraq's alleged WMD at the UN Security Council on February 5,  2003.

Lest we forget Colin Powell played a behind the scenes role in the Iran Contra Affair. 

The Crawford meetings were intended to plan the war on Iraq. 

Colin Powell was a central political instrument. The issue is who was Behind Colin Powell?

Who was present at the Crawford meetings?

In the wake of the Iraq invasion, the plagiarized "British intelligence Iraq Dossier" presented to the UN Security Council by (former) Secretary of State Colin Powell was so to speak "forgotten".  

The plagiarism issue nonetheless confirms beyond doubt the war crimes' allegations against George W. Bush and Tony Blair.

Michel Chossudovsky, November 8, 2015

.

Plagiarism and Iraq's WMDs: British Intelligence Iraq Dossier Relied on Recycled Academic Articles

by Glen Rangwala

Below is the text presented by Dr. Rangwala to the House of Commons Select Committee on Foreign Affairs 

It was presented in June 2003, in the wake of the invasion and occupation of Iraq

http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm200203/cmselect/cmfaff/813/813we18.htm

THE PRESENTATION OF THE 30 JANUARY 2003 DOSSIER

1.  The 19-page dossier, entitled "Iraq—Its Infrastructure of Concealment, Deception and Intimidation", was released on 30 January 2003. The document begins with the statement that:

"This report draws upon a number of sources, including intelligence material (. . ."

2.  The assertion that the intelligence agencies were involved in the production of the dossier was made more explicitly by Prime Minister Blair when he announced the release of the dossier to the House of Commons on 3 February 2003:

"We issued further intelligence over the weekend about the infrastructure of concealment. It is obviously difficult when we publish intelligence reports, but I hope that people have some sense of the integrity of our security services. They are not publishing this, or giving us this information, and making it up. It is the intelligence that they are receiving, and we are passing it on to people."

www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk

A REVIEW OF THE CONTENTS OF THE 30 JANUARY 2003 DOSSIER

Sources

3.  The bulk of the 19-page document (pp 6-16) is directly copied without acknowledgement from three different sources that are on the internet. The most extensively used source is an article in the on-line Israeli journal, Middle East Review of International Affairs (September 2002), entitled "Iraq's Security and Intelligence Network: A Guide and Analysis".

http://meria.idc.ac.il/journal/2002/issue3/jv6n3a1.html

4.  The author of the piece is Mr Ibrahim al-Marashi, a postgraduate student then based at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, California, who is completing a doctorate at Oxford University. He has confirmed to me that his permission was not sought; in fact, he didn't even know about the British document until I contacted him on 4 February to enquire whether his permission was given.

5.  In addition to Mr Marashi's work, there is also the use of two articles from the specialist security magazine,Jane's Intelligence Review. On-line summaries of articles by Mr Sean Boyne in 1997 and Mr Ken Gause in 2002 are on the GlobalSecurity.org website, at:

http://globalsecurity.org/intell/world/iraq/

These texts were also amalgamated in part into the UK dossier.

6.  The fact that these sources were copied is most clear from the typographical errors and anomalous uses of grammar in the original pieces that are incorporated into the Downing Street document. For example, Mr Marashi had written:

"Saddam appointed, Sabir `Abd al-'Aziz al-Duri as head (. . .)"

There is a misplaced comma after the second word. On p 13, the British dossier incorporates the same misplaced comma:

"Saddam appointed, Sabir `Abd al-'Aziz al-Duri as head (. . .)"

7.  Because the texts of these three authors are copied directly also results in a proliferation of different transliterations (for example, different spellings of the Ba'th party, depending on which author is being copied).

Modifications to the original articles

8.  The only exceptions to these acts of copying were the tweaking of specific phrases. For example, most of p 9 on the functions of the Mukhabarat (General Intelligence) is copied directly from Mr Marashi's article. However, Marashi writes of the Mukhabarat's role in:

"monitoring foreign embassies in Iraq".

This becomes in the British dossier:

"spying on foreign embassies in Iraq".

Similarly, on the same page, Marashi writes that the Mukhabarat had a role in:

"aiding opposition groups in hostile regimes"

The British dossier renders this as:

"supporting terrorist organisations in hostile regimes".

9.  A further example is from the section on "Fedayeen Saddam" (Saddam's Self-Sacrificers). Most of this text is copied from the 1997 article by Sean Boyne. However, Boyne writes that the personnel of this organisation are:

"recruited from regions loyal to Saddam", and refers to their original grouping as "some 10,000-15,000 `bullies and country bumpkins.'"

10.  This becomes in the British government's text, at pp 15-16, a reference to how its personnel are:

"press ganged from regions known to be loyal to Saddam" . . . "some 10,000-15,000 bullies."

11.  The reference in Mr Boyne's article to how the organisation was made up of "bullies and country bumpkins" was shorn of its last three words in the UK dossier, perhaps to render a more threatening picture of the organisation than that contained in the original article.

12.  Numbers are also increased or are rounded up. So, for example, the section on "Fedayeen Saddam" (pp 15-16) is directly copied from Boyne's article, almost word for word. The only substantive difference is that Mr Boyne estimates the personnel of the organisation to be 18,000-40,000 (Ken Gause, in another article that was substantially copied, estimates personnel in the region of 10,000-40,000). The British dossier instead writes "30,000 to 40,000″. A similar bumping up of figures occurs with the description of the Directorate of Military Intelligence.

Errors

13.  There is at least one serious substantive mistake in the British text, on p 14, about the Iraqi organisation the Military Security Service (al-Amn al-Askari). After an initial two paragraphs copied from Marashi's 2002 article, the remainder of the text is taken from the description by Sean Boyne in his 1997 article of a wholly different organisation called the General Security Service (al-Amn al-Amm). That is, it mixes up the descriptions of two different organisations.

14.  The result is a confusion that renders the description incoherent. The description of the Military Security Service (al-Amn al-Askari) begins by relating how this organisation was created in 1992 (in a section copied from Marashi). It then describes how the Military Security Service moved headquarters in 1990 (in a piece copied from Boyne on the activities of the General Security Service), two years before the organisation was even created.

15.  Later in the same section, the UK dossier claims that the head of the Military Security Service is Taha al-Ahbabi. This is from Boyne's description of the General Security Service. In fact, the Military Security Service was headed by Thabet Khalil when the dossier was released.

FURTHER COMMENTS

16.  The information in the UK dossier is presented as being an accurate statement of the current state of Iraq's security organisations. However, it may not be anything of the sort. Mr Marashi—the real and unwitting author of much of the document—refers in his article to his primary source as being the documents captured by Coalition forces in 1991, and which are now retained by the Massachusetts-based organisation, the Iraq Research and Documentation Project. His own focus is the activities of Iraq's intelligence agencies in Kuwait in the period from August 1990 to January 1991, as this is the subject of his thesis. As a result, much of the information presented as relevant to how Iraqi agencies are currently engaged with UNMOVIC is 12 years old.

17.  When the document was first released as a Microsoft Word document, I checked the properties of the text in the File menu. It revealed the authors of the text as P. Hamill, J. Pratt, A. Blackshaw, and M. Khan. Those names were removed within hours from the downloadable file. However, in collaboration with journalists, I have since checked who these individuals are. The identity of the authors is as follows:

Paul Hamill, a Foreign Office official;

John Pratt, a junior official from the Prime Minister's Strategic Communications Unit;

Alison Blackshaw, Alastair Campbell's personal assistant;

Mustaza Khan, news editor of the 10 Downing Street website.

THE ORDERING OF THE DOSSIER

18.  The dossier is ordered as follows:

p 1 is the summary.

pp 2-5 consists of, firstly, a repetition of the comments of Hans Blix, Executive Chairman of UNMOVIC, to the Security Council in January on the difficulties they were encountering. Further claims about the activities of al-Mukhabarat follow. These claims are not backed up, and have in some cases been specifically denied by Hans Blix. For example, the UK dossier claims on p 3 that:

"Journeys are monitored by security officers stationed on the route if they have prior intelligence. Any changes of destination are notified ahead by telephone or radio so that arrival is anticipated. The welcoming party is a give away."

This can be contrasted with the assessment of Hans Blix on 14 February 2003 that:

"Since we arrived in Iraq, we have conducted more than 400 inspections covering more than 300 sites. All inspections were performed without notice, and access was almost always provided promptly. In no case have we seen convincing evidence that the Iraqi side knew in advance that the inspectors were coming."

http://www.un.org/Depts/unmovic/blix14Febasdel.htm

Similarly, the UK dossier claims on p 3 that:

"Escorts are trained, for example, to start long arguments with other Iraqi officials `on behalf of UNMOVIC' while any incriminating evidence is hastily being hidden behind the scenes."

By contrast, Dr Blix relates in the same presentation of 14 February that:

"we note that access to sites has so far been without problems, including those that had never been declared or inspected, as well as to Presidential sites and private residences."

p 6 is a simplified version of Mr Marashi's diagram at: http://cns.miis.edu/research/iraq/pdfs/iraqint.pdf

p 7 is copied (top) from Mr Gause (on the Presidential Secretariat), and (middle and bottom) from Mr Boyne (on the National Security Council).

p 8 is entirely copied from Mr Boyne (on the National Security Council).

p 9 is copied from Mr Marashi (on al-Mukhabarat), except for the final section, which is insubstantial.

p 10 is entirely copied from Mr Marashi (on the General Security Service), except for the final section, which is insubstantial.

p 11 is entirely copied from Mr Marashi (on Special Security), except for the top section (on General Security), which is insubstantial.

p 12 is entirely copied from Mr Marashi (on Special Security).

p 13 is copied from Mr Gause (on Special Protection) and Mr Marashi (Military Intelligence).

p 14 is copied from Mr Marashi (first two paragraphs) and then wrongly copied from Mr Boyne (on Military Security). The last section, on the Special Republican Guard, is copied from Mr Marashi.

p 15 is copied from Messrs Gause and Boyne (on al-Hadi project / project 858).

pp 15-16 is copied from Boyne (on Fedayeen Saddam).

p 16: The final section, on the Tribal Chiefs' Bureau, seems to be copied from Anthony H. Cordesman, "Key Targets in Iraq", February 1998, http://www.csis.org/stratassessment/reports/iraq_argets.pdf, pg. 8

pp 17-19 make general claims about human rights in Iraq.

Dr Glen Rangwala

Newnham College

Cambridge

16 June 2003

http://www.globalresearch.ca/plagiarism-british-intelligence-iraq-dossier-relied-on-recycled-academic-articles/513

The release Thursday of the 5,544-page text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership—a trade and investment agreement involving 12 countries comprising nearly 40 percent of global output—confirms what even its most apocalyptic critics feared.

"The TPP, along with the WTO [World Trade Organization] and NAFTA [North American Free Trade Agreement], is the most brazen corporate power grab in American history," Ralph Nader told me when I reached him by phone in Washington, D.C.

"It allows corporations to bypass our three branches of government to impose enforceable sanctions by secret tribunals. These tribunals can declare our labor, consumer and environmental protections [to be] unlawful, non-tariff barriers subject to fines for noncompliance. The TPP establishes a transnational, autocratic system of enforceable governance in defiance of our domestic laws."

A 2014 protest in Tokyo against the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement. (Shizuo Kambayashi / AP)

The TPP is part of a triad of trade agreements that includes the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA). TiSA, by calling for the privatization of all public services, is a mortal threat to the viability of the U.S. Postal Service, public education and other government-run enterprises and utilities; together these operations make up 80 percent of the U.S. economy. The TTIP and TiSA are still in the negotiation phase. They will follow on the heels of the TPP and are likely to go before Congress in 2017.

These three agreements solidify the creeping corporate coup d'état along with the final evisceration of national sovereignty. Citizens will be forced to give up control of their destiny and will be stripped of the ability to protect themselves from corporate predators, safeguard the ecosystem and find redress and justice in our now anemic and often dysfunctional democratic institutions. The agreements—filled with jargon, convoluted technical, trade and financial terms, legalese, fine print and obtuse phrasing—can be summed up in two words: corporate enslavement.

The TPP removes legislative authority from Congress and the White House on a range of issues. Judicial power is often surrendered to three-person trade tribunals in which only corporations are permitted to sue. Workers, environmental and advocacy groups and labor unions are blocked from seeking redress in the proposed tribunals. The rights of corporations become sacrosanct. The rights of citizens are abolished.

The Sierra Club issued a statement after the release of the TPP text saying that the "deal is rife with polluter giveaways that would undermine decades of environmental progress, threaten our climate, and fail to adequately protect wildlife because big polluters helped write the deal."

If there is no sustained popular uprising to prevent the passage of the TPP in Congress this spring we will be shackled by corporate power. Wages will decline. Working conditions will deteriorate. Unemployment will rise. Our few remaining rights will be revoked. The assault on the ecosystem will be accelerated. Banks and global speculation will be beyond oversight or control. Food safety standards and regulations will be jettisoned. Public services ranging from Medicare and Medicaid to the post office and public education will be abolished or dramatically slashed and taken over by for-profit corporations. Prices for basic commodities, including pharmaceuticals, will skyrocket. Social assistance programs will be drastically scaled back or terminated. And countries that have public health care systems, such as Canada and Australia, that are in the agreement will probably see their public health systems collapse under corporate assault. Corporations will be empowered to hold a wide variety of patents, including over plants and animals, turning basic necessities and the natural world into marketable products. And, just to make sure corporations extract every pound of flesh, any public law interpreted by corporations as impeding projected profit, even a law designed to protect the environment or consumers, will be subject to challenge in an entity called the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) section. The ISDS, bolstered and expanded under the TPP, will see corporations paid massive sums in compensation from offending governments for impeding their "right" to further swell their bank accounts. Corporate profit effectively will replace the common good.

Given the bankruptcy of our political class—including amoral politicians such as Hillary Clinton, who is denouncing the TPP during the presidential campaign but whose unwavering service to corporate capitalism assures her fealty to her corporate backers—the trade agreement has a good chance of becoming law. And because the Obama administration won fast-track authority, a tactic designed by the Nixon administration to subvert democratic debate, President Obama will be able to sign the agreement before it goes to Congress.

The TPP, because of fast track, bypasses the normal legislative process of public discussion and consideration by congressional committees. The House and the Senate, which have to vote on the TPP bill within 90 days of when it is sent to Congress, are prohibited by the fast-track provision from adding floor amendments or holding more than 20 hours of floor debate. Congress cannot raise concerns about the effects of the TPP on the environment. It can only vote yes or no. It is powerless to modify or change one word.

There will be a mass mobilization Nov. 14 through 18 in Washington to begin the push to block the TPP. Rising up to stop the TPP is a far, far better investment of our time and energy than engaging in the empty political theater that passes for a presidential campaign.

"The TPP creates a web of corporate laws that will dominate the global economy," attorney Kevin Zeese of the group Popular Resistance, which has mounted a long fight against the trade agreement, told me from Baltimore by telephone. "It is a global corporate coup d'état. Corporations will become more powerful than countries. Corporations will force democratic systems to serve their interests. Civil courts around the world will be replaced with corporate courts or so-called trade tribunals. This is a massive expansion that builds on the worst of NAFTA rather than what Barack Obama promised, which was to get rid of the worst aspects of NAFTA."

The agreement is the product of six years of work by global capitalists from banks, insurance companies, Goldman Sachs, Monsanto and other corporations.

"It was written by them [the corporations], it is for them and it will serve them," Zeese said of the TPP. "It will hurt domestic businesses and small businesses. The buy-American provisions will disappear. Local communities will not be allowed to build buy-local campaigns. The thrust of the agreement is the privatization and commodification of everything. The agreement has built within it a deep antipathy to state-supported or state-owned enterprises. It gives away what is left of our democracy to the World Trade Organization."

The economist David Rosnick, in a report on the TPP by the Center for Economic and Policy Research(CEPR), estimated that under the trade agreement only the top 10 percent of U.S. workers would see their wages increase. Rosnick wrote that the real wages of middle-income U.S. workers (from the 35th percentile to the 80th percentile) would decline under the TPP. NAFTA, contributing to a decline in manufacturing jobs (now only 9 percent of the economy), has forced workers into lower-paying service jobs and resulted in a decline in real wages of between 12 and 17 percent. The TPP would only accelerate this process, Rosnick concluded.

"This is a continuation of the global race to the bottom," Dr. Margaret Flowers, also from Popular Resistance and a candidate for the U.S. Senate, said from Baltimore in a telephone conversation with me. "Corporations are free to move to countries that have the lowest labor standards. This drives down high labor standards here. It means a decimation of industries and unions. It means an accelerated race to the bottom, which we must rise up to stop."

"In Malaysia one-third of tech workers are essentially slaves," Zeese said. "In Vietnam the minimum wage is 35 cents an hour. Once these countries are part of the trade agreement U.S. workers are put in a very difficult position."

Fifty-one percent of working Americans now make less than $30,000 a year, a new study by the Social Security Administration reported. Forty percent are making less than $20,000 a year. The federal government considers a family of four living on an income of less than $24,250 to be in poverty.

"Half of American workers earn essentially the poverty level," Zeese said. "This agreement only accelerates this trend. I don't see how American workers are going to cope."

The assault on the American workforce by NAFTA—which was established under the Clinton administration in 1994 and which at the time promised creation of 200,000 net jobs a year in the United States—has been devastating. NAFTA has led to a $181 billion trade deficit with Mexico and Canada and the loss of at least 1 million U.S. jobs, according to a report by Public Citizen. The flooding of the Mexican market with cheap corn by U.S. agro-businesses drove down the price of Mexican corn and saw 1 million to 3 million poor Mexican farmers go bankrupt and lose their small farms. Many of them crossed the border into the United States in a desperate effort to find work.

"Obama has misled the public throughout this process," Dr. Flowers said. "He claimed that environmental groups were supportive of the agreement because it provided environmental protections, and this has now been proven false. He told us that it would create 650,000 jobs, and this has now been proven false. He calls this a 21st century trade agreement, but it actually rolls back progress made in Bush-era trade agreements. The most recent model of a 21st century trade agreement is the Korean free trade agreement. That was supposed to create 140,000 U.S. jobs. But what we saw within a couple years was a loss of about 70,000 jobs and a larger trade deficit with Korea. This agreement [the TPP] is sold to us with the same deceits that were used to sell us NAFTA and other trade agreements."

The agreement, in essence, becomes global law. Any agreements over carbon emissions by countries made through the United Nations are effectively rendered null and void by the TPP.

"Trade agreements are binding," Flowers said. "They supersede any of the nonbinding agreements made by the United Nations Climate Change Conference that might come out of Paris."

There is more than enough evidence from past trade agreements to indicate where the TPP—often called "NAFTA on steroids"—will lead. It is part of the inexorable march by corporations to wrest from us the ability to use government to defend the public and to build social and political organizations that promote the common good. Our corporate masters seek to turn the natural world and human beings into malleable commodities that will be used and exploited until exhaustion or collapse. Trade agreements are the tools being used to achieve this subjugation. The only response left is open, sustained and defiant popular revolt.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/tpp-wto-nafta-the-most-brazen-corporate-power-grab-in-american-history/5487363

A chilling remark from a House of Lords debate just caught my eye.

Column GC355 in Hansard, the verbatim report of proceedings of the UK parliament, dated 4 November 2015, said:

Lord Mendelsohn: We welcome the appointment of the former British ambassador to Israel, Matthew Gould, who will have a key role in cyber security inside the Cabinet Office – a very useful and important position.

Sure enough, the UK government's website confirms that Gould is now director of cyber security and information assurance at the Cabinet Office. "He and his team are focused on keeping Britain safe from cyber attack, through delivering the UK's Cyber Security Strategy."

They must think we have very short memories. As Britain's first Jewish ambassador to Israel, Gould described himself as a "passionate" Zionist and while in Tel Aviv he was instrumental in setting up the UK-Israel Tech Hub. In the words of MATIMOP (the Israeli Industry Centre for Research and Development), the hub was established

to promote partnerships in technology and innovation between Israel and the UK, and is the first initiative of its kind for the British government and for an embassy in Israel. The hub's creation followed an agreement between prime ministers David Cameron and Binyamin Netanyahu to build a UK-Israel partnership in technology.

Three years ago Cameron appointed venture capitalist Saul Klein as the UK Tech Envoy to Israel with the task of promoting the partnership, leading UK technology missions to Israel, bringing Israeli start-ups to Britain, and hosting technology events in both countries.

MATIMOP quotes Britain's National Health Service as an example of successful UK-Israel technology collaboration. The NHS

has now formed strong collaborations with Israeli life sciences companies conducting clinical trials in the UK. The cooperation was made as part of the burgeoning partnership between Israel and Britain's life sciences industries initiated by the UK-Israel Tech Hub.

Driven by the Israel lobby

Four years ago Craig Murray, a former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, argued that British policy was being driven in an underhanded fashion by the Israel lobby. He linked Gould with the Fox-Werritty scandal and raised questionsabout meetings between disgraced former Defence Secretary Liam Fox and Fox's friend/adviser, Adam Werritty (who was backed financially by Israel lobbyists but had no security clearance and therefore no authorised role) and Gould.

Murray wrote to Gould asking when he first met Werritty, how many times he had met him, and how many communications of every kind had passed between them. He was told these questions would be answered in Cabinet Secretary O'Donnell's investigation. "But Gus O'Donnell's report answered none of these questions," wrote Murray. "It only mentioned two meetings at which Fox, Gould and Werritty were all three present…"

This prompted Murray to dig further. "There were at least six Fox-Werritty-Gould meetings, not the two given by O'Donnell… Matthew Gould was the only British Ambassador who Fox and Werrity met together. They met him six times. Why?"

Murray, with many useful sources from his days as an ambassador, claimed to have serious evidence connecting Gould with a secret plan to attack Iran, but the Foreign Office and the Cabinet Secretary blocked questions. Murray published his story, "Matthew Gould and the plot to attack Iran", here.

In it he pointed out that

Matthew Gould does not see his race or religion as irrelevant. He has chosen to give numerous interviews to both British and Israeli media on the subject of being a jewish ambassador, and has been at pains to be photographed by the Israeli media participating in Jewish religious festivals. Israeli newspaper Haaretz described him as "Not just an ambassador who is Jewish, but a Jewish ambassador". That rather peculiar phrase appears directly to indicate that the potential conflict of interest for a British ambassador in Israel has indeed arisen.

He went on to say that Gould stood suspected of long term participation with Fox and Werritty "in a scheme to forward war with Iran, in cooperation with Israel". The stonewalling by O'Donnell and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office led Murray to conclude that "something very important is being hidden right at the heart of government".

Labour Member of Parliament Paul Flynn remarked that no previous ambassadors to Israel had been Jewish so as to avoid conflict of interest and accusations of going native. He immediately came under intense flak. Flynn too asked about meetings between Werritty and Gould, as some reports suggested that Gould, Werritty and Fox discussed a potential military strike on Iran with Mossad. "I do not normally fall for conspiracy theories," said Flynn, "but the ambassador has proclaimed himself to be a Zionist and he has previously served in Iran."

Fox had earlier made the idiotic claim: "Israel's enemies are our enemies" and "in the battle for the values that we stand for… Israel's enemies are our enemies and this is a battle in which we all stand together". The Jewish Chronicle hailed him as "a champion of Israel within the government". Furthermore, Fox continually rattled the sabre against Iran which, of course, was no threat to Britain but is regarded by Israel as a bitter enemy. Iraq too was Israel's enemy, not ours. Yet Fox, according to the theyworkforyou.com, voted "very strongly" for the Iraq war. He was also an enthusiastic supporter of the war in Afghanistan.

Gatekeepers or fifth columnists?

Given that Fox so eagerly waved the flag of a foreign military power and was a man with dangerous beliefs and demonstrably weak judgement, how could those who appointed him not see that he was unemployable as a minister of the British Crown – unless they were similarly tainted?

When the Werritty relationship came to light Fox jumped before being flung from the battlements. But the good people of North Somerset, in their wisdom, re-elected him at the general election last May. He's already on the road to political rehabilitation among the Conservative high command.

Gould's new job as head of the Office of Cyber Security and Information Assurance (OCSIA) involves giving strategic direction to cyber security and information assurance for the UK. This includes  internet crime, working with private sector partners on exchanging information, and engaging with international partners in improving the security of cyber space and information security. Does it seem right for such a person to be in charge of crucial security matters at the heart of our government? What was in fellow Zionist David Cameron's mind when he appointed him?

Well, here's a possible clue. In March of this year Francis Maude, the previous Cabinet Office minister responsible for cyber security, announced three UK-Israel academic collaboration ventures with cyber research funding, the partnerships being University of Bristol/Bar Ilan University, University College London/Bar Ilan University and University of Kent/University of Haifa. They'll be working together on six specific areas of research:

• identity management
• governance: regulating cyber security
• privacy assurance and perceptions
• mobile and cloud security
• human aspects of security or usable security
• cryptography.

This builds on existing UK-Israel cooperation. Both parties signed a Memorandum of Understanding on digital cooperation in March 2014.

Still sitting comfortably? Only this week the Cameron government was lecturing us on threats to national security and announcing plans to trawl through our personal emails and web browsers in order to "keep us safe". The question is, who trawls Gould's private emails?

http://www.globalresearch.ca/look-whos-in-charge-of-uk-government-cyber-security/5487359

Hebron is a microcosm of Israel's war on Palestine, unrestrained state terror, at least 22 of its residents murdered by security forces since October 1 alone.

Israel's claim about "continu(ing) to allow as normal a fabric of life as possible for all residents" is baloney – B'Tselem calling it "a far cry from (horrific daily) reality."

"There has been no 'normal fabric of life' in Hebron for many days, and the measures taken in the name of security are draconian and not dictated by reality," it stressed.

Tel Rumeidah neighborhood near Hebron's Old City is besieged, completely closed off and isolated – access granted only to so-called "registered residents," forced to endure intrusive security checks on entering or leaving, discouraging free movement altogether.

Some residents refused to submit their names to a security list required for them to enter their own homes freely. Others are denied entry for various intolerable reasons.

Tel Rumeida resembles a ghost town. Visible residents are settlers, many openly displaying guns, protected by heavily armed soldiers in combat gear.

Palestinian shops and other businesses were closed, their owners denied access. Draconian measures were imposed on area villages and towns, sealed off like Hebron.

All vehicles leaving the city of Yatta are stopped, contents and passengers intrusively searched, making travel impossible. All youths are suspected "terrorists."

Thousands of Palestinians endure severe disruptions to their daily lives, collectively punished, commonplace Israeli policy – US major media ignoring what's ongoing entirely, reporting nothing, horrific human rights abuses unnoticed.

Hebron-based Youth Against Settlements (YAS) is an activist group against Israeli colonization of Palestine – "through non-violent popular struggle and civil disobedience," explaining:

Ostensibly to protect approximately 600 fundamentalist Israelis that have forcibly established a settlement right in the heart of Hebron, the Israeli state has imposed on the Palestinian residents of the city a regime of forced evictions, curfews, market closures, street closures, military checkpoints, subjection to military law including frequent random searches and detention without charge, and lack of protection from rampant settler violence, which has pressured approximately 13,000 Palestinian civilians to flee their homes in the Hebron city center, turning it into a virtual ghost town.

The area is surrounded by hostile settlements, Palestinian residents terrorized by harassment, violence, and vandalism, Israeli closed military zones imposed to displace them from their own land – forcing them to leave, preventing their return, confiscating their property and possessions, whatever they can't take with them.

YAS coordinator Issa Amro said Hebron "is besieged. Soldiers storm Palestinian homes pre-dawn, evicting their residents, taking them over.

Settlers urge them to kill the Palestinians. "They are rejoicing that they took over my home and building," Amro explained. "One of the soldiers said that they were (raiding the home) as punishment for speaking to the international media about what's happening in Hebron."

The raid happened hours after heavily protected settlers attacked Hebron area Palestinian homes. Besieged residents call draconian conditions intolerable.

Overnight Saturday into early Sunday morning, soldiers kidnapped 18 Hebron area Palestinians, at the same time storming and ransacking homes.

On Sunday, Israeli media said Netanyahu will offer Palestinians supposed goodwill gestures when he meets with Obama on Monday, aimed at easing tensions, a shameless ploy to try ending justifiable resistance, another unconditional surrender scheme likely to be denounced and rejected by long-suffering people demanding freedom.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

His new book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III."

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.

It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs.

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November 7, 1917, the Great Socialist Revolution in Russia. Medieval and feudal values were swept aside and people’s power was internationalized, creating public services of excellence, making available public resources as universal property, implementing regimes of social mobility and externalizing the Revolution to the four corners of the Earth.

November 7, in the Gregorian Calendar, marks the date of the October 25 Revolution in the Julian Calendar, the Great October Socialist Revolution, which brought medieval societies into the front line of development within one generation, which created a worldwide revolution enshrining workers’ rights, women’s rights and human rights into Constitutional law around the world.

The eternal values of the Revolution

The Russian Revolution was an exercise in power to the people, implementing democracy, freeing serfs, creating the proletariat, freeing women and giving them the vote, taking children out of the mines, creating Trade Unions which defended workers’ rights against the hegemonistic tendencies of societies controlled by Capitalists.

It was an exercise in massive programs of literacy, freeing people constrained by the imposed yoke of ignorance, being unable to read or write or communicate, it was an exercise in the creating of public services – universal healthcare, universal education, the right to a house, the right to a job, the right to social mobility, where excellence and endeavor were rewarded over family connections or the power to bribe.

It was an exercise in a universal movement of goodwill, brotherly and sisterly relations being favored over differences in race, in creed, in ethnicity, in color; it was an exercise in the implementation of social leaning programs worldwide. Whole societies and countries were freed from the yoke of imperialism, colonies were disbanded, people were educated, people were empowered, women were given universal rights, universally.

Providing universal and free public services

Public services existed for the first time in developing countries which had been the playgrounds of the rich and prosperous from the northern hemisphere, more specifically North America and Western Europe, countries which had enslaved millions of people in the Negro Holocaust, i.e. slavery. They have yet to apologize and make reparations.

The climate was one of goodwill, one of providing knowledge, discussing ideas and enshrining ideals in Constitutions. For the general goodwill of Humanity. The idea was a free education, the idea was security of the State against invasion from imperialist powers, the idea was safety on the streets, with people free to venture out at any time of day or night, free to do what they wanted, the idea was to provide free medical care, including dental care. The idea was to export these universal rights and values to all countries.

It worked, and it was successful. The model existed, was implemented and enjoyed, it was celebrated, it freed millions of people from the yoke of imperialist tyranny, it provided an example, a model and a path to follow. It also provided a beacon of light for the future, after the neo-imperialist wave which is the reactionary knee-jerk force we feel today and see around the globe in the wars provoked by the 666 – the Big Six Lobbies which shape the policies of the FUKUS Axis (France-UK-US) and their NATO poodles (Banking, Finance/Economics, Energy, Food, Pharmaceutical, Weapons).

The Great October Revolution brought previously unknown benefits to countless millions of people, despite having been forced to defend itself right from the beginning when the countries which have historically fostered and sponsored social terrorism interfered in the Russian Civil War; the Great October Revolution surpassed the provocations from external forces creating dissent through acts of terrorism and sabotage via agents provocateurs; the Great October Revolution created an industrialized society capable of withstanding and destroying the Hordes of Hitler and then decades later, spending 250 billion USD a year (forty years ago), providing public services for peoples enslaved by those exponents of social terrorism.

Ninety-eight years later, we can see that the world has changed little, and that the values of the Great October Revolution continue to strike a chord with those of the vast majority of humankind, being core values in the hearts and minds of Humanity. Those who practiced social terrorism, continue to practice social terrorism.

Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey

Pravda.Ru 

(timothy.hinchey@gmail.com)

*Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey has worked as a correspondent, journalist, deputy editor, editor, chief editor, director, project manager, executive director, partner and owner of printed and online daily, weekly, monthly and yearly publications, TV stations and media groups printed, aired and distributed in Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, East Timor, Guinea-Bissau, Portugal, Mozambique and São Tomé and Principe Isles; the Russian Foreign Ministry publication Dialog and the Cuban Foreign Ministry Official Publications. He has spent the last two decades in humanitarian projects, connecting communities, working to document and catalog disappearing languages, cultures, traditions, working to network with the LGBT communities helping to set up shelters for abused or frightened victims and as Media Partner with UN Women, working to foster the UN Women project to fight against gender violence and to strive for an end to sexism, racism and homophobia. A Vegan, he is also a Media Partner of Humane Society International, fighting for animal rights. He is Director and Chief Editor of the Portuguese version of Pravda.Ru.

http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/08-11-2015/132530-november_revolution-0/