Watford, June 6–9: here are ten good reasons to be there…

1. Be witness to the world summit that dare not speak its name

If more than a hundred of the highest ranking politicians, financiers and other major corporate leaders from across Europe and North America were meeting for a conference near London then you might naively suppose that the world’s media would be interested to hear about it. If additionally, it transpired that such meeting was not only to be held behind closed doors and patrolled by armed guards, but also conducted under such strict secrecy that attendees were prohibited from speaking about whatever had been discussed or even disclosing the names of other attendees, you would be forgiven for supposing that the press would be swarming outside the gates and banging on the doors to find out more. But, and in the words of the song, it ain’t necessarily so…

As this year’s Bilderberg meeting comes back round, it almost goes without saying that the press is maintaining its commitment to silence. And the sad truth is that although much of the mainstream media already has limited access to the meetings, it nonetheless chooses to remain as tight-lipped. Indeed, there has barely been a single column inch devoted to their surprise appearance on our shores, although here is a local exception:

Hertfordshire taxpayers will foot the bill for a major police security operation to protect a shadowy summit of world leaders taking place in Watford next month.

The Bilderberg Group of around 140 influential figures including royalty, politicians and business leaders will meet at The Grove from June 6 to June 9.¹

So begins what ought to be regarded as a world press exclusive but published not by Reuters or AP or the BBC, but in the Watford Observer, suddenly finding themselves forced into the vanguard. Well, not quite. The story that this year’s Bilderberg chinwag is coming to Watford having first broken more than a month earlier and being soon after confirmed (as initial rumours of Bilderberg appearances have reliably been) by many in the alternative media:

The 2013 Bilderberg conference is now confirmed at the Grove hotel, Watford. A spokesman for Herts Constabulary said:

“I can confirm that the Bilderberg group meeting is taking place at The Grove hotel, Watford, between 6th-9th June 2013″

Watford’s finest hotel, playing host to the world’s most powerful political summit. A bright day indeed for the Grove.

That was taken from bilderberg2013 and published the day before the more official story was released by the Watford Observer. Those at protest group bilderberg2013 having posted as early as April 12^th the notice that:

There is growing evidence that this year’s Bilderberg conference will take place in the UK, at the luxury Grove Hotel, Hertfordshire, just north of Watford.

Whilst urging:

“citizen journalists, concerned citizens and interested parties to come along and witness a major international summit taking place.”

2. What’s to lose by going along?

I consider myself both a “concerned citizen and interested party”, and must confess to finding it odd to think there are many who still don’t. But then, for some reason (we all know the reason, but I’ll let it pass for a moment) Bilderberg has a way of putting blinkers on the public as well as the press – even the minority who have actually heard of the event, perhaps justifiably wary of too much speculation, but also uncharacteristically reticent when it comes to freely expressing their own concerns and objections to this secret elitist get-together.

So I find that many of the kinds of people who are deeply concerned and stick to the teeth with the state of the politics and world affairs, including friends who have previously travelled as far as Edinburgh to voice dissent at a G8 summit, or who regularly take to the streets of London to rage against Westminster, will nonetheless think to turn a blind eye to the annual Bilderberg event.

Incuriously dismissing Bilderberg as insignificant or simply irrelevant is the surprisingly common response I get when I raise the subject. Without presenting a single shred of evidence to support such a contention, they tell me that Bilderberg is just a big talking shop. A place for glad-handing, patting one another of the backs and saying what jolly good chaps they all are…. yes, very probably, but patting one another on the backs about what exactly? Well, about being a part of a damned big exclusive club, they’ll insist, and that’s all you need to know. This lack of curiosity from those who more generally wish to get to the bottom of things being curious in itself, and also to my mind a little alarming…

For why dismiss something merely on the grounds of its (partial) invisibility? Obviously, the physicist in me protests – most of the really interesting and important areas of physics being ordinarily out of sight, and yet nonetheless driving the rest of the visible universe.

However, I think what the Bildersceptics (to coin a necessary term) are implicitly acknowledging is that “this is just the way the world works”, which is almost precisely how the Bilderbergers themselves have tended to justify their “private” gatherings. So to such a response I can only really say: well, didn’t you make the great effort to protest against G8 or outside Westminster precisely because “this is the way the world works”? Added to which, what has become of your usually excellent sense of political smell…?

For Bilderberg simply reeks to high heaven, and though special interest deals are, of course, brokered in a great many places, including no doubt behind the scenes at the G8 and the corridors of Westminster, the whiff of that stale, smoky air of corruption appears so much the thicker at Bilderberg. Following a few rounds of golf and a splendid five-star luncheon just what else is there to do stuck together inside a five-star hotel for three days and nights besides sealing deals of one kind or another; the glad-handing and the back-patting all part of the crony favour system.

And beyond the corporate hobnobbing, which is surely smelly enough, might our politicians not indeed be conspiring in a different way? Aligning themselves with some kind of an overarching agenda that very deliberately chooses to remain “private” – although actually ‘clandestine’ is a word that better serves the purpose; more appropriate because until very recently Bilderberg didn’t exist at all supposedly, being merely the paranoid fiction of a few overheated imaginations.

And here is the reason that the pointed finger often becomes unsheathed. Wait for it: I can hear the C-word coming. Oh dear! “You don’t believe in any conspiracy theories, do you?” My abrupt reply: “well, what constitutes a conspiracy…?”

And it’s funny to think how the pointy finger is so casually aimed towards the very people who sought the truth and found it. Those who insisted that Bilderberg was real when commonsense and logic appeared to be against them. Having been proved correct, they might have expected to hear a few more apologies from those who’d dismissed them as mad. But apparently the pointy finger is harder to shift. There are a thousand ways to kill the messenger.

3. Bilderberg only pretends to be an irrelevant talking shop

Bilderberg is far from irrelevant. To judge better for yourself, however, I recommend downloading a surprising and very much one-off BBC Radio 4 broadcast called “Club Class” from 2003, which is available online: http://wikileaks.org/w/images/5/5d/BBC-bilderberg-2003.mp3

On top of which there are plenty of other clues that have slowly come to light. Such evidence being limited and fragmentary for obvious and unavoidable reasons given the sustained and almost blanket media blackout on Bilderberg. And it really goes with saying that we would know so much more already if the media had probed and investigated as it should. Yet what is already known is surely incriminating enough.

For instance, we can say with certainty and no hesitation that the goal of forming a single world government is one very much desired by Bilderberg’s most significant members (and for further details I recommend my first post about the group when it was meeting at St Moritz in 2011 – although these days, Bilderberg’s globalist agenda isn’t really a secret at all).

Now saying this, I also realise that such plans for global governance may sound attractive to some readers, and especially to those who see themselves on the left of the political spectrum. I too would love to live in a world of ethical international collaboration and global justice. But it is wise to always be careful what we wish for, and so let’s not be soft-headed here: the mainstay of Bilderberg Group (head honchos such as David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, and our own British contingent being spearheaded by Ken Clarke and dear old “Prince of Darkness” Peter Mandelson) obviously not remotely interested in expanding internationalism in any traditional socialist sense. Their less stated though transparently clear objective – if we judge by actions rather than words – being to consolidate and expand the established corporatocracy.

4. This is a protest that might conceivably achieve its main goal

As you may have gathered, I certainly intend to trundle down to Watford to stand outside the cordons at this year’s Bilderberg meeting and I am hoping that not hundreds, or even thousands, as have attended previous meetings (the protests continuing to grow over recent years), but that hopefully and potentially hundreds of thousands might decide to join us. My fingers are crossed.

Ordinarily, when we venture out to protest, we do so with the near certain foreknowledge that our protest will have been in vain. None of the real objectives having been achieved. We most probably tune in to watch the TV news highlights later, but it is only really to see how extreme the mismatch was between the official police estimate and the number determined by the march organisers. But protesting Bilderberg will be different and for one perfectly straightforward reason: that between June 6^th and 9^th we’re not supposed to be there at all – and just imagine that! Being involved in a protest that hasn’t already been officially sanctioned by Ed Miliband, or led from the front by the last leader of the Lib Dems, or else entirely pushed aside from the headline news by another of Bob Geldolf’s giant celebrity gigs.

And suppose there are a hundred thousand or more who do steadily gather outside the gates of The Grove in a three weeks time, then the BBC, C4, ITV, Sky and the rest must finally be forced to follow us there, whereas, and without such a determined mass protest, the meeting will again pass off barely reported upon and completely unnoticed by the majority of the world’s population. So why hesitate to go when numbers alone might be enough to tear down this veil of secrecy. Isn’t this how a free people begins to make itself heard?

We should not allow this excellent opportunity pass. For when Bilderberg are at last forced out into the light of day we will have achieved something – if nothing else, we will have forced the world’s media to do its proper job.

5. It’s okay to have fun

Unlike the Bilderbergers themselves, I am inclined to believe that as a rule it is better not to mix business and pleasure. But if none of the above has helped in persuading you to join us, then here’s an alternative pitch – everything else besides, this is very likely to be the most interesting protest you’ve ever been involved with – so why not just roll up and:

Enjoy the spectacle, meet new friends, and secure your souvenir picture of a Bilderberg participant gliding into the Grove’s grounds in a tinted limo. [also from the bilderberg2013 website]

Protesting, in my humble opinion, ought to be a serious business. When out in opposition against the latest war, or the imposition of further “austerity measures”, partying doesn’t really help. It is in my view (and apologies for seeming such an old curmudgeon) an unnecessary and unwanted distraction. However, any protest against Bilderberg is significantly different from most other protests. For once, sheer publicity being our overriding aim.

Entertainment, therefore, is all to the better. So here is a little more encouragement to come along offered by the bilderberg2013 protest group, who are also planning to launch their own “Bilderberg Fringe Festival” outside the main event:

The Bilderberg Fringe Festival is a platform for conscious citizens from all over the world to join together at the Grove Hotel, Watford and positively influence global powerbrokers to make the right decisions for our future….. and have a fantastic party.

If you are a musician, poet, artist, speaker, performer, workshop host or have a soundsystem, tent or anything else you would like to bring to the party, get in touch at bilderbergfringe [at] yahoo.co.uk. We would love marvellous art to be created around the perimeters of the Grove hotel to drench the area in joy and creativity!

We will be providing the infrastructure for any individual or group wanting to get involved, plus a media tent and press centre to facilitate much-needed coverage of the Bilderberg conference itself.

Together let us make this a historic occasion for freedom and democracy.

6. Henry Kissinger and his partners in (war) crime

This is what Watford’s elected mayor, Dorothy Thornhill had to say about the staging of this year’s Bilderberg conference on her doorstep (from the same article in the Watford Observer):

“I have my concerns about it because it does attract people who can and do cause violence and disturbance.”

How very well said Mayor Thornhill; never a truer word spoken…just scan your eyes down the guest lists of previous Bilderberg meetings and you’ll see exactly what she means:

Blair, Anthony (1993)

Powell, Colin (1997)

Rice, Condoleezza (2008)

Perle, Richard (2011)

Kissinger Henry (1957, 1964, 1966, 1971, 1973, 1974, 1977, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012)

Indeed, Henry Kissinger, who is one of the grandees of Bilderberg, has alone been responsible for more “violence and disturbance” than just about anyone else alive on the planet today. Responsible for the overthrow and murder of elected leaders like Salvador Allende in Chile, as well as the instigator of more widespread murder and mayhem, for example, with the formation of Operation Condor which directly led to millions of people being tortured and “disappeared” across much of Latin America. Then there is Kissinger’s role in the war crimes carried out in Indochina; his commitment to covertly spreading the ‘scorched earth’ tactics of the Vietnam War with the carpet bombing of Cambodia and Laos under Operation Menu. And that barely scratches the surface of all of Kissinger’s crimes and misdemeanours, so here are a few lesser known instances:

Take, for example, the case of former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and East Timor. Declassified documents reveal that after the Timorese declaration of independence from Portugal in 1975, Kissinger and President Gerald Ford, fearing that the new country would become a communist outpost, gave Indonesian President Suharto the green light to invade the island in a Jakarta meeting the day before the invasion.

The United States was then supplying Indonesia’s military with 90 percent of its arms, and Kissinger himself described their relationship as that of “donor-client.” As the civilian death toll from the invasion climbed into the tens of thousands and the reports of atrocities mounted, Kissinger ensured that US arms continued to flow to the invading forces despite Congressional strictures. Estimates of those who died from military action, starvation or disease range from 100,000 to 180,000—roughly one-seventh to one-fourth of the entire population of East Timor.²

But then, as Henry Kissinger once candidly explained [from wikileaks]:

“The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer.”

Speaking at this year’s World Economic Forum – that more public globalist conflab at Davos in Switzerland – Kissinger also chillingly warned that a crisis involving a nuclear Iran in the “foreseeable future” could lead to a nuclear war and “a turning point in human history”. And with Kissinger still so close to the strategic helm, there’s good reason to pay heed to his words – especially when he also adds so grimly and predictably that “no option is off the table”:

Well, it is very possible that we will see Kissinger in Watford all too soon. So maybe we can arrest him for his many crimes, and before it’s too late. Certainly on the occasion that he does attend, the many charges laid against him might reasonably be brought to the attention of senior officers of the Hertfordshire Constabulary who will otherwise be inadvertently protecting a wanted man. As a matter of fact, there is a rather interesting precedent here:

The latest move to question Kissinger was by Peter Tatchell, a British human rights activist. While Kissinger was speaking in Britain at the UK’s Institute of Directors annual conference on April 24, Tatchell attempted to have him arrested for committing war crimes under the Geneva Conventions Act.

Judge Nicholas Evans at the Bow Street magistrates’ court rejected Tatchell’s request because Tatchell did not present enough evidence implicating Kissinger to war crimes. However, according to Tatchell, the judge left the door open for future attempts to arrest the former U.S. official if suitable evidence is presented.

According to Tatchell’s recent contribution to London’s The Guardian, if he is able to “produce stronger evidence of Kissinger’s culpability in the killing, maiming, torture and forced relocation of civilian populations in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia in the late 60s and early 70s,” then there is a possibility an arrest warrant for Kissinger may be issued in the future.³

Click here to read more in an article entitled “Henry Kissinger, Wanted Man” written by Christopher Reilly, and published in counterpunch more than a decade ago.

7. You never know who might turn up as a surprise guest

Incidentally, the names of Bilderberg attendees I have picked out above were all drawn from what is only a partial and a highly abbreviated list provided by wikipedia. A list that surprisingly fails to record even the name of Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s national security adviser, and another serial warmonger I have featured many times before on this blog. The funny thing is that although Brzezinski’s name is missing from the main list, it is nevertheless registered in one of the many footnotes. A footnote (currently number 68) which reads:

“Western Issues Aired”. The Washington Post. 24 April 1978. “The three-day 26th Bilderberg Meeting concluded at a secluded cluster of shingled buildings in what was once a farmer’s field. Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s national security adviser, Swedish Prime Minister Thorbjorrn Falldin, former secretary of state Henry Kissinger and NATO Commander Alexander M. Haig Jr. were among 104 North American and European leaders at the conference.”

Alternatively, and if you decide to visit the main wikipedia page about Zbigniew Brzezinski you’ll see there is a direct link back to Bilderberg. The same goes for Donald Rumsfeld and also Paul Wolfowitz ⁴, who though missing from the main list of attendees is actually described on his own page as a former steering committee member of the Bilderberg group. But then the main wikipedia entry for Bill Clinton fails to record his ties to the group and the same goes for Margaret Thatcher – both invited to Bilderberg gatherings prior to becoming national leaders (there is more about this again in my earlier post).

And then there was last year’s do in Chantilly, Virginia: “were Mitt Romney and Bill Gates there?” Here’s Charlie Skelton (a journalist and also one of the campaigners behind bilderberg2013) writing on his Guardian Bilderblog and answering the question to the best of his ability:

Four eyewitnesses on the hotel staff told me Willard Mitt Romney was here at Bilderberg 2012. My four eyewitnesses place him inside. That’s one more than Woodward and Bernstein used. Romney’s office initially refused to confirm or deny his attendance as Bilderberg is “not public”. His people later said it wasn’t him.

So, was he being crowned, or singing for his supper? Will Mitt Romney follow in the august footsteps of Clinton, Cameron and Blair to have attended Bilderberg and then shortly become leader? Four years ago, Senator Obama shook off his press detail and nipped (many think) into Bilderberg. This exact same hotel. […]

The Washington Post saw Bill Gates come in. And I’ve got three eyewitnesses from inside who confirmed he was here. This [picture of man hiding his face] is his ear:

You won’t see the names Mitt Romney or Bill Gates on the officially released Final List of Participants because, well, the list is a nonsense. It’s nothing like a complete list of people who attend Bilderberg. It’s a smokescreen, a bit of spin. So can we all, please, stop repeating it as gospel? ⁵

Click here to read Charlie Skelton’s full article.

8. This year offers two events for the price of one

Incidentally, Zbigniew Brzezinski, as I mentioned in another recent post, is also well-known in some circles as the author of what he called the Technetronic Era; a future vision featuring:

‘a society that is shaped culturally, psychologically, socially and economically by the impact of technology and electronics – particularly in the arena of computers and electronics.’ ⁶

So he perhaps above all others attending – presuming of course that he does attend (this year’s official guest list is yet to be leaked) – may be surprised and delighted to learn that within the secluded 300-acre grounds of the same luxury Hertfordshire hotel, there is going to be yet another “select gathering”. A meeting of minds that might also be to his taste:

of new media gurus, political pointy-heads, start-up whiz kids and pop stars awarded the post-chart career title “humanitarian” are meeting to carve up the digital future.

“To carve up the digital future”, so what does that involve exactly? Well, according to the article, which was published in last year’s Independent, The Grove annually hosts what it describes as “The great Google gathering”:

Each year, Larry Page, Google’s co-founder and Eric Schmidt, executive chairman, jet into London for the invitation-only annual gathering, at the Grove hotel, where 400 delegates, chosen from the “great minds of our time”, discuss topics ranging from technology and the media to politics and the arts.

This year’s guest list includes Goldman Sachs’s BRICs expert Jim O’Neill, singer Annie Lennox, and Bill Clinton, who will shoot the breeze with Schmidt at a panel session today.

Arsenal manager Arsène Wenger and model Lily Cole (who boasts a double first from Cambridge, should anyone doubt her credentials) also made the cut at an event previously graced by Prince Charles and Sir Richard Branson.

It certainly sounds like a shindig that’s right up Brzezinski’s technetronic avenue… but what’s this? The same Independent article going on to say:

For conspiracy theorists, the conference, staged by the search engine giant, which reported a 60 per cent surge in earnings to $2.89bn this year, is a cuddlier version of the Bilderberg Group, the supposedly shadowy network of financiers that holds a private annual assembly, recast in the image of our new tech masters. ⁷ [my own bold highlight added]

A technetronic home from home then! And isn’t this all just a little peculiar? That this year’s Google’s annual Zeitgeist conference, which has been based at the Grove since 2007, will be followed within days by the rather less cuddly Bilderberg proper – most likely with either Kissinger or Brzezinski in tow. Well, no, actually it isn’t…

Eric Schmidt, Chairman of Google, has in fact already attended Bilderberg meetings in 2008, 2010 and 2011 (according again to wikipedia). So what should one make of this improbable convergence of “private meetings”, aside from the obvious fact that it will be extremely convenient – for Eric Schmidt to name but one…

9. They don’t want us (but maybe we can change some minds)

Hold on – sorry, sorry, it would seem that when quoted above I had misunderstood and misrepresented the viewpoint of Mayor Thornhill. Allow me to correct myself.

It’s not the alleged war criminals and their hangers on that are bothering the elected mayor… no, not at all, and if only I’d read down just a far as the next line in the Watford Observer I could have presented her opinions more accurately. Now I’ll need to go back and quote what she said from the beginning again:

“I have my concerns about it because it does attract people who can and do cause violence and disturbance. [which is not a reference to Kissinger]

“But I am confident the police will be able to minimise that and give them their right to protest.

“I am ambivalent about whether this is a good thing. It’s potentially a positive thing as long as things don’t kick off.”

“I am concerned about the use of police resource but it is very good The Grove has been deemed a prestigious enough venue.”

Click here to read the full article in the Watford Observer.

In other words, it is people like me (and hopefully you) she is worrying about and encouraging to stay at home. Exercising our democratic right to free speech and assembly entirely from the comfort of our own living rooms. Not that Mayor Thornhill is alone in this regard, of course.

Perhaps Mayor Thornhill will be reassured if we point out that none of the demonstrations against Bilderberg have ever “kicked off”, as she very eloquently puts it. And would she really want Watford to miss out in sharing the proper recognition it deserves? For what’s the point in having a “prestigious enough venue” when so few will ever get to hear about it? Put this way, I feel sure Mayor Thornhill will welcome us with open arms. After all, not even Elton John and his millions of pounds was enough to put Watford on the map (even if they did make it to the FA Cup Final in 1984). Whereas just a couple of hundred thousand demonstrators could easily make all the difference…

So maybe you would like to join us, Mayor Thornhill, because please believe me when I say you’re not any part of the in-crowd, but much like the rest of us, just another insignificant peasant – in any case, the offer remains an open one.

10. Bilderberg might be even more odious than we imagined

Here’s another thing Mayor Thornhill may be interested to ponder over. I wonder if she’s heard what the Honorary President of the Supreme Court of Italy, Ferdinando Imposimato, revealed to Articolo Tre little more than a month ago on April 11^th. Allegations against Bilderberg that I imagine Herts Constabulary might also be interested to learn more about:

“I found a document that left me awestruck, where when it comes to slaughter it also speaks of the Bilderberg Group. A document in the possession of a terrorist Ordine Nuovo, Ventura. I believe in this document. I made some tests and I can say that behind the strategy of tension and the massacres there is also the Bilderberg Group… ” ⁸

The “strategy of tension” that Judge Imposimato is referring to here, being a series of false flag terrorist attacks carried out across Europe (but especially in Italy) under CIA directions and the codename Operation Gladio.

By adding this note, I can already feel the pointy fingers unsheathed once more and jabbing in my virtual direction. But look, this idea of a “strategy of tension” is not a ‘conspiracy theory’ at all. It is no more a ‘theory’ than the lied about proof of Saddam’s WMDs or the long denied existence of Bilderberg, but simply another established yet little known historical fact – and one that once again is easily retrievable from wikipedia.

A meticulously detailed exposé of Operation Gladio has even featured as a three part “Timewatch” broadcast on BBC in 1992, and though I have embedded it in an earlier post, I see no reason not to embed it again below – after all, Operation Gladio played a very important part in shaping the destiny of post-war Europe and if we lived in a genuinely free society the truth about Gladio would be taught as part of the national curriculum in our schools:

As for Ferdinando Imposimato, and aside from being a former Senior Investigative Judge, he was also a Senator who served on the Anti-Mafia Commission in three administrations, and the author or co-author of seven books on international terrorism and state corruption. Added to which, Imposimato presided over a great many terrorism-related cases, including the kidnapping and assassination of President Aldo Moro, the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II, and other political assassinations and kidnapping cases including several against the Mafia.

Judge Imposimato may be wrong about Bilderberg’s direct involvement in Gladio, but he evidently believes that the document he has seen is genuine. And Imposimato is an expert witness when it comes to state-sponsored terrorism and particularly with regards to the crimes of Operation Gladio. So with Imposimato’s latest allegation, shouldn’t we be calling for further investigation?

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And here are two more [too late change the title now]:

11. Our time has come…

Summing up then, there will be all sorts of different people and groups gathering to protest against this year’s Bilderberg meeting, but in spite of different outlooks we all have a common cause. All equally sick and tired of the way our nations are run solely for the benefit of the one-percent, and fed up with being bullied into line. We don’t need to agree on every point to stand side-by-side.

Outside the locked gates of Bilderberg we can join in defiance against “austerity”, and against the neo-imperialist wars, and the rise of a police state, and every other assault on our civil rights, our social welfare and our democracies. Those inside Bilderberg are in part responsible, whether they purposefully deliberate on the destruction of our societies, or whether our decline and fall is an inadvertent consequence of their venality and greed. What is happening to all of us is happening under their powerful watch. So there’s no need to be a ‘conspiracy theorist’ to understand why those inside Bilderberg will once again prefer to hide their faces and names and to scurry about in tinted limos desperate to be unseen. And yes, we are going there to shine more light and to shame them all.

Bilderberg is a carbuncle. A recurring and festering sore. Symptomatic of a deep malaise, it bursts forth annually, rarely in the same place twice and hardly ever within touching distance. It comes this close about as a rarely as a new comet, and likewise portends nothing but doom and disaster. Just consider, for instance, what followed in its wake immediately after appearing in Athens (2009) and then Sitges near Barcelona (2010). The timings could hardly have been more striking given what subsequently happened to Greece and Spain. And as Bilderberg moves across to Britain, we also have the coincidence of a Goldman Sachs stooge called Mark Carney preparing to succeed Sir Mervyn King as Governor of the Bank of England. Do you think Carney might be on the guest list? Well, we shall soon see…

So I ask in a spirit of solidarity that in one way or another (and if only by spreading news of the meeting and our protest to friends and associates on facebook, twitter and by old-fashioned word of mouth) you join in our resistance to Bilderberg and everything it so evidently stands for. Lending our bankrupt ruling elites tacit permission to continue operating in the dark won’t help the greater cause in any way. For as our freedoms and rights are stolen right from under our noses, we must act with urgency and also in as many useful ways as we can. Taking our protest to the doorstep of Bilderberg being just one such very purposeful way to respond.

Finally then, and though I wouldn’t as a rule quote anything by Sebastian Coe, I happen to believe that those remarks he made at the closing ceremony of the London Olympics were never more pertinent than now – for when the limos have driven off back off into the distance, and the police helicopters have stopped whooring overhead, then I hope we might have a tremendous reason for saying:

“When our time came – Britain we did it right. Thank you!”

12. To stand and be counted

But I actually don’t wish to end there… hanging semi-ironically on the vainglory of Lord Coe, but to finish instead with a few words truly worth reflecting upon.

Martin Luther King Jr:

On some positions, Cowardice asks the question, “Is it safe?” Expediency asks the question, “Is it politic?” And Vanity comes along and asks the question, “Is it popular?” But Conscience asks the question “Is it right?” And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right.⁹

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1 From an article entitled “The Grove hotel set to host Bilderberg ‘secret summit’ written by Ben Endley, published in the Watford Observer on May 10, 2013. http://www.watfordobserver.co.uk/news/10411984.Hotel_set_to_host__secret_summit_/

2 Taken from an article entitled “If Charles Taylor Can Be Tried for War Crimes, Why Not Kissinger?” written by Reed Brody, published in The Nation magazine on May 9, 2012. http://www.thenation.com/article/167809/if-charles-taylor-can-be-tried-war-crimes-why-not-kissinger#

3 From an article entitled “Henry Kissinger, Wanted Man” written by Christopher Reilly, published in counterpunch magazine on April 28—30, 2002. http://www.counterpunch.org/2002/04/28/henry-kissinger-wanted-man/

4 Another footnote (currently 110) on the List_of_Bilderberg_participants: “Why is our governor visiting this group”. The Augusta Chronicle. 19 June 2008. p.8. “Some of the names on the list are intriguing. Some of the well-known names include:Ben Bernanke – chairman, Board of Governors, Federal Reserve System; Condoleezza Rice – U.S. secretary of state; James A. Johnson – tasked with choosing U.S. Sen. Barack Obama’s running mate; Paul Wolfowitz – with the Institute for Public Policy Research. The one name that stands out in my opinion this year is South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford.”

5 From an article entitled “Bilderberg 2012: were Mitt Romney and Bill Gates there?” written by Charlie Skelton, published by the Guardian on June 5, 2012. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-news-blog/2012/jun/05/bilderberg-2012-chantilly-occupy

6 From Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Technetronic Era written by Zbigniew Brzezinski, reprinted by Greenwood Press, December 20, 1982., p. 9. You can find it quoted in a review of the book by Stephen McGlinchey, published by e-International Relations on July 22, 2011. http://www.e-ir.info/2011/07/22/review-between-two-ages-america%E2%80%99s-role-in-the-technetronic-era/

7 From an article entitled “The great Google gathering: The search engine is taking its quest for knowledge offline at a secluded British hotel” written by Adam Sherwin, published in The Independent on May 22, 2012. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/online/the-great-google-gathering-7771352.html

8 “Ho trovato un documento che mi ha lasciato sgomento, dove quando si parla di stragi si parla anche del gruppo Bilderberg. Un documento in possesso di un terrorista di Ordine Nuovo, Ventura. Io credo a questo documento. Ho fatto delle verifiche e posso dire che dietro la strategia della tensione e alle stragi c’è anche il gruppo Bilderberg, una specie di Grande Fratello che sta sopra, manovra, si serve di terroristi neri e massoni”.

Taken from “Ferdinando Imposimato: ‘C’è Bilderberg dietro alla strategia della tensione’” (which translates as “Ferdinando Imposimato: ‘there’s Bilderberg behind the strategy of tension’” published April 11, 2013. Translation from Bing Translator. Original article: http://www.articolotre.com/2013/04/ferdinando-imposimato-ce-bilderberg-dietro-alla-strategia-della-tensione/159105

9 “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution” Martin Luther King Jr. (31 March 1968)

UN condemns force-feeding as Gitmo hunger strike enters 13th week — Clive Stafford Smith fights on for justice

The UN human rights office has condemned force-feeding hunger strikers at Guantanamo Bay, calling it ‘torture’ and a breach of international law. At least 21 inmates out of the 100 officially on strike are being force-fed through nasal tubes.

Click here to read more from an article published by Russia Today yesterday.

Shockingly, the majority of the inmates still incarcerated at Guantánamo – 86 of the 166 – have long since been cleared of all terrorism charges by the Obama administration and so are legally entitled to return home. These prisoners continue to languish at Gitmo simply as a consequence of diplomatic and procedural constraints.

Little more than a month ago, I put together a short post drawing attention to the plight of the prisoners who remain trapped at Guantánamo, and to the fact that the majority of those inmates were involved in a mass hunger strike; a protest, which having started on February 6^th, was by then already past its fiftieth day. At this time, the officially reported number was only 26 of the inmates, but this figure was totally dismissed by lawyers with access to the prisoners who were already aware that the true number exceeded a hundred.

The official figure has been steadily rising ever since. So by April 13^th, according to The Pentagon at least, the hunger strike involved up to 43 prisoners.¹ Little more than a week later, on April 22^nd, another BBC news report raised the official figure of prisoners on hunger strike to 84.² And then, by April 24^th, that official figure had grown once more “with Gitmo authorities saying only 92 detainees are taking part in the hunger strike”.

On the same day, Russia Today‘s Sara Firth spoke with Clive Stafford Smith, who is currently representing 15 Guantánamo prisoners, including the last remaining British resident Shaker Aamer held indefinitely at the camp. He told them:

I spent my whole life representing people on death rows. I’ve been to most of the death rows of the southern states of America. Guantánamo, for all the nonsense that the military puts out about it, is worse than any death row I’ve ever been to on two different levels. First you’ve got the physical treatment of the prisoners. There is no prison in the US, where you can beat a prisoner and not get sued until next millennium. So it’s worse because no one controls the military. But on the other level it’s far worse psychologically.

The military got upset when we called Guantánamo a gulag, because they don’t like the echoes of the Soviet Union and the old days. To take that analogy a bit further, which I think is totally fair, I don’t think that there was a gulag in the Soviet Union where 52 percent of the prisoners had been told that they were cleared for release but they couldn’t go. That sort of torture is worse than anything. Shaker was told he was cleared in 2007 by Bush, 2009 by Obama and he is still there. And there is no legitimate reason why he can’t come back to London tomorrow.

The Foreign Secretary [William Hague] wrote to me saying that he’d been told by the Americans that Shaker is only cleared to go to Saudi Arabia, not to Britain. But that’s total drivel. There is no other prisoner, I know of 166 people in Guantánamo, who has only been cleared to go to one place. Shaker has never been told he has only been cleared to go to one place. He’s been given two notices neither of which says that. And there is a reason for it. And the reason is that they want to gag him. The US wants him to go to Saudi Arabia on the promise that the Saudis will keep him banged up forever, he won’t be able to talk to the media, he won’t talk to anyone.

So certainly the US would like to keep Shaker quiet because of everything he has seen and everything that’s happened to him. But I’m very much afraid that it’s also the British intelligence services who want to keep him quiet, because they know that Shaker is a witness against them. Going down to Bagram airforce base in January 2002 the British saw him and were legally complicit in his torture there. But also Shaker saw Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi being tortured and this is the most embarrassing example America has ever had. So the last thing that the British or Americans want to come out of the Guantánamo Bay is Shaker Aamer, who can shed some lights on the torture that led to catastrophic mistakes. […]

He was one of the first five prisoners held by the Americans in Bagram and he was taken there just before New Year 2001. Al-Libi had just been taken and the Americans at the time thought that he was a big Al-Qaeda person, which he wasn’t even a member of. The Americans were abusing him to try to get him to make statements. Shaker was taken from the cage, where he was held, into the room where al-Libi was being abused. He saw the people who were there, he can identify some of those people. The British were present in Bagram at that time. And he can tell you a whole lot about what was going on in terms of abuse of al-Libi. Now al-Libi can’t speak for himself, because he was sent back to Libya, where he according to the Libyans died or according to the other people was murdered. One extraordinary embarrassing witness has disappeared and Shaker is one of the few people that remain.

Click here to read a full transcript or to watch the interview on the Russia Today website.

Click here to follow RT’s day-by-day timeline of the Gitmo hunger strike.

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Clive Stafford Smith is a person I have greatly admired for many years. He had initially trained to be a journalist, but then, following a summer spent meeting death row inmates — an experience that reinforced his original abhorrence of capital punishment — he came to the dramatic conclusion that he might achieve more by legally defending them instead of simply writing about them. Following this revelation, he retrained in law and set up his own legal practice.

During the decades since, Stafford Smith, who became founder and director of Reprieve, has represented more than 300 prisoners facing the death penalty in the southern United States. And then, when the preposterous “War on Terror” was launched and the hooded men in orange boiler suits began to be unloaded and dumped into the cages at Guantánamo without due process and their human rights violated, Stafford Smith turned his attention to helping these “enemy combatants” – the majority of whom, he quickly realised, were not merely being detained without charge, but entirely innocent of any involvement in terrorist activities. Up to now, he has helped secure the release of 65 Guantánamo Bay prisoners as well as others across the world who have been detained and tortured in black prisons such as Bagram Theatre Internment Facility, Afghanistan.

Here is Clive Stafford Smith speaking at a recent conference and sat alongside some of the prisoners he has helped to release, including Sudanese journalist Sami al-Hajj who was picked up in Afghanistan by the Pakistani army whilst on assignment with Al Jazeera, and ended up being held in Guantánamo without charge for more than six years.

The very epitome of the eternal optimist, it seems that almost nothing can dull Stafford Smith’s enthusiasm and sense of humour, or dent his belief that we will eventually reach a better future. He finishes on a characteristically upbeat point saying “We’re going to win this battle, it’s just a matter of when”:

On January 20^th 2010, just one year after Obama’s inauguration, Clive Stafford Smith had been invited to speak at the Frontline Club with regards to the situation at Guantánamo Bay as well as the detention facilities at Bagram and Abu Ghraib. The proceedings were moderated by BBC correspondent Jon Manel.

One of the underlying issues back then was to what extent had Obama helped in propelling the United States away from the Bush administration’s use of torture and extraordinary rendition? In my view, and certainly with hindsight, Clive Stafford Smith is rather too generous when it comes to Obama’s record, but overall what he had to say was as insightful as ever:

1 From an article entitled “Clashes at Guantánamo over hunger strike prisoners” published by BBC news on April 13, 2013. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22140663

2 From an article entitled “Over half of Guantánamo Bay’s detainees join hunger strike” written by Tom Santorelli, published by BBC news on April 22, 2013. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22249470

march against Britain’s new drone HQ: noon tomorrow from Lincoln to RAF Waddington

The following message from the Stop the War Coalition was received yesterday.

Thank you for signing the ‘Ground the Drones’ petition, calling on the British government to abandon the use of drones as a weapon of war.

The Ground the Drones campaign, organised by CND, the Drone Campaign Network, Stop the War Coalition and War On Want is gaining strength.

The petition is supported by Dr Rowan Williams (former Archbishop of Canterbury) and Dennis Halliday (former UN Assistant Secretary-General).

Please help us build the campaign even more by asking your friends and colleagues to sign.

Saturday 27 April we will be marching from Lincoln to RAF Waddington, which is set to be Britain’s drone control centre. Join us in confronting this worrying expansion of the war on terror.

March route: We are gathering at 12 noon on the West corner of South Park – see the map here: http://goo.gl/maps/X0ez6

Transport: You can reach Lincoln easily by train, and transport has been arranged from around the country. See details here: http://bit.ly/ZufNFB

Thank you for your support. We hope to see you on Saturday.

For those who cannot make the demonstration, we will send a report on the day next week.

“Into The Fire” — ‘austerity’ and its part in the return of fascism

Angela Merkel tried to contain her irritation when asked at a podium discussion in Berlin this week whether southern European countries could take much more German-ordered austerity.

But the frustration in her voice was clear enough after a week in which several European allies broke ranks, and in a public challenge to Germany, effectively declared the era of deficit reduction in Europe to be over.

“I call it balancing the budget,” the German chancellor told her audience at a book presentation. “Everyone else is using this term austerity. That makes it sound like something truly evil.”

So begins an article published yesterday by Greek Independent Press. The article continues:

There are signs the criticism is beginning to grate. German officials turn testy when the word “austerity” is mentioned these days. In recent months, they have deliberately adjusted their language, adopting the term “growth-friendly consolidation” to describe their policy approach.

Yes, whatever you do just make sure you don’t mention… the “austerity”!

Listening to Angela Merkel here, one might mistakenly imagine that “austerity” was some kind of nasty term made up by opponents of the agenda, whereas, in actual fact, it was coined as the euphemism of choice by those who advocated and most avidly sought the implementation of such an economic “shock therapy”. “Shock therapy” being, of course, a term conveniently applied by the earlier proponents of such measures, and good enough when the victims mostly lived in Latin America or Africa. But when “shock therapy” came back to Europe and America it needed another name, and, as euphemisms go, “austerity” obviously had its advantages: it was short and memorable, and unconsciously appealed to a certain kind of stoical, almost religious outlook, and as such was able to cover its ill intentions beneath the guise of such virtues as frugality and self-restraint.

Of course, the term “austerity” is actually just a polite cover needed to hide away the truly diabolical consequences of destroying a nation’s wealth and welfare provision. “Growth-friendly consolidation”, on the other hand, and aside from being unmitigated nonsense^*, is far too much of a mouthful. After all, does anyone still remember the dear old “Community Charge”? – most people don’t. When it came to naming, more cuddly sounding “Community Charge” simply didn’t stand a chance against its punchier rival “The Poll Tax”. So Merkel and the others should be warned: they are no doubt already stuck with the term “austerity”, whether they like it or not.

And “austerity” is only getting a bad name because it is indeed “something truly evil” (as Merkel put it); an evil that, as time passes, will doubtless become more and more obvious to everyone. For “austerity” is as socially divisive as it is economically destructive: opening up the way for the very worst forms of political extremism to rise and prosper. Savage economics and hard right policies complimenting one another perfectly; the iron fist slipped (but only barely concealed) inside an already iron glove. We should call it what it is: extreme “austerity” is creeping fascism.

I actually visited Greece in the Summer of 2006, just about a year before this crisis kicked off, and back then it was a fully functioning western democratic society. It felt like a home from home. Yet, in little more than six years the country has been trashed. Broken on the wheel of “austerity”, and with no end at all in sight.

To see how terribly Greece has been ruined, and to also understand how, on the back of such wanton destruction, a neo-Nazi group like Golden Dawn has grown and incrementally seized more power, I strongly recommend a new documentary entitled “Into The Fire: The Hidden Victims of Austerity in Greece”, which was released just a few days ago and is embedded below:

Into the Fire is being crowd-released today [April 20^th]: All over the internet people are embedding Into the Fire on their website or blog. With everyone who participates the audience and distribution network will grow. Are you participating? http://intothefire.org

A hard hitting documentary which shows the plight of refugees and migrants in recession hit Athens, Into The Fire is a film with a difference.

Shot and edited with sensitivity and compassion, it doesn’t pull its punches and makes for harrowing viewing in parts. It is the product of crowd funding, dedication, self-sacrifice and a burning sense of justice.

In times of severe austerity things look bleak for Greek people, but they’re far worse for those who have recently arrived. Without housing, legal papers or support, migrants in Greece are faced with increasing and often violent racism at the hands of the growing Nazi party Golden Dawn and the police in Athens. Many are trapped by EU laws and legislation of other EU countries meaning they’d be returned to Greece if they managed to get to another member state, they are desperate to leave the country.

This film gives incredible insights into the reality faced by people who simply want to lead peaceful, normal lives.

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* Here are some interesting graphs taken from an wikipedia article entitled “European sovereign-debt crisis”, which show the rise in the levels of Greek, Spanish and Portuguese debt since 1999 as compared to the average of the Eurozone:

All three graphs (and others including those for Ireland and Cyprus) show a marked turning point around 2007-8, providing further evidence not only that “austerity” hasn’t worked (even within its own terms of debt reduction), but that the western world is actually faced with a systemic banking crisis that flared up at that time. (Please note that the flattening off throughout the final three years of these graphs represents only projected estimates.)

The following is taken from an article written by Tyler Durden and posted on zerohedge from February 18, 2013:

“Beleaguered Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy just broke another record. As if a plague of corruption scandals was not enough, Spain’s debt-to-GDP has now reached levels not seen in over 100 years. As El Pais reports, Spanish debt levels rose at an alarming EUR 400 million per day in 2012 making for the largest annual increase in debt in the nation’s history – all the while proclaiming austerity.”

And here’s another helpful graph that goes along with the article, showing once more that rather than reducing Spanish debt, the imposition of “austerity measures” is very closely correlated to the spike in that debt:

Thatcher’s legacy is our road to serfdom: but don’t believe me, listen instead to Paul Craig Roberts

Margaret Thatcher died today aged 87

If you want the hagiography then I recommend BBC news. Tributes to our Iron Lady that roll on and on and on. All very hard to stomach. But what did Mrs T actually achieve aside from, as The Sun newspaper famously put up, saying “Up yours Delors”! What did the policies of a government led by a Prime Minister who told us that she didn’t believe in society, actually do to our society? The answer is that she set about dismantling it altogether.

There were winners, of course, but that was inevitable given that Thatcher’s aims were all about winners and losers. So as she asset-stripped the nation, selling off our telecommunications, our electricity and gas companies, and our water supplies (government gradually reduced to the role of the banker in a game of Monopoly) those who bought the shares at bargain prices made a quick buck, thank you very much. And money was also flooding into the coffers from the sale of council houses, but mostly thanks to the boom in North Sea oil.

So where was all that money spent? Well, mostly it was redistributed by way of tax cuts; our own money given away so that it would supposedly trickle down back to us, ha ha… but of course the money never did trickle back down, and simply percolated upwards, lining the pockets of the new millionaires and then trickling away altogether into the off-shore tax havens and Swiss Bank accounts of the super-elites.

But Thatcher’s policies didn’t only ensure the tremendous wealth transfer from the poor to the rich. In achieving these ends she had also set about smashing up the trade unions, making ready to begin deindustrialising the country, whilst simultaneously “liberalising” the markets. So a country that had once been a powerhouse of industrial output was being reduced, cut down to leave our so-called “service economy”, and increasingly dependent upon sustained growth within The City of London. Growth that was delusory, since it was, we now realise, based upon an ever-expanding bubble of new “financial instruments”. A growth that was eating into the economy itself.

In short then, Thatcher encouraged us to be more selfish than ever whilst deregulating those parts of our society that most needed regulation. Deregulation that has carried us to where we find ourselves today… on the brink of bankruptcy. But obviously I wouldn’t expect those who still love and admire Mrs T to believe me when I say that this financial mess is actually her one true and lasting legacy. No, please don’t listen to me. Listen instead to Paul Craig Roberts, the former head of policy at Department of Treasury under Reagan and so-called Father of Reaganomics; the man behind the same neo-liberal policies and strategies that were also being applied at the very same time across the Atlantic:

Here’s what Paul Craig Roberts wrote in a recent article [March 6th] posted on his own website (please note that had Thatcher been American, she would undoubtedly have described herself as a Libertarian):

Libertarians will be the last to comprehend that the return of crony capitalism, robber barons, and economic insecurity is the direct consequence of a quarter century of deregulation. As I show in my new book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism And Economic Dissolution Of The West, it is the failure of the latest laissez faire experiment that has saddled us with crony capitalism. Monopoly concentration and rule by the few, not Libertarian nirvana, is what deregulation and unbridled greed produce.

More on how the economic policies of Thatcher and Reagan were the root cause of this present economic crisis, as well as proposed strategies for rescuing ourselves from an otherwise inevitable financial catastrophe, can be found in my earlier post [published July 2011] entitled “The answer to TINA… is TRISH”.

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Additional:

And this is British author, journalist and political activist, Tariq Ali, offering his own brief assessment of Thatcher’s legacy on today’s Democracy Now!:

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Update:

On the latest episode of the Keiser Report [broadcast on RT, April 10^th], Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert examined the question of whether Margaret Thatcher “saved Britain.” They draw attention to the economic impact of peak North Sea oil revenues, and ask, if Thatcher had saved some of our nation’s oil wealth, just how large might a UK sovereign wealth fund be today:

In the second half of the show, Max Keiser also talked to Jan Skoyles of The Real Asset Company about whether the safest way to protect your money is by investing in gold, silver or Bitcoin – an informed and interesting discussion.

50 days and counting: mass hunger strike at Guantánamo is being ignored and downplayed

It is a frankly staggering but barely reported fact that the majority of prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay – 86 of the 166 – have actually been cleared by the Obama administration to leave. Indeed, only a tiny fraction of the remaining “detainees” – as few as 34 – are ever likely to be charged by the US government. Yet, in spite of this, the more than fifty percent being held without any charge against them, still see little or no prospect of release after more than a decade of false imprisonment.

To highlight their continuing plight some of these inmates (and I will return to numbers in a moment) decided to go on hunger strike. A mass protest that started on February 6^th and which is now into its eighth week. So far, however, the mainstream media has mostly ignored their protest altogether, with only Russia Today consistently reporting on the deteriorating situation at Guantánamo.

Democracy Now! also featured a report just over a fortnight ago on Wednesday March 13^th, and this is what Pardiss Kebriaei, senior staff attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights as well as counsel for Ghaleb Al-Bihani, one of the hunger strikers, told us back then:

He [Ghaleb Al-Bihani] said what we’ve heard from every other detainee who has communicated with his lawyer since February, which is that there is a large-scale hunger strike in Camp 6, which is the largest of the facilities at Guantánamo. That prison holds about 130 men. He said that almost everyone, except for a few who are sick and elderly, are on strike.

He himself had lost over 20 pounds. He is a diabetic. His blood glucose levels are fluctuating wildly. He told me that medical staff at Guantánamo have told him his life is in danger. And he and others want us to get the word out about this.

At this time, the official version was that “only five or six” prisoners were involved in the hunger strike, but here’s Pardiss Kebriaei again:

They have downplayed the scale of the strikes and have said that there are only a handful on strike and only a handful being tube-fed. It may be a matter of semantics: the way that Guantánamo authorities define people on hunger strike is largely discretionary.

But what we have heard from every habeas counsel who has been down to the base or communicated with their clients since February is the same, which is that there is a large-scale strike, men are refusing food.

Click here to read a complete transcript or to watch the interview on the Democracy Now! website.

And here’s a more recent Russia Today article from Monday [March 25^th]:

US officials initially denied that a strike was taking place at all.

“As you recall, they started off by saying, ‘no one is on hunger strike, just five or six people who have been on the hunger strike for many years’. Then that figure was revised up to 14 and now we are seeing the figure steadily increasing, but to nowhere near the extent that the prisoners’ lawyers are talking about,” investigative journalist and author of ‘The Guantanamo Files’ Andy Worthington told RT.

Currently the officially-acknowledged number of Gitmo detainees on hunger strike has reached 26 people, according to the US Defense Department. Eight of them are being force-fed, which means they are administered food in the form of a nutritional supplement through a hose snaked into their nose while they are restrained in a chair.¹

Click here to read more from the same Russia Today report or to watch video of the report.

Hidden away on the BBC website, you can also find this report from yesterday:

The International Committee of the Red Cross says it is urgently sending a doctor to Guantanamo Bay because of a growing hunger strike among detainees.

The ICRC says the doctor and another group member are flying to Guantanamo a week earlier than planned “because of the current tensions” there.²

The same BBC article also reports that officially 31 of the 166 prisoners are now on hunger strike. The official figures rising as news of the hunger strike slowly leaks out… but why so slowly. Here are the thoughts of outspoken British MP George Galloway talking on Russia Today (and published in the same article):

“Nobody else is talking about this subject. If this were happening in Russia, if people disappeared into an illegal black hole in Russia and were facing indefinite incarceration, without trial, without charge and without access of attorneys, we’d never hear the end of it. The Western media would be full of it. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, they’d be screaming from the rooftops of Westminster.

But because this is an American crime, they’re allowed to get away with it. Because the people that control the so-called mainstream media are fully on side with the agenda of the Obama administration.”

Whatever you may think about Galloway, it is hard to deny the truth of much that he has to say. And the fact that during the past fifty days, our own media outlets have consistently declined to draw any serious attention to this important story ought to be a cause for concern for all of us.

Incidentally, I happen to be on the emailing lists of both Amnesty International and Avaaz and neither organisation has sent any news about the mass hunger strike taking place at Guantánamo, let alone any campaigns calling for action to be taken. Shame on both organisations.

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The following is a Russia Today report from January last year, marking the tenth anniversary of the opening of Gitmo at Guantánamo Bay:

1 From an article entitled “’Nobody else talking about this’: Gitmo inmate hunger strike goes on” published by Russia Today on March 25, 2013. http://rt.com/news/guantanamo-hunger-strike-media-786/

2 From a BBC new report entitled “Guantanamo hunger strike prompts urgent Red Cross visit” published on Mnarch 27, 2013. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-21958255

ten years of horror in Iraq: is this what Syria now has to look forward to?

On Wednesday [March 20^th] Democracy Now! spoke with investigative journalist Dahr Jamail (currently working for Al Jazeera). Jamail provided a detailed review of the terrible conditions in Iraq, ten years after the US-led “liberation”; a campaign which began with the notorious “shock and awe” assault and one that has directly resulted in more than a million deaths (which include over a hundred thousand documented civilian deaths so far).

With a puppet president, Nouri al-Maliki, installed, the US occupation is now being quietly maintained by the presence of thousands of military contractors, whilst meanwhile the Iraqi population is the target of terrorist attacks on an almost daily basis as sectarian violence spirals out of control – 65 people were killed, and hundreds wounded by bomb blasts in Baghdad just on the day of the anniversary itself.

What Dahr Jamail describes is nothing less than a hell on earth where human rights abuses are rampant, and the use of indefinite detention and execution is commonplace:

… the situation in Iraq today, 10 years after the U.S.-led invasion and occupation began, it’s just utter devastation. It’s a situation where, overall, we can say that Iraq is a failed state. The economy is in a state of crisis, perpetual crisis, that began far back with the institution of the 100 Bremer orders during—under the Coalition Provisional Authority, the civil government set up to run Iraq during the first year of the occupation. And it’s been in crisis ever since.

The average Iraqi is just barely getting by. And how can they get by when there’s virtually no security across large swathes of country to this day, where, you know, as we see in the headlines recently, even when there’s not these dramatic, spectacular days of dozens of people being killed by bombs across Baghdad and other parts of Iraq, on any given day there’s assassinations, there’s detentions, there’s abductions and people being disappeared and kidnapped?

First of all, we have a situation where detentions across Iraq, primarily in Sunni-dominated parts of Baghdad, as well as in areas like Fallujah, predominantly Sunni cities, where people are being detained, en masse at times, nightly home raids, same type of stuff that the U.S. military used when they were in Iraq. And then the types of torture being described coming out of the prisons is truly horrific: people being hung by their ankles for days at a time while their heads are in buckets of water on the ground; people having their hands tied behind their backs and then hung from their hands for sometimes days at a time; electrical shock being used on people’s limbs, on their genitals, on their tongues; men being raped by broom handles as well as bottles; women in prison being raped. I spoke with one woman released just over a week ago at this point, talking about how she had been in prison for four years and was raped repeatedly by Iraqi forces. [There are] other types of techniques being used—and again, all of this comes back to the types of workings of Colonel James Steele … [more about Steele in a moment]

But the types of torture is ongoing. It’s rampant. It’s one of the driving factors as to why we’re seeing massive Friday protests now, well into the three month, across Al Anbar province and the Adhamiyah district of Baghdad, where Sunnis are demanding a halt for the detentions, a halt of the so-called Article 4, which is the legislation passed and being used in the Iraqi government that—basically where they took a page out of the Bush playbook of giving them carte blanche to arrest anybody for any reasons under the guise of terrorism charges, of suspected terrorism, and then they can be held indefinitely. I spoke with people both at Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch about this, and they said one of the problems now is, it’s the detentions and the being held secretly is so rampant now by the Iraqi security forces that there isn’t really even a need for secret prisons anymore. Remember a ways back, we had—it all came out that there were secret Maliki prisons. Well, now, today in Iraq, they’re referring—they’re being referred to by a lot of Iraqis as “secret prisoners,” because people are being detained, their families aren’t—there’s no law requiring that the families be notified, nobody knows where these people are. They can be held in any prison anywhere in broad daylight, because no name is being registered anywhere. So, literally, we have untold numbers of people being detained, being treated horrifically.

Asked whether he agreed with many people that the problems in Iraq are “not so much the result of the U.S. invasion but rather sectarian war between Sunnis and Shias”, Jamail’s response is unequivocal:

I don’t agree. I think all of this is a direct result of—either direct or indirectly a result of the U.S. invasion and occupation and the strategy applied. I mean, we saw something come out just last week in a joint investigation of BBC Arabic and The Guardian, which gave hard evidence, insider evidence, of the machinations of the U.S. using retired Lieutenant Colonel James Steele, infamous during the Reagan administration of orchestrating so many of the death squads in Central America along with Negroponte. Well, Negroponte happened to be the U.S. ambassador to Iraq for some of the occupation and, of course, brought in his old buddy James Steele to set up the same types of tactics, the detentions, the types of torture techniques that we’re seeing rampant across today—across Iraq today, the blatant attempts to foment sectarian violence, sort of a divide-and-conquer policy. Even Rumsfeld, former Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld under Bush, back around 2006, 2007, referred to kind of casually using the “Salvador Option” in Iraq, and that’s precisely what he was describing.

Click here to read the full transcript or to watch the interview on the Democracy Now! website.

Friday’s Democracy Now! offered a more extended profile of Colonel James Steele, investigating his role in Iraq and formerly in El Salvador, where he had previously coordinated death squads and torture centres. Also heavily implicated are General David Petraeus and Donald Rumsfeld.^*

In the second part of the same interview [from Wednesday 20^th], Jamail reported on another side of the horrors in today’s Iraq. A huge increase in birth defects and cancers, most especially plaguing the city of Fallujah, which are a direct consequence of the earlier US bombardment with the widespread use of weapons containing white phosphorous and depleted uranium (DU):

Overall, the country has seen a massive increase in cancer rates from the 1991 Gulf War up to present, even according to official Iraqi government statistics. In 1991, for example, there were 40 registered cases of cancer out of 100,000 Iraqis. By 1995, four years after that war, that number had jumped to 800 out of 100,000 Iraqis. And then—by 2005, that number had doubled— The most recent statistic, I’ll end with, before I get into Fallujah. And what these images are showing is that in 2005 we saw 1,600 Iraqis with cancer out of 100,000, so a massive escalation that continues.

And going on to Fallujah, because I wrote about this a year ago, and then I returned to the city again this trip, we are seeing an absolute crisis of congenital malformations of newborn. There is one doctor, a pediatrician named Dr. Samira Alani, working on this crisis in the city. She’s the only person there registering cases. And she’s seeing horrific birth defects. I mean, these are extremely hard to look at. They’re extremely hard to bear witness to. But it’s something that we all need to pay attention to, because of the amount of depleted uranium used by the U.S. military during both of their brutal attacks on the city of 2004, as well as other toxic munitions like white phosphorus, among other things.

And so, what this has generated is, from 2004 up to this day, we are seeing a rate of congenital malformations in the city of Fallujah that has surpassed even that in the aftermath of—in the wake of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that were—that nuclear bombs were dropped on at the end of World War II. So, Dr. Samira Alani actually visited with doctors in Japan, comparing statistics, and found that the amount of congenital malformations in Fallujah is 14 times greater than the same rate measured in the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan in the aftermath of the nuclear bombings.

These types of birth defects, she said—there are types of congenital malformations that she said they don’t even have medical terms for, that some of the things they’re seeing, they’ve never seen before. They’re not in any of the books or any of the scientific literature that they have access to. She said it’s common now in Fallujah for newborns to come out with massive multiple systemic defects, immune problems, massive central nervous system problems, massive heart problems, skeletal disorders, baby’s being born with two heads, babies being born with half of their internal organs outside of their bodies, cyclops babies literally with one eye—really, really, really horrific nightmarish types of birth defects. And it is ongoing.

The images in this report are so absolutely shocking that I have decided not to embed the video, but if you would like to hear more of what Dahr Jamail had to say or to read the full transcript then click here to watch on the Democracy Now! website.

Click here to read my own earlier post about the use of white phosphorous and DU in Fallujah.

On Friday [March 15^th], a day that marked the second anniversary of the uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Democracy Now! also interviewed Rim Turkmani, an astrophysicist and member of the Syrian Civil Democratic Alliance, who had come to New York to meet with Security Council members in order to discuss possible political solutions to the developing crisis in Syria. This is part of what Rim Turkmani said:

The uprising started as a nonviolent uprising; however, because of the extreme violence, you know, the way the regime responded to this uprising, things developed very quickly into a very violent movement. However, there have been external actors who were supporting the arming of the opposition, and unfortunately that fueled the violence, increased dramatically the number of casualties, and turned the whole thing into more of a war, rather than a revolution. So nowadays, people don’t talk about democracy anymore. You don’t talk about the original rights and freedoms, which the people two years ago went to the street to protest for. We’re talking more about ending a war.

And I see all these statements, you know, from France and Britain, and even the U.S., are very contradicting and saying that we want to arm the rebels; however, we want a political solution. I mean, for me, a political solution means a peaceful solution. Peace can only be reached through peaceful ways, peaceful means, and can’t be reached through fueling the violence. So, I don’t think their efforts will help in calming the situation or dropping the number of casualties in the country. […]

It’s more of a geopolitical struggle, really, over Syria than responding to the needs of the people. I am a member of the opposition, as well. All [of] my group, very active inside Syria, is in opposition, but it’s a nonviolent opposition. That is very clear in its aim to reach democracy. However, we don’t reach any—we don’t get any support. We are—there’s systematic efforts to marginalize people like us inside Syria and focus only on the armed rebels. And they are the ones now who are stealing all the headlines. Now, why? Because, yes, there are certain actors, regional and international, who see this as a proxy war, and it’s an opportunity to fight their international opponents. It’s a struggle over Syria, over power, and the Syrians are falling victims to that.

I cannot find this clip uploaded on youtube but you can read the full transcript or watch the interview on the Democracy Now! website by clicking here.

Obviously it was the Bush-Cheney administration who are most responsible for the campaign against Iraq, although the Obama administration has nevertheless been complicit in the on-going chaos; the US occupation now secured by the stay-behind presence of those thousands of military contractors, with a completely blind eye turned to the brutality of the Maliki regime. Meanwhile, and with Iraq already in ruins, Obama is once more talking up the need for “humanitarian intervention” in neighbouring Syria. A conflict that has been allowed to escalate in part thanks to American covert support for terrorist groups.

In an excellent week of broadcasts, Democracy Now! also welcomed freelance foreign correspondent Reese Erlich to talk more specifically about US and Saudi Arabian involvement in the Syrian conflict:

What I found was that the Saudi government and wealthy Saudis are involved in arming Syrian rebels, the most ultraconservative, ultrareligious groups, such as al-Nusra, and that hundreds of Saudis are infiltrating across the borders from Jordan and Turkey and going to fight with these extremist groups in Syria. […]

Well, the Saudis want to see a pro-Saudi government emerge. The analysts I spoke to in Saudi Arabia point to what they call the Yemen model, where there was an Arab Spring uprising, the head of the government was replaced, but a pro-Western, pro-Saudi general replaced the old guy. So, they’d love to see that happen in Syria. But as my sources pointed out, it’s not going to happen, because Syria is very, very different from Yemen.

And in the case of the U.S., the U.S.—you know, the debate in the U.S. is whether—well, shall we bomb them? Shall we create a no-fly zone and arm the rebels and take a more militant stand? Or shall we continue kind of the Obama policies of secretly arming the—and covertly arming and training the guerrillas? The problem is, the reason this has not been resolved, as pointed out to me by a Muslim Brotherhood leader that I interviewed in Istanbul, is that the U.S. hasn’t found a leader that it can trust to pursue its interests. If you recall, in the case of Iraq or Afghanistan, there was a guy the U.S. promoted as the new democrat, supposedly, who turned out to be otherwise. But they haven’t found that guy yet in Syria, and that’s one of the reasons that they’re taking a less than militant stand in support of the Syrian rebels.

In the same roundtable interview, Rim Turkmani added:

As we all know, Saudi Arabia is not a democratic country. The uprising started to reach a democratic Syria. So, I don’t have faith in any undemocratic country to support democratic transition inside Syria. I’m not surprised that they’re supporting the armed rebels and increasing the level of violence in Syria. However, we are very confident that violence never, ever leads to democracy. So, as much as I oppose the regime, my group opposes the regime, we oppose also these efforts from Saudi Arabia to turn Syria into a jihadi land. I mean, the Syrians are—their mentality is very, very different from like the jihadi extreme Muslims’ mentality, and I think they will find it very difficult to market their ideas inside Syria. However, the violence is giving them the right environment, fertile environment, for such ideology to spread. […]

And you heard even the U.K. and the U.S., even though they’re supporting a little bit the arming, they’re still talking about a political solution. A political solution means that we have to talk to all these armed people, all the armed groups, and bring them to a negotiation table. I trust we can bring the Syrians. We can bring those who defected from the army or those who thought they were carrying arms to defend their families. However, the jihadists are going to be impossible. They are going to be the real obstacle to any peace process in Syria. Their cause is global. It’s not for democracy, certainly. Even if the regime falls tonight, they’re going to continue their fight. They are not interested in any negotiations and any peace deal. And their threat is not going to be contained inside Syria. It’s certainly going to affect the whole region. This is why we have to act very quickly to end this war and bring together a peaceful solution for all the Syrians. It has to be all-inclusive, to bring all the Syrians into a negotiation table to reach a peaceful solution towards a democratic Syria. We’re not interested in any project that doesn’t lead eventually to a democratic country.

Click here to read the full transcript or to watch the interview on the Democracy Now! website.

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Additional:

Mike Prysner joined the US Army when he was 17, between his junior and senior years in high school. He left for basic training in June 2001 and was assigned to the 10th Mountain Division in Fort Drum, NY. In March 2003, his company was attached to the 173rd Airborne Brigade to take part in the initial invasion of Iraq. This is an edited version of a powerful speech he delivered at the 2008 “Winter Soldier” in Maryland. Testimony of what was really going on in Iraq:

Mike Prysner was also one of the speakers at the event “Speaking Truth to Power: a permanent state of war” on April 9, 2011 in Asheville, NC:

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* Click here to watch “James Steele: America’s Mystery Man in Iraq”, a 15-month investigation made by the Guardian and BBC Arabic and produced by Maggie O’Kane [who gave an extended interview about the film on Democracy Now! on Friday 22^nd].