Mark Whitby, who was on the train and witnessed Jean-Charles' death, said:
"As the man got on the train I looked at his face. He looked like a cornered rabbit. He looked absolutely petrified."Mark then said that Jean Charles was pushed down, whereupon:
"One of the police officers was holding a black automatic pistol in his left hand. They held it down to him and unloaded five shots into him."Actually, it turned out that five shots wasn't enough for this particular lawman. He 'unloaded' seven shots into Jean-Charles' head and one into his shoulder. He also missed the target three times.
The murder was officially sanctioned by Sir Ian Blair, the Chief of the Metropolitan Police, who, as soon as it became known that one of his pet psychos had made mincemeat out of an unarmed Brazilian, said that the dead man was 'directly linked' to anti-terror operations.
Initial statements from other police sources said that they were 'very confident' that Jean-Charles was one of the four bombers who attempted to set off explosives the previous day. However, a little while later, a further statement admitted:
"We are now satisfied that he was not connected with the incidents of Thursday, July 21, 2005. For somebody to lose their life in such circumstances is a tragedy and one that the Metropolitan police service regrets."At this point, Sir Ian Blair began to describe the shoot to kill policy as a 'shoot to protect' policy.
A Downing Street spokesman said:
"The prime minister has said all along he supports all the efforts of police and law enforcement agencies."
"If a suspect ignores a command to stop and is deemed to be jeopardising the lives of others, shooting to kill is justified."Jean Charles' body was identified by his cousin, Alex Alves Pereira, who said:
"What can the police say? They will try to justify this but there's no way. My cousin's body had his head blown apart with bullets in the back of the head... Apologies are not enough. I believe my cousin's death was result of police incompetence... He was a victim of government's mistakes...Another cousin, Maria do Socorro, said:
He does not have a past that would make him run from police... they are going to kill many people, they are going to kill thousands of people. They just kill the first person they see, that's what they did. They killed my cousin, they could kill anyone."
"I think they acted incompetently, like amateurs... they are panicking and seeing everyone as a suspect. If you are going to have a war on terror, you have got to use brains to fight it not just brute force."Jean Charles' grandmother said:
"There was no reason to think he was a terrorist."The police, whose original statements regarding Jean Charles movements on the day he died, insisted that he had walked to the underground station, later admitted that this was not true. He had, in fact, taken a bus from his home in Tulse Hill to the tube. Which means, not only did they have plenty of time to pick him up before he got to Stockwell, but also, one hopes, that they didn't think the risk to the passengers on the bus was all that substantial.
Just after Jean Charles death, we were led to believe that he had been shot for a variety of reasons. These were:
A fortnight or so after the killing, after it had become known that Jean-Charles had been wearing a light denim jacket, the police began to insist that it wasn't them who had disseminated the padded jacket story. However, a Scotland Yard spokesman did say that his 'clothing and behaviour' had added to their suspicions.
What is certain is this: the police made no effort to correct the impression that Jean Charles was wearing suspicious clothing until well after the event.
ii) 'Intelligence.' Documents found in a rucksack abandoned by one of the previous day's unsuccessful suicide bombers, allegedly, led to the address where he was living. However, Jean-Charles' home was known to be a 'multi-occupancy' residence, where it would have been certain that almost all of those living there had no terrorist links.
Late in the day, the Met also admitted that the bloke who was supposed to have been keeping an eye on the 'multi-occupancy' residence was urinating at the time Jean-Charles emerged from the building and was, thus, unable to verify that he was a suspect. The actual words he used were:
"I checked the photographs."He then said that he thought it was 'worth someone else having a look.' It also transpired that this chap was not a police officer. He was, in fact, a soldier on detachment to the Met.
Thus, right at the start of the process that led to Jean Charles' death, The 'intelligence' was, already, flawed and incomplete to a pathological degree. To whit:
"Hey, a slightly tinted chap has just left the building. I got caught short and didn't get a good look at him but he's got that suicide bomber kind of aura about him. Let him get on the bus, wearing that suspicious-looking light denim jacket, and then, when he gets to the tube, blow his head off just to be on the safe side".I don't think so.
iii) Jean-Charles ran away from the police when 'challenged.'
He had, in their words, 'refused to obey police instructions' and 'vaulted' over the ticket barrier to escape. This description of events also proved to be wildly inaccurate. (A lie) In fact, CCTV footage shows Jean-Charles walking at normal pace into the station, picking up a copy of a free newspaper and using his card to pass through the barriers before descending the escalator to the platform and running to a stationary train, which he boarded and sat down casually within.
Once again, late in the day, after allowing the impression to take root in the public's consciousness, the police insisted that they had never said that Jean-Charles had vaulted the barrier whilst trying to escape from police officers. However, someone within the Met also believed that this is what happened because the pathologist was informed thus:
"He was followed into Stockwell Tube station where he vaulted over the ticket barrier. He ran downstairs and onto a Tube train where it appears that he stumbled. The officers then immobilised him and a number of shots were fired."Sir Ian Blair said this after the shooting:
"As I understand the situation the man was challenged and refused to obey police instructions."Leaked documents inform us that after Jean-Charles sat down, armed officers were 'provided with positive identification.' Following shouts including the word 'police,' Jean-Charles got up and advanced towards the CO19 officers, a surveillance officer said. He added:
"I grabbed the male in the denim jacket by wrapping both my arms around his torso, pinning his arms to his side. I then pushed him back on to the seat where he had been previously sitting... I then heard a gun shot very close to my left ear and was dragged away on to the floor of the carriage."According to this version of events, at no point had Jean-Charles 'refused to obey police instructions,' before he was shot, as Ian Blair had said.
Of course, we can't be sure how accurate the information provided by the surveillance officer is. What you can be reasonably certain of is this: this man will not exaggerate the murderous role of the shootist. He will, if anything, sugar-coat the behaviour of the brother officer who killed an innocent man.
Jean-Charles was shot seven times in the head and once in the shoulder, according to the post-mortem examination. Three other bullets missed their target. Three bullets missed their target. Such information bespeaks an out-of-control automaton to me.
"Whatever else they were doing, they clearly thought they were faced with a suicide bomber and they were running towards him. That is cold courage of an extraordinary sort."Courage? What kind of courage does it take for a bunch of bloodthirsty wildboys, all armed to the teeth and raring to go, to shoot dead an unarmed innocent, reading a newspaper, who had no idea that a murderously terminal assault was about to be launched against him? It takes none at all.
One more thing, after two bullets in the nut at a distance of six long inches, you're dead. Stone cold. You are dead, dead, dead.
What do you think the cowboy who fired eleven bullets at Jean-Charles, missing the target three times from the closest of close range, was doing after the first couple of shots? Either he was in the midst of stark, raving bonker moment or something, much, much worse.
He was enjoying himself.
And do you know what I think Sir Ian and St. Tony were doing when they sent forth such a fun-loving psychopath to wreak havoc upon the London commuter? Sending the rest of us a message.
On 25 July 2005, security sources stated that Jean-Charles had been in the UK on an out-of-date student visa. I reckon they did this to reassure the rest of us that the naughty Brazilian deserved to die.
When Jean Charles looked up from his paper that day, I wonder if he thought that the men with murder in their eyes were there to send him home for overstaying his welcome. I hope he didn't have time to figure out that the global village's most fervent cheer-leader, the World Order wagtail in Downing Street who enticed him here in the first place, would let loose a head-hunting terminator with instructions to send him home in a box.
It took him three days to figure out that it wouldn't look too good if he was seen to be sunning it large in faraway climes, when an innocent man had just been shot dead by the Met.
At this time our glorious leader chipped in with a helpful comment of his own.
"I personally think it's sensible for people to take the holiday they should have."
On that day, Tony, Cherie and the chicks arrived in Barbados for some good, clean Christian fun in the sea, sand, sun and surf with Sir Cliff Richard at his well-fortified Caribbean hideaway.
In an interview on Radio 4's Talking Politics show, Sir Ian Blair put it like this:
"Tragic as the death of Mr. Menezes is... it is one death out of 57."So that's alright, then.
Which one of the following would you buy a used car from? Tony Blair? Ian Blair? Charles Clarke? Jean-Charles de Menezez?
P.S. In September 2004, an Israeli security firm was chosen to provide security for London's Underground train network. Metronet Rail selected VERINT Systems 'to enhance security of the London Underground.'
To the relief of some, the company 'lost' the CCTV footage of a plain clothes Metropolitan Police officer executing Jean-Charles de Menezez.
On 23 July 2005, three car bombs exploded in the Egyptian tourist town of Sharm Al Sheikh.
At least 88 people were killed in the Red Sea resort and around 120 more injured. 10 Britons and a British Asian were killed.
These were: 17-year-old Matthew Fulham, from Hinckley, Leicestershire, died in the Ghazala Gardens Hotel blast one day before his 18th birthday. His family had thought he was safe but later discovered he had returned to the hotel shortly before the explosions.
Hannah Lloyd, 16, from Evesham, Worcestershire, was airlifted to Cairo, then to the UK, but died in hospital on the 8th of August. Her sister Georgina, 14, suffered serious leg injuries. They, too, had been staying at the Ghazala Gardens Hotel with their mother.
Valerie Bracci, 70, of Canvey Island, Essex, and her daughter Lesley Ayers, 50, of Basildon, were also killed at the Ghazala Gardens Hotel.
Jeremy Lakin, 28, from Nottingham, and Annalie Vickers, 31, from Eastbourne, were staying at the Hyatt Regency Hotel. They were killed on the last evening of their diving holiday.
Keri Davies, 29, from Fareham, Hampshire, and his American girlfriend Kristina Miller, 26, were taking a holiday before starting a new life together in Australia.
Alan Bentley, from Grantham, Lincolnshire, his wife, Mandy, from Pontypridd, south Wales, and Mandy's 16-year-old son, David Sawyer, were taking their first family holiday for five years as a last-minute 16th birthday treat for David. His friend, Charith Jayawardene, 17, was also killed.
Mandy's brother, Peter Langton, from Rhondda, said:
"It was tragic way to die. She's a victim of war."Yes she was, Peter. She was just one more victim of Tony Blair's latest war.
On 26 July 2005, Tony Blair said this:
"Let us expose the obscenity of these people saying it is concern for Iraq that drives them to terrorism… We are not going to deal with this problem, with the roots as deep as they are, until we confront these people at every single level - and not just their methods but their ideas…Do you know what I think the problem is? A pathologically zealous, war-mongering liar who fervently believes that cosying-up to Israel and America will see his great name glorified forever and ever. Amen.
And I'll tell you something else. There is no justification for suicide bombing whether in Palestine, Iraq, in London, in Egypt, in Turkey, anywhere. In the United States of America, there is no justification for it. Period…
11 September for me was a wake up call. Do you know what I think the problem is? That a lot of the world woke up for a short time and then turned over and went back to sleep again".
The problem, ladies and gentlemen, is a ghastly, God-filled psychopath who sees the truth and those that tell it as dangerous enemies who must be slain before they infect the dumb herd with wisdom.
Time after time after time, when young, British Muslims were interviewed in the wake of 7/7, they stated that Iraq was the reason that Britain had been attacked. Almost all of the talking heads that appeared in the media over the following weeks agreed with this. The only people who didn't agree were the Prime Minister, those politicians who voted, against the express wishes of the British people, to go to war with Iraq in March, 2003, and a media darling or two.
When the dead are counted at the end of World War III, of one thing you can be certain, when Anthony Charles Linton Blair is hauled before the courts, he will still be insisting that none of it had anything to do with him.
On 27 July 2005, The Times reported thus:
"The ethnic mix of the eight London bombers, ranging from young Somalis to Yorkshire-born sons of Pakistani parents and an Anglo-Jamaican convert, has surprised investigators."It doesn't surprise me in the slightest.
On 29 July 2005, The Daily Record reported thus:
"Tony Blair's claim that the London bombers weren't motivated by Iraq was undermined by his own spies yesterday. MI5 officially declared the war was the 'dominant issue' for Islamic extremists in Britain.On 29 July 2005, Patrick Basham, a senior fellow in the Center for Representative Government at the Cato Institute, reported thus at The American Spectator Online:
Immediately after the July 7 attacks, which killed 56, Blair denied they were a response to political injustice in Iraq. Instead, he insisted they were driven by a perversion of Islam. Foreign Secretary Jack Straw also rejected a link between the bombings and Iraq.
But MI5's website carries a statement by intelligence analysts saying the war was one of the main factors that drove Islamic extremists to terrorism. It reads: 'Though the terrorists have a range of aspirations and causes, Iraq is a dominant issue for a range of extremist groups and individuals in the UK and Europe.
The threat comes from a diverse range of sources, including al-Qaeda and associated networks and those who share al-Qaeda's ideology but don't have direct contact with them. A threat could manifest itself from a lone individual or group rather than a larger network.'
The statement builds on a leaked security services report prepared weeks before the first bombings. It said there was no group with the intent or ability to attack Britain. But it warned Iraq was a focus for a range of terrorist-related activities.
Now Blair has softened his line. He said while extremists might try to exploit the Iraq issue, there could beno excuse for suicide attacks. He also denied that he tried to claim the London bombings had 'nothing to do with Iraq."
"Tony Blair must wish he were George Bush. While both administrations wage war on terrorism, the terrorist weed choking London is much harder to stamp out because it's growing in British soil.On 30 July 2005, 32-year-old father-of-two,
Our fastest-growing religion is Islam but here the numbers aren't a security concern, as a commitment to Islam hasn't overwhelmed a strong attachment to America itself. Score another victory for the cultural melting pot. By contrast, the U.K. embraced government-subsidized multiculturalism and is paying a very dear price, indeed.
British asylum laws provide a safe haven to those persecuted for their beliefs elsewhere. For London, the tangible downside of serving as a political oasis is that many radical Islamic clerics took refuge in the city's mosques, hence 'Londonistan.' Funded by the British welfare state, these clerics preach violent jihadism to a stratum of young, second-generation British Muslim men alienated both from mainstream society and the British Muslim establishment.
Today, Blair is caught between a fundamentalist rock and a fascist hard place. How does he act without provoking the Muslim fanatics or the white racists, or both?
Seven in ten Britons want their government to exclude or deport from the U.K. those foreign Muslims who incite hatred, according to an ICM poll for the Guardian newspaper. Blair is keen to comply with public opinion, but he's hamstrung by the U.K.'s embrace of supranational political bodies. Judges have interpreted the U.N. Convention on Refugees in such a way as to deny the British government the right to refuse admission to, or to revoke refugee status from, those who conspire against their host country.
Nor will Blair gain redress through the E.U. The European Convention on Human Rights, incorporated into British law seven years ago, confers on people the right not to be returned to countries where they may face persecution. Therefore, Blair finds himself in the ridiculous position of pleading with an assortment of authoritarian regimes to guarantee the safety of those dangerous people that the U.K. seeks to deport.
The radical clerics are highly effective proselytizers for their cause. Before the first London bombings, British intelligence services estimated that one percent of Britain's 1.6 million Muslims either support or are involved in terrorism. Can there really be 16,000 potential Muslim terrorists in the U.K.? No, but a significant number are prepared to act against their own country. The U.K. government says 3,000 British Muslims have returned home from al Qaeda training camps.
A new survey of British Muslims for London's Daily Telegraph newspaper finds that six percent -- 100,000 people -- believe the London bombings were fully justified. One in four British Muslims, while not condoning the London attacks, sympathize with the feelings and motives of those who carried them out. Furthermore, nearly one in five British Muslims feels little or no loyalty at all to the U.K., and a third of British Muslims believe that Western society is decadent and immoral and that Muslims should seek to bring it to an end.
This segment of a mainly peaceful and productive immigrant population hasn't escaped the attention of those political actors whose traditional antipathy toward blacks is being transferred to the largely unassimilated Muslim community. The far-right British National Party is trying to exploit the home-grown terrorist threat by calling for immigration controls and distributing literature using a photograph of the bombed London bus with the caption, 'Maybe it's time to start listening to the BNP.'
Today's xenophobic right is more than a nuisance because it's fishing in an increasingly well-stocked pond of grievances. Before 7/7 working-class whites living in heavily Muslim parts of London, and in cities such as Bradford, Leeds, and Luton, voiced the complaint that, on their streets at least, one sees far more burqas than Bobbies. A pervasive cultural apartheid encourages a majority of surveyed whites to believe Muslims are more loyal to fellow Muslims outside of the U.K. than to their fellow Britons.
Some extreme right-wing groups have even joined forces with well-organized soccer hooligans in a coordinated campaign to exact physical revenge upon the Muslim community. British police have recorded over 1,200 suspected anti-Muslim incidents in the past three weeks. Last Friday, for example, a Muslim-owned store in a Leeds suburb was set ablaze and the police evacuated one of London's largest mosques following a bomb threat.
Since July 7, the Blair government's response has been surprisingly measured. Yet, both the police and Blair's conservative opponents, firmly backed by public opinion, tug in the direction of sacrificing additional freedoms for the illusion of certain security.
Among Londoners, fear and frustration are starting to replace stoicism as the most common responses to their new reality. Callers to British talk radio reflect a growing populist sentiment that's both anti-civil liberties and anti-immigrant. If, in the coming days, Blair's actions appear insufficient against domestic terror, his countrymen's legendary stiff upper lip may yet turn into an ugly, authoritarian-minded scowl."
Andrew 'Olly' Holloway, a former soldier with the Welsh Fusiliers, and 48-year-old Ken Hull, a former policeman with the Royal Ulster Constabulary, were working for the Control Risks Group when they were killed by a roadside bomb in Basra.
"The security situation is dangerous. The threat to British nationals remains high."Caroline Hawley, a BBC correspondent in Baghdad, said a second explosion, five minutes after the first, seriously injured two Iraqi boys. They were part of a crowd that had gathered around the scene of the blast.
"Sheikh Osama bin Laden offered to the British public and the UK people at large an offer of cease-fire. He said if they rolled up against the Government, brought the troops home, he promised not to attack them. But unfortunately, the stiff upper British lip became hard-headed and we saw what took place on 7th July…
I’m sure if you asked those who passed away on 7th July, should we negotiate with Osama bin Laden, they would say yes, to bring their lives back, to save themselves from the burning inferno underground… We don’t live in peace with you any more, which means the covenant of security no longer exists. That’s why those four bombers attacked London – they believed that there was no covenant of security, and for them their belief was that it was allowed to attack the UK…
For them, the banner has been risen for jihad inside the UK."Abu Izzadeen also warned the viewers that there were many other 'Muslim cells,' as he called them, in this country. He told Newsnight that the London bombings would make people 'wake up and smell the coffee'."
"We don't live in peace with you any more, which means the covenant of security no longer exists."On 4 August 2005, the BBC reported thus:
"Osama Bin Laden's lieutenant Ayman al-Zawahri has warned London will face more attacks because of Tony Blair's foreign policy decisions. His comments were made in a videotape which was broadcast on Arab satellite channel al-Jazeera. The al-Qaeda deputy said: 'Blair has brought to you destruction in central London, and he will bring more of that, God willing.'
Mr Blair has denied his policies caused the 7 July bombs, which killed 56…
Al-Zawahri last appeared in a video in June, saying Muslims should not rely on peaceful protests but should also use violence."
"As for the British, I tell them that Blair has brought you destruction in central London, and God willing, will bring more destruction.On 6 August 2005, whilst Tony Blair was holidaying with Sir Cliff Richard at his home in Barbados, one of fiercest, most respected and most articulate critics died suddenly.
O nations of the crusade alliance, we proposed that you at least stop your aggression against the Muslims. The lion of Islam, mujaheed sheikh Osama Bin Laden, may God preserve him, offered you a truce to leave the house of Islam. Has sheikh Osama Bin Laden not informed you that you will not dream of security until we live it in reality in Palestine and before all infidel armies leave the land of Muhammad, may peace be upon him?
You, however, shed rivers of blood in our land so we exploded volcanoes of anger in your land. Our message to you is crystal clear: Your salvation will only come in your withdrawal from our land, in stopping the robbing of our oil and resources, and in stopping your support for the corrupt and corrupting leaders.
What you have you seen, O Americans, in New York and Washington and the losses you are having in Afghanistan and Iraq, in spite of all the media blackout, are only the losses of the initial clashes. If you continue the same policy of aggression against Muslims, God willing, you will see horror that will make you forget what you saw in Vietnam.
The truth which Bush, Rice and Rumsfeld hide from you is that the only way out from Iraq is immediate withdrawal, and any delay in this decision will only mean more deaths and more losses. If you don't leave today, then you shall inevitably leave tomorrow but after scores of thousands of fatalities and double that number of disabled and wounded people. They are repeating with regard to Iraq the same claims and lies they uttered about Vietnam.
Did they not tell you that they would train the Vietnamese people so that they would run their own affairs themselves, and that they were defending freedom in Vietnam?"
Blair did not think it appropriate to cut short his holiday in order to attend the funeral of his former Foreign Secretary.
"I believe the Prime Minister's snub to Robin's family, to millions of New Labour voters, demonstrates a petty vindictiveness and a moral failure, opting to continue snorkelling instead of doing his duty."McCririck's comments prompted an angry denunciation of his intervention from all manner of Tony Croney and New Labour apparachik. However, as the TV personality said what he said, his views were being broadcast from a loudspeaker to the many whowho had gathered outside the cathedral.
His contemptuous opinion of the prime Minister's non-attendance prompted a spontaneous round applause from these.
"The radical Islamic preacher Omar Bakri Mohammed has said he will return to Britain - unless the government says it does not want him back. The Syrian-born cleric left London for Lebanon on Saturday, amid speculation he was to be investigated for treason… The self-styled sheikh, who ran the radical al-Muhajiroun group from Tottenham in north London until it was disbanded last year, is famous for praising the 9/11 hijackers as the 'magnificent 19'.And if 'betraying one's country' meant betraying the people of that country as opposed to betraying 'the Crown' or the 'government,' I reckon most of the MPs and peers who have frequented the bars and corridors of Westminster over the last 100 years would have been sentenced to death prior to 1998. When the greatest traitor of them all changed the law.
Recently he said he would not report a potential bomber to the police, claiming Islam 'forbids' him. He said he would stop any potential attack himself, with the help of his 'Muslim brothers'.
John Prescott said: 'At the moment he has the right to come in and out. That is the circumstances at present and we have to change situations in this country by law'…
Bakri Mohammed is thought to have dual Syrian and Lebanese nationality, but has indefinite leave to remain in the UK after gaining political asylum in the 1980s…
Labour MP Andrew Dismore said Bakri Mohammed had been a 'malign influence' in Britain for 20 years… He said: 'I believe he could have been prosecuted for inciting race hatred a long time ago... Why he wasn't is a matter for the Crown Prosecution Service'…
Lib Dem peer Lord Carlile QC, independent reviewer of anti-terror laws, said he did not think it would be appropriate to bring treason charges.
Betraying one's country has long been regarded as one of the most serious of offences. The death penalty for the offence was abolished only in 1998 and it now carries a penalty of life imprisonment."
Why do you think he changed it? Just in case, perhaps?
On 2 August a videotape of Mohammed Sidique Khan, one of the 7/7 bombers, was seen on Al-Jazzera television. In it, he said:
"Our words are dead until we give them life with our blood. I and thousands like me have forsaken everything for what we believe… Until we feel security, you will be our targets. Until you stop the bombing, gassing, imprisonment and torture of my people we will not stop this fight. We are at war and I am a soldier. Now you too will taste the reality of this situation."In a separate recording, Osama Bin Laden's second-in-commmand, Ayman al-Zawahri, claimed responsibility for the 7/7 attacks, said they were a 'slap' to the policies of Tony Blair and added:
"I talk to you today about the blessed London battle which came as a slap to the face of the tyrannical, crusader British arrogance. It's a sip from the glass that the Muslims have been drinking from. This blessed battle has transferred - like its glorious predecessors in New York, Washington, and Madrid - the battle to the enemies' land".Al-Zawahri also said that the 'lands and interests of the countries which took part in the aggression against Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan' would be targeted.
On 2 September 2005, Inayat Bunglawala, the media secretary of the Muslim Council of Great Britain, said this:
"The hatred is due to many of our policies in the Middle East. These policies have left an huge opening for radical Muslims operating in Islamic communities across the country. It's about time Blair realised that the war was a terrible misjudgement. Many of our other foreign policies are seen by Muslims as being detrimental to Islamic countries in the Middle East…Bunglawala referred to the Mohammed Sidique Khan videotape thus:
Martyrdom has a key role in our religion… Martyrdom follows a defence of their homeland and honour…The war in Iraq was wrong and young Muslims felt that - look at how many took to the streets to march against it… its up to Blair to come out and say he was wrong and that he is willing to listen to what they have to say."
"This tape does serve to confirm that the war in Iraq and our policies in the Middle East have indeed led to a radicalisation amongst a section of Muslim youth."On 5 September 2005, 20-year-old Fusilier Donal Anthony Meade, from Plumstead in south-east London, and 22-year-old Fusilier Stephen Robert Manning, from Erith in Kent, died as a result of wounds sustained during a patrol near Az Zubayr, Basrah province, Iraq.
On 11 September 2005, an armoured SNATCH landrover was attacked in Basrah and 34-year-old Major Matthew Bacon was killed.
Three other British soldiers were seriously injured.
"The videotape of the suicide bomber Mohammad Sidique Khan has switched the focus of the London bombings away from the establishment view of brainwashed, murderous individuals and highlighted a starker political reality. While there can be no justification for horrific killings of this kind, they need to be understood against the ferment of the last decade radicalising Muslim youth of Pakistani origin living in Europe.
During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, the US funded large numbers of jihadists through Pakistan's secret intelligence service, the ISI. Later the US wanted to raise another jihadi corps, again using proxies, to help Bosnian Muslims fight to weaken the Serb government's hold on Yugoslavia. Those they turned to included Pakistanis in Britain.
According to a recent report by the Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation, a contingent was also sent by the Pakistani government, then led by Benazir Bhutto, at the request of the Clinton administration. This contingent was formed from the Harkat-ul- Ansar (HUA) terrorist group and trained by the ISI. The report estimates that about 200 Pakistani Muslims living in the UK went to Pakistan, trained in HUA camps and joined the HUA's contingent in Bosnia. Most significantly, this was 'with the full knowledge and complicity of the British and American intelligence agencies'.
As the 2002 Dutch government report on Bosnia makes clear, the US provided a green light to groups on the state department list of terrorist organisations, including the Lebanese-based Hizbullah, to operate in Bosnia - an episode that calls into question the credibility of the subsequent 'war on terror'.
For nearly a decade the US helped Islamist insurgents linked to Chechnya, Iran and Saudi Arabia destabilise the former Yugoslavia. The insurgents were also allowed to move further east to Kosovo. By the end of the fighting in Bosnia there were tens of thousands of Islamist insurgents in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo; many then moved west to Austria, Germany and Switzerland.
Less well known is evidence of the British government's relationship with a wider Islamist terrorist network. During an interview on Fox TV this summer, the former US federal prosecutor John Loftus reported that British intelligence had used the al-Muhajiroun group in London to recruit Islamist militants with British passports for the war against the Serbs in Kosovo.
Since July Scotland Yard has been interested in an alleged member of al-Muhajiroun, Haroon Rashid Aswat, who some sources have suggested could have been behind the London bombings.
According to Loftus, Aswat was detained in Pakistan after leaving Britain, but was released after 24 hours. He was subsequently returned to Britain from Zambia, but has been detained solely for extradition to the US, not for questioning about the London bombings. Loftus claimed that Aswat is a British-backed double agent, pursued by the police but protected by MI6.
One British Muslim of Pakistani origin radicalised by the civil war in Yugoslavia was LSE-educated Omar Saeed Sheikh. He is now in jail in Pakistan under sentence of death for the killing of the US journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002 - although many (including Pearl's widow and the US authorities) doubt that he committed the murder. However, reports from Pakistan suggest that Sheikh continues to be active from jail, keeping in touch with friends and followers in Britain.
Sheikh was recruited as a student by Jaish-e-Muhammad (Army of Muhammad), which operates a network in Britain. It has actively recruited Britons from universities and colleges since the early 1990s, and has boasted of its numerous British Muslim volunteers. Investigations in Pakistan have suggested that on his visits there Shehzad Tanweer, one of the London suicide bombers, contacted members of two outlawed local groups and trained at two camps in Karachi and near Lahore. Indeed the network of groups now being uncovered in Pakistan may point to senior al-Qaida operatives having played a part in selecting members of the bombers' cell.
The Observer Research Foundation has argued that there are even 'grounds to suspect that the [London] blasts were orchestrated by Omar Sheikh from his jail in Pakistan'. Why then is Omar Sheikh not being dealt with when he is already under sentence of death? Astonishingly his appeal to a higher court against the sentence was adjourned in July for the 32nd time and has since been adjourned indefinitely.
This is all the more remarkable when this is the same Omar Sheikh who, at the behest of General Mahmood Ahmed, head of the ISI, wired $100,000 to Mohammed Atta, the leading 9/11 hijacker, before the New York attacks, as confirmed by Dennis Lormel, director of FBI's financial crimes unit.
Yet neither Ahmed nor Omar appears to have been sought for questioning by the US about 9/11. Indeed, the official 9/11 Commission Report of July 2004 sought to downplay the role of Pakistan with the comment: 'To date, the US government has not been able to determine the origin of the money used for the 9/11 attacks. Ultimately the question is of little practical significance' a statement of breathtaking disingenuousness.
All this highlights the resistance to getting at the truth about the 9/11 attacks and to an effective crackdown on the forces fomenting terrorist bombings in the west, including Britain. The extraordinary US forbearance towards Omar Sheikh, its restraint towards the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb, Dr AQ Khan, selling nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea, the huge US military assistance to Pakistan and the US decision last year to designate Pakistan as a major non-Nato ally in south Asia all betoken a deeper strategic set of goals as the real priority in its relationship with Pakistan. These might be surmised as Pakistan providing sizeable military contingents for Iraq to replace US troops, or Pakistani troops replacing Nato forces in Afghanistan.
Or it could involve the use of Pakistani military bases for US intervention in Iran, or strengthening Pakistan as a base in relation to India and China. Whether the hunt for those behind the London bombers can prevail against these powerful political forces remains to be seen. Indeed it may depend on whether Scotland Yard, in its attempts to uncover the truth, can prevail over MI6, which is trying to cover its tracks and in practice has every opportunity to operate beyond the law under the cover of national security."
"Tony Blair, perhaps I shouldn't repeat this conversation, told me yesterday that he was in Delhi last week. And he turned on the BBC world service to see what was happening in New Orleans… And he said it was just full of hate of America and gloating about our troubles. And that was his government. Well, his government-owned thing".The 'Global Initiative' forum was organised and hosted by Tony B Liar's best pal, Bill Clinton.
On 19 September 2005, two undercover SAS men, dressed in Arab clothing, were arrested by Iraqi police in Basra.
Before they were apprehended they shot dead one policeman and wounded another. On 20 September 2005, the BBC reported thus:
"The Iraqi government has launched an inquiry into the events that led the British Army to stage a dramatic rescue of two UK soldiers detained by police.At the Global Research website, Michel Chossudovsky contradicted the BBC report and said:
Both men were members of the SAS elite special forces… The soldiers were arrested by police and then handed over to a militia group, the British Army says. Iraq's interior ministry ordered the police force in Basra to release the soldiers but that order was ignored.
Defence Secretary John Reid told reporters that a delegation of six British military personnel, including a legal officer, had been sent to the police station to ease the release of the men. Mr Reid said surveillance had established the men were being moved to another location, while at the same time an angry crowd posed an obstacle to the departure of the six-strong team.
The British commander on the ground, Brigadier John Lorimer, ordered British forces to move into the police station to help the team. Almost simultaneously, a separate operation was staged to rescue the men from the place where they had been moved to.
It is understood force was also used in this operation, although there were no casualties as the Shia militia holding the British soldiers fled.
The episode saw a wall flattened at the police station by a British armoured personnel carrier, but Mr Reid said the coalition was still going 'in the right direction' in terms of its overall strategy in Iraq and said this incident was merely 'local'."
"British forces used up to 10 tanks' supported by helicopters 'to smash through the walls of the jail and free the two British servicemen…Did you get that? According to Al-Shaykh, our SAS men, who were you'll remember, dressed as Arabs, were driving 'a booby-trapped car laden with ammunition,' which 'was meant to explode in the centre of the city of Basra in the popular market.'
Several media reports and eyewitness accounts suggested that the SAS operatives were disguised as Al Qaeda 'terrorists' and were planning to set off the bombs in Basra's central square during a a major religious event…
In the British raid on the prison, 7 Iraqis were killed and 43 were injured…
The attack on the 19th of September to 'rescue' the two SAS men was launched under the command of Brig John Lorimer. In a statement, Lorimer said that the purpose of the raid was to ensure the safety of the two SAS men…
Brig Lorimer's account was challenged by the US appointed interim government. Iraqi interior minister Baqir Solagh Jabr, in an interview with the BBC, denied that the Iraqi police had handed over the SAS men to the local militias, as Brigadier Lorimer had stated... 'That is not right, totally not right,' he said.
He accused Brigadier Lorimer of reacting to 'rumour' when he ordered his men to storm the police station and said that the building where the SAS men had been found was actually part of the police station.
In a subsequent declaration, Lorimer said that the police in Basra were involved in terrorism, and were being supported by Iran This alleged link to Iran is now denied by British Defense officials…
Nobody in Basra believes that the two arrested SAS men were 'working undercover against militants linked to Iran".The coverage on Al-Jazeera TV was very different to that which the British and American people were treated to.
For example, on the day that these events took place and before the SAS men had been 'rescued,' Al-Jazeera featured an interview with one Fattah al-Shaykh. Al-Shaykh said this: 'If you really want to look for truth, then we should resort to the Iraqi justice away from the British provocations against the sons of Basra, particularly what happened today when the sons of Basra caught two non-Iraqis, who seem to be Britons and were in a car of the Cressida type. It was a booby-trapped car laden with ammunition and was meant to explode in the centre of the city of Basra in the popular market.
However, the sons of the city of Basra arrested them. They then fired at the people there and killed some of them. The two arrested persons are now at the Intelligence Department in Basra, and they were held by the National Guard force, but the British occupation forces are still surrounding this department in an attempt to absolve them of the crime'."
Now, we all know that people say anything in the middle of a war and an Iraqi chap is likely to say any old thing. However, there is something you ought to know about Fattah al-Shaykh. He is a member of the Iraqi National Assembly, a political deputy for Basra, no less. In other words, not only is he not a tiddlywink, he's one of those Iraqis that the Yanks and the Brits thought safe enough to stand for parliament in the Iraqi elections.
In an article titled: Who’s Blowing Up Iraq? Mike Whitney quoted Al-Shaykh thus:
"It seems that the American forces are trying to escalate the situation in order to make the Iraqi people suffer…. There is a huge campaign for the agents of the foreign occupation to enter and plant hatred between the sons of the Iraqi people, and spread rumors in order to scare the one from the other. The occupiers are trying to start religious incitement and if it does not happen, then they will try to start an internal Shiite incitement."Whitney, who is also a Global Research reporter, continued:
"Al-Sheikh’s feelings are shared by a great many Iraqis. They can see that everything the US has done, from the forming a government made up predominantly of Shi’ites and Kurds, to creating a constitution that allows the breaking up to the country (federalism), to using the Peshmerga and Badr militia in their attacks on Sunni cities, to building an Interior Ministry entirely comprised of Shi’ites, suggests that the Pentagon’s strategy is to fuel the sectarian divisions that will lead to civil war."A Syrian TV reporter in Baghdad, Ziyad al-Munajjid, echoed these sentiments thus:
"This incident gave answers to questions and suspicions that were lacking evidence about the participation of the occupation in some armed operations in Iraq. Many analysts and observers here had suspicions that the occupation was involved in some armed operations against civilians and places of worship and in the killing of scientists. But those were only suspicions that lacked proof. The proof came today through the arrest of the two British soldiers while they were planting explosives in one of the Basra streets. This proves, according to observers, that the occupation is not far from many operations that seek to sow sedition and maintain disorder, as this would give the occupation the justification to stay in Iraq for a longer period."Mike Whitney's 20 September article concentrated on the leading Iraqi 'insurgent,' Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. This is what he had to say about him:
"In more than two years since the United States initiated hostilities against Iraq, there has never been a positive identification of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Never. That doesn’t mean that he doesn’t exist; it simply suggests that prudent people will challenge the official version until his whereabouts and significance in the conflict can be verified.And, ladies and gentlemen, it's not just independent websites that are saying such things. In 20 September 2005, Washington Post article written by Ellen Knickmeyer, titled: British Smash into Iraqi Jail to free 2 detained Soldiers, she said:
At present, much of the rationale for maintaining the occupation depends on this elusive and, perhaps, illusory figure. It’s odd how Al-Zarqawi appears at the precise coordinates of America’s bombing-raids, and then, miraculously vanishes unscathed from the scene of the wreckage. This would be a remarkable feat for anyone, but especially for someone who only has one leg. Al-Zarqawi may simply be a fantasy dreamed up by Pentagon planners to put a threatening face on the Iraqi resistance.
The Defense Dept has been aggressive in its effort to shape information in a way that serves the overall objectives of the occupation. The primary aim of the Pentagon’s 'Strategic Information' program is to distort the truth in a way that controls the storyline created by the media. Al-Zarqawi fits perfectly within this paradigm of intentional deception. The manipulation of information factors heavily in the steady increase of Iraqi casualties, too…
Last week, over 200 civilians were killed in seemingly random acts of violence purportedly caused by al-Zarqawi. But, were they? Were these massive attacks the work of al-Zarqawi as the western media reports or some other 'more shadowy' force?…
Rumsfeld has cast the Jordanian as the agent-provocateur; the driving force behind religious partition and antagonism. But, al-Zarqawi has nothing to gain by killing innocent civilians, and everything to lose. If he does actually operate in Iraq, he needs logistical supporting all his movements; including help with safe-houses, assistants, and the assurance of invisibility in the community. These would disappear instantly if he recklessly killed and maimed innocent women and children.
Last week the Imam of Baghdad’s al-Kazimeya mosque, Jawad al-Kalesi said, that 'al-Zarqawi is dead but Washington continues to use him as a bogeyman to justify a prolonged military occupation….He’s simply an invention by the occupiers to divide the people.' Al-Kalesi added that al-Zarqawi was killed in the beginning of the war in the Kurdish north and that 'his family in Jordan even held a ceremony after his death.'
Most Iraqis probably agree with al-Kalesi, but that hasn’t deterred the Pentagon from continuing with the charade. This is understandable given that al-Zarqawi is the last tattered justification for the initial invasion.
It’s doubtful that the Pentagon will ditch their final threadbare apology for the war. But the reality is vastly different from the spin coming from the military. In fact, foreign fighters play a very small role in Iraq with or without al-Zarqawi. As the Center for Strategic and International Studies revealed this week in their report: 'Analysts and government officials in the US and Iraq overstated the size of the foreign element in the Iraqi insurgency… Iraqi fighters made up less than 10% of the armed groups’ ranks, perhaps, even half of that.'
The report poignantly notes that most of the foreign fighters were not previously militants at all, but were motivated by, 'revulsion at the idea of an Arab land being occupied by a non-Arab country.'
The report concludes that the invasion of Iraq has added thousands of 'fresh recruits to Osama bin Laden’s network;' a fact that is no longer in dispute among those who have studied the data on the topic.The al-Zarqawi phantasm is a particularly weak-link in the Pentagon’s muddled narrative. The facts neither support the allegations of his participation nor prove that foreigners are a major contributor to the ongoing violence.
Instead, the information points to a Defense establishment that cannot be trusted in anything it says and that may be directly involved in the terrorist-bombings that have killed countless thousands of Iraqi civilians. Regrettably, that is prospect that can’t be ignored. After all, no one else benefits from the slaughter."
"The Iraqi security officials on Monday variously accused the two Britons they detained of shooting at Iraqi forces or trying to plant explosives."In a postcript to his original article, Whitney poses these questions:
"Why were the British so afraid to go through the normal channels to get their men released? Could it be that the two commandos were 'trying to plant explosives?… Does this solve the al-Zarqawi mystery? Are the bombs that are killing so many Iraqi civilians are being planted by British and American Intelligence?"In a 15 October follow-up to Michel Chossudovsky's original report he told us this:
"The matter of what the SAS operatives were doing was hushed up. No investiigation was carried out. This and other incidents suggest that the bomb attacks on civlians including suicide attacks are in fact covert intelligence operations to trigger divisions within Iraqi society, while at the same time weakening the resistance movement.There is, however, a growing awareness among the Iraqi populaiton that the occupation forces rather than Al Qaeda are behind the attacks on civilians."
"He was Officer Commanding 61 Section, Special Investigation Branch, Royal Military Police. He had been responsible for the investigation of all in-theatre serious incidents, plus investigations conducted by the General Police Duties element of the Theatre Investigation Group."They also said that the 'circumstances' surrounding his death 'were not regarded as suspicious.'
Most mainstream media reporting suggested that Ken had committed suicide. Most internet reports suggested that he was found hanged, although at least one article in the British press stated that he had been found dead in his bed. MOD reports have implied that he might have been suffering from 'stress.' In the words of one defense analyst quoted by the BBC:
"Capt Masters was part of quite a small outfit and his job would have been quite stressful. It's quite an onerous job... I think, there is quite a lot of stress involved".However, The Daily Mail, for one, dismissed the suicide theory thus:
"It is said to be unlikely that the pressures of work would have led him to commit suicide".The Independent also said:
"Capt Masters was not receiving any medical or psychological treatment. Friends and colleagues of Captain Masters, who was married with two children, said that his death had come as a 'total surprise'… A military source said: 'This has come as shock to us. Ken was not suffering from depression or anything that indicated that he would take his own life'."The Mirror added:
"The married father-of-two is not believed to have been suffering from depression, mental illness or physical injury and had not been due to appear as a witness in any cases relating to mistreatment… A military source said: 'This has come as a total surprise to Ken's forces colleagues'."Other senior military sources in Basra have been quoted thus:
"It is hard to believe he found it hard to cope with work."
"For someone that respected within the forces to apparently commit suicide is a big blow to morale."In a 17 October Global Research article, Michel Chossudovsky pointed up the connection between the two SAS men and Ken Masters and asked:
"Was pressure put to bear on Captain Masters by the Ministry of Defense? According to Michael Keefer, the British Army led by Brig Lorimer was determined 'to remove these men from any danger of interrogation by their own supposed allies'."Chossudovsky continues:
"A subsequent withdrawal of any cooperation on the part of the regional government, tends, if anything, to support the view that this episode involved something much darker and more serious than a mere flare-up of bad tempers at a check-point…On 12 October 2005, General Jackson was quoted thus in The Times:
Captain Ken Masters had a mandate to cooperate in his investigations, with the civilian Iraqi authorities. As part of his mandate he was to investigate 'into allegations that British soldiers killed or mistreated Iraqi civilians'…
The press reports and official statements suggest that the assault on the prison was authorized by the Ministry of Defense.
General Sir Michael Jackson, Chief of the General Staff was in Basra a few days prior to Captain Masters untimely death to deal explicitly with the matter. While in Basra, he no doubt also had meetings with both Brig Lorimer and Captain Masters."
"Let me make it clear that it was important to retrieve those two soldiers."So that's what Jackson thought. Pretty much what Brigadier Lorimer thought and John Reid, the UK the Defence Secretary, implied that he thought, wouldn't you say?
It would be very interesting to know if Captain Masters, who may have viewed his reposibilities and obligations to the Iraqi people somewhat differently, thought the same thing.
Ken Masters was a soldier who had risen throught the ranks to attain the senior position he held in Iraq. He was thus, one hopes, rather more like you and me, when it comes to right and wrong, than the average establishment, Sandhurst-trained officer, who might see his duty to the regiment, the Crown, the Secretary of Defence and the government as beyond any idea of natural justice or truth.
If such a man had made it back to Blighty, not only would he have been able to chill out considerably and shrug off some of the 'stress' he was under, he might also have blown the biggest whistle imaginable.
Ken Masters was due an official holiday. He would have been shipped back to England on home leave, less than two weeks after he 'hanged' himself in Iraq.
"Even Vietnam is not as bad as where we are now because at least in Vietnam the Americans had been invited in by a government trying to protect themselves from communism."
"These two toughies came round and wanted to manhandle me out. I said: 'Do you want me to leave? I will leave, you don't need to manhandle me.' Physically, I am not too well, so I said I would follow them
I don't normally heckle if I have other processes of making my views known, but on this occasion I had no choice… Labour has always depended on a democratic flow of ideas and free speech. But New Labour has… become restrictive…He added, 'a small mistake' had been rectified, unlike the 'big mistake we made in invading Iraq.'
The important thing is the Labour Party gets back to its fundamental culture where the members control the party, not the party controlling its members. We cannot stifle debate by hiring heavies".
"I apologise completely. We're really, really sorry. It should not have happened at all. We simply put our hands up and say it was completely wrong. I can't do anything more than apologise profusely."Which is a lot more of an apology that the British people as a whole ever got for his lying us into a war with Iraq. I'll tell you this: if Walter had been an 82-year-old Anglo-Saxon Battle of Britain pilot, we probably wouldn't have heard of him and we definitely wouldn't have had an apology from The Beast.
One of them was a Blairite toady who moonlights as a Councillor in South Shields. The other bloke, the big, black night-club-bouncer type, guess what he does for a living? He's a night-club bouncer.
One more thing: What upset this pair so much, the heinous comment that Walter made that got him slung out of the Labour party Conference for the first time in 57 years, as Jack Straw defended New Labour's policy in Iraq, was this:
"Nonsense".That's what got an 82-year-old hoiked out of his seat and detained by the police under the prevention of terrorism act.
Free speech, eh? Britons never, never, never shall be slaves, eh?
Wake up, England.
In October 2005, Burak Erdenir wrote this in The Turkish Policy Quarterly:
"The future of Europe is closely linked to the successful integration of Muslim immigrants into European societies. Europe should seek to reach cultural pluralism in contrast to assimilation or exclusion in order to avoid discrimination against Muslims…On 6 October 2005, Tony Blair said this:
Both Muslim immigrants and host societies have mutual responsibilities in this respect. Both have to go through a mental change, eventually resulting in the redefinition of their identities…
Today about 23 million Muslims accounting for 4.5 percent of the total, live in whole of Europe compared with only 800,000 in 1950. Each year around 1 million immigrants mostly from the Muslim countries are flowing into Europe. Birth rates of European Muslims are more than three times of those of non-Muslim Europeans. It is estimated that Muslims will comprise at least 20 percent of Europe’s population in 2050…
According to a Daily Telegraph poll… even though majority of Muslims condemn the London bombings, a number of them are seriously alienated from society, even feeling sympathy for the bombers.
The same poll shows that 24 percent of the respondents have some 'sympathy with the feelings and motives of those who carried out the attacks.' This is noteworthy in the sense that in absolute numbers it amounts to 400,000 British Muslims."
"There is no justification for Iran or any other country interfering in Iraq."Nope, your right there, Antonia, no country that has a land border with any other should ever demonstrate any fraternal concern when its neighbour is invaded.
As for the US and the UK, and what some might call their very own interferential role in Iraq over the last fourteen years, well, basically, when we go to war, we're saving humanity and the planet, we're not interfering. At least, that what the B-movie actress in Downing Street tells us.
"There is no justification for… interfering in Iraq."It's what some might call irony. It's what I would call insane.
Wake up, world.
On 14 October 2005, the Iranian News Agency reported thus from Baghdad:
"An Iraqi army officer has said that the British military personnel and security forces were involved in acts of terrorism in Iraq. The Iraqi officer, introduced himself… as Fayyadh Mas'ud, and said: 'The evidences at our disposal cannot be denied… Investigations show that the British Army's explosives and equipment were used in several instances of bomb blasts in Baghdad'…On 18 October 2005, 30-year-old Sergeant Christian Hickey of the 1st Battalion The Coldstream Guards, was killed by a roadside bomb in Basra.
In this connection, the Iraqi authorities have asked for explanations from the British officials, but so far they have not given any clear answer.
Terrorist operations in various districts of Baghdad and other regions have turned Iraq into an unsafe place and thousands of civilians have been killed so far. However, America and Britain repeatedly say that their forces will remain in Iraq until full establishment of security.
Political analysts believe that America and Britain are undermining security in Iraq in order to justify their own presence…
At the same time, some news sources unofficially reported that several British nationals and Iraqis, hired as mercenaries by the British, have been arrested in connection with the recent explosions in Baghdad."
She had staged a lone protest at the Cenotaph by reading out the names of the 97 British soldiers that had died in Iraq up to that point. 14 police officers were called upon to bring her in.
She was found guilty of breaching Section 132 of the aforementioned act at Bow Street Magistrates Court on 8 December 2005. Speaking after her three-hour trial, Maya said:
"I just think it's a shame that you can't voice your freedom of speech in this country any more and it is illegal to hold a remembrance ceremony for the dead."Amen to that, sweetheart. Amen to that.
At this event, the Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, addressed about 4000 students thus:
"Over the past 300 years, the world of Islam has been in retreat... One hundred years ago the last trench of Islam fell, when the oppressors went towards the creation the Zionist regime. It is using it as a fort to spread its aims in the heart of the Islamic world...
The establishment of the Zionist regime was a move by the world oppressor against the Islamic world. The skirmishes in the occupied land are part of a war of destiny. The outcome of hundreds of years of war will be defined in Palestinian land...
The Islamic umma will not allow its historic enemy to live in its heartland... The annihilation of the Zionist regime will come... There is no doubt that the new wave in Palestine will soon wipe off this disgraceful blot from the face of the Islamic world.
ISRAEL MUST BE WIPED OFF THE MAP".
"These sentiments are completely and totally unacceptable. I have never come across a situation of the President of a country saying they want to wipe out, not that they have got a problem with, or an issue with, but want to wipe out another country. This is unacceptable. Their attitude towards Israel, their attitude towards terrorism, their attitude on the nuclear weapons issue, it isn't acceptable.No, Anthony, it doesn't make 'anybody in Europe' angry. It might upset Israel's little drummer boys but the non-drumming majority? Nah, we couldn't care less, pal. We're not subbed up to the eyeballs like you.
Now if they continue down this path then people are going to believe that they are a real threat to our world security and stability... I felt a real sense of revulsion at those remarks, and to anybody in Europe, knowing our history, when we hear statements like that made about Israel, it makes us feel very angry."
"It indicates and underlines I am afraid how much some of those places need reform themselves. How are we going to build a more secure world with that type of attitude? It is a disgrace.There you go again, Tony! Imagining people are going to be asking a slavering warmonger like you to 'do something about this' after the last bo**ocks. In your wet, Israeli dreams, matey.
I haven't said in precise terms what we can do, but THIS IS A DISCUSSION THAT WE WILL BE HAVING WITH OUR ALLIES. And you know there has been a long time in which I have been answering questions on Iran, with everyone saying to me: 'Tell us you are not going to do anything about Iran.' If they carry on like this, the question people are going to be asking us is: 'When are you going to do something about this'?"
"Because you can imagine a state like that, with an attitude like that, having a nuclear weapon?"Oh, yes, Anthony, I think we can imagine 'a state like that, with an attitude like that, having a nuclear weapon.' In fact, I can think of three states like that, right off the top of my head. There's the one run by that smirking chimpanzee.
Within hours of Tony B's outburst, the usual suspects climbed aboard the battlewagon. Israeli PM, Ariel Sharon, said:
"Such a country that has nuclear weapons is a danger, not only to Israel and the Middle East, but also to Europe."
"We must submit a clear-cut request to the UN secretary general and the Security Council to obtain Iran's expulsion from the United Nations".The Israeli daily, Ha'aretz, reported thus:
"What is worrying, other than the minor issue that one day we might all turn into dust because of a nervous Iranian missile, is that 60 years after the Holocaust a leader of a state again openly threatens to destroy the Jews."The Israeli daily, Maariv, echoed the play-the-Hitler-card sentiment thus:
"The open call to destroy the state of Israel highlights the comparison with another leader who was elected by his people in 1933, whose agenda included an open call to destroy the Jewish people... Israel and the world must respond seriously to the declaration by Ahmadinejad and his masters, who are challenging the Western world and have already equipped themselves with ballistic missiles, and are now striving to make the bomb."Anyway, folks, which of our two fire-and-brimstone types worried you the most?The one where the nutcase did what Muslims/Arabs have been doing on a regular basis for over ninety years now? That is, threatening death and destruction to those who brutalise and terrorise the Palestinian people on a daily basis.
Or the one where another nutcase implied that, if certain 'people' posed the question, 'when are you going to do something about this,' the towelheads might find him and his 'allies' coming to save them rather sooner than they might have imagined when they were chanting 'Death to Israel! Down with Bush!'
When I hear speeches like the one the mad Iranian made, I think to myself, what else is new? When I hear speeches like the one the mad Scots-Irishman made, I think to myself, looks to me like more young British lads are about to die in defence of those that Tony likes best.
"In nearly six decades, Israel has achieved an astonishing amount. It has built a thriving democracy in a region historically dominated by autocratic regimes… It now has one of the most advanced economies in the world. These are things for which the people of Israel and the wider Jewish community are rightly proud."I should hope that Israel 'has one of the most advanced economies in the world.' I mean, the US gives it about five or six billion quid every year, and then the Rothschilds, Maxwells, Murdochs, Dame Shirley Porters, Lords Sainsbury and all the rest of the mega-rich Hebrews on the planet do prop up the people of the book with a stupendous bung every now and again, don't they?
And then there's all the repararations they've managed to filch out of poor, old Germany over the years. Oh, yes, if Israel didn't have one of the most advanced economies on the planet, well, the tax dollars, pounds, francs, marks and Euros of all the poor non-Jews would have been wasted, wouldn't it? Straw continued:
"Today the United Kingdom and Israel share the same democratic values and we enjoy practical collaboration in many areas".You can say that again, Jackie boy. It's almost as though the UK gets its orders from Jerusalem, we 'collaborate' so much. What was it they did with collaborators in WWII? Oh yes, now I remember. Straw continued:
"Today’s Jewish community in this country should be proud of its vitality and vibrancy and be congratulated for its many achievements. Anglo-Jewry serves to provide a positive message for multicultural Britain, as a religious minority who have, over time, integrated themselves into the fabric of British life and culture, whilst still maintaining their ancient traditions and central tenets of their faith…Looks like Jackie Boy and Our Dear Leader have been given their orders, then. Iran and Syria next. But we all knew that, didn't we.
These remarkable shifts in attitude by Arab states throw into sharper relief the baleful, harmful influence of two states who are in a mindset which allows them to believe that the clock can be turned back to before 1967, if not before 1948. These two states are Iran and Syria."
On 19 November 2005, US Lance Corporal, Miguel Terrazas, of Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines, was killed by a roadside bomb just outside the village of Haditha, in the Anbar Province of Iraq.
At this time, the surviving marines claimed that fifteen Iraqi civilians were killed by the same blast. The truth was somewhat different.
It transpired that 24 unarmed men, women and children were slaughtered in revenge for the death of their comrade. After it was discovered that the Haditha civilians had not been killed by a bomb, the marines changed their story and claimed that the men were insurgents and the dead women and children were 'collateral damage.' Video evidence of the corpses, however, irrefutably proved that they had been executed a close range.
"They knocked at our front door and my father went to open it. They shot him dead from behind the door and then they shot him again. Then one American soldier came in and shot at us all. I pretended to be dead and he didn't notice me."Eight people died in the house, including Safa's five siblings, aged between 14 and two. In another house seven people including a child and his 70-year-old grandfather were killed. Four brothers aged 41 to 24 died in a third house. Eyewitnesses said they were forced into a wardrobe and shot.
"It's much worse than reported in Time magazine. There was no firefight. There was no IED that killed these innocent people. Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood."Rahul Mahajan, a member of the steering committee of the United for Peace and Justice movement, concurred, saying:
"The massacre of up to 500 Vietnamese civilians in the village of My Lai was the tip of an iceberg of atrocities. The same is true of the Haditha massacre. Although it is the largest documented example of the deliberate mass murder of civilians, it joins a series of actions that, while short of this degree of cold-blooded brutality, involve neglect and indifference so pervasive and deep that it amounts to depraved indifference to Iraqi life."On 7 April 2006, three officers were stripped of their command and reassigned.
On 29 October 2005, 23-year-old Lance Corporal Steven Sherwood, of the 1st Battalion, The Royal Gloucestershire, Berkshire and Wiltshire Light Infantry, was killed as a result of hostile action in Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan. Five other soldiers were injured in the attack.
On 20 November 2005, father-of-one, Sergeant John Jones, of the 1st Battalion Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, was killed by a roadside bomb in Basra. Four other soldiers were injured, one of them seriously.
On 26 November 2005, the BBC reported thus:
"Kidnapped charity worker Norman Kember was in Iraq to 'show solidarity' with the Iraqi people, his friend has said. Bruce Kent, who has known him for 15 years, (said) 'It was purely a gesture of solidarity with other people suffering - that's what he was doing. He was so critical of the whole war on Iraq - totally critical…Norman Kember, James Loney and Harmeet Singh Sooden were rescued by British and various other coalition forces on 23 March 2006. None of the captors was present, no shots were fired and no-one was injured. Which sounds like a pay-off to me.
He would have known the dangers over there but that's why I think it's courage that he showed. The people out there deserve a bit of western support which is non-governmental. I think that's what he was doing so he knew he was taking a risk'… Mr Kember is unlikely to have been protected by armed security because that would only have been available from UK or US Government sources. 'Precisely because he was distancing himself from those institutions, he would not have had security,' his friend said. Mr Kent, who is vice-president of CND, said his friend was 'a lovely man' with a 'wonderful little twinkly sense of humour'.
'He's a very deep, sincere man. A man whose whole life has been dedicated to peace,' he added. When asked before he went if he was brave, Mr Kember said: 'I don't know. I've done a lot of writing and talking about peacemaking. I've demonstrated... but I feel that's what I'd call cheap peacemaking'."
He had been badly beaten and executed.
On 2 December 2005, the BBC reported thus:
"Video clips which appear to show Iraqi civilians being shot at by British security firm employees have prompted an internal investigation. The various video clips have been posted on the internet in recent days and appear to show civilian cars being shot at on roads in Iraq. Aegis Defence Services Ltd said it would 'investigate whether the footage has any connection with the company'…It is not known if the videos are genuine or a hoax.
Aegis Defence Services Ltd won a $293m (£169m) contract from the US government last year to operate in Iraq. One clip shows two cars veering off a road after being shot at from somewhere near the camera.
Meanwhile, another shows an unmarked car smashing into another. Gunshots can be heard on the clips. Aegis said in a statement: 'Should any incident recorded on the video footage have involved Aegis personnel, this... will be subject to scrutiny'.
Aegis is contracted to provide a range of services to the US government.
Its remit includes the protection of civilians and soldiers travelling in Iraq. The company says its rules of engagement 'allow for a structured escalation of force to include opening fire on civilian vehicles under certain circumstances'.
A Foreign Office spokesman said officials had seen the video but there was nothing in them to indicate Aegis Defence Services staff were involved.
He added that the investigation was a matter for the company and the US authorities who had contracted them."
On 14 December 2005, the BBC reported thus:
"There will be no public inquiry into the 7 July London bombings which killed 52 people, the Home Office has said. Ministers will instead publish a definitive account of what happened in a written narrative…On 28 December 2005, 30-year-old Darren Birch, a security guard with Aegis Defence Services, suffered severe head injuries and died in Baghdad Central Hospital after the vehicle in which he was travelling collided with a water tanker.
After the bombings there were calls for a public inquiry and, in September, Home Secretary Charles Clarke said one had not been ruled out."
Darren had previously served in the Household Cavalry.
The book, Neo-Conned! Just War Principles: A Condemnation of War in Iraq, a compilation of 25 essays by various writers was published on 31 December 2005. On p. 136, the politician and columnist, Pat Buchanan, said this:
“Neocons say we attack them because they are Jewish. We do not. We attack them because their warmongering threatens our country, even as it finds a reliable echo in Ariel Sharon.”On the next page he says this:
“They charge us with anti-Semitism…The truth is, those hurling these charges harbor a 'passionate attachment' to a nation not our own that causes them to subordinate the interests of their own country and to act on an assumption that, somehow, what's good for Israel is good for America.”On page 142, he says this:
“Who would benefit from a war of civilizations between the West and Islam? Answer: one nation, one leader, one party. Israel, Sharon, Likud.”On 20 January 2006, Stephen Enright, a 29-year-old former paratrooper working as a civilian contractor with the Armor-Group, was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq.
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