Syria Under Attack - the Great Satan & the Little Imp, Turkey - Plus their al-Qaeda Proxies - Mayhem in the Middle East

ꕤ Article SOURCE https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/04/07/syri-a07.html New exposé by Seymour Hersh: Turkey staged gas attack to provoke US war on Syria By Patrick Martin 7 April 2014 In a lengthy article published Sunday by the London Review of Books, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reports that the sarin gas attack on a Damascus suburb on August 21, 2013 was actually carried out by Syrian “rebel” forces acting at the behest of Turkey, for the purpose of providing a pretext for a US attack on Syria. The gas attack killed many hundreds of people in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta, and the Obama administration and the corporate-controlled US media immediately blamed the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad for the atrocity. The New York Times, in particular, published a lengthy analysis by its military “expert,” C. J. Chivers, which purported to show, based on rocket trajectories, prevailing winds and other technical factors, that the gas shells could only have been fired from Syrian army artillery positions. For several weeks, the Ghouta attack became the pretext for a warmongering campaign by the White House and the US and European media. Obama threatened immediate air strikes, claiming that the Syrian government had crossed a “red line” against the use of chemical weapons, which he had laid down in 2012. The US president then abruptly reversed himself and announced he would seek congressional approval first, only to call off any overt military action in favor of a deal brokered by Russian President Vladimir Putin in which Assad agreed to the supervised dismantling of his chemical weapons stockpiles. By Hersh’s account, “Obama’s change of mind had its origins at Porton Down, the defence laboratory in Wiltshire. British intelligence had obtained a sample of the sarin used in the 21 August attack and analysis demonstrated that the gas used didn’t match the batches known to exist in the Syrian army’s chemical weapons arsenal. The message that the case against Syria wouldn’t hold up was quickly relayed to the US joint chiefs of staff… As a consequence the American officers delivered a last-minute caution to the president, which, in their view, eventually led to his cancelling the attack.” The US military leadership also knew that White House claims that there could be no other source for the sarin gas than the Syrian army were false. “The American and British intelligence communities had been aware since the spring of 2013 that some rebel units in Syria were developing chemical weapons,” Hersh reports. “On 20 June analysts for the US Defense Intelligence Agency issued a highly classified five-page ‘talking points’ briefing for the DIA’s deputy director, David Shedd, which stated that al-Nusra maintained a sarin production cell…” Hersh quotes extensively from this US government document, which the office of the US director of national intelligence now denies ever existed: “Al-Nusrah Front’s relative freedom of operation within Syria leads us to assess the group’s CW [chemical weapons] aspirations will be difficult to disrupt in the future… Turkey and Saudi-based chemical facilitators… were attempting to obtain sarin precursors in bulk, tens of kilograms, likely for the anticipated large scale production effort in Syria.” Hersh notes that members of al-Nusra were arrested in Turkey last May in possession of two kilograms of sarin. They were charged in a 130-page indictment with “attempting to purchase fuses, piping for the construction of mortars, and chemical precursors for sarin.” All have since been released pending trial, or had charges dropped altogether. Those arrests followed chemical weapons attacks in Syria in March and April 2013, where a UN investigation found evidence implicating the Syrian “rebels.” One source told Hersh, “Investigators interviewed the people who were there, including the doctors who treated the victims. It was clear that the rebels used the gas. It did not come out in public because no one wanted to know.” The “no one,” of course, was the US government, its European allies, and its UN stooges—as well as their political apologists in the media and the pseudo-left groups such as the International Socialist Organization that were either openly campaigning for military intervention in Syria or justifying it by portraying the US-financed “rebels” as the bearers of a democratic revolution. When the August 21 attack took place, Obama ordered the Pentagon to draw up plans for bombing Syria, and, as a former intelligence official told Hersh, “the White House rejected 35 target sets provided by the joint chiefs of staff as being insufficiently ‘painful’ to the Assad regime.” The US bombing plan ultimately envisioned “a monster strike” involving two wings of B-52 bombers equipped with 2,000-pound bombs, as well as Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from submarines and surface warships. Hersh continues: “The new target list was meant to ‘completely eradicate any military capabilities Assad had,’ the former intelligence official said. The core targets included electric power grids, oil and gas depots, all known logistic and weapons depots, all known command and control facilities, and all known military and intelligence buildings.” The bombing attack drawn up at the direction of the Obama White House would have itself constituted a war crime, causing thousands if not tens of thousands of casualties and crippling Syria as a functioning society. Hersh then passes on to his most important revelation: that US officials believed the Turkish government, or its intelligence agencies, had instigated the gas attack in Ghouta. He cites concerns among US military and intelligence leaders that “there were some in the Turkish government” who supported “dabbling with a sarin attack inside Syria—and forcing Obama to make good on his red line threat.” This was reinforced by the British military intelligence finding on the type of gas used in Ghouta. This included a message to the Americans: “We’re being set up here.” This was followed by a further message about the Ghouta attack that “a senior official in the CIA sent in late August: ‘It was not the result of the current regime [i.e., Assad]’. UK & US know this.” Hersh suggests that the bitter controversy over the attack on a US consulate and CIA mission in Benghazi, Libya in 2012, which killed four Americans including the ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, is directly linked to the infighting over Syria. It has been widely reported that the CIA organized the shipment of Libyan weapons stockpiles from Benghazi to the Syrian rebels. Hersh cites a “highly classified annex” to the report of the Senate committee that investigated the Benghazi attack. This document “described a secret agreement reached in early 2012 between the Obama and [Turkish] Erdogan administrations… By the terms of the agreement, funding came from Turkey, as well as Saudi Arabia and Qatar; the CIA, with the support of MI6, was responsible for getting arms from Gaddafi’s arsenals into Syria. A number of front companies were set up in Libya, some under the cover of Australian entities. Retired American soldiers, who didn’t always know who was really employing them, were hired to manage procurement and shipping. The operation was run by David Petraeus, the CIA director who would soon resign when it became known he was having an affair with his biographer.” According to Hersh, after the Benghazi fiasco, the CIA was pulled out, but the Libya to Turkey to Syria pipeline continued, possibly including “manpads”—portable surface-to-air missile launchers, which the Obama administration had opposed supplying the rebels out of concern that they would be used to attack civilian airliners.   Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan tasked Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MIT) with engineering a provocation that would give a pretext for direct US military intervention. Hersh quotes his source: “‘The MIT was running the political liaison with the rebels, and the Gendarmerie handled military logistics, on-the-scene advice and training—including training in chemical warfare,’ the former intelligence official said. ‘Stepping up Turkey’s role in spring 2013 was seen as the key to its problems there… Erdogan’s hope was to instigate an event that would force the US to cross the red line. But Obama didn’t respond in March and April.’” Two sources described to Hersh a working dinner during Erdogan’s visit to Washington in May 2013 in which Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry and National Security Adviser Thomas Donilon met Erdogan, foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu and MIT chief Hakan Fidan. Erdogan appealed for Obama to attack Syria, telling him “your red line has been crossed.” Obama then pointed at Fidan and said, “We know what you’re doing with the radicals in Syria.” Hersh cites a “US intelligence consultant” who describes a classified briefing for Martin Dempsey, chairman of the joint chiefs, and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, prepared before the August 21 gas attack. The briefing noted “the acute anxiety” in the Erdogan regime over the military setbacks for the Syrian rebels and warned that the Turkish leadership felt “the need to do something that would precipitate a US military response.” In the period following the gas attack, Hersh’s former intelligence official source explained, communications intercepts and other data supported the suspicion that Turkey had organized the Ghouta attack. “We now know it was a covert action planned by Erdogan’s people to push Obama over the red line,’ the former intelligence official said. ‘They had to escalate to a gas attack in or near Damascus when the UN inspectors’—who arrived in Damascus on 18 August to investigate the earlier use of gas—‘were there. The deal was to do something spectacular. Our senior military officers have been told by the DIA and other intelligence assets that the sarin was supplied through Turkey—that it could only have gotten there with Turkish support. The Turks also provided the training in producing the sarin and handling it.’” Only a week ago, evidence surfaced that supports the credibility of Hersh’s report. A video was posted on YouTube of a meeting of Turkish officials, including Fikan, in which the intelligence chief suggests that Turkish agents should mount an attack on a Muslim shrine inside Syria to provide a pretext for a Turkish invasion of the country. Hersh’s account is his second long exposé in four months of the “false flag” gas attack in Damascus. Both articles were published in the British journal because no major US newspaper or magazine will any longer publish material from the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. Beginning with his reporting of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam for the New York Times, Hersh has specialized in developing sources in the US military and intelligence apparatus, frequently those with policy differences with the current administration in Washington. Hersh left the Times for Newsday, and then wrote for the New Yorker for many years. Both the New Yorker and the Washington Post refused to publish his first report on the Ghouta gas attack, which charged that the sarin attack had been carried out by Syrian rebels in the al-Nusra Front, forcing Hersh to find a British publisher for his account. The US press was largely silent on that report, and it has so far blacked out the latest exposure. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/04/07/syri-a07.html ---------------------- ꕤ ---------------------- COMMENT Wow, this is good stuff. Hersh sounds like a hero ... but he's also a conduit for factions within the US government (via inside sources), so I don't know that this is a fully-fledged hero, or if it is just another establishment voice.  *Discovered he's 'blacklisted' by major US media, as they refuse to publish him.  So Hersh's probably cool.  What Turkey is capable of is mind-blowing. I don't mind the PKK giving it to them, now. US media refusing to publish Hersh, and Hersh having to publish outside the country shows us just how controlled the media is in the land of the 'free'. CIA strikes again.  That David Petraeus guy played a part, as well. I'm not sure if that UK analyist has anything to do with David Kelly, who was killed, probably by UK intelligence (I'm guessing). Daily Mail UK 22 April 2012 Suicide riddle of weapons expert who worked with David Kelly: Scientist tells wife he is going for a walk, then takes his life in a field... just like his friend A weapons expert who worked with Dr David Kelly at the Government’s secret chemical warfare laboratory has been found dead in an apparent suicide. In circumstances strongly reminiscent of Dr Kelly’s own mysterious death nine years ago, the body of Dr Richard Holmes was discovered in a field four miles from the Porton Down defence establishment in Wiltshire. It is not yet known how he died. Mr Holmes, 48, had gone missing two days earlier after telling his wife he was going out for a walk – just as Dr Kelly did before he was found dead at an Oxfordshire beauty spot in July 2003. Police said there were no suspicious circumstances in the latest case but revealed that Dr Holmes  had ‘recently been under a great deal of stress’. He resigned from Porton Down last month, although the centre yesterday refused to explain why. Inevitably, the parallels between the two cases will arouse the suspicions of conspiracy theorists. Despite Lord Hutton’s ruling eight years ago that Dr Kelly committed suicide, many people – among them a group of doctors – believe his inquiry was insufficient and have demanded a full inquest. Some believe Dr Kelly, who kept an office at Porton Down right up until his death, was murdered. He was outed as being the source of a BBC report that Downing Street ‘sexed up’ evidence of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction to justify going to war. Although it is not clear if the two scientists were close, one source told The Mail on Sunday that they were friendly when they worked at Porton Down in the Nineties. At the time, Dr Holmes ran a project organising the installation of chemical protection equipment in RAF Sentinel spy planes, while Dr Kelly was head of microbiology and frequently toured the former Soviet Union as a weapons inspector. After the first Gulf War, Dr Holmes is also thought to have worked on the production of chemical protection suits for troops. In 1991 he was the joint author of a scientific paper about an RAF chemical and biological protection system. Yesterday, a Porton Down spokesman confirmed Dr Holmes had quit his job but declined to comment further. ‘It is not our policy to speak openly about any individual who works for us,’ she said. Before finding his body, Wiltshire Police made a public appeal for information but warned people not to approach Dr Holmes for their own safety because they believed he had been ‘looking at information on the internet regarding self-harm and the use of toxic substances’.  [Wiltshire Police spin-doctoring to shape public perceptions?  Hard to say what's going on here.  British scientists and intelligence officers seem to die frequently and suspiciously (think of the one found dead in the zipped up bag in a bath).  Whatever this is, it's occurred before the sarin attack in Ghouta.] Friends of Dr Holmes say this disclosure irritated his family, who questioned why a scientist engaged in chemical warfare research would ‘need to Google toxic substances’. Dr Holmes’s widow, Susan, is  a chemist who also works at  Porton Down as head of business administration. One of the Government’s most sensitive and secretive military facilities, the site has long been the focus of controversy. Three years ago hundreds of ex-servicemen who were used as chemical warfare guinea pigs there between 1939 and 1989 were given compensation and an apology from the Ministry of Defence. They were tested with the nerve agent sarin, but some of those involved claimed they had been  told they were taking part in cold-remedy trials. Many suffered serious illnesses after exposure to the gas, which was developed by the Nazis during the Second World War. An inquest into Dr Holmes’s death was opened and adjourned by Wiltshire Coroner David Ridley last week. Coroner’s officer Paul Tranter said Dr Holmes’s family had grown concerned for his wellbeing after  he failed to return from a walk on April 11. A search party involving police and members of the other emergency services began combing waste ground close to his home in the Bishopsdown area of Salisbury. Police discovered his body half a mile away in a field used regularly by dog-walkers and joggers in the village of Laverstock. Mr Tranter said the results of tests carried out to establish the cause of death would not be known for several weeks. He added: ‘Police do not consider this death to be suspicious in any way, nor do they believe there was any third-party involvement.’ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2133201/Dr-Richard-Holmes-Suicide-riddle-weapons-expert-worked-David-Kelly.html Recapping Sarin gas attack, Ghouta  (suburb Damascus, Syria) - 21 Aug 2013 carried out by al-Nusra Front al-Qaeda linked 'rebel' Western proxy opposition as pretext for US attack on Syria killed hundreds compliant corporate US media points at Assad New York Times is big-time US foreign policy shill publishes report of CJ Chivers purporting to show gas shells could only have been fired by Syrian Army (Assad's) Porton Down Defence lab in Wiltshire, UK analysis sample sarin {obtained by British Intel} demonstrated gas used in Ghouta attack did not match existing Syrian batches case against Assad/Syria could not hold Obama cancels well-planned attack aiming to totally wipe out Syria govt military [reported by Patrick Martin, WSWS, 7 April 2014] Days later TWO YEARS EARLIER 22 April 2012 - Daily Mail UK Dr Richard Holmes head of microbiology {who worked with murdered (2003) Dr David Kelly} Porton Down Defence lab in Wiltshire, UK ... just happens to 'commit suicide' ... just like Dr David Kelly happened to  *bullshit* Dr David Kelly revealed UK intelligence report re illegal attack on Iraq 'sexed up' Dr David Kelly Died:  2003 Dr Richard Holmes head of microbiology Dr Richard Holmes Died:  2012 Porton Down lab no match Ghouta attack with Syria / Assad govt NOTE 21 Aug 2013 = Sarin attack, Ghouta, Syria Dr Richard Homes died year prior presumably no link to Sarin  More on Dr David Kelly: Ten Years Ago: The Death of Dr. David Kelly. Murdered on the Orders of Her Majesty’s Government? By Dr. David Halpin and James Corbett Global Research, July 19, 2013 GRTV 13 October 2011 http://www.globalresearch.ca/ten-years-ago-the-death-of-dr-david-kelly-murdered-on-the-orders-of-her-majestys-government/5343229 White House lied that sarin source was Syrian army / Assad & US military leadership knew it Both American & British intel knew 'rebels' (ie proxies) in Syria were developing chemical weapons Evidence Seymour Hersh (journalist) relies on US Defence Intel - 5-page briefing proves this DIA Dep. Dir, David Shed states al-Nusra maintained sarin production cell Turkey & Saudi-based chemical facilitators --> US government denied existence of document Not brought to public attention Kept hushed by: US govt European allies UN stooges political apologists media pseudo-left groups Obama had Pentagon draw attack plans re Syria 35 such plans rejected - not sufficiently destructive monster strike planned - 2,000 pounds bombs intended to completely destroy Assad military US attack on Syria would have: constituted another US war crime (like Iraq) killed thousands crippled Syria as functioning society produced another Libya (civil war 4 years) Hersh reports: Turkish government or its Intelligence (comment:  which is partner & co-conspirator of Turkish govt as evidenced by leaked audio - Syria false flag plot) INSTIGATED SARIN GAS ATTACK IN GHOUTA This assertion is reinforced by British Porton Down lab finding that Ghouta sample is NO match for Syria government & UK & US know this Infighting re Syria linked to Benghazi, Libya US Consulate & CIA Mission Attack 4 dead Americans incl. Ambassador to Libya CIA was arranging shipments  of Libya weapons stockpiles from Benghazi to Syria proxies 2012 secret agreement b/w Obama & Turkey funding for weapons from: TURKEY, SAUDI ARABIA, QATAR CIA + MI6 running arms from Gadaffi arsenals Libya to Syria al-Qaeda linked 'rebel' proxies attacking Syria govt front companies set up for cover, incl. Australian entities retired US military hired to manage procurement & shipping op run by Gen David Petraeus, CIA Director CIA reportedly pulled out post Benghazi LIBYA to TURKEY to SYRIA weapons rat run continues manpads / portable SAM launchers supplied to al-Qaeda linked 'rebel' proxies capable of air attacks MIT tasked by Erdogan to stage provocation, as pretext for US intervention MIT runs liaison w/  al-Qaeda linked 'rebel' proxies gendarmerie (military that is policing civilian sector) handled logistics, training etc on site gendarmerie (ie Turk military) training incl. chemical warfare leaked Turkish authorities + intel audio supports suspicion Turkey arranged Ghouta attack Sarin supplied via Turkey w/ Turkish support + handling training No major US newspaper or US magazine will publish any material from Seymour Hersh any longer -- ie he must be blacklisted New Yorker & Washington Post refused to publish Seymour Hersh Ghouta gas attack first report that indicated al-Nusra Front (al-Qaeda linked, Turkish & Western backed 'rebel' proxy) linked to Ghouta chemical attack Original Seymour Hersh Article The Red Line and the Rat Line Seymour M. Hersh on Obama, Erdoğan and the Syrian rebels Vol. 36 No. 8 · 17 April 2014 pages 21-24 | 5870 words http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n08/seymour-m-hersh/the-red-line-and-the-rat-line David Cameron's Shameless Attack on Russia http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/05/russia-west-gas-attack-syria Is Dave aware that Hersh has exposed the lot of them? ꕤ

Torture & War Crimes - The Show Must Go On

ꕤ Article SOURCE http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2223831/How-Britain-tortured-Nazi-PoWs-The-horrifying-interrogation-methods-belie-proud-boast-fought-clean-war.html How Britain tortured Nazi PoWs: The horrifying interrogation methods that belie our proud boast that we fought a clean war By Ian Cobain Published: 09:34 EST, 27 October 2012 | Updated: 09:35 EST, 27 October 2012 The German SS officer was fighting to save himself from the gallows for a terrible war crime and might say anything to escape the noose. But Fritz Knöchlein was not lying in 1946 when he claimed that, in captivity in London, he had been tortured by British soldiers to force a confession out of him. Tortured by British soldiers? In captivity? In London? The idea seems incredible. Britain has a reputation as a nation that prides itself on its love of fair play and respect for the rule of law. We claim the moral high ground when it comes to human rights. We were among the first to sign the 1929 Geneva Convention on the humane treatment of prisoners of war. Surely, you would think, the British avoid torture? But you would be wrong, as my research into what has gone on behind closed doors for decades shows. It was in 2005 during my work as an investigative reporter that I came across a veiled mention of a World War II detention centre known as the London Cage. It took a number of Freedom Of Information requests to the Foreign Office before government files were reluctantly handed over. From these, a sinister world unfolded — of a torture centre that the British military operated throughout the Forties, in complete secrecy, in the heart of one of the most exclusive neighbourhoods in the capital. Thousands of Germans passed through the unit that became known as the London Cage, where they were beaten, deprived of sleep and forced to assume stress positions for days at a time. Some were told they were to be murdered and their bodies quietly buried. Others were threatened with unnecessary surgery carried out by people with no medical qualifications. Guards boasted that they were ‘the English Gestapo’. The London Cage was part of a network of nine ‘cages’ around Britain run by the Prisoner of War Interrogation Section (PWIS), which came under the jurisdiction of the Directorate of Military Intelligence. Three, at Doncaster, Kempton Park and Lingfield, were at hastily converted racecourses. Another was at the ground of Preston North End Football Club. Most were benignly run. But prisoners thought to possess valuable information were whisked off to a top-secret unit in a row of grandiose Victorian villas in Kensington Palace Gardens, then (as now) one of the smartest locations in London. Today, the tree-lined street a stone’s throw from Kensington Palace is home to ambassadors and billionaires, sultans and princes. Houses change hands for £50 million and more. Yet it was here, seven decades ago, in five interrogation rooms, in cells and in the guardroom in numbers six, seven and eight Kensington Palace Gardens, that nine officers, assisted by a dozen NCOs, used whatever methods they thought necessary to squeeze information from suspects. Of course, it is crucial to put these events into context. When the gloves first came off at Britain’s interrogation centres — the summer of 1940 — German forces were racing across France and the Low Countries, and Britain was fighting for its very survival. The stakes could not have been higher.  [see:  Dresden fire-bombings war crime for comparison -- "well over 250,000 -- possibly as many as a half a million -- persons" killed "within a 14-hour period, whereas estimates of those who died at Hiroshima range from 90,000 to 140,000" -- here] In the following years, large parts of Britain’s cities were left in ruins, hundreds of thousands of service personnel and civilians died, and barely a day passed without evidence emerging of a new Nazi atrocity. Little wonder, perhaps, that it was felt acceptable for German prisoners to suffer in British interrogation centres.  [I'm going to guess that the 'new Nazi atrocity' referred to, as if to justify allied war crimes, is a production of British and allied wartime propaganda, as well as the product of illegitimate 'confessions' obtained under torture.] And it should also be said that whatever went on within their walls, it paled into insignificance compared with the horrors the Nazis visited on millions of prisoners.  [And what of the Dresden genocide and what of the post-war atrocities visited upon millions of starved German civilians and German POWs deliberately murdered?  Elements of this article sound like an apology for those that were much the same as their vilified German enemy, based articles and videos I've seen so far on the subject of allied crimes and atrocities.] So, how can we be sure about the methods used at the London Cage? Because the man who ran it admitted as much — and was hushed up for half-a-century by an establishment fearful of the shame his story would bring on a Britain that had been fighting for honesty, decency and the rule of law. That man was Colonel Alexander Scotland, an accepted master in techniques of interrogation. After the war, he wrote a candid account of his activities in his memoirs, in which he recalled how he would muse, on arriving at the Cage each morning: ‘Abandon all hope ye who enter here.’ Because, he said, before going into detail: ‘If any German had any information we wanted, it was invariably extracted from him in the long run.’ As was customary, before publication Scotland submitted his manuscript to the War Office for clearance in 1954. Pandemonium erupted. All four copies were seized. All those who knew of its contents were silenced with threats of prosecution under the Official Secrets Act. What caused the greatest consternation was his admission that the horrors had continued after the war, when interrogators switched from extracting military intelligence to securing convictions for war crimes. Of 3,573 prisoners who passed through Kensington Palace Gardens, more than 1,000 were persuaded to sign a confession or give a witness statement  for use in war crimes prosecutions. Fritz Knöchlein, a former lieutenant colonel in the Waffen SS, was one such case. He was suspected of ordering the machine-gunning of 124 British soldiers who surrendered at Le Paradis in northern France during the Dunkirk evacuation in 1940. His defence was that he was not even there. At his trial, he claimed he had been tortured in the London Cage after the war. He was deprived of sleep for four days and nights after arriving in October 1946 and forced to walk in a tight circle for four hours while being kicked by a guard at each turn. He was made to clean stairs and lavatories with a tiny rag, for days at a time, while buckets of water were poured over him. If he dared to rest, he was cudgelled. He was also forced to run in circles in the grounds of the house while carrying heavy logs and barrels. When he complained, the treatment simply got worse. Nor was he the only one. He said men were repeatedly beaten about the face and had hair ripped from their heads. A fellow inmate begged to be killed because he couldn’t take any more brutality. All Knöchlein’s accusations were ignored, however. He was found guilty and hanged. Suspects in another high-profile war crime — the shooting of 50 RAF officers who broke out from a prison camp, Stalag Luft III, in what became known as the Great Escape — also passed through the Cage. Of the 21 accused, 14 were hanged after a war-crimes trial in Hamburg. Many confessed only after being interrogated by Scotland and his men. In court, they protested that they had been starved, whipped and systematically beaten. Some said they had been  menaced with red-hot pokers and ‘threatened with electrical devices’. Scotland, of course, denied allegations of torture, going into the witness box at one trial after another to say his accusers were lying. It was all the more surprising, then, that a few years later he was willing to come clean about the techniques he employed at the London Cage. In his memoirs, he disclosed that a number of men were forced to incriminate themselves. A general was sentenced to death in 1946 after signing a confession at the Cage while, in Scotland’s words, ‘acutely depressed after the various examinations’. A naval officer was convicted on the basis of a confession that Scotland said he had signed only after being ‘subject to certain degrading duties’. Scotland also acknowledged that one of the men accused of the ‘Great Escape’ murders went to the gallows even though he had confessed after he had — in Scotland’s own words — been ‘worked on psychologically’. At his trial, the man insisted he had been ‘worked on’ physically as well. Others did not share Scotland’s eagerness to boast about what had gone on in Kensington Park Gardens. An MI5 legal adviser who read his manuscript concluded that Scotland and fellow interrogators had been guilty of a ‘clear breach’ of the Geneva Convention. They could have faced war-crimes charges themselves for forcing prisoners to stand to attention for more than 24 hours at a time; forcing them to kneel while they were beaten about the head; threatening to have them shot; threatening one prisoner with an unnecessary appendix operation to be performed on him by another inmate with no medical qualifications. Appalled by the embarrassment his manuscript would cause if it ever came out, the War Office and the Foreign Office both declared that it would never see the light of day. Two years later, however, they were forced to strike a deal with him after he threatened to publish his book abroad. He was told he would never be allowed to recover his original manuscript, but agreement was given to a rewritten version in which every line of incriminating material had been expunged. A heavily censored version of The London Cage duly appeared in the bookshops in 1957. But officials at the War Office, and their successors at the Ministry of Defence, remained troubled. Years later, in September 1979, Scotland’s publishers wrote to the Ministry of Defence out of the blue asking for a copy of the original manuscript  by the now dead colonel for their archives. The request triggered fresh panic as civil servants sought reasons to deny the request. But in the end they quietly deposited a copy in what is now the National Archives at Kew, where it went unnoticed — until I found it a quarter of a century later. Is there more to tell about the London Cage? Almost certainly. Even now, some of the MoD’s files on it remain beyond reach. Scotland, his interrogators, technicians and typists, and the towering guardsmen left the building in January 1949. The villas were unoccupied for several years. Eventually, numbers six and seven were leased to the Soviet Union, which was looking for a new embassy building. Today, they house the chancery of the Russian embassy. Number eight — where it is thought the worst excesses were carried out — remained empty. It was too large to be a family home in the post-war years and in too poor a state of repair to be converted to offices. By 1955, the building had fallen into such disrepair it was sold to a developer, who knocked it down and built a block of three luxury flats. One that went on the market in 2006 was valued at £13.5 million. The Cage was not, however, Britain’s only secret interrogation centre during and after World War II. MI5 also operated an interrogation centre, code-named Camp 020, at Latchmere House, a Victorian mansion near Ham Common in South-West London, whose 30 rooms were turned into cells with hidden microphones. The first of the German spies who arrived in Britain in September 1940 were taken there. Vital information about a coming German invasion was extracted at great speed. This indicates the use of extreme methods, but these were desperate days demanding desperate measures. In charge was Colonel Robin Stephens, known as ‘Tin Eye’, because of the monocle fixed to his right eye. It was not a term of affection. The object of interrogation, Stephens told his officers, was simple: ‘Truth in the shortest possible time.’ A top secret memo spoke of ‘special methods’, but did not elaborate. He arranged for an additional 92-cell block to be added to Latchmere House, plus a punishment room — known chillingly as Cell 13 — which was completely bare, with smooth walls and a linoleum floor. Close to 500 people passed through the gates of Camp 020. Principal among them were German spies, many of whom were ‘turned’ and persuaded — or maybe forced — to work for MI5. Its first inmates were members of the British Union of Fascists.  Some were held in cells brightly lit 24 hours a day, others in cells kept in total darkness. Several prisoners were subjected to mock executions and were knocked about by the guards. Some were apparently left naked for months at a time. Camp 020 had a resident medical officer, Harold Dearden, a psychiatrist who dreamed up regimes of starvation and of sleep and sensory deprivation intended to break the will of its inmates. He experimented in techniques of torment that left few marks — methods that could be denied by the torturers and that civil servants and government ministers could disown. These techniques surfaced again after the war in a British interrogation facility at Bad Nenndorf, a German spa town, in one of the internment camps for those considered a threat to the Allied occupation. In the four years after the war, 95,000 people were interned in the British zone of Allied-occupied Germany. Some were interrogated by what was now termed the Intelligence Division. In charge of Bad Nenndorf was ‘Tin Eye’ Stephens, on attachment from MI5, and drawing on his Camp 020 experiences. An inmate recalled him yelling questions at prisoners and then punching them. Over the next two years, 372 men and 44 women would pass through his hands. One German inmate recalled being told by a British intelligence officer: ‘We are not bound by any rules or regulations. We do not care a damn whether you leave this place on a stretcher or in a hearse.’ He was made to sleep on a wet floor in a temperature of minus 20 degrees for three days. Four of his toes had to be amputated due to frostbite. A doctor in a nearby hospital complained about the number of detainees brought to him filthy, confused and suffering from multiple injuries and frostbite. Many were painfully emaciated after months of starvation. A number died. The regime was intended to weaken, humiliate and intimidate prisoners. With complaints soaring, a British court of inquiry was convened to investigate what had been going at Bad Nenndorf. It concluded that former inmates’ allegations of physical assault were substantially correct. Stephens and four other officers were arrested while Bad Nenndorf was abruptly closed. But there was a quandary for the Labour government. The political fallout could be deeply damaging. There were other similar interrogation centres in Germany. From the very top, there were urgent moves to hush things up. Stephens’ court martial for ill-treatment of prisoners was heard behind closed doors. He did not deny any of the horrors. His defence was that he had no idea the prisoners for whom he was responsible were being beaten, whipped, frozen, deprived of sleep and starved to death. This was the very defence that had been offered — unsuccessfully — by Nazi concentration camp commandants at war-crimes trials. But he was acquitted. The suspicion remains that he got off because, if cruelties did occur at Bad Nenndorf, they had been authorised by government ministers. Extracted from Cruel Britannia by Ian Cobain, published by Portobello Books at £18.99. © Ian Cobain 2012. To order a copy for £15.99 (p&p free), call 0843 382 0000. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2223831/How-Britain-tortured-Nazi-PoWs-The-horrifying-interrogation-methods-belie-proud-boast-fought-clean-war.html ---------------------- ꕤ ---------------------- COMMENT When it comes to propaganda, lies, corruption, cruelty, murder, war crimes, and evil, it looks like it's a level playing field:  there's no distinction between the 'good guys' and the 'bad guys'. Everything is a lie. The account in this article is a drop in the ocean of injustices and crimes committed by the 'good guys' before, during and after world wars, and in the 70 years since. Seventy years since the WWII torture of Germans and various other war crimes committed by the British and the Americans, the corrupt, lying, lawless and morally bankrupt British authorities hold an Australian journalist hostage of political persecution and detention without charge, following WikiLeaks exposure of modern day corruption and war crimes of Western governments.  Assange is denied medical access and deprived of liberty, under threat of extradition to the convicted in absentia, war criminal, torturing, kidnapping and assassinating Americans, while the bustling modern world stands by and lets these long-time bad actors and geopolitical villains get away with this crime, day after day for 5 years. Does anybody else feel sick knowing there's no limit to the depths of Western state depravity, lies and hypocrisy? How odd that the Russians have been allocated the British torture chamber interrogation suites in London as embassy premises. Is this some kind of attempt at modern-day psychological warfare on the Russian ambassadors in London, I'm wondering? Although I'm appalled by disclosures in the article, I'm also kind of drawn to the creepiness of the torture chamber and imagine a visit to the back end of the Russian embassy in London could be an interesting and eerie experience. The British were torturing German prisoners 4 years after the end of war, but it's unclear to me why, when the war was a long time over. First inmates of the London torture chambers were members of the British Union of Fascists. As the torturing war criminal Western governments are just totalitarian fronts for elites and their corporate interests, the first round targeting of fascists with state torture is probably based more on the existing political and economic elite's determination to maintain its power, than on the objective merits of proposals by fascists: "British fascist corporatism planned to replace the House of Lords with elected executives drawn from major industries, the clergy, and colonies. The House of Commons was to be reduced to allow for a faster, "less factionist" democracy."  [wikipedia] Replacement of the House of Lords sounds like a sensible idea, but replacing the overlords with industrialists and clergy is just allocating power to more of the same types of elites, isn't it? Don't know enough about political fascism to judge these ideas as a whole. Hey, I've just realised that the CAGE support for victims of 'war on terror' UK NGO is probably styled after the original British Cage torture history name. As torture and war, disguised as 'national security' and 'humanitarianism', has continued unabated the last 70 years, the warmonger elite serving Western puppet state fronts for what poses as 'democracy' and representative government, really ought to drop the entirely unconvincing 'peace' and 'humanitarian' propaganda:  the financial and social costs of serial US-led military interventions, resulting in blow-back invasion by refugee immigration that inundates the Western austerity-punished underprivileged, Western working classes and Western taxpayers, is evident to those bearing the brunt of blow-back, whose societies are being wilfully destroyed by treasonous, lying, elite and foreign interest serving politicians. About to watch this video: Eisenhower’s Rhine Meadows Death Camps   A Deliberate Policy of Extermination ꕤ

Putin Vindicated: Ukraine Fascists & Potential Ukraine-Jewish Aliyah

JPOST - ARTICLE Putin says Ukraine being overrun by fascists - and he may be right 05/16/2015     Candidly speaking: Putin, Ukraine and the Jews     The crisis in Ukraine and ‘the new Jewish question Kiev has now handed the Kremlin "evidence" for Putin’s claim that Russia is facing off against fascists. Ukrainians greeted the Nazis as liberators during the Second World War Ukrainians greeted the Nazis as liberators during the Second World War. (photo credit:Courtesy) As Ukraine continues its battle against separatists, corruption and a collapsing economy, it has taken a dangerous step that could further tear the country apart: Ukraine’s parliament, the Supreme Rada, passed a draft law last month honoring organizations involved in mass ethnic cleansing during World War Two. The draft law - which is now on President Petro Poroshenko’s desk awaiting his signature - recognizes a series of Ukrainian political and military organizations as “fighters for Ukrainian independence in the 20th century” and bans the criticism of these groups and their members. (The bill doesn’t state the penalty for doing so.) Two of the groups honored - the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) - helped the Nazis carry out the Holocaust while also killing close to 100,000 Polish civilians during World War Two. The law is part of a recent trend of contemporary Ukrainian nationalism promoted by those on the extreme right to break with the country’s Communist past and emphasize Ukraine’s suffering under the Soviet regime. In addition to the moral problem of forbidding the criticism of Holocaust perpetrators, the law hinders Ukraine’s European ambitions - and validates Russian President Vladimir Putin’s claims that the country is overrun by neo-Nazis. The OUN was founded in 1929 as a revolutionary organization designed to liberate Ukraine from Soviet rule and create an independent Ukrainian state. Many OUN leaders were trained in Nazi Germany, and the group’s philosophy was influenced by Nazi racial theorists such as Alfred Rosenberg. OUN literature, for example, declared the need to “combat Jews as supporters of the Muscovite-Bolshevik regime… Death to the Muscovite-Jewish commune! Beat the commune, save Ukraine!” The OUN fought both the Nazis and the Soviets, and many Ukrainian nationalists have argued that the OUN was primarily a national liberation movement. But while the OUN’s core goal may have been the creation of an independent Ukrainian state, along the way its members were responsible for terrible atrocities. Starting with a pogrom in Lviv shortly after the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, OUN militias - with the support of the Nazis - embarked on a killing spree in Western Ukraine that claimed the lives of tens of thousands of Jews. After the Nazis dissolved these militias, many of their members joined the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police in German service, where they received weapons-training and became one of the most important instruments of the Holocaust in Belarus and Western Ukraine. By 1943 the OUN had seized control of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), a Ukrainian nationalist paramilitary group, and declared itself opposed to both the retreating Germans and the oncoming Soviets. Although no longer in Nazi service, the UPA nevertheless continued to target and kill Jews, herding them into labor camps for execution. The UPA also engaged in the mass ethnic cleansing of Poles during this time, killing nearly 100,000 people. Even after the Red Army pushed the Germans from Ukraine in the summer of 1944, the UPA continued to fight a partisan war against Soviet forces well into the 1950s, before it was finally crushed by the massive power of the Red Army. It is this legacy of sacrifice that explains the Rada’s decision to pass a law honoring the OUN and the UPA. This law echoes a recent trend of glorifying right-wing Ukrainian nationalist organizations with controversial pasts. Under former Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, a number of leading Ukrainian nationalists were honored with a memorial at Babi Yar - site of the single-worst massacre of Jews during the Holocaust. Yushchenko also bestowed the highest government honor of “Hero of Ukraine” upon the controversial former OUN leader Stepan Bandera - a step roundly condemned by the chief rabbi of Ukraine, the president of Poland and the European Union. More recently, radical nationalists played a key role as “shock troops” on the Maidan, and the anti-government camp was full of OUN-UPA flags and cries of “Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the heroes!” - chants that originated with the OUN. Currently, a number of OUN-UPA apologists occupy important government positions, including the minister of education, the head of the Security Service of Ukraine and the director of the Ukrainian government’s Institute of National Memory. Even Poroshenko has gotten into the act, laying a wreath in honor of the OUN at Babi Yar last year. The draft law has a number of downsides beyond the moral problem of giving the OUN and UPA a free pass for atrocious crimes. Most obviously, making criticism of Holocaust perpetrators illegal is not compatible with Ukraine’s European ambitions. It is natural that many Ukrainians would wish to define themselves in opposition to the former Soviet Union, but as a budding democracy, banning criticism of any organizations - particularly those with such dark pasts - is the wrong way to build national identity. Kiev also must remember that its conflict with Putin’s Russia is taking place in cyberspace as well as the Donbass. Kiev has now handed the Kremlin “evidence” for Putin’s claim that Russia is facing off against fascists. Not surprisingly, Russian state-owned media outlets have had a field day condemning the law. Perhaps the worst effect of this law is the way it would split the country. Eastern and western Ukrainians already possess widely diverging views on recent political events such as the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Maidan revolution. The law would only exacerbate these regional differences. Historically, support for the “OUN-cult” originated primarily in the western Ukrainian regions of Galacia and Volhynia, where they are seen as heroic freedom fighters against Soviet oppression. Eastern Ukrainians, by contrast, grew up viewing these groups as Nazi collaborators to be feared and condemned rather than celebrated. The Rada’s passage of this law has already greatly harmed Ukraine. It is now up to Poroshenko to mitigate the damage by vetoing it. Josh Cohen is a former USAID project officer involved in managing economic reform projects in the former Soviet Union. He contributes to a number of foreign policy-focused media outlets and tweets at @jkc_in_dc .  http://www.jpost.com/International/Putin-says-Ukraine-being-overrun-by-fascists-and-he-may-be-right-403205 RT NEWS - ARTICLE EXTRACT Poroshenko signs laws praising Ukraine nationalists as ‘freedom fighters’ Published time: May 16, 2015 01:46 The ‘de-communization’ package of laws signed by Poroshenko on Friday also included a legislation banning communist-era symbolic and propaganda, condemning Soviet government on par with German Nazi regime. He also signed laws that will see the release of Soviet-era KGB archives to public, and scrap the term Great Patriotic War from official use replacing it with World War II. FULL ARTICLE - here. COMMENT So there you have it.  Ukraine's glorifying Nazi collaborators & those that have committed other WWII atrocities,  according to Jerusalem Post.  And the anti-Russian West can hardly brush off JPost as a 'Kremlin troll' or a Russian cyberwar psyop. It looks as though this love of homegrown Nazis is entrenched, as it was former Ukrainian (pro-West) President Viktor Yushchenko that first instigated the formal recognition.  So the love of Nazi collaborators would have been known to USA, UK, Germany, and the rest of the EU-NATO parade of clowns that supported the CIA coup in Ukraine. Yushchenko was in office 2005-2010 and is supposed to be the Orange Revolution president who was given a dose of Agent Orange (which sounds pretty fitting): Another murky chapter in recent Ukrainian history involves the 2004 poisoning of pro-Western politician Viktor Yushchenko. His successful run for the presidency that year against a Moscow-backed candidate triggered Ukraine’s Orange Revolution. During the campaign, Mr. Yushchenko ingested dioxin, a powerful toxin that left him in severe pain, his face discolored and bloated. Shortly before becoming ill, he had attended a small private dinner with Ihor Smeshko, then SBU chief. Ukrainian investigators zeroed in on the dinner as a possible site of the poisoning. Mr. Smeshko, whom Mr. Yushchenko had fired upon becoming president, was interrogated by prosecutors. Mr. Smeshko denies he had anything to do with the poisoning, which remains unsolved. [Wall Street Journal - here] Anyway, I thought that was rather a quirky detail.  Although it's superficially interesting, I'm not interested enough to dig through the ins and outs of 2004 Ukraine to get a feel for what may have really been going on.  While I don't believe what mainstream media has to say, I've provided a link to WSJ regardless, for anyone that does want to read what likely amounts to US propaganda about 'Russian sabotage'. Not sure why there's a discrepancy between the JPost article and the RT News article:  the former reporting that the pro-Nazi Ukraine law has been prepared for signature, while the latter's reporting that the law's been signed into effect (along with a ban on communist-era symbolism and "propaganda" and so forth). Do that note that the JPost writer is a former USAID project officer, who managed projects in the former Soviet Union. As I've a poor memory and can only remember a vague USAID and CIA connection, checked to see how USAID is connected to the CIA.   Looks like I'm not the only one checking on USAID as a CIA front: The following are a couple of USAID articles that discuss the CIA connection.  I'll never remember the ins and outs of the CIA connection, so knowing that there is a connection is going to have to be enough for me in the short-term (unless I force myself to read an endless series of these articles, over and over again, until I finally get it.  No chance.  Too lazy.  Also, CIA is too abstract for me:  it's this thing that nobody ever sees; it seems almost like a myth, although I know it's not.  Anyway, hoping that drip-type tiny bits of exposure, here and there, will eventually get the related information to sink in.  LOL). CIA Front, USAID, “Spreading Democracy”, Gearing Up in Ukraine – Suharto II? By Scott Creighton Global Research, May 08, 2014 USAID has a history of working with the CIA as a front operation to help them spread that special kind of “democracy” (read as IMF inspired brutal repression) in nations where we have installed brutal dictators in support of our neoliberal economic agenda. http://www.globalresearch.ca/cia-front-usaid-spreading-democracy-gearing-up-in-ukraine-suharto-ii/5381174 The murderous history of USAID, the US Government agency behind Cuba’s fake Twitter clone By Mark Ames On April 8, 2014 “In a number of countries, including Venezuela and Bolivia, USAID is acting more as an agency involved in covert action, like the CIA, than as an aid or development agency.” —Mark Weisbrot, Center for Economic and Policy Research Last week, we learned from the Associated Press that USAID (United States Agency for International Development) — the government agency which manages billions in overseas “humanitarian” aid programs — plotted to overthrow Cuba’s communist regime via a covertly-funded fake Twitter platform. http://pando.com/2014/04/08/the-murderous-history-of-usaid-the-us-government-agency-behind-cubas-fake-twitter-clone/ I've kind of gone off track here with the USAID diversion, so back to fascists of the Ukraine kind. Seeing that there's definitely a fascist / neo-Nazi revival in Ukraine, it's interesting that US pro-Israel lobby groups (Anti-Defamation League and the Simon Wiesenthal Centre) have blocked US legislation that would have left Ukraine without US Department of Defence support (ie arms, equipment and training). This was described as a decision based on 'geopolitics,' but I don't fully understand why organisations that promote what I assume is a Zionist cause are involving themselves in geopolitics. However, if Ukraine continues to attack the ethnic Russian, pro-independence, population of the east - or if war eventually breaks out between Ukraine and Russia - Israel stands to gain a sizeable additional Jewish population departing from Ukraine, and Jewish population growth is something Israel welcomes and encourages: Ukraine’s 70,000-strong Jewish community, the world’s 11th-largest, is undergoing what members describe as its biggest upheaval since the Second World War. While most of the country’s Jews live in Kiev, up to a fifth reside (at least until recently) in the conflict-hit east. Convinced they would return home after the fighting ended, many now face the brutal reality of all-out war on Europe’s fringes. Some are resettling elsewhere in Ukraine, while others are immigrating to Israel (an act known as aliyah). The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ) estimates that more Ukrainian Jews will make aliyah this year than in the last three years combined. Through September 1 of 2014, 3,252 Jews had relocated to Israel from Ukraine, compared with 1,982 in 2013, according to the IFCJ, which helps foot the bill for the move. In 2012, that number was 2,030. The IFCJ expects to spend some $2 million this year on securing plane tickets to Israel and predicts the number of immigrants could hit 7,000, Yechiel Eckstein, the organization’s founder, told me by telephone from Jerusalem. Under Israel’s Law of Return, any Jew in the world is entitled to Israeli citizenship. http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/09/ukraine-jewish-community-israel/380515/ I'm wondering if increasing Israel's population may be one of the motivators behind the pro-Israel organisations' move to block legislation that would have prevented the US military from providing assistance to the Ukraine fascists. * PS    Both Israel and US probably stand to gain from war in Ukraine.  Israel would gain a Jewish population boost and the US gets to sell arms, cause Russia grief and divert Russia from other things.  That being so, it would not be unreasonable to expect Mossad to be part of the Ukraine action - maybe stoking things.  So maybe that ambush of Alexei Mozgovoi was a Mossad job?   OK, I'm probably getting a bit carried away here guessing wildly about Mozgovoi's end. But the premise that Mossad would have an involvement overall seems a sound one, given they operate closely with CIA and given the expected population gains for Israel if conflict continues or war is ignited with Russia. The other pay-off of war between Ukraine and Russia might be that Russia would perhaps be less focused on events in Syria and the Middle East.  I don't know that for a fact, but it seems reasonable that you'd be more worried about your own backyard than goings on in the Middle East if you had a war on your doorstep to deal with.  If so, that would mean the US-Israeli and Saudi sides could maybe finally get the upper hand in Syria and get on with the mission of destabilising Iran. * PPS  I don't know what I'm talking about.  LOL I'm just guessing what could happen, but I don't really know enough for anyone to take this seriously.  For all I know, Russia is capable of 'multi-tasking' and any potential war with Ukraine is primarily about weakening Russia economically and politically, in terms of maybe domestic support for the government (which would be a bonus for the West, as the West is bent on getting rid of Putin and installing some puppet that will let them suck Russia dry). Tempted to delete the rambling thoughts above, because it really is crap, where I'm not referring to news sources, and I'm just taking wild guesses at what's going on. Will let it stand, although it's rather embarrassing to get this carried away guessing at players and motivations in Ukraine.