TOKYO MASTER BANNER

MINISTRY OF TOKYO
US-ANGLO CAPITALISMEU-NATO IMPERIALISM
Illegitimate Transfer of Inalienable European Rights via Convention(s) & Supranational Bodies
Establishment of Sovereignty-Usurping Supranational Body Dictatorships
Enduring Program of DEMOGRAPHICS WAR on Europeans
Enduring Program of PSYCHOLOGICAL WAR on Europeans
Enduring Program of European Displacement, Dismemberment, Dispossession, & Dissolution
No wars or conditions abroad (& no domestic or global economic pretexts) justify government policy facilitating the invasion of ancestral European homelands, the rape of European women, the destruction of European societies, & the genocide of Europeans.
U.S. RULING OLIGARCHY WAGES HYBRID WAR TO SALVAGE HEGEMONY
[LINK | Article]

*U.S. OLIGARCHY WAGES HYBRID WAR* | U.S. Empire's Casino Unsustainable | Destabilised U.S. Monetary & Financial System | U.S. Defaults Twice A Year | Causes for Global Financial Crisis of 2008 Remain | Financial Pyramids Composed of Derivatives & National Debt Are Growing | *U.S. OLIGARCHY WAGES HYBRID WAR* | U.S. Empire's Casino Unsustainable | Destabilised U.S. Monetary & Financial System | U.S. Defaults Twice A Year | Causes for Global Financial Crisis of 2008 Remain | Financial Pyramids Composed of Derivatives & National Debt Are Growing | *U.S. OLIGARCHY WAGES HYBRID WAR*

Who's preaching world democracy, democracy, democracy? —Who wants to make free people free?
[info from Craig Murray video appearance, follows]  US-Anglo Alliance DELIBERATELY STOKING ANTI-RUSSIAN FEELING & RAMPING UP TENSION BETWEEN EASTERN EUROPE & RUSSIA.  British military/government feeding media PROPAGANDA.  Media choosing to PUBLISH government PROPAGANDA.  US naval aggression against Russia:  Baltic Sea — US naval aggression against China:  South China Sea.  Continued NATO pressure on Russia:  US missile systems moving into Eastern Europe.     [info from John Pilger interview follows]  War Hawk:  Hillary Clinton — embodiment of seamless aggressive American imperialist post-WWII system.  USA in frenzy of preparation for a conflict.  Greatest US-led build-up of forces since WWII gathered in Eastern Europe and in Baltic states.  US expansion & military preparation HAS NOT BEEN REPORTED IN THE WEST.  Since US paid for & controlled US coup, UKRAINE has become an American preserve and CIA Theme Park, on Russia's borderland, through which Germans invaded in the 1940s, costing 27 million Russian lives.  Imagine equivalent occurring on US borders in Canada or Mexico.  US military preparations against RUSSIA and against CHINA have NOT been reported by MEDIA.  US has sent guided missile ships to diputed zone in South China Sea.  DANGER OF US PRE-EMPTIVE NUCLEAR STRIKES.  China is on HIGH NUCLEAR ALERT.  US spy plane intercepted by Chinese fighter jets.  Public is primed to accept so-called 'aggressive' moves by China, when these are in fact defensive moves:  US 400 major bases encircling China; Okinawa has 32 American military installations; Japan has 130 American military bases in all.  WARNING PENTAGON MILITARY THINKING DOMINATES WASHINGTON. ⟴  
Showing posts with label UK. Show all posts
Showing posts with label UK. Show all posts

December 04, 2015

Turkey - 'Erdogan Blackmails NATO Allies' - Mike Whitney

Article
SOURCE
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/12/03/erdogan-blackmails-nato-allies/



December 3, 2015
Erdogan Blackmails NATO Allies

by Mike Whitney

You know the country has really gone to the dogs when Washington’s main allies in its war on Syria are the two biggest terrorist incubators on the planet. I’m talking about Saudi Arabia and Turkey, both of which are run by fanatical Islamic zealots devoted to spreading violent jihad to the four corners of the earth. Not that the US doesn’t have blood on its hands too. It does, but that’s beside the point.

The point is that if you’re trying to sell your fake war on terror to the public, then you might want to think twice about lining up with Grand Sultan Erdogan and King Chop-Chop of Riyadh. The optics alone should have sent the White House PR team running for cover. I mean, couldn’t they have hired squeaky-clean Iceland to join the fray just to persuade the public that the ongoing proxy war wasn’t a complete sham. Which it is.

It all goes to show that no one in the administration really gives a rip about appearances anymore. Obama is going to do what he wants to do, and if you don’t like it: Tough!

Isn’t that the message?

Of course it is. But just look how that apathy transfers itself into other areas of governing like, let’s say, strategic planning. Take Syria for example, where the think tank pundits were given the task of coming up with a plan to topple a secular regime without: 1–triggering a violent insurgency.  2–igniting massive antiwar demonstrations around the world and, 3—producing hundreds or thousands of US casualties. In other words, our esteemed leaders didn’t want another Iraq which is understandable.

Anyway, that was the basic assignment. So the think tankers came up with this brilliant plan to enlist Sunni militants that the CIA would fund, arm, train and deploy into Syria to shoot the place up, raise holy hell, and then topple the regime of Syrian President Bashar al Assad.  That was the plan, at least.

Four and half years later, the place is a worse mess than Iraq.  Half the population is either dead or internally displaced, the civilian infrastructure is a shambles, and nothing has been achieved. Nothing.  Assad is safely tucked away in Damascus, the jihadi proxies are on the run, and everyone hates the US more than ever.

Great plan, eh? Where’s the downside?

The downside is that now Washington finds itself backed against the wall with precious  few options that don’t involve a direct confrontation with Moscow. Of course, all of this could have been avoided had the White House been more eager to negotiate a settlement to the conflict months earlier in Vienna. But, instead, the bullheaded Obama team decided to stick with its dreary “Assad must go” mantra which put the kibosh on any long-term agreement or ceasefire proposal. So now, the Russian-led coalition has made significant gains on the ground, retaking numerous key cities, highways and airbases in the west and south while sending US-backed terrorists fleeing eastward towards Raqqa.  These developments have forced Washington into a fallback position that will likely entail air-support for Turkish ground forces who will be deployed to Northern Syria to take and hold area sufficient for a “safe zone”, which is an innocuous sounding moniker the media invokes to conceal the fact that Turkey plans to annex sovereign Syrian territory which, by the way, is an act of war.

Now fast-forward to last week:

Some readers may have noticed disturbing headlines like this in the Wall Street Journal: “U.S. Urges Turkey to Seal Border”

Or this Reuters piece that popped up on Monday:  “NATO allies act to strengthen Turkey’s air defenses”

Why, you may ask, does Obama want Turkey to close the border now when the horse has already left the barn? What I mean is that the White House has known for over 3 years that the bulk of the jihadis were transiting Turkey on their way  to Syria, just like they knew that ISIS’s oil was being transported across Turkey. They knew it all because they have their damn spy satellites and  AWACs circling overhead. In fact, they could probably tell you how many bumblebees crossed the border at any given time, so they sure as heck saw the throngs of bearded roughnecks moving southward in droves.  So why is it so urgent to close the border now, after all, the damage is already done, right?

Could it have something to do with the fact that Putin’s legions are moving north to seal the border? Could there be an alternate objective, for example, could the US and Turkey be setting the stage for an incursion into Syria that would secure the land needed for the glorious safe zone?

That’s what most of the analysts seem to think, at least the ones that haven’t been coopted by the mainstream media. But why is NATO suddenly getting involved? What’s that all about? After all, Putin was reluctant to even commit his airforce to the Syrian conflict. It’s not like he’s planning to invade Turkey or something, right?

Of course he’s not thinking of invading Turkey. That would pit Russia against NATO in a planet-incinerating fight-to-the-death. That might please some of the crackpots in Washington, but just about everyone else would rather avoid the mushroom cloud scenario.

So, what’s really going on?

For that, we turn to Moon of Alabama that provides this excellent summary in a recent post titled:  “The Real “Terrorist Sympathizers” Want To Wage War On Syria … And Russia”. Here’s an excerpt:

     “Who initiated this sudden rush within major NATO governments to get parliamentary blank checks for waging a long war on Syria? Not only in the UK but also in France and Germany?

    The German government turned on a dime from “no military intervention in Syria ever” to “lets wage a war of terror on Syria” without any backing from the UN or international law. .. Who initiated this? A simple, medium size terror attack in Paris by some Belgians and French can not be the sole reason for this stampede.

    Did Obama call and demand support for his plans? What are these?

    I smell that a trap is being laid, likely via a treacherous Turkey, to somehow threaten Russia with, or involve it in, a wider war. This would include military attacks in east-Ukraine or Crimea as well as in Syria. Obama demanded European backing in case the issue gets out of hand. No other reason I have found explains the current panic. The terrorists the “west” supports in Syria are in trouble. The real terrorist sympathizers need to rush to their help. It is a start of all-out war on Syria and its Russian protectors.” (“Terrorist Sympathizers” Want To Wage War On Syria … And Russia“, Moon of Alabama)

Is that what’s going on? Has Turkish President Erdogan figured out how to hoodwink the NATO allies into a confrontation with Russia that will help him achieve his goal of toppling  Assad and stealing Syrian territory?

It’s hard to say, but clearly something has changed,  after all, neither France, nor Germany nor the UK were nearly as gung-ho just a few weeks ago. Now they’re all hyped-up and ready for WW3. Why is that?

Ahh, Grasshopper, that is the mystery, a mystery that was unraveled in an op-ed that appeared in the Tuesday edition of the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet Daily News. Here’s the excerpt:

    “The increase in military cooperation within NATO countries against ISIL and the piling up of NATO forces near Turkey’s border with Syria take place in parallel with the recent deal between Ankara and the Brussels over Syrian refugees and the re-activation of Turkey’s EU accession bid.” ….(“Western forces pile up on Turkey-Syria border“, Hurriyet)

Okay, so Erdogan worked out a deal with the other NATO countries. Why is that such a big deal?

Well, check out this blurb from the Today’s Zaman:  “Erdogan’s advisor, Burhan Kuzu, summed it up even more succinctly saying: “The EU finally got Turkey’s message and opened its purse strings. What did we say? ‘We’ll open our borders and unleash all the Syrian refugees on you,’” Kuzu stated in his controversial tweet… ” (“EU bows to Turkey’s threat on refugees says Erdoğan advisor“, Today’s Zaman)

Blackmail? Is that what we’re talking about, blackmail?

It sure sounds like it.

Let’s summarize: Erdogan intentionally releases tens of thousands of Syrian refugees into Europe to put pressure on EU politicians who quickly lose the support of their people and face the meteoric rise of right wing parties. And then, the next thing you know, Merkel, Hollande and every other EU leader is looking to cut a deal with Erdogan to keep the refugees in Turkey.

Isn’t that how it all went down? Except we’re missing one important factoid here, because according to the first op-ed “The increase in military cooperation within NATO… and the piling up of NATO forces near Turkey’s border”…took  place in parallel with the deal between Ankara and the Brussels.”

Get it? So there was a quid pro quo that no one wants to talk about.  In other words, Germany, France and the UK agreed to support Erdogan’s loony plan to conduct military operations in Syria, risking a serious dust-up with Russia, in order to save their own miserable political careers.

Boy, if that doesn’t take the cake, than I don’t know what does.

MIKE WHITNEY lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/12/03/erdogan-blackmails-nato-allies/
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COMMENT

Don't know about this.  

The part about Turkey's troops annexing Syrian territory is interesting. 

Don't know why Europe would bother with the US$3.2-BILLION for refugee blocking deal with terrorist supporter & gun runner, Turkey.

A wall and military force is cheaper & more trustworthy than Erdogan.
The US and European Union are invested in a long-haul war with Syria, so Turkey is their partner in crime.  Turkey's being paid off to remain cooperative and useful, and it's money probably earmarked for buying jihadist muscle and guns to take Syria. 
Europeans ought to arm themselves and take down their treacherous and incompetent governments, who are using taxpayer money to fund the destruction of Europe as the home of European peoples and to fund chaos generally.



October 30, 2015

Torture & War Crimes - The Show Must Go On

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.

Stephenscourt 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

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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






October 06, 2015

Video - Melanie Phillips Islam in Europe

Video
SOURCE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bH6QO9MfaH4




Melanie Phillips

Islam in Europe



13 Jul 2011

Rough Summary
{recommend:  check against audio}

Pew Poll
Britain least Islamophobic of all European nations that were studied & Britain nevertheless where Muslims hated their host country the most.

Real religion has become individualism. 
Nonetheless, a great desire for spirituality.

Spirituality without the church, without organised religion & moral codes.

Morality has been privatised.

What's right for me, is the basis for moral and cultural relativism.

Relativism involves no judgement to be permitted of people's lifestyles; the development of multiculturalism and victim culture, based on the doctrine that the values of the majority by definition are illegitimate, because they exclude the minorities.

Under the doctrine of relativism, there is no objective truth; everything is a matter of opinion, because my values are the equal of your values and therefore it is merely my opinion versus your opinion.

Under the doctrine of relativism, there is no objectivity; there is no truth.

This has given rise to a moral and social anarchy, in which Britain is rapidly retreating to a pre-modern age of irrationality.

Having disaggregated [divided] truth, we are no longer able to use the reason that bases itself on truth.

Yet we make a fetish of reason. It is in the name of reason -- scientific reason, also known as empiricism -- we have exiled religion and declared that god is dead because the biblical stories are merely primitive superstition, as they don't correspond to the dictates of reason as defined by empiricism.

Believe in a wide range of crap.

Complete disintegration of rationality, belief, cultural identity, morality, spirituality and religion has created a cultural vacuum.

Britain, Islamists filling the vacuum by:
1) 
terrorising population through terror;
2) 
converting the most vulnerable:  criminals, mentally disturbed, young who look for meaning beyond materialism.
 3)
exploiting victim culture, which has arisen out of doctrine of multiculturalism to claim that in the interests of 'equality' they must have preferential treatment in the public square, backed up by the threat of terrorism.  Intellectual elite in Britain has fallen for this hook, line & sinker, unlike the public, who most certainly have not. 

But our intellectual, political and security establishment in large measure is saying, instead of Muslims in Britain being treated on the principles of equality like any other minority, they have allowed and, indeed, condoned and encouraged, the steady encroachment of Islam into the public sphere.

So Britain now has earnest discussions by UK's most senior lawyers of the extent to which Islamic law can and should be permitted to encroach into the field of the English common law, although the principles of Islamic law are inimical to the English law and to the canons of Western society and British society.


Archbishop of Canterbury stated:  entirely proper for British Muslims to have recourse to sharia family law alongside English common law.

He was somewhat surprised by the explosive reaction he provoked.

What he was saying we should have no fear of as a hypothetical enticement for the future was already happening, in spades.


In Britain, there's a steady development of Muslim enclaves which are governed informally by parallel jurisdiction of sharia law, a kind of embryonic state within a state.

Britain already turns an official blind eye to such things as cousin marriage, genital mutilation of women, honour violence, and polygamy.

Indeed, Britain is now, as a state, encouraging and condoning polygamy, because Britain is now giving welfare benefits to the multiple wives of Muslim men.

Britain's Prime Minister has said that Britain should become the global centre of sharia finance.

What is not understood, is that this will institutionalise Islamism in Britain.

It has come as a shock for some of Britain’s banks to find that on their sharia boards advising them about their sharia finance arrangements, sit those who are not wholly unassociated with Islamic terrorism and with al-Qaeda.

Sharia, as understood by Melanie Phillips, does not prohibit the charging of interest.  Sharia merely prohibits exorbitant rates of interest.

Sharia loans will entail the Islamisation of borrowers, Phillips states.

British establishment refuses to see all of this and refuses to accept that religion is at the heart of the problem, and refuses to accept that what Britain is facing is an Islamic jihad.

British establishment has instead accepted the Muslims' own assertion that what we are facing in terms of terror is nothing whatsoever to do with religion and if anyone says that Islam is a religion of violence, they will kill them.

British establishment thinks that by seeking to accommodate this Muslim narrative of encroachment into the public sphere, they will draw the Muslim sting and get the Muslim community on-side, they will draw the sting of anger against Britain, they will turn jihadists into model citizens, and they will separate the community from al-Qaeda.

British establishment think that the Islamic religion in the form of the Muslim Brotherhood is an antidote to al-Qaeda -- an antidote to terror.  They think the Muslim Brotherhood is a counter-radicalisation movement.

As a result, they are using the Muslim Brotherhood and bringing it into the heart of British establishment, because they fail to understand that what Britain is facing is a pincer movement of Islamism being used against British society, not just through terrorism but also through cultural attack.

Britain is seeing Leninist Islamism in the form of al-Qaeda, as well as Gramscian Islamism in the form of Tariq Ramadan and cultural Muslim Brotherhood onslaught, which corresponds to and is using the Gramscian onslaught on the basic tenets of Western civilisation through such things as the capture of the intelligentsia, the capture of the universities, the capture of the establishment, the capture of the civil service, the destruction of such things as family and nation, and substitution of the values of the excluded and transgressive for the values of the normal.

That is the Gramscian project.  It has succeeded in Britain absolutely to the letter.  And the Islamists are coming along and Islamising Gramsci.  That's what Britain has.

The government does not see this, so Britain now has Muslim Brotherhood people at the centre of government, advising government on how to combat Islamist extremism.

Melanie Phillips has sat in defence establishment seminars, where she has seen hard-bitten people from the security establishment sitting lapping up Islamits bamboozling them with a sanitised and highly selective version of Islam.

Melanie Phillips states that she knows that the British police are giving sensitive security information to Muslim extremists who are on their liaison groups with the community, which are not vetted in case they upset the Muslim community and they are asking permission of these people before they conduct raids.

What this is doing is undermining the true moderate Muslims in Britain, of whom there are certainly some, but not by any means as many as is said to be, but they do exist.


Cardinal Pell painted a benign and optimistic picture of relations between the non-Muslim and Muslim minority in Australia.

Melanie Phillips makes a couple of points, which Pell did not fully acknowledge:

1.  Australia has very few Muslims compared to Britain and what there is in Europe, and that of course makes a considerable difference.

2.  Key thing about Australia is that this relatively happy state of affairs follows the incredibly hard line taken by John Howard and other ministers in that government, who basically said in terms, repeatedly:  this is the line we are drawing, we are a European Western society, you live here on our terms, or else you go -- and by the way, we are not letting a lot of you in and like it or lump it, these are our terms.  This is our society, this is our culture, you are welcome to take part in it, but on our terms.


Melanie Phillips states, this is what has to happen.  Britain has to draw the cultural line in the sand.

"The British Muslims say to us, we want equality.  We are a minority, we want equality.  And the establishment, because its so bamboozled by multiculturalism, thinks that equality means equality of the minorities with the majority.  But it doesn't. 
The deal since the establishment has been that the majority upholds its own society -- and in the case of Britain and the West, tenets of liberalism, of tolerance of the disconnect between religion and the public square -- and that all minorities are treated the same *as each other* within that.
In other words, they are all free and welcome to practise communities of faith, but where those faiths may conflict with the dominant values of the majority, those values must give way. ... In terms of the public sphere, it's ours:  you do not colonise it. So not one inch will we give to sharia, because we give it to no other minority."

Britain has gone hell for leather in the opposite direction and that is why Britain is the most tolerant nation in Europe towards its Muslim minority, and it is the most hated by that minority.

Antonio Gramsci

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Gramsci



Further Video

Melanie Phillips
on the threat of radical Islam
11 Mar 2015
https://youtu.be/S7qOemB2l9E?t=1680


Terrifying conclusion.

Hard to weigh up how seriously to take Melanie Phillips, as she is very bound up in defending Israel -- ie Israel can do no wrong -- & it sounds like the US can't do wrong either (eg 2007 videos I just looked at).

That could be unimportant, but it could also be a significant thing.

The threat is probably real (but not necessarily for the reasons she thinks).  The rest I don't buy.

Israel never gets bad press, but from the way this lady's talking in the videos I've seen, you'd think the press was crucifying Israel.

Israel is always treated as an exception:  Tzipi Livni arrest warrant ignored; over 120,000 signature petition to arrest Netanyahu not discussed in UK parliament, contrary to own rules;  the "Israel has a right to defend itself" constant refrain, as Israel was pounding Gaza (which is like an open prison); the massive amount of aid Israel receives from the US; the military aid Israel received from Germany; the considerable amount of kowtowing to Israel and supporters of Israel that the West seems to do, are just some of the things that come to mind.

---------------------- ꕤ ----------------------



September 25, 2015

Britian Refused to Play By Own Rules -- 112,000 Petition Calling for Arrest of Netanyahu for War Crimes - Not Debated In Parliament

Article
SOURCE
PRESS TV
http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2015/09/18/429735/UK-Parliament-Netanyahu-Arrest-Petition



UK parliament under fire for declining Netanyahu arrest petition


Fri Sep 18, 2015 2:46PM

The British Parliament has come under increasing fire over its decision to skip a debate on a petition calling for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“It’s quite disappointing that the Parliament has refused to play by its own rules. The fact is that it’s a particular issue which receives over 100,000 signatures that ultimately allows to be debated on the floor of the House. The fact that it has been declined, gives rise to many questions,” said Anas al-Tikriti, chief executive of the Cordoba Foundation.

    “It seems to me that the Parliament has failed in its duty. It seems to me that this is the continuation of the pro-Israel lobby in its attempt to sweep under the carpet the crimes committed by Israel,” he told Press TV’s UK Desk on Friday.

‘Important petition’

Al-Tikriti described the petition as an important bid, which shows the British people want an end to their government’s support for the Israeli regime.

“I think that 112,000 signatures means that there is a quite tremendous disgust in British government’s continuous relationship with Israel… It demonstrates that there is a huge gap between what the British public feels and wants and how the British government and its politicians behave,…” he underscored.

Earlier this week, the British parliament announced that it will not debate the petition calling for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over war crimes.

The petition has already received over 112,000 signatures, well above 100,000 signatures necessary to qualify the motion for a debate in parliament.

It was uploaded on the UK Parliament’s official website on August 7.

Those signing the petition wanted Netanyahu to be brought to justice for the crimes committed against Palestinian people during Israel’s deadly war on the Gaza Strip last year.

However, the House of Commons’ Petitions Committee announced Wednesday that it is not possible, neither under the international law, nor the UK law, to take action against the Israeli prime minister over Tel Aviv’s war crimes against the people of Gaza.

‘Staunch support for Israel’

The British government, which is seen as one of the staunch supporters of the Israeli regime, had already rejected the bid.

“Under UK and international law, visiting heads of foreign governments, such as Prime Minister Netanyahu, have immunity from legal process, and cannot be arrested or detained,” the government said on the petition website.

Earlier this month, British Prime Minister David Cameron announced that his country “remains staunch" in its "defense of Israel".

Cameron made the pledge while meeting with visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at 10 Downing Street in London on September 10.  

Anti-Israel sentiments

Netanyahu’s two-day visit to London provoked anger among many Britons with a number of them gathering outside Downing Street on to demand his arrest for war crimes in the Gaza Strip.

Last year, Tel Aviv launched a 50-day war on the besieged coastal territory, killing nearly 22-hundred people, most of them civilians. Thousands more were injured and some 100-thousand houses were damaged during the indiscriminate attacks.

The war drew global condemnation and prompted many people across the world to join campaigns against the Israeli regime, including BDS Movement (boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel).
http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2015/09/18/429735/UK-Parliament-Netanyahu-Arrest-Petition

---------------------- ꕤ ----------------------

COMMENT

"... announced Wednesday that it is not possible, neither under the international law, nor the UK law, to take action ..."
It must depend on who's doing the bombing.
If it was Serbia, I'm sure the Brits would oblige -- swiftly.
But I guess US-NATO doesn't need Gaza for a Middle Eastern military base, as Israel has that strategic market cornered.
So, the post WWII international laws were never intended to be respected by the US and its allies.
It was just some humanitarian / international 'super-league' farce, passing a  fantasy benchmark of military propriety, intended to be imposed on minor players and targets only.


PressTV

Needs to upload audio to YouTube.  Found their audio difficult listening.  Constant stop-start.  Gave up.


Transcript - Assange - Transnational Security Elite, Carving Up the World Using Your Tax Money

Video
SOURCE

Harry Fear TV
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijTEQxR07Iw&feature=youtu.be




JULIAN ASSANGE

OCT8 Antiwar Mass Assembly (2011)


ꕤ  Copyright Disclaimer under section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, education and research.

---------------------- ꕤ ----------------------

TRANSCRIPT
[for quotation purposes, confirm audio]




Julian Assange - OCT8 Antiwar Mass Assembly (2011)


Mass Assembly in London
10th anniversary of the Afghan war
and the formation of the Stop the War Coalition



Anas Altikriti
Assembly chair

Brothers & Sisters, Friends, Ladies & Gentlemen:

Our next speaker is someone who changed the face of the landscape of news reporting, forever.

Our next speaker struggled to get here today, because for 306 days he's been placed under house arrest, with no charge.

Someone we all know.

Someone we respect.

Someone we admire for what he has done for the truth and for news around the world.

Please welcome:  Julian Assange.

[applause]

Julian Assange
Editor, WikiLeaks

Thank you.  Thank you.

Well, what a wonderful crowd.

It's not a crowd that I often get to see.

It's very heartening to see that so many people care about the values that I hold dear.

And there's something I want to talk about.

What can we do with our values? 

What can we do at all, in relation to this war? 

Because the reality is Margaret Thatcher had it right:  there is no society anymore.

What there is, is a transnational security elite that is busy carving up the world, using your tax money.

To combat that elite, we must not petition:  we must take it over.

We must form our own networks of strength and mutual value, which can challenge those strengths and self-interested values of the warmongers in this country, and in others, that have formed, hand in hand, an alliance to take money from the United States -- from every NATO country, from Australia -- and:  launder it through Afghanistan; launder it through Iraq; launder it through Somalia; launder it through Yemen; launder it through Pakistan; and wash that money in peoples' blood.

I don't need to tell you the depravity of war. 

You are all too familiar with its images, with the refugees of war, with information that we have revealed showing the everyday squalor and barbarity of war.

Information such as the individual deaths of over 130,000 people in Iraq.

Individual deaths that were kept secret by the US military who denied that they ever counted the deaths of civilians.

Instead, I want to tell you what I think is the way that wars come to be and that wars can be undone.

In democracies, or the pseudo democracies that we are evolving into, wars are a result of lies.

The Vietnam War and the push for US involvement was the result of the Gulf of Tonkin incident:  a lie.

The Iraq War, famously, is a result of lies.

Wars in Somalia are a result of lies.

The Second World War and the German invasion of Poland was the result of carefully constructed lies.

That is war by media.

Let us ask ourselves of the complicit media -- which is the majority of the mainstream press -- what is the average death count attributed to each journalist?

When we understand that wars come about as a result of lies peddled to the British public, and the American public, and the publics all over Europe and other countries, then who are the war criminals?

It is not just leaders, it is not just soldiers:  it is journalists.

Journalists are war criminals.

And while one might think that that should lead us to a state of despair, that the reality that is constructed around us is constructed by liars, is constructed by people who are close to those that they are meant to be policing:  it should lead us also to an optimistic understanding, because if wars can be started by lies, peace can be started by truth.

[applause]

So that is our task and it is your task.

Go and get the truth.

Get into the ballpark and get the ball, and give it to us and we'll spread it all over the world.

[applause]

Anas Altikriti
Assembly chair

Julian Assange.

[applause]

--- end 6:52 ---


---------------------- ꕤ ----------------------

McNamara admits: 

It didn't happen

Gulf of Tonkin Incident

Copyright Disclaimer under section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, education and research.


The black art of news management
John Pilger, Investigative Journalist
3 June 2010

EXTRACTS ONLY
How do wars begin? With a “master illusion”, according to Ralph McGehee, one of the CIA’s pioneers in “black propaganda”, known today as “news management”. In 1983, he described to me how the CIA had faked an “incident” that became the “conclusive proof of North Vietnam’s aggression”. This followed a claim, also fake, that North Vietnamese torpedo boats had attacked an American warship in the Gulf of Tonkin in August 1964.

“The CIA,” he said, “loaded up a junk, a North Vietnamese junk, with communist weapons - the Agency maintains communist arsenals in the United States and around the world. They floated this junk off the coast of central Vietnam. Then they shot it up and made it look like a fire fight had taken place, and they brought in the American press. Based on this evidence, two Marine landing teams went into Danang and a week after that the American air force began regular bombing of North Vietnam.” An invasion that took three million lives was under way.
FULL @ SOURCE
http://johnpilger.com/articles/the-black-art-of-news-management



30-year Anniversary: 

Tonkin Gulf

Lie Launched Vietnam War

By Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon

Thirty years ago, it all seemed very clear.

“American Planes Hit North Vietnam After Second Attack on Our Destroyers; Move Taken to Halt New Aggression”, announced a Washington Post headline on Aug. 5, 1964.

That same day, the front page of the New York Times reported: “President Johnson has ordered retaliatory action against gunboats and ‘certain supporting facilities in North Vietnam’ after renewed attacks against American destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin.”

But there was no “second attack” by North Vietnam — no “renewed attacks against American destroyers.” By reporting official claims as absolute truths, American journalism opened the floodgates for the bloody Vietnam War.

A pattern took hold: continuous government lies passed on by pliant mass media…leading to over 50,000 American deaths and millions of Vietnamese casualties.


EXTRACT ONLY - FULL AT SOURCE

[scroll down at source]

https://archive.is/injay
POLITICAL PERSECUTION

JULIAN ASSANGE
Australian Journalist

FAQ & Support


[Figure valid: early January 2016]

the WORLD'S
Most WANTED Publisher
5 YEARS DETAINED
NO CHARGE


COLLATERAL MURDER
WikiLeaks VIDEO  |  IRAQ


LATEST BOOK
Assange, Co-Author:

The WikiLeaks Files
(2015) | here

*Collateral Murder link updated.