How Britain and U.S. Killed the Bahrain Revolution

Former editor and writer for major news media organizations. He has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages

Finian Cunningham

February 17, 2021

Britain and the United States worked together to kill the Bahrain revolution of 2011 and its people’s long-held aspirations for democratic governance.

Ten years ago this week, the Bahraini people launched a daring, peaceful uprising against a despised and despotic monarchial regime. During the next four weeks, the Al Khalifa regime was rocked to its shaky foundations as hundreds of thousands of Bahrainis took to the streets of the Persian Gulf island state.

What followed, however, was a crucial – if despicable – intervention by Britain and the United States which unleashed a wave of brutal repression – a repression that continues to this day. Without this British and American operation, the Bahraini regime would have fallen to a popular uprising.

At stake for London and Washington was not just the tiny island of Bahrain itself but the stability of the entire chain of Persian Gulf monarchies, principally Saudi Arabia. The Gulf sheikhdoms are essential for maintaining the geopolitical interests of the Western powers in the Middle East, for propping up the petrodollar system which is paramount to American economic sustenance, and prolonging lucrative trade for British and American weapons manufacturers.

If Bahrain were to succumb to a democratic uprising by its people demanding free and fair elections, independent rule of law, more equitable economic governance, and so on, then the Gulf monarchies would be “threatened” by example. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Oman are the other Gulf states which are ruled over by monarchs. They are all clients of Western powers, facilitating American and British military bases across the region which are vital for power projection, for example prosecuting wars and confronting designated enemies like Iran. Bahrain hosts the U.S. Navy Fifth Fleet base as well as a new British naval base that was opened in 2016. In short, Bahrain could not be allowed to attain democracy as that would have a domino effect across the entire region jeopardizing U.S. and British interests.

The democratic aspirations of the Bahraini people are poignantly apposite. The majority of the indigenous population are followers of Shia Islam with many cultural connections to ancient Iran which lies to the north across the narrow Gulf sea. The Bahraini rulers descend from a colonial settler tribe which invaded the island in the 18th century. The Khalifa tribe hailed from the Arabian Peninsula originally. Their occupation of Bahrain was one of conquest and pillage. Unlike most Bahrainis the usurpers professed to following Sunni Islam and held the native population in contempt, lording over them and imposing arbitrary, extortionate levies under pain of death. But the British Empire constructed the new rulers into a monarchy in 1820 in order to perform a sentinel duty over the island in a key waterway leading to Britain’s imperial jewel in the crown, India. The British Empire had similar protectorate arrangements with all the other Gulf Arab territories.

Down through the centuries, British colonial officers and soldiers were relied on to enforce the Khalifa regime in Bahrain. Uprisings by the people would recur periodically and would be violently suppressed by British security forces.

The pattern was repeated during the 2011 Arab Spring revolts which swept across North Africa and the Middle East. Some of these revolts were manipulated or fomented by Western powers for regime change, such as in Syria and Libya. But in Bahrain, it was a truly democratic impulse that galvanized the Shia majority to once again demand their historic rights against what was viewed as an imposter, despotic regime.

Such was the regime’s shaky hold on power that the tide of popular uprising nearly swept it aside during the four weeks following the beginning of the Bahrain uprising on February 14, 2011. This author was present during this tumultuous time which saw up to 500,000 people take to the streets – nearly half the population. Pearl Roundabout in the capital, Manama, became a de facto “Republic of Bahrain” with peaceful encampments and daily throngs defiantly telling King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa that it was “game over” for his crony regime. It was a heady time and the regime’s imminent perilous fate was palpable. Plunging the people into a bloodbath would be the escape route for the rulers and their Western sponsors.

On March 14, 2011, thousands of troops from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates invaded Bahrain and began a bloody repression against unarmed protesters. People were rounded up for mass-detention and torture. Young men were shot dead at point-blank range. The vicious repression that began a decade ago continues to this day – albeit ignored by Western news media. All of the Bahraini pro-democracy leaders languish in prisons without due process. Several prisoners have been executed for alleged terrorist crimes after “confessions” were beaten out of them.

Only days before the Saudi-Emirati invasion of Bahrain, on March 9, 2011, the regime was visited by senior British and American security officials. On the British side were Sir Peter Ricketts, the national security advisor to then Prime Minister David Cameron, as well as General Sir David Richards, the head of British military. In a second separate meeting, on March 11, three days before the onslaught, the Khalifa regime was visited by then U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. We don’t know the details of those discussions but media reports stated at the time that the British and Americans were “offering their support for the royal family”.

Britain and the United States worked together to kill the Bahrain revolution of 2011 and its people’s long-held aspirations for democratic governance. The repression goes on with British and American officials frequently visiting Bahrain to express support for the Khalifa regime. Former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited the island in August 2020 and fawned over the regime for its support to Washington’s policy of normalizing ties with Israel. There is no sign of the new Biden administration taking a more critical position towards Bahrain. Indeed it was the Obama administration in which Biden was vice president that colluded with Britain in the slaughter of the Bahraini revolution back in 2011.

Thus, when Britain and the United States talk about promoting democracy and human rights in places like Hong Kong, Venezuela, Russia, or anywhere else, just remember their bankrupt credibility as proven by Bahrain. Western news media – despite their claims of freedom and independence – also deserve condemnation. Those media have steadfastly ignored the plight of Bahrainis in deference to their government’s geopolitical interests.

A follow-up commentary on the Arab Spring events 10 years ago will look at how the United States and Britain hypocritically and disingenuously moved to intervene in Libya and Syria at the very same time that these powers were suppressing the legitimate pro-democracy movement in Bahrain.

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Why not make Parliament into a Holocaust Memorial?

May 08, 2019  /  Gilad Atzmon

By Gilad Atzmon

Five British Prime Ministers, some of them renowned war criminals, united yesterday in a call to build a Holocaust Memorial in proximity to Parliament.  “A sacred, national mission,” is how Theresa May described the idea and for once, I totally agree with this tragic, sad woman. I would take it further: don’t just build a holocaust shrine in Westminster, make our parliament into a Holocaust monument. We don’t really need a House of Commons; as things stand, we better get direct orders from our true rulers in Tel Aviv.

But there is a deeper ethical rationale that justifies the erection of a holocaust memorial instead of our dysfunctional parliament. Every political commentator in Britain knows by now that the more that Jewish pressure groups terrorise the kingdom, its human rights campaigners, its artists, writers and poets, the more Brits become aware of the crimes of Zionism, Israel and their ruthless Lobby. The more British politicians join Parliamentary friends of Israel clubs, the less Brits trust their political system. The more Holocaust indoctrination is shoved down our throats, the more suspicious Brits become of the manner in which history is told.

Mrs May said: “By putting our National Holocaust Memorial and Education Centre next to our Parliament, we make a solemn and eternal promise that Britain will never forget what happened in the Holocaust.” Is that true Mrs. May? Do you really mean what you say? Will our Holocaust memorial bring to light the embarrassing fact that Britain made it very difficult for Jewish refugees to seek a safe haven in the Kingdom or in other parts of the empire? In 1937, as the rate of Jewish refugees looking to immigrate to Britain increased, the British government created stricter standards for those whom they would admit. One was that refugees had to have ₤50 deposited in an overseas bank, but in Germany it was against the law to possess foreign currency. If this was not enough to stop Jewish immigration from Germany, the British government limited the number of immigrants in 1938 and 1939. Practically speaking, the British Government turned its back on German and Austrian Jews.

 The PM vowed that “in the face of despicable Holocaust denial, this memorial will stand to preserve the truth forever.

” I am here to tell you with confidence that the British Holocaust memorial will act intensively to conceal British complicity in the destruction of European Jewry.

 Mrs May was joined by all the living former prime ministers: David Cameron, Gordon Brown, Tony Blair and Sir John Major. With the exception of Sir John Major, all our living PMs are involved in a lot of death and carnage. While Blair and Brown led this kingdom to a disastrous criminal war in Iraq that led to millions of casualties, it was Cameron who managed to pull this country into a chain of disasters in Libya, Syria and beyond.

 Tony Blair whom third of the British people see as a war criminal  said in his message that “Antisemitism and hate did not end in 1945. Unfortunately today some of this poison is back from the political fringe to parts of the political mainstream.” Blair was probably referring to his own party that struggles to disown the criminal past he himself inflicted on it. But the truth of the matter is that Antisemitism didn’t die in 1945, certainly not in Britain. The post-war Labour Government went out of its way to make the lives of Jewish holocaust survivors impossible. In Zionist history, British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin (Labour) is remembered as one of the bitterest enemies of the Jewish people. This senior Labour politician had opposed removing the limiting of Jewish immigration to Palestine. Is this Zionist chronicle of Labour anti-Jewish politics going to be explored in the Holocaust monument?

It doesn’t take a genius to gather why Blair and Brown are so enthusiastic about a museum that Chronicles Nazi crimes rather than a proper and timely institute that would explore their own crimes in Iraq. It is pretty clear why David Cameron prefers to divert attention from his own blunders in Syria and Libya. But it goes further. Britain and the Empire have a long list of crimes against humanity to account for: slavery, concentration camps in the Boer war, the partitioning of India, the destruction of Palestine, famines in Ireland and Bengal. Millions of innocent people lost their lives due to the crimes of the empire, yet our ethically compromised Prime Ministers are committed to the commemoration of crimes that were committed by another people. Is this the ethical message we are supposed to pass to the next generations? Is zero self-reflection a new British value?

 I have learned that Jeremy Corbyn, the person who according to the polls is destined to become our next PM, is not at all different from his predecessors. Corbyn, who at a certain point claimed to care for the many, is now subscribing to the primacy of Jewish suffering. Corbyn was quick to announce that he also would “strongly support permanent commemoration, including a national memorial, alongside extra investment in educational programmes.” I guess that supporting a Holocaust memorial is an entry ticket to 10 Downing Street.

There is a good reason to believe that our entire political class has migrated to Egypt by now, without exception they all live in a state of denial. 

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British intelligence now officially a by-word for organized crime

An intelligence service given free rein to commit ‘serious crimes’ in its own country is an intelligence service that is the enemy of its people.

The quite astounding revelation that Britain’s domestic intelligence service, MI5, has enjoyed this very freedom for decades has only just been made public at a special tribunal in London, set up to investigate the country’s intelligence services at the behest of a coalition of human rights groups, alleging a pattern of illegality up to and including collusion in murder.

The hitherto MI5 covert policy sanctioning its agents to commit and/or solicit serious crimes, as and when adjudged provident, is known as the Third Direction. This codename has been crafted, it would appear, by someone with a penchant for all things James Bond within an agency whose average operative is more likely to be 5’6” and balding with a paunch and bad teeth than any kind of lantern-jawed 007.

The Pat Finucane Centre, one of the aforementioned human rights groups involved in bringing about this tribunal investigation (Investigatory Powers Tribunal, to give it its Sunday name) into the nefarious activities of Britain’s domestic intelligence agency, issued a damning statement in response to the further revelation that former Prime Minister David Cameron introduced oversight guidelines with regard to the MI5 covert third direction policy back in 2012.

Cameron’s decision to do so, the group claims, was far from nobly taken:

“It can be no coincidence that Prime Minister David Cameron issued new guidelines, however flawed, on oversight of MI5 just two weeks before publication of the De Silva report into the murder of Pat Finucane. The PM was clearly alive to the alarming evidence which was about to emerge of the involvement of the Security Service in the murder. To date no-one within a state agency has been held accountable. The latest revelations make the case for an independent inquiry all the more compelling.”

Pat Finucane, a Belfast Catholic, plied his trade as a human rights lawyer at a time when the right to be fully human was denied the minority Catholic community of the small and enduring outpost of British colonialism in the north east corner of Ireland, otherwise known as Northern Ireland. He was murdered by loyalist paramilitaries in 1989, back when the decades-long conflict euphemistically referred to as the Troubles still raged, claiming victims both innocent and not on all sides.

Unlike the vast majority of those killed and murdered in the course of this brutal conflict, Finucane’s murder sparked a long and hard fought struggle for justice by surviving family members, friends and campaigners. They allege – rather convincingly, it should be said – that it was carried out with the active collusion of MI5.

Stepping back and casting a wider view over this terrain, the criminal activities of Britain’s intelligence services constitute more than enough material for a book of considerable heft. How fortunate then that just such a book has already been written.

In his ‘Dead Men Talking: Collusion, Cover Up and Murder in Northern Ireland’s Dirty War’, author Nicholas Davies “provides information on a number of the killings [during the Troubles], which were authorized at the highest level of MI5 and the British government.”

But over and above the crimes of MI5 in Ireland, what else have those doughty defenders of the realm been up to over the years? After all, what is the use of having a license to engage in serious criminal activity, including murder and, presumably, torture, if you’re not prepared to use (abuse) it? It begs the question of how many high profile deaths attributed to suicide, natural causes, and accident down through the years have been the fruits of MI5 at work?

And what about the possibility of MI5’s involvement in, dare we use the term, false flag operations?

As someone who abhors the premise of conspiracy theory on principle, the fact that more and more are turning to its warm embrace as an intellectual reflex against what is politely described as the ‘official narrative’ of events, well this is no surprise when we learn of the egregious machinations of Western intelligence agencies such as Britain’s MI5.

What we are bound to state, doing so without fear of contradiction, is this particular revelation opens up a veritable Pandora’s Box of grim possibilities when it comes to the potential crimes committed by Britain’s domestic intelligence agency, ensuring that a full and vigorous investigation and public inquiry is now both necessary and urgent.

If any such investigation is to be taken seriously, however, it must include in its remit the power to investigate all possible links between Britain’s intelligence community and organisations such as, let’s see, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group?

The deafening UK mainstream media and political class silence over the trail connecting 2017 Manchester Arena suicide bomber Salman Abedi and MI6, Britain’s foreign intelligence agency, leaves a lingering stench of intrigue that will not out. The work of investigative journalist Mark Curtis on this sordid relationship is unsurpassed.

As Curtis writes, “The evidence suggests that the barbaric Manchester bombing, which killed 22 innocent people on May 22nd, is a case of blowback on British citizens arising at least partly from the overt and covert actions of British governments.”

In the same report he arrives at a conclusion both damning and chilling: “The evidence points to the LIFG being seen by the UK as a proxy militia to promote its foreign policy objectives. Whitehall also saw Qatar as a proxy to provide boots on the ground in Libya in 2011, even as it empowered hardline Islamist groups.”

Finally: “Both David Cameron, then Prime Minister, and Theresa May – who was Home Secretary in 2011 when Libyan radicals were encouraged to fight Qadafi [Muammar Gaddafi] – clearly have serious questions to answer. We believe an independent public enquiry is urgently needed.”

In words that echo down to us from ancient Rome, the poet Juvenal taunts our complacency with a question most simple and pertinent: “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?”  Who will guard the guards themselves?

Edward R Murrow puts it rather more bluntly: “A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.”

Sooner or later, people in Britain are going to have to wake up to who the real enemy is.

By John Wight
Source

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A Gangster State

By Craig Murray

“Information Clearing House” –  Max Weber defined a key attribute of a state as holding the monopoly on the legitimate exercise of violence within a given territory. For anybody other than the state to use substantive physical force against you or to imprison you is regarded as an extremely serious crime. The state itself may however constrain you, beat you, imprison you and even kill you. That link is on deaths in police custody. I might also quote the state murder of 12 year old British child Jojo Jones, deliberately executed by drone strike by the USA with prior approval from the British government.

That is but one example of the British state’s decreasing reticence over the use of extreme violence. The shameless promotion of Cressida Dick to head the Metropolitan Police as reward for orchestrating the cold-blooded murder of an innocent and unresisting Jean Charles de Menezes is another example. So is Savid Javid’s positive encouragement of the US to employ the death penalty against British men stripped of citizenship.

There are a class of states where the central government does not have sufficient control over its territories to preserve its monopoly of violence. That may include violence in opposition to the state. But one further aspect of that is state sanctioned violence in pursuit of state aims by non state actors, done with a nod and a wink from the government – death squads and private militias, often CIA supplied, in South America have often acted this way, and so occasionally does the British state, for example in the murder of Pat Finucane. In some instances, a state might properly be described as a gangster state, where violent groups acting for personal gain act in concert with state authorities, with motives of personal financial profit involved on both sides.

It appears to me in this sense it is fair to call Britain a gangster state. It has contracted out the exercise of state violence, including in some instances to thepoint of death, against prisoners and immigration detainees to companies including G4S, who exercise that violence purely for the making of profit from it. It is a great moral abomination that violence should be exercised against humans for profit – and it should be clear that in even in most “humane” conditions the deprivation of physical liberty of any person is an extreme and chronic exercise of violence against them. I do not deny the necessity of such action on occasion to protect others, but that the state shares out its monopoly of violence, so that business interests with which the political class are closely associated can turn a profit, is a matter of extreme moral repugnance.

Rory Stewart appeared on Sky News this morning and the very first point he saw fit to make was a piece of impassioned shilling on behalf of G4S. That this was the first reaction of the Prisons Minister to a question on the collapse of order at Birmingham Prison due to G4S’ abject performance, shows both the Tories’ ideological commitment to privatisation in all circumstances, especially where it has demonstrably failed, and shows also the extent to which they are in the pockets of financial interests – and not in the least concerned about the public interest.

I should add to this that Tories here includes Blairites. Blair and Brown were gung-ho for prison privatisation, and even keen to extend the contracting out of state violence for profit to the military sector by the deployment of mercenary soldiers, which New Labour itself consciously rebranded as “private military companies”. Iraq was a major exercise in this with British government contracted mercenaries often outnumbering actual British troops.

The reason for the state to have the monopoly of violence in any society is supposed to be in order to ensure that violence is only ever exercised with caution, with regret and in proportion, solely in unavoidable circumstances. It is the most profound duty of a state to ensure that this is so. The contracting out of state violence for private profit ought to be unthinkable to any decent person.

Craig Murray is an author, broadcaster and human rights activist. He was British Ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004 and Rector of the University of Dundee from 2007 to 2010. https://www.craigmurray.org.uk

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One Year On – The Truth About The Manchester Bombing Scorpion

The Saker

May 22, 2018

by Nick for The Saker Blog

“Terrorism is like a scorpion; it can unexpectedly sting you at any time”. Among the Western nations to discover the bitter truth of Bashar al Assad’s 2013 warning was Britain, when a Libyan suicide bomber killed 22 people attending a pop concert in Manchester. But while the UK media covered the May 22^nd first anniversary of the massacre, not a single mainstream outlet so much as hinted at the fact that the attack was intimately linked to the attempt by the Cameron regime to use Jihadi terror as a weapon of foreign policy.

The truth emerged during the trial last December of Mohammed Abdullah, a Libyan national living in Manchester who was jailed for ten years for belonging to ISIS/Daesh.

Press coverage of the trial confirmed that Abdullah and his friends joined the terror group after fighting in Libya in 2011. But the same mainstream media carefully avoided the fact that the Manchester terror cell to which Abdullah, and his close friend Manchester bomber Salman Abedi, belonged was formed as a direct result of the British government and security services trying to use radical Muslims as weapons to achieve ‘regime change’ in Libya.

The Daily Mail was among the media outlets that reported on the conviction of Mohammed Abdallah:

“Footage has emerged of the jihadi linked to the Manchester Arena bomber fighting with militants in Libya before he tried to become an ISIS sniper.

“Mohammed Abdallah and his brother Abdalraouf were at the centre of a Manchester-based terror network which included Salman Abedi, who killed 22 at the Ariana Grande concert earlier this year.

“As unemployed former drug dealer Abdallah was jailed for 10 years today, footage showed him and his brother during a spell they spent in Libya fighting along militants in the country’s civil war.

“The brothers, who grew up in Manchester had dual Libyan nationality, joined the ‘Tripoli Brigade’ when the North African country fell apart in 2011.”

Hold it right there! Because the Tripoli Brigade was not some random bunch of Jihadi crazies. It was a part of the so-called National Liberation Army, the umbrella force organised to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi. The NLA was the ground-force backed by none other than David Cameron, who turned the RAF into the air arm of the Islamist rebellion.

It was founded, organised and led by Mahdi al-Harati, a Libyan-Irish citizen. It was armed by the CIA, through the American puppet regime in Qatar. The brigade included officers who had lived most of their lives in English speaking countries including Ireland, Canada, UK and the US.

An article in Ireland’s Sunday World drew attention to relations between Mahdi al-Harati and an unnamed US intelligence agency.

According to the article on November 6, 2011, €200,000 in cash was stolen from al-Harati’s Dublin house a month previously.

The Sunday World reported that a criminal gang working the area found two envelopes stuffed with €500 notes during a raid on the al-Harati’s family home, October 6.

The article, apparently relying on police sources, stated that al-Harati, who has been a Dublin resident employed as an Arabic teacher for 20 years, claimed, when contacted by police, that the stolen cash was “given to him by an American intelligence agency.”

The article continued, “Astonished officers made contact with Mahdi al-Harati who told them that he had travelled to France, the United States and Qatar the previous month and that representatives of an American intelligence agency had given him a significant amount of money to help in the efforts to defeat Gaddafi. He said he left two envelopes with his wife in case he was killed and took the rest of the cash with him when he went back to Libya.”

When Abdallah’s brother was shot and paralysed from the waist down, he was flown back to Britain to get NHS treatment. But the UK’s aid for the rebels went far beyond the ‘health tourism’ we’ve all come to expect in Soft Touch Britain.

Middle Eastern Eye blew the whistle on what really happened on 25th May 2017, in a major investigation entitled ‘Sorted’ by MI5: How UK government sent British-Libyans to fight Gadaffi. This included the following revelations:

“One British citizen with a Libyan background who was placed on a control order – effectively house arrest – because of fears that he would join militant groups in Iraq said he was “shocked” that he was able to travel to Libya in 2011 shortly after his control order was lifted.

“‘I was allowed to go, no questions asked,’ said the source, who wished to remain anonymous.

“He said he had met several other British-Libyans in London who also had control orders lifted in 2011 as the war against Gaddafi intensified, with the UK, France and the US carrying out air strikes and deploying special forces soldiers in support of the rebels.

“‘They didn’t have passports, they were looking for fakes or a way to smuggle themselves across,’ said the source.

“But within days of their control orders being lifted, British authorities returned their passports, he said.

“‘These were old school LIFG guys, they [the British authorities] knew what they were doing,’ he said, referring to the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, an anti-Gaddafi Islamist militant group formed in 1990 by Libyan veterans of the fight against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.

“Belal Younis, another British citizen who went to Libya, described how he was stopped under ‘Schedule 7’ counter-terrorism powers on his return to the UK after a visit to the country in early 2011. Schedule 7 allows police and immigration officials to detain and question any person passing through border controls at ports and airports to determine whether they are involved in terrorism.He said he was subsequently asked by an intelligence officer from MI5, the UK’s domestic security agency: “Are you willing to go into battle?

“‘While I took time to find an answer he turned and told me the British government have no problem with people fighting against Gaddafi,’ he told MEE.

As he was travelling back to Libya in May 2011 he was approached by two counter-terrorism police officers in the departure lounge who told him that if he was going to fight he would be committing a crime.

But after providing them with the name and phone number of the MI5 officer he had spoken to previously, and following a quick phone call to him, he was waved through.

“As he waited to board the plane, he said the same MI5 officer called him to tell him that he had ‘sorted it out’.”

The victims of David Cameron’s scorpion nest in Manchester

The Manchester Bomber’s own father first came to Britain with the help of the security services as a leading member of the LIFG. And the December 2017 trial confirmed that his close friend Mohammed Abdallah was a fighter with the Tripoli Brigade – David Cameron’s allies and “boots on the ground” in the war on Libya.

So we see that the terrorist cell which murdered 22 innocent people in Manchester were not a group who slipped in and out of Britain to wage terrorist war without anyone noticing. Rather, they were part of a terror gang deliberately encouraged and aided and abetted by the British political elite and intelligence services.

They were yet another example of the way in which Britain and key allies, including the USA, Israel and France, have continually treated Wahhabi-inspired terrorists as pet scorpions which they can drop down other people’s shirts in the hope that they will do their dirty work for them.

The Manchester bombing was a terrible and classic example of the accuracy of President Assad’s warning against this wickedly cynical policy. One year on, with defeated Daesh fighters using every possible route to try to escape final annihilation by the Syrian Army by slipping into Western Europe, the resulting danger is now worse than ever.

The West no longer even knows where its scorpions are. Its short-sighted political and media elites need to check their own boots!

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The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!

Britain and the War on Syria: Ten Questions for the British Government

Source

By Adeyinka Makinde,

On May 10th 2018, the British government “condemned” recent Iranian rocket attacks against Israeli positions in the Golan Heights, adding that Israel “has the right to defend itself”. It did not condemn recent Israeli attacks on Iranian positions which apparently killed Iranian personnel, but choose to issue the condemnation once Iran retaliated. Britain has not been an impartial, at-a-distance observer of the conflagration in Syria. Indeed if the recollections of Roland Dumas are anything to go by, it was at the heart of an international conspiracy of nations aimed at overthrowing the government of Bashar al-Assad. And given Britain’s recent participation in the military action taken in concert with the United States and France over a highly disputed allegation of Syrian government responsibility for a chemical attack on the Syrian city of Douma, questions abound as to what interests Britain has in relation to Syria. The following are ten questions which any informed and conscientious British Member of Parliament should take the opportunity to ask either the Prime Minister or Foreign Secretary in a formal letter or during relevant Parliamentary proceedings such as ministerial question time.

1. Why has the British government been silent about many attacks carried out by Israel over the course of the Syrian conflict against both Syrian and Iranian positions?

2. Are Iranian rocket attacks against Israel not justified under international law on the basis of self-defence? After all, Israel has fired at Iranian positions and killed Iranian soldiers. Iran did not fire first.

3. Is it not a contravention of international law to attack a sovereign state (Syria) and another nation (Iran) invited by the legal government to help defend it against externally supported insurgents?

4. If Iran is firing at the Golan Heights, would the British government want to clarify that the Iranian military is in fact firing at territory that has been illegally occupied and annexed by Israel?

5. Would the British government like to comment on former French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas’s statement made in 2013 that while on a private visit to England, British officials approached him to join in a plan to organise an armed insurrection against the Syrian government? In his words, the war we have witnessed these past seven years by the Syrian government against Islamic fanatics was “prepared, conceived and organised” at least two years in advance of what became an insurgency. Would the British government care to clarify the capacities of the “officials” who sought Monsieur Dumas’s help in this illegal conspiracy? Were they politicians, intelligence agents, military officers or all of the mentioned categories?

6. Would the British government take the opportunity to explain why, as reported by the British Guardian newspaper in March 2013, British military officers were stationed at the border shared between Syria and Jordan while tasked with offering “logistical and other advice in some form” to rebels and prospective insurgents?

7. Would the British government consider explaining why it allowed the collapse of the 2015 Old Bailey trial of Bherlin Gildo, a Swedish national who had been charged with terrorist activities in Syria? Would the government elucidate on the reasons why Britain’s security and intelligence services would have been “deeply embarrassed” about their covert support for anti-Assad militias?

8. Would the British government explain why British soldiers such as the late Sergeant Matt Tonroe of the Parachute Regiment have been embedded with United States Special Forces in Syria without the express invitation of the legal government of that sovereign nation?

9. Why is the Theresa May-led government keen to continue funding the al-Nusra-linked ‘White Helmets’ group of “volunteer rescuers” which only operates in rebel-held areas? Can the government clarify the extent to which British intelligence is associated with the group’s founder, former British soldier James Le Mesurier and whether British intelligence may have connections with the organisation?

10. Finally, would the British government like to take the opportunity to offer a detailed clarification of just what national interest issues compel British involvement in Syria?

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This article was originally published on Adeyinka Makinde’s blog.

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Revealed Britain’s link to terrorist groups in Libya

What will be the blowback for UK government after Libya revelations?

By Mark Curtis: The revelation that the British government likely had contacts with the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) and the 17 February Martyrs Brigade during the 2011 war in Libya – groups for which the 2017 Manchester bomber and his father reportedly fought at that time – raises fundamental questions about the UK’s links to terrorism.

Indeed, a strong case can be made for a devastating conclusion: that the UK is itself a de facto part of the terrorist infrastructure that poses a threat to the British public.

Foreign minister Alistair Burt told Parliament on 3 April that: “During the Libyan conflict in 2011 the British government was in communication with a wide range of Libyans involved in the conflict against the Gaddafi regime forces. It is likely that this included former members of Libyan Islamic Fighting Group and 17 February Martyrs Brigade, as part of our broad engagement during this time.” This is the first time the government has admitted to having contacts with these groups at that time.

Covert boots on the ground

The admission is highly significant. In 2011, Britain played a leading role, along with the US, France and some Arab states, in conducting bombing and a covert operation to remove Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. But the UN resolution they obtained did not allow them to put troops on the ground – although Britain did so covertly, it was admitted later.

Instead, militant fighters, such as those from the LIFG, were seen as Islamist boots on the ground to promote Britain’s war. After the Manchester bombing in May last year, which killed 22 people, it was widely reported that the terrorist, Salman Abedi, and his father, Ramadan, had both fought with the LIFG in 2011.

As Middle East Eye revealed last year, the British government operated an “open door” policy that allowed Libyan exiles and British-Libyan citizens living in the UK to join the 2011 war, even though some had been subject to counter-terrorism control orders.

These dissidents were members of the LIFG, and most were from Manchester, like the Abedis. Renowned journalist Peter Oborne subsequently revealed that they were “undoubtedly encouraged” by MI6 to travel to Libya to oust Gaddafi. Indeed, after the Libyan leader was overthrown, these fighters were allowed back into Britain “without hesitation”.

The connection to the British secret state goes back even further. Ramadan Abedi is believed to have been a prominent member of the LIFG, which he joined in 1994. This was two years before MI6 covertly supported the LIFG in an attempt to assassinate Gaddafi, an operation initially revealed by former MI5 officer, David Shayler. At the time MI6 handed over money for the coup attempt, the LIFG was an affiliate of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda, and LIFG leaders had various connections to his terror network.

Millions in Qatari funding

Reports also suggest that Ramadan Abedi fought with the February 17th Martyrs Brigade, an offshoot of the LIFG, in the 2011 Libyan war – the other militant group mentioned by the government in its parliamentary response. Many of Gaddafi’s opponents living in the UK and connected to the LIFG joined this brigade, which was one of the key units seeking to topple Gaddafi.

The brigade was armed by Qatar, which provided $400m worth of support to Libyan rebel groups and was their major arms supplier. Britain is reported to have approved of Qatar’s arms supplies to these militant groups and worked closely alongside it as its principal partner in the war. The Times reported in June 2011 that “Britain and France are using Qatar to bankroll the Libyan rebels”.

But here the story also relates to another terrorist – Rachid Redouane, part of a group who killed eight people in the London Bridge/Borough market attack last year. Redouane also fought in the Libya war of 2011, reportedly for the Liwa al-Ummah unit, another offshoot of the LIFG. Some of Liwa’s members were trained by Qatari special forces in Libya’s western mountains – training that involved covert UK and US “liaison” officers.

This raises the possibility that Redouane might even have received combat training in a UK-approved operation. It is also possible that Salman and Ramadan Abedi benefited from such military training or from the arms supplies that were flooding into Libya at the time. No evidence has, however, so far emerged.

How much did officials know?

The government is refusing to say which groups Salman and Ramadan Abedi fought for in Libya. In response to a question on this subject from Labour MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle, security minister Ben Wallace replied on 3 April: “The Home Office does not comment on intelligence matters nor on matters which form part of ongoing investigations.” It is interesting that Wallace described this as an “intelligence” matter. Is this a tacit official admission of links between the Abedis and the security services?

There are numerous other key questions that demand answers. When Theresa May was home secretary in 2011, did she know about or authorise the despatch of Libyans living in the UK to Libya, and were Salman or Ramadan Abedi specifically part of this process? If she did not, what were security services, who reported to her and then foreign secretary William Hague, therefore up to? Did either the LIFG or the 17 February Martyrs Brigade receive either direct or indirect UK assistance to fight in Libya at this time? Why were the Abedis allowed to return back to the UK after fighting in Libya with no questions asked?

There is an equally fundamental question: will British journalists seek to uncover more of this story? After all, it is possible it could lead to revelations about the secret state’s links to terrorism that could cause the downfall of ministers.

Mark Curtis is an author and consultant. He is a former Research Fellow at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) and has been an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Strathclyde and Visiting Research Fellow at the Institut Francais des Relations Internationales, Paris and the Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Auswartige Politik, Bonn. 

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The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!

If anyone still thinks that the EU referendum resulting in #Brexit was democracy in action – then it’s time to wake up to reality

Revealed: The Highjacking of Britain’s EU Referendum

By True Publica,

We have witnessed in full view how a shadowy global operation involving dark money, big data and American billionaires influenced the result of the EU referendum. If anyone still thinks that the EU referendum resulting in Brexit was democracy in action – then it’s time to wake up to reality.

Last year, TruePublica published a series of articles on the subject of how Brexit came about, one example being – “How Brexit Was Engineered By Foreign Billionaires To Bring About Economic Chaos – For Profit.” Today, vindication arrives in the form of the mainstream media falling over themselves by covering what this website was saying all along; that unregulated corporations like Facebook and foreign billionaires such as those funding organisations like Cambridge Analytica had an eye on exploiting a new market and in its wake destroyed what was left of democracy in Britain. Don’t think the Conservative party in Britain did not know what was going on – this was an engineered result

The Verge headlines with: Cambridge Analytica’s use of Facebook data was a ‘grossly unethical experiment.’ The article gives massive wriggle-room to Facebook by saying

“On Friday, Facebook announced that it had suspended Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL) and its political data analytics company, Cambridge Analytica, for violating its Terms of Service, by collecting and sharing the personal information of up to 50 million users without their consent.”

This article is one day old and mentions nothing at all about Britain’s EU referendum, which was subject to the same treatment as the US presidential election.

Are FB really trying to tell us that they handed over 50 million customer details to a third party company – no questions asked. With one quick search we found out that SCL specialises in political manipulation using military style tactics and strategies.

Being charitable you could say that FB took the money irrespective of the consequences. But it is far more likely that there is more to this story than meets the eye.

Carole Cadwalladr from the Observer/Guardian is vindicated as well with her Cambridge Analytica Files:

For more than a year we’ve been investigating Cambridge Analytica and its links to the Brexit Leave campaign in the UK and Team Trump in the US presidential election.”

Her latest article confirms what we have been reporting – that the British electorate has been subject to a campaign equivalent to cyberwarfare.

This is confirmed with Cadwalladre writing –

“Its (SCL) defence arm was a contractor to the UK’s Ministry of Defence and the US’s Department of Defense, among others. Its expertise was in “psychological operations” – or psyops – changing people’s minds not through persuasion but through “informational dominance”, a set of techniques that includes rumour, disinformation and fake news. SCL Elections had used a similar suite of tools in more than 200 elections around the world.” 

SCL’s offices are described as being a place of “cutting-edge cyberweaponry.” Russia, Facebook, Trump, Mercer, Bannon, Brexit – every one of these threads runs through Cambridge Analytica says the article.

The Facebook data story along with the threads that left crumbs for us to follow is now out in the open and the damning evidence needs further official scrutiny.

Britain’s Information Commissioner is now forced into seeking a warrant to Cambridge Analytica’s systems. Facebook cannot simply deny its dubious role. If nothing else having $37 billion wiped off the share value of Facebook in little more than one day will worry investors enough to question its CEO as it goes from one crisis to the next in different countries around the world.

The Guardian ends up by quoting Tamsin Shaw, a philosophy professor at New York University, and the author of a recent New York Review of Books article on cyberwar and the Silicon Valley economy. She said she’d pointed to the possibility of private contractors obtaining cyberweapons that had at least been in part funded by US defence and points out that “the whole Facebook project” has only been allowed to become as vast and powerful as it has because of the US national security establishment.

At TruePublica we were able to connect the dots.  That these corporations, their billionaire facilitators, the American ‘deep state’ and certain members of the Tory party effectively attacked Britain by skirting around democracy with new technologies. They have now handed over to the next stage in the campaign to take over Britain. This scandal has since been overshadowed by the current political elite lying though their teeth on the Novichok/Russia scam to divert the story of massive political meddling by our so-called ally from across the pond.

The Brexit negotiations will fundamentally fail, as they have been all along, paving the way for new corporate freedoms not witnessed in Britain by handing them over to American corporations.

As George Monbiot wrote recently –

“When corporations free themselves from trade unions, they curtail the freedoms of their workers. When the very rich free themselves from tax, other people suffer through failing public services. When financiers are free to design exotic financial instruments, the rest of us pay for the crises they cause.”

We have been warned about how food standards will fall, not because of the EU negotiations but because of low American standards.

We have been warned that a US trade deal would be a health and safety disaster.

We have been warned that banned products sold in post-Brexit Britain as a result of doing business the American way will hurt literally everyone in Britain one way or another.

We have been warned that the NHS will be privatised and American corporations given a free trip to new profits at the expense of the nations health. Theresa May has refused to rule out giving US companies full access to NHS contracts as part of a future trade deal with Donald Trump’s White House.

Now that the EU referendum result is what it is – the next attack is coming from within.

An unprecedented drive to lobby ministers to ditch strict EU safety standards in order to secure a US trade deal has ben drawn up by a transatlantic group of conservative thinktanks. The Guardian reported only last month that these “shadow trade-talks” include nearly a dozen leading rightwing and libertarian groups from the UK and the US. They are are preparing to push their “ideal free trade agreement” that would allow the import of US meats, drugs and chemicals banned in Britain.

These often shadowy groups, again funded by dark money, are pushing for, amongst other things, environmental protections to be lifted. The project is being overseen by the Initiative for Free Trade (IFT), an organisation founded by the hard-Brexit advocate and Tory MEP Daniel Hannan.

That deal includes Britain recognising US standards. The Guardian continues:

“US exporters of agricultural produce – beef, for instance – would have a brand new market to sell to, and British consumers a cheaper alternative to the current options.”

That cheaper option as they put it is laced with growth hormones, antibiotics, GMO feed and quite probably other undisclosed chemicals.

Greenpeace UK’s policy director Dr Doug Parr said:

“This network of secretive pressure groups is trying to hijack US-UK trade talks to impose its anti-regulation agenda. They want a free-for-all Brexit that waters down rules on food safety, animal welfare and nature protection. It’s the exact opposite of the green vision promised by Theresa May.”

A spokesperson for the IFT said of the leaked document where this information emanated from –

“If consumers don’t want to buy products made to different standards to our own, they will see the US flag on the packet and not buy it.”

That is exactly the type of response you’d expect from a free marketeer who cares nothing at all for public protection systems built up over the generations.

Professor Luis Suarez-Villa (Social Ecology and of Planning, Policy and Design at the University of California, Irvine) wrote in the FT recently:

“The largest, wealthiest corporations have gained unprecedented power and influence in contemporary life. From cradle to grave the decisions made by these entities have an enormous impact on how we live and work, what we eat, our physical and psychological health, what we know or believe, whom we elect, and how we deal with one another and with the natural world around us.

At the same time, government seems ever more subservient to the power of these oligopolies, providing numerous forms of corporate welfare—tax breaks, subsidies, guarantees, and bailouts—while neglecting the most basic needs of the population.”

This is what America has in store for us – a system of legalised corruption on a grand scale. John W Whitehead, constitutional attorney in the USA writes in his article  “The Government Is Still the Enemy of Freedom‘ –

“Truth be told, we live in a dictatorship disguised as a democracy where all that we own, all that we earn, all that we say and do—our very lives—depends on the benevolence of government agents and corporate shareholders for whom profit and power will always trump principle. And now the government is litigating and legislating its way into a new framework where the dictates of petty bureaucrats carry greater weight than the inalienable rights of the citizenry.”

Having ruined their own country for profit, they are coming to ruin another for profit, but this time, it’s ours. Britain.

As mentioned right at the beginning of this article – If anyone still thinks that the EU referendum resulting in Brexit was democracy in action – then it’s time to wake up to reality.

After all, why would the Government Make It Illegal For Corporations To Speak About Brexit?

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Featured image is from TruePublica.

The original source of this article is TruePublica

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The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!