Dear all, It's nearly that dastardly Bilderberg time of the year again. As Conrad Black faces the music, just as we should ensure all criminals, particularly the rich ones must, Marek Tysis and I are already well on the way to collating all your helpful input and tracking down the venue and dates of this year's Bilderberg meeting. It's happening somewhat interactively on the Bilderberg.org forum - please register if you haven't already as I'm beginning to send out updates via the forum too. http://www.bilderberg.org/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=3
Much has already been said about the run-up to a violation of Iranian sovreignty, possibly using nuclear weapons. The recent bombing of the Iranian Republican guard in Zahadan and apparent kidnapping of an Iranian general in Turkey suggest that NATO/Nazi black operations have already begun. I simply want to add my voice to those pleading for readers in a position to stop this occuring, within UK, US or Israeli positions of power, to do their bit to prevent this violation of the UN Charter - as a matter of extreme urgency. Anyway, enjoy another offering of news - my little antidote to what you haven't read in today's Sunday Papers. 1. Lord on trial: Enter the woman in Black 2. Tonight's new Adam Curtis offering on BBC2 at 9pm 3. The Pinay Cercle and assassinations 4. Tony Gosling - shameless self-publicist.... 5. Prince Charles - Nazi company he keeps 6. Isreali soldiers using Palestinian children as human shields 7. Brigadeer Gordon Kerr - demon of death paid by the British taxpayer 8. US and UK already doing black ops. inside Iran 1. Lord on trial: Enter the woman in Black What Barbara Amiel wears to court this week could reveal much about how the case against her husband is going http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article2347522.ece By Stephen Foley in New York Published: 11 March 2007 What to wear to one's husband's trial? A difficult choice for a supportive spouse at the best of times, but how much worse when you are Barbara Amiel, whose voluminous wardrobe and spending constitutes exhibits A to nearly Z at the fraud trial of Lord Black of Crossharbour, erstwhile proprietor of The Daily Telegraph. Definitely not her $140 "jogging attire" prosecutors allege was put through expenses at the media company that Lord Black illegally used as his personal piggy bank. With the trial due to begin in Chicago on Wednesday, there is precious little time left for Lady Black to choose between a dozen designer handbags with which to accessorise her chosen outfit. Yet trial lawyers agree that her choice could affect her husband's chances of securing the acquittal he believes is coming. In 14 counts of fraud, racketeering and obstruction of justice, Lord Black is accused of looting more than $80m (£41m) from his company, Hollinger International, to finance a lifestyle of conspicuous consumption, with lavish parties, lavish homes and lavish clothes that propelled him and his wife into a social whirl of celebrity and minor royalty. At every turn, prosecutors are planning to inject Lady Black's famous spending habits; defence lawyers have struggled to get much of this evidence ruled out as an irrelevance. Both sides are quibbling over whether 11,000 emails between the couple, many of which are from Lady Black asking for her husband to pick up some expense or other, will be admissible. Lord Black is believed to have hired expensive "jury consultants", who offer tips and tricks on how to make an appropriate impression with jurors, and sartorial advice for the peer and his wife will have been part of the deal. Experts agree that she will have to walk a fine line. Daniel Horowitz, a veteran criminal defence lawyer, reckons that a toned down, gloomy outfit could prove ill-fitting. He said: "She's Imelda Marcos. She has got to be unapologetic for her excesses. Turning up in anything less than a flamboyant outfit, and the jury will know that she's messing with us, trying to fool us." Edward Greenspan, Lord Black's defence lawyer, says that the team could still decide that Lady Black's presence in the courtroom is more of a hindrance than a help, in which case she will be banished. Lord Black himself says that he doesn't expect his wife to be there every day. "She's a big girl," he told the Canadian magazine Macleans. "It's up to her, but I don't know if she wants to sit through all of the evidence. I'm sure she'll put in an appearance from time to time to show the flag." If she does stay for the evidence, you can be sure the jury will be looking across to her as they hear tales of how Hollinger is said to have picked up most of the tab for her $54,000 birthday party at a New York restaurant. These are not mere indulgences to be expected of a press baron whose empire once spanned Canada, the UK, the US and Israel, the prosecution says. Although Lord Black controlled Hollinger, there were minority shareholders in the company and his expenses were coming out of their profits. Most controversially, he and his cronies allegedly took home millions of dollars in "non-compete" clauses that were written into deals to sell Hollinger's papers - fees that prosecutors say rightfully belonged to Hollinger. Lord Black and his co-accused - associates John Boultbee, Peter Atkinson and Mark Kipnis - deny there was anything wrong with the arrangements. The Black trial is expected to last three months. Doubts still remain over whether Lord Black himself will testify. His handlers are worried that a typically florid, arrogant performance on the stand would turn off a jury. Much will depend on what will be left of the credibility of David Radler, Lord Black's right-hand man for 35 years. Radler has turned prosecution witness, agreeing to serve 29 months in a Canadian jail in return for admitting one fraud charge. Between Radler's choice of words, and Lady Black's choice of outfit lies the fate of the rambunctious peer. 2. Tonight's new Adam Curtis offering on BBC2 at 9pm The Trap - a new documentary from Adam Curtis explores individualism and freedom The Trap starts on 11 March on BBC2 at 9pm http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/article.php?article_id=10878 by Anindya Bhattacharyya "Human beings will always betray you. You can only trust the numbers." This chilling declaration flashes up in the opening credits of The Trap: What Happened To Our Dream Of Freedom, a new documentary series by Adam Curtis which starts on BBC2 next week. Curtis is best known for his 2004 series The Power of Nightmares: The Rise Of The Politics of Fear. This detailed how neocons in the US talked up the threat of radical Islamism to justify their "war on terror". The Trap is even more ambitious in scope. Like The Power Of Nightmares, it uses archive footage and interviews to explore the history and political impact of an idea - in this case the model of "individual freedom" that underlies neoliberal economics. Curtis traces the roots of this idea to the early post war years, when a circle of right wing thinkers - followers of the Austrian economist Friedrich von Hayek - became influential in shaping US nuclear strategy during the Cold War. These researchers, including the mathematician John Nash, gathered at the Rand Corporation in California. They developed "game theory" to model what a "rational" military strategy would be in the face of threatened mutual nuclear annihilation. These games imagined a paranoid world where individuals ruthlessly sought rewards and modified their behaviour in the light of that of their opponents. Crucially, this behaviour could be measured "objectively", allowing researchers to create computerised models and calculate "optimal" strategies. Curtis's documentary traces how its underlying vision of social behaviour was picked up and generalised to areas such as psychology, economics and management theory. The political crisis of the 1970s offered the chance for the followers of Hayek to take centre stage. They attacked notions of a "public service ethos" in state controlled institutions, arguing that public sector workers were motivated purely by self-interest - just like the "lonely robots" of their computer models. Private sector management techniques were imported into public services, displacing previous attitudes with performance indicators, targets and incentives. This, it was claimed, would remove "inefficiencies" and induce "rational" behaviour into sluggish bureaucracies. Market Curtis notes that while this project started in the 1980s with Margaret Thatcher's introduction of the "internal market" into the NHS, it really took off under John Major's government - and has been ruthlessly expanded under New Labour. But far from "rationalising" public services, this battery of statistics had the opposite effect. Public sector managers started to "game the system" - fiddle the figures by reorganising services to artificially meet targets. Curtis cites examples from the health service, education and policing. In one instance, hospital managers took the wheels off trolleys and reclassified them as "beds" in order to hit their target of reducing the number of patients on trolleys. New Labour's response to this madness was to create even more targets in a futile effort to balance out the distortions produced by the system. Public services were plunged into a nightmare world of metrics, audits and meaningless jargon - what Curtis calls the "tyranny of objective numbers". The results of this shift have been disastrous, Curtis argues - and even some of the original founders of game theory, such as John Nash, now agree. Far from bringing "freedom" from bureaucracy, neoliberal management policies have increased social inequality, plunged the poorest in society into misery, and fuelled the rampant concentration of wealth in the hands of a new super elite. Under New Labour social mobility has declined to the lowest levels since the Second World War. Ideas Curtis narrates his story by splicing together archive footage of news events, social situations, even clips from television dramas and films. It's a compelling and original style that places his work somewhere between a documentary, an essay and a dream. However, it has limitations. Watching The Trap one can't help feeling drawn into the paranoid world of the Rand Corporation theorists. While Curtis expertly traces the development of their ideas, he is silent when it comes to explaining why those ideas took hold. There is no sense of any kind of alternative vision, nor any pointers to a solution. Episodes such as the rise of Margaret Thatcher just "happen", with the immense political conflicts of that period relegated to a footnote. Rather than seeing ideas as being consciously promoted by particular social forces, Curtis paints a world where we all just sleepwalk into oblivion. Nevertheless, Curtis's work is gripping and thought provoking. His documentaries are proof that television can deal with complex issues without being patronising. The final programme in the three part series - still in preparation as Socialist Worker went to press - examines the "war on terror" as an attempt by neoliberals to extend their deranged vision of "individual freedom" by force. If the first two episodes are anything to go by, The Trap is a strong contender for "must see" documentary of the year. 3. The Pinay Cercle and political assassinations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Cercle Please check out these two fascinating articles on 'Le Cercle', a far- right political solutions club made up of ex intelligence people. http://www.gnosticliberationfront.com/le_cercle.htm Le Cercle "... the Circle consists of a loose gathering of various conservative and anti-Communist politicians, publicists, bankers and VIPs that meets some twice a year in various parts of the world. Its origins stem from the former French Prime Minister Antoine Pinay. The Circle, which still exists today, also invites guest speakers... One recent development is the establishment within the Circle of a command staff or of an inner circle which then works out particularly suitable means for action on current political questions." - German intelligence chief Hans Langemann, 1980 "Le Cercle is a secret transnational intelligence and direct action group, that, according to all accounts, is funded by the CIA. We only know the dates and places of a handful of Circle meetings (1), which were attended by about a hundred persons at a time. Before the 1990's, it was called Cercle Violet, or initially, Cercle Pinay, in both cases after its (French) chairman. In later times, chairmanship of Le Cercle went on to the British. The Pinay Circle used to fight the spread of communism worldwide, at all costs, even in our own backyard. This threat largely ceased to exist when the USSR collapsed and the role of the Circle had to change. Today, its members are probably talking about "Al-Qaeda infiltration" instead of "communist infiltration", although looking at the people involved with the Circle, one wonders how many actually believe in the 'War on Terror' as a tool to spread "freedom" and "democracy". We will get to that later.........." http://www.gnosticliberationfront.com/le_cercle.htm Pinay Cercle - by David Guyatt, 1999 - http://www.copi.com/articles/guyatt/circle_of_power.html CIRCLE OF POWER By David Guyatt Perhaps more sinister, and certainly more shadowy than the Bilderbergers, the "Pinay Cercle" is an "Atlanticist" right-wing organisation of serving and retired intelligence operatives, military officers and politicians that conspired to "affect" changes in government. Amongst other things they claim credit for engineering the election of Margaret Thatcher in the U.K. and may have been behind the ousting of Australia's Gough Whitlam. Now almost forgotten, the decade of the "Seventies" was a time of immense political upheaval, dirty tricks and incessant rumours of right-wing military Coup d'etats in leading western democracies. Amongst the long list of resulting casualties of this "decade of tension" were Britain's Prime Ministers: Harold Wilson and Ted Heath, Australia's Gough Whitlam, Sweden's Olaf Palme, America's Jimmy Carter and France's Francois Mitterand. The more southern flanks of Nato's European axis: Portugal, Spain, Turkey and Greece converted rumour into chilling fact via the steel-blue glaze of gun-barrels. Italy, home of Pizza, the Pope, and Propaganda Due (P2) came in for its own brand of political fixit, courtesy of Uncle Sam's very own CIA. As the decade of the "eighties" slowly slipped above the now less than pink eastern horizon, right-wing beneficiaries of a co-ordinated international destabilisation programme gave their heart-felt thanks. Among them were Britain's Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher - Madonna of the Armaments industry - and America's less brittle, and considerably less acute, Ronald Reagan - humble originator of the mega-tax-buck- swallowing SDI "Star Wars" programme and also, thus, a valued friend of the boys at Guns R Us International. These two decades saw a proliferation of right-wing, quasi official and secretive groups that co-ordinated intelligence, propaganda and undertook covert black-operations around the globe. One of the most shadowy of all is the "Pinay Cercle", named after its founder Antoine Pinay, Premier of France in 1951. Known more simply as "Le Cercle" it is recognised as a more clandestine sister organisation to the already very secretive Bilderberg Group1 - a "behind-the-scenes 'invisible' influence" network.................. http://www.copi.com/articles/guyatt/circle_of_power.html 4. Tony Gosling - shameless self-publicist.... I shall be in London next Monday (19th March '07) to give a talk on a mystery subject connected either with last month's diabolical BBC2 Conspiracy Files film about 9/11, the subsequent scandal that BBC World reported the collapse of WTC7 25 minutes before it happened or on the involvement of Israeli security company Verint Systems with the 7/7 London bombings. Time is 7pm, venue is the Indian YMCA Fitzroy Square W1T 6AQ (Warren Street tube, Northern & Victoria lines) . http://www.nineeleven.co.uk/board/viewtopic.php?t=7710 5. Prince Charles - Nazi company he keeps These short quotes should prove to those who don't already know that show Prince Charles is a great admirer of the Nazi Architect Albert Speer. I first came across that fact in a brilliant BBC4 documentary 'Jerry Building' by Jonathan Meades, so it was with absloute horror that I read the following article in last week's Daily Mail, knowing that most people wouldn't realise that our future King (and antichrist if you believe Tim Cohen's book 'The antichrist and a cup of tea') is such a devoted fan of Speer. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Meades#TV_works No doubt Charles will be sending someone to the Bonhams auction on the 27th to buy these letters, saving them from public scrutiny much as the allegedly threatening letters from Prince Philip to Princess Diana have been 'disappeared'. quote 1 - "Still, Prince Charles, who has built his own version of the past in the form of the ghastly Poundbury, is sure to love it. For Charles is not only a huge fan of Tolkien but also of Poundbury designer Leon Krier, who has written a book defending the architecture of Albert Speer. Interesting to know where those piffling opinions come from." http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/film/2006/12/whod_buy_a_house_in_hobbiton.html quote 2 - "... two and three (so similar they can be discussed together) dealt with a potpourri of incidents and issues, some past and some present, that Kasher considered to be related to Hitler's art programs. Here we saw material about Philip Johnson's and Mies van der Rohe's flirtations with the Nazi party in the early '30s, about Baron Thyssen's and Peter Ludwig's postwar patronage of Arno Breker, and about Prince Charles's admiration for the architecture of Albert Speer. Kasher stretches his subject to include hostility to avant- garde art in more general terms: he invokes Harry Truman's befuddled critique of those "nutty modern artists" as well as (predictably) Jesse Heims's campaign against "pornographic" contemporary art." http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1248/is_n10_v81/ai_14488116 Speer did know of Holocaust 8th March 2007 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=441072&in_page_id=1770 For years Hitler's architect and arms minister Albert Speer claimed he was unaware of plans to exterminate the Jews. His avoidance of blame for the genocide is thought to have spared him the noose at the end of the Second World War. But a newly-discovered letter shows Speer knew the Nazis' mass murder was plotted by Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS and Gestapo. Speer - one of the most important men in the Reich after Hitler - confessed his guilt to the wife of a Belgian resistance leader killed by the Nazis in a letter dated 1971. He told Helene Jeanty: "There is no doubt: I was present when Himmler announced on October 6, 1943 that all Jews would be killed." Speer wrote to Mrs Jeanty, who wrote a book he admired, after serving a 20-year sentence for war crimes - mainly for the use of slave labour. Previously Speer claimed that while he was at the conference where Himmler revealed the Final Solution, he had left before the announcement was made. Speer denied involvement in the Holocaust in his best-selling book Inside The Third Reich, and later in extensive interviews with the author Gitta Sereny - who spent 12 years writing a book about him. The unpublished letters between Speer and Mrs Jeanty, written between 1971 and Speer's death in 1981, have surfaced from an anonymous British source. They are expected to fetch up to £4,000 at Bonhams in London on March 27. see also the spin version of Prince Charles in today's Sunday Express CHARLES: HOW I'LL RULE http://www.express.co.uk/news_detail.html?sku=1362 6. Israeli soldiers using Palestinian children as human shields Israeli group says troops used Palestinian civilians as human shields Last updated at 15:51pm on 9th March 2007 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=441274&in_page_id=1811 The Israeli army said that it was looking into new allegations that troops used Palestinians as human shields during an operation in the West Bank city of Nablus. The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem charged that while conducting a major operation against Palestinian gunmen in the city last week, troops took two minors - a 15-year-old boy and an 11-year old girl - along while they searched houses for militants and weapons, forcing them to enter the houses first. The use of civilians in military operations has been ruled illegal by Israel's Supreme Court and is prohibited by military orders. The army said that it was checking the new charges. The first indication that troops used Palestinians as human shields in the Nablus operation came when an Associated Press Television camera captured what appeared to be such a scene on February 25. The footage shows Sameh Amira, 24, accompanying troops as they enter apartments in the city's casbah, or Old City. The army promised a "thorough inquiry" into that incident. Amira's cousin, 15-year-old Amid Amira, told B'Tselem field workers that soldiers took him at the same time as they took Sameh. They forced him to come along as they searched three houses, he said, making him enter rooms first, empty cupboards and open windows. Jihan Dadush, 11, told B'Tselem that soldiers took her from her home three days later, on February 28, forcing her to open the door of a neighboring apartment and enter ahead of them. The soldiers then took her home, she said. Until 2005, soldiers employed a tactic of making civilians knock on their neighbors' doors to warn them of an impending raid, claiming this protected bystanders by spurring militants to surrender peacefully. But in a landmark 2005 ruling, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled the tactic illegal and barred any use of civilians in military operations. B'Tselem spokeswoman Sarit Michaeli urged the army to open a military police investigation into the Nablus incidents. "The army must investigate what happened and act accordingly - try people, make sure the rules are clarified and understand where the failures were, in order to prevent this from happening again," she said. In August 2002, a 19-year-old Palestinian student, Nidal Daraghmeh, was killed when troops in the West Bank town of Tubas forced him to knock on the door of a neighboring building where a Hamas fugitive was hiding. Gunfire erupted and Daraghmeh was killed. 7. Brigadeer Gordon Kerr - demon of death paid by the British taxpayer Unit linked to scandals may be in Iraq http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/article2294205.ece http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/02/363117.html Thursday, February 22, 2007 By Chris Thornton Questions have been tabled in Parliament about reports that the shadowy Army unit linked to Troubles intelligence scandals is now operating in Iraq. The Joint Services Group (JSG), which allegedly operates out of Baghdad's Green Zone, is said to be the new name for the Force Research Unit (FRU) - the Army outfit that ran notorious agents like Brian Nelson and IRA mole Stakeknife. SDLP leader Mark Durkan has demanded answers from the Ministry of Defence about the group's reported operations in Iraq. His party has called for their withdrawal from that country. The JSG is alleged to be running Iraqi agents using techniques learned in Northern Ireland, where FRU ran key informers inside the IRA and loyalist groups - but may have allowed them to get away with murder in order to preserve their cover. SDLP justice spokesman Alban Maginness said the unit "will only make it worse" for the people of Iraq if they operate in the same way that they did in Northern Ireland. FRU's work with Nelson, a UDA intelligence officer, was exposed when he was jailed for conspiracy to murder. But full details of his work, including links to the murder of solicitor Patrick Finucane, have never been fully explained. The Army unit also operated the IRA agent known as Stakeknife. He is alleged to have operated within the IRA's internal security department, which involved him in the deaths of alleged informers. Four years ago, up to two dozen members of FRU were named in criminal investigation files sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions by Lord Stevens, the head of the Stevens Inquiry. No public action has been taken on those In his 2003 report, Lord Stevens said collusion had taken place involving members of FRU and loyalist and republican paramilitaries. The unit is said to have been renamed as the JSG in the wake of that report. Prior to the invasion of Iraq, the JSG is said to have operated exclusively in Northern Ireland. But as terrorist units spread throughout Iraq, it was deployed to develop intelligence gathering. British defence sources are reported to have claimed the group has saved hundreds of lives, prevented suicide bombings and gathered intelligence that helped coalition forces kill Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, last year. But Mr Maginness said the unit has "never been called to account for their actions" in Northern Ireland. "The FRU has been involved in murder and mayhem in the North," he said. see also 'Green slime' invades Iraq http://www.williambowles.info/ini/ini-0366.html 8. Are US and UK aready doing black ops. inside Iran? Zahedan bombings intended to foment Sunni-Shia conflict: governor http://www.mehrnews.ir/en/NewsDetail.aspx?NewsID=449498 http://www.tehrantimes.com/Description.asp?Da=2/18/2007&Cat=2&Num=009 TEHRAN, Feb. 17 (MNA) -- A percussion bomb exploded in the southeastern city of Zahedan late Friday, two days after a car bomb blasted near a bus and martyred 11 military personnel. At 11 p.m. on Friday, a bomb was blasted in Zahedan's beltway, and was followed by the sound of shooting. Wednesday's terrorist act targeted Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) personnel as they were riding a bus from their housing compound to work. Zahedan Governor Hassan-Ali Nuri said that Friday's percussion bomb did not cause any casualties or damage. The terrorists are attempting to incite division between Shias and Sunnis and provoke ethnic conflicts, Nuri commented. However, Nuri told the Mehr News Agency that "Zahedan is in peace at the moment." Soltan-Ali Mir, the director of the political and security office at Sistan-Baluchestan province, said after Wednesday's incident some weapons and ammunitions were found and "it is interesting that the weapons are made by the United States and Britain." Mir said the detained terrorists revealed in their confessions that they had some meetings in certain neighboring countries for their financial support and "this indicates that the U.S. and Britain are involved in the recent incidents." One of the detainees admitted that they were told to assassinate Sunni leaders and then accuse the Shias and thereby trigger ethnic conflicts, Mir added. Wednesday's attack was claimed by a Sunni militant group, Jundallah, which is headed by Abdulmalik Rigi, and has been blamed for committing terrorist acts in the country. Provincial police commander Brigadier General Mohammad Ghafari said that three main perpetrators of the bombings and a total of 65 suspects have been arrested. Zahedan's representative in the Majlis, Hossein-Ali Shahriari, stated that after the explosion on Friday night "more than two thousand people" came to the region to "confront the vicious forces with bare hands". The recent bombings can have no objective but to cause terror, the MP underlined. Condemning Wednesday's terrorist bus attack, the United Nations Security Council on Thursday called for those responsible for the deadly incident to be brought to justice. The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon also condemned the terrorist bombing. Thousands of Zahedan's Shia and Sunni people have signed a petition calling for the establishment of security in the province and announced that they are prepared to cooperate in bringing stability to Zahedan. see also Ethnic Opposition on the Rise in Iran http://www.aina.org/news/2007030893202.htm --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "PEPIS" group. Please feel free to forard it to anyone who might be interested particularly your political representatives, journalists and spiritual leaders/dudes. 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