Tuesday 29 July 2008

Operation Sarkozy:


How the CIA planted one of its agents as President of the French Republic.

Thierry Meyssan 14/07/08

Translated for Axis of Logic from French to English by Robert Thompson
(source)


Nicolas Sarkozy should be judged on his actions and not on his personality.


But when his actions surprise even his own electors, it is legitimate to examine in detail his biography and to ask about the alliances which brought him to power. Thierry Meyssan decided to write the truth about the origins of the President of the French Republic. All the information contained in this article is verifiable, with the exception of two imputations, pointed out by the author who assumes sole responsibility for them.


The French people, weary of the over-long presidencies of François Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac, elected Nicolas Sarkozy and counted on his energy to revitalise their country. They hoped for a break with the years of immobilism and superannuated ideologies. They have had a break with the principles which form the foundation of the French nation. They have been stupefied by this "hyper president", every day grabbing hold of another new file, drawing the right and the left to him, thus disposing of all the land-marks to the point of creating complete confusion.


Like children who have just done something very stupid, the French are too busy finding excuses to admit the extent of the damage and of their naïvety. This makes them refuse all the more to see who Nicolas Sarkozy is, which they ought to have realised long ago.



The man is clever. Like an illusionist, he has diverted their attention by offering them his private life as a spectacle and in posing in celebrity magazines, to the point of making them overlook his political history.



Let the sense of this article be fully understood: it is not to reproach Mr Sarkozy with his links of family, friends and professional contacts, but to reproach him with having hidden his links from the French people who believed that they were electing a free man.



To understand how a man in whom all agree they see an agent of the United States and Israel has been able to become the head of the Gaullist party, then the President of the French Republic, one must go back in time. Far back. We must follow a long digression during which we shall introduce the protagonists who are today taking their revenge.



Family secrets

At the end of the Second World War, the USA secret services counted on the Italo-US godfather Lucky Luciano to control the security of American ports and to prepare the allied landings in Sicily.



Luciano's contacts with the US services passed above all through Frank Wisner Sr. then, when the 'godfather' was freed and went into exile in Italy, through his Corsican 'ambassador', Étienne Léandri.



In 1958, the United States, worried about a possible victory of the FLN in Algeria which would have opened North Africa to Soviet influence, decided to give rise to a military coup d'état in France. The operation was organised jointly by the Planning Direction of the CIA - in theory run by Frank Wisner Sr.- and by NATO. But Wisner had already sunk into dementia so that it was his successor, Allan Dulles, who supervised the action. From Algiers, the French Generals formed a Committee of Public Safety which exerted pressure on the civil government in Paris and forced it to give full powers to General De Gaulle without any need to use force.



However, Charles De Gaulle was not the pawn whom the Anglo-Saxons believed they could manipulate. To start with, he tried to find a way out of the colonial contradiction by giving wide autonomy to the overseas territories within a French Union. But it was already too late to save the French Empire since the colonised peoples did not believe in the promises from the metropolis and insisted on their independence. After having successfully led fierce campaigns of repression against the independentists, De Gaulle realised what had to be done. Showing rare political wisdom, he decided to give each colony its independence.



This U-turn was seen as a betrayal by most of those who brought him to power. The CIA and NATO then backed all sorts of plots to get rid of him, including a failed putsch and some forty attempts to assassinate him. However, some of his partisans approved of his political evolution. Around Charles Pasqua, they formed the SAC, a militia to protect him.



Pasqua is both a Corsican crook and a former member of the resistance. He married the daughter of a Canadian bootlegger who made a fortune during prohibition. He ran the Ricard company which, after having dealt in absinthe, a forbidden drink, made itself respectable by selling anisette. However, the company continued to serve as a cover for all sorts of deals in relation with the Italo-New Yorker Genovese family, that of Lucky Luciano. It was therefore not surprising that Pasqua called on Étienne Léandri (Luciano's "ambassador") to recruit strong arm men and build up a Gaullist militia. A third man played an important role in the formation of the SAC, De Gaulle's former body-guard, Achille Peretti -another Corsican.



Thus protected, De Gaulle drew up with panache a policy of national independence. While confirming that he belonged to the Atlantic camp, he questioned the Anglo-Saxon leadership. He objected to the entry of the United Kingdom into the European Common Market (1961 and 1967); he refused the deployment of UNO blue helmets in the Congo (1961); he encouraged Latin American states to break free of US imperialism (speech in Mexico, 1964); he expelled NATO from France and withdrew form the Integrated Command Structure of the Atlantic Alliance (1966); he denounced the Viet-Nam War (speech in Phnon Penh, 1966); he condemned Israeli expansionism during the Six Day War (1967); he supported the independence of Quebec (speech in Montreal 1967) ; etc...



At the same time, De Gaulle consolidated France's power by giving it a military-industrial complex including a nuclear dissuasion force, and by guaranteeing its supply of energy. He usefully separated the troublesome Corsicans from his entourage by giving them overseas missions. Thus Étienne Léandri became the dealer for the Elf group (now Total), while Charles Pasqua became the confidant of the heads of state in French-speaking Africa.



Aware that he could now defy the Anglo-Saxons everywhere at the same time, De Gaulle allied himself with the Rothschild family. He chose as Prime Minister the Director of the Bank, Georges Pompidou. The two men formed an efficient tandem. The political audacity of the first never lost sight of the economic realism of the second.



When De Gaulle resigned, in 1969, Georges Pompidou briefly succeeded him as President before being carried off by cancer. The historical Gaullists did not accept his leadership and were worried by his excessively anglophile attitude. They cried treason when Pompidou, seconded by the Secretary General of the Elyse Eduard Balladur, allowed "perfidious Albion" into the European Common Market.



The making of Nicolas Sarkozy


Having thus described the background, let us come back to our principal personage, Nicolas Sarkozy. Born in 1955, he was the son of a Hungarian nobleman, Pal Sarkösy de Nagy-Bocsa, who fled to France after fleeing the Red Army, and Andrée Mallah, a Jewish lady from Sallonica. After having had three children (Guillaume, Nicolas and François), the couple divorced. Pal Sarkösy de Nagy-Bocsa remarried with an aristocrat, Christine de Ganay, by whom he had two children (Pierre-Olivier and Caroline). Nicolas was not brought up by his parents alone, but passed to and fro in this recomposed family.



His mother became the Secretary of Achille Peretti. After having co-founded the SAC, De Gaulle's body-guard had pursued a brilliant political career. He was elected Député and Mayor of Neuilly-sur-Seine, the richest suburb of the capital, then President of the National Assembly.



Unhappily, in 1972, Achille Peretti was subject to serious accusations. In the United States, the magazine Time revealed the existence of a secret Corsican criminal organisation the 'Union corse ' which was said to control a large share of the traffic in drugs between Europe and America, the famous "French connection" which Hollywood brought to the screen. Based on parliamentary hearings and its own investigations, Time quoted the name of a Mafia boss, Jean Venturi, arrested some years earlier in Canada, who was no other than the commercial representative of Charles Pasqua for the drinks company Ricard. The names of several families were mentioned who were said to run the "Union corse", including the Perettis. Achille denied this, but had to resign from the presidency of the National Assembly and even escaped from a "suicide".



In 1977, Pal Sarközy separated from his second wife, Christine de Ganay, who then linked herself with the number two of the central administration of the Department of State in the United States. She married him and set up home with him in America. The world being small, as is well known, her husband was no other than Frank Wisner Jr., the son of the previous one. The functions of Junior at the CIA are not known, but it was clear that he had an important role there. Nicolas, who remained close to his step-mother, his half-brother and his half-sister, began to turn towards the United States where he "benefitted" from training programmes in the Department of State.



At the same time, Nicolas Sarkozy joined the Gaullist Party. He there met and had contacts with Charles Pasqua more speedily as he was not only a national leader, but also in charge of the local section in the Hauts-de-Seine.



In 1982, Nicolas Sarkozy, having completed his legal training and having been called to the Bar, married Achilles Pretty's niece. His best man was Charles Pasqual. As an Avocet, Maître Sarkozy looked after the interests of the Corsican friends of his mentors. He bought a property in Corsica, at Vice, and thought of making his name more Corsican by replacing the 'y' with an 'I': Sarkozy.



The following year, he was elected Mayor of Neuilly-sure-Seine in the place of his uncle-in-law, Achilles Pretty, stricken by a heart attack.



However, Nicolas did not take long to betray his wife and, from 1984 onward, he had a hidden liaison with Cecilia, the wife of the most famous French television personality at the time, Jacques Martin, whom he had met when celebrating their marriage as Mayor of Neuilly. This double life lasted for five years, before the lovers left their respective spouses to set up a new household.



Nicolas was a witness at the marriage, in 1992, of Jacques Chirac's daughter, Claude, to an editorialist at Le Figaro. he could not stop himself from seducing Claude and to have a brief affair with her, while living officially with Cecilia. The betrayed husband committed suicide by taking drugs. The break between the Chirac's and Nicolas Sarkozy was brutal and permanent.



In 1993, the left lost the parliamentary elections. President François Mitterrand refused to resign and entered into a cohabitation with a Prime Minister from the right, Jacques Chirac. His ambition was to become President and thought of then forming a tandem with Eduard Balladur comparable with that of De Gaulle and Pompidou, and he refused to be Prime Minister again and left the place to his "friend for over thirty years", Eduard Balladur. Despite his dubious past, Charles Pasqual became Minister of the Interior. Even if he kept a firm grip Moroccan marijuana, he took advantage of his position to legalise his other activities by taking control of the casinos, gaming and racing in French-speaking Africa. He also established links in Saudi Arabia and in Israel an became an honorary officer in the Mossad. As for Nicolas Sarkozy, he was Minister of the Budget and government spokesman.



In Washington, Frank Wisner Jr. took over from Paul Wolfowitz as being responsible for political planning in the Defence Department. Nobody commented on the links which he had with the French government's spokesman.



This was when the tension within the Gaullist Party came back as thirty years earlier between the historic Gaullists and the financial right, in the person of Balladur. The novelty was that Charles Pasqua and with him the young Nicolas Sarkozy betrayed Jacques Chirac to come closer to the Rothschild tendency. Everything went wrong. The conflict reached its peak in 1995 when Édouard Balladur put himself forward against his ex-friend Jacques Chirac for the presidential election, and was beaten. Above all, following the instructions received from London and Washington, the Balladur government opened negotiations for adhesion to the European Union and to NATO of the States in Central and Eastern Europe, freed from Soviet control.



Everything went wrong in the Gaullist Party where the friends of yester-year were ready to kill one another. To finance his electoral campaign, Édouard Balladur tried to get hold of the Gaullist Party's black funds, hidden within the double accounting system of the oil company Elf. Hardly had the old Étienne Léandri died, when Judges looked into the company and its bosses were incarcerated. But Balladur, Pasqua and Sarkozy never managed to recuperate the booty.



Crossing the desert

Throughout his first term, Jacques Chirac kept Nicolas Sarkozy at a distance. The man became discreet during this long period of crossing the desert. Discreetly, he continued to make links in financial circles.



In 1996, Nicolas Sarkozy having finally managed to end an endless divorce procedure married Cécilia. As witnesses they had the two billionaires Martin Bouygues and Bernard Arnaud (the richest man in the country).



Last act


Well before the Iraq crisis, Frank Wisner Jr. and his colleagues at the CIA were planning the destruction of the Gaullist line and the rise in power of Nicolas Sarkozy. They acted in three stages: firstly the elimination of the leaders of the Gaullist Party and taking over this body, then the elimination of the principal rival on the right and the investiture by the Gaullist Party for the presidential election, and finally the elimination of any serious challenger from the left in order to be sure of carrying off the presidential election.



For years, the media were kept excited by posthumous revelations by a real property speculator. Before dying of a serious illness, he had registered for reasons never made clear a video confession. For even more obscure reasons, the "cassette" fell into the hands of a highly placed member of the Socialist Party, Dominique Strauss-Khan, who passed it on indirectly to the press.



Even if the confessions of the speculator did not lead to any judicial sanction, they opened a Pandora's box. The principal victim of the successive affairs was to be the Prime Minister Alain Juppé. To protect Chirac, he alone took on all the criminal offences. Putting Juppé out of the way left the way clear for Nicolas Sarkozy to take over the running of the Gaullist Party.



Sarkozy then made use of his position to force Jacques Chirac to take him back into the government, despite their mutual hatred. He was definitively to be the Minister of the Interior. What a mistake! In this post, he controlled the Préfets and the interior intelligence network which he used to put his appointees into the major branches of the administration.



He also dealt with Corsican matters. The Préfet Claude Érignac had been assassinated. Although no-one had claimed it, the murder was immediately interpreted as a challenge made by the independentists to the Republic. After a long hunt, the police managed to arrest a fleeing suspect, Yvan Colonna, the son of a Socialist Député. Without regard for the presumption of innocence, Nicolas Sarkozy announced this arrest accusing the suspect of being the assassin. This news was too good two days before a referendum being organised by the Minister of the Interior in Corsica to modify the status of the Island. However that may be, the voters rejected the Sarkozy project which, according to some, favoured Mafia interests.



Although Yvan Colonna was later found guilty, he has always claimed his innocence and no material evidence has been found against him. Strangely, the man refused to talk, preferring to be found guilty than to reveal what he knows. We here reveal that the Préfet Érignac was not killed by nationalists, but shot by the hit-man, Igor Pecatte, immediately sent off to Angola where he has been taken on by the Elf group. The motive for the crime was closely linked to the previous functions of Érignac, in charge of the African networks of Charles Pasqua at the Ministry of Cooperation. As for Yvan Colonna, he has been a personal friend of Nicolas Sarkozy for many years and their children are in friendly contact with one another.



A new affair came to light: false listings were circulating which untruthfully accused certain personalities of hiding bank accounts in Luxembourg, with Clearstream. Among the personalities defamed: Nicolas Sarkozy. He took the case to court and let it seem that his right-wing rival for the presidential election, the Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin, had organised this machination. He did not hide his intention to have him sent to prison. In reality, the false listings were put in circulation by members of the Franco-American Foundation, of which John Negroponte was the President and Frank Wisner Jr. the Director. What the Judges did not know and we reveal here was that the listings were made in London by a joint office of the CIA and the MI6, Hakluyt & Co, of which Frank Wisner Jr. is also Director. Villepin fights back against the accusations, but he is charged, forbidden to leave his home and, de facto, temporarily removed from political life. The way is open for on the right for Nicolas Sarkozy.



It remained necessary to neutralise opposition candidates. The membership dues to the Socialist Party have gone down to a symbolic level to attract new members. Suddenly thousands of young people applied for membership cards. Among them are at least ten thousand new members who are in reality members of the Trotskyite "Lambertist" Party (so called from the name of their founder Pierre Lambert). This small extreme left formation has a history of working for the CIA against the Stalinist communists during the Cold War (it was the equivalent of the SD/USA of Max Shatchman, which formed the neoconservatives in the USA). This was not the first time that the "Lambertists" had infiltrated the Socialist Party.



In particular they planted two famous CIA agents: Lionel Jospin (who became Prime Minister) and Jean-Christophe Cambadélis, the principal adviser to Dominique Strauss-Kahn.



Primaries were organised in the Socialist Party to appoint its candidate for the presidential election. Two personalities were competing: Laurent Fabius and Ségolène Royal. Only the first represented a danger for Sarkozy. Dominique Strauss-Kahn became a candidate with the task of eliminating Fabius at the last moment. This he was able to do thanks to the votes of the infiltrated "Lambertist" militants who voted not for him but for Royal. The operation was possible because Strauss-Kahn, of Moroccan Jewish origin, had been on the US payroll for many years. The French were not aware that he lectured at Stanford, where he had been taken on by the Provost of the University, Condoleezza Rice. As soon as he took office, Nicolas Sarkozy and Condoleezza Rice thanked Strauss-Kahn by having him appointed to head the International Monetary Fund.



First days at the Élysée Palace


On the evening of the second round of the presidential election, when the opinion polls announced his probable victory, Nicolas Sarkozy made a short speech to the nation from his campaign HQ. Then, contrary to custom, he did not go to celebrate with the militants of his party, but went to Fouquet's. The famous restaurant on the Champs-Élysées, which had once been the meeting place for the "Union Corse" now belongs to the casino operator Dominique Desseigne. It was placed at the disposition of the elected President to receive his friends and principal donors to his campaign. A hundred or so guests crowded in, the richest men in France were there with the casino bosses.



Then the elected President allowed himself a few days of earned rest. Taken there in a private Falcon-900 to Malta, he rested there on the Paloma, the 65 metre yacht of his friend Vincent Bolloré, a billionaire formed at the Banque Rothschild.



Finally, Nicolas Sarkozy was invested as President of the French Republic. The first decree which he signed was not to proclaim an amnesty, but to allow casinos to be operated by his friends Desseigne et Partouche and increase the number of gambling machines.



He formed his working team and his government. With no surprise, one finds there a very worrying casino owner (Minister of Youth and Sport) and lobbyist for the casinos of his friend Desseigne (who became spokesman for the "Gaullist" Party).



Nicolas Sarkozy relied above all on four men: Claude Guéant, Secretary General of the Élysée Palace. He was the former right arm of Charles Pasqua. François Pérol, Assistant Secretary General of the Élysée. He was a managing partner of the Banque Rothschild. Jean-David Lévitte, diplomatic adviser. Son of the former Director of the Jewish Agency. French Ambassador to UNO, he was removed from his post by Chirac who considered him too close to George Bush. Alain Bauer, the man in the shadow. His name does not appear in any directory. He is in charge of the intelligence services. Grandson of the Grand Rabbi of Lyon, former Grand-Master of the Grand Orient of France (the principal Masonic obedience in France) and former number 2 of the USA National Security Agency in Europe.



Frank Wisner Jr., who had in the meantime been appointed special envoy by President Bush for the independence of Kosovo, insisted that Bernard Kouchner be appointed Minister for Foreign Affairs with a dual priority mission: The independence of Kosovo and the ending of France's Arab policy.



Kouchner, of Baltic Jewish origin, started his career by taking part in creating a humanitarian NGO. Thanks to money from the National Endowment for Democracy, he took part in operations for Zbigniew Brzezinski in Afghanistan, alongside Osama Ben Laden and the Karzaï brothers against the Soviets. He could be found in the 90s alongside Alija Izetbegoviç in Bosnia-Herzegovina. From 1999 to 2001, he was the High Representative of UNO in Kosovo.



Under the control of the younger brother of President Hamid Karzaï, Afghanistan became the largest producer in the world of opium poppies. The juice is transformed on the spot into heroin and transported by the US Air Force to Camp Bondsteed (Kosovo). There the drug is taken over by the men of Haçim Thaçi who distribute it principally in Europe and also in the United States. The profits are used to finance the illegal operations of the CIA. Karzaï and Thaçi are long-time personal friends of Bernard Kouchner, who obviously knows nothing of their criminal activities despite the international reports which have been made on the subject.



To complete his government, Nicolas Sarkozy appoints Christine Lagarde, Minister of Economy and Finance. She had made all her career in the United States where she ran the prestigious law firm of Baker & McKenzie. Within Dick Cheney's the Center for International & Strategic Studies, she co-chaired with Zbigniew Brzezinski a working group which supervised the privatisations in Poland. She had organised intense lobbying for Lockheed Martin against the French aircraft manufacturer Dassault.



A new escapade during the summer. Nicolas, Cécilia, their joint mistress and their children were offered holidays in the USA at Wolfenboro, not far from President Bush's property. The bill this time was paid by Robert F. Agostinelli, an Italo-New York merchant banker, a Zionist and a leading neo-conservative who gives his views in Commentary, the magazine of the American Jewish Committee.



The success of Nicolas spreads to his half-brother Pierre-Olivier. Under the Americanised name of "Oliver", he was appointed by Frank Carlucci (who was the number 2 of the CIA after having been recruited by Frank Wisner Sr.) Director of a new investment fund of the Carlyle Group (the joint management company of the portfolios of the Bushes and the Ben Ladens). Having become the 5th deal-maker in the world, he manages the principal assets of the sovereign funds of Kuwait and Singapore.



The popularity of the President is in free-fall in the opinion polls. One of his advisers in communication, Jacques Séguéla, planned to distract the attention of the public with new "celebrity stories". The announcement of the divorce from Cécilia was published by Libération, the newspaper of his friend Édouard de Rothschild, to cover up the demonstrators' slogans during a day of general strikes. Going further still, the communicator organised a meeting with the singer and former model, Carla Bruni. Several days later, her affair with the President became official and the media din again covered up the political criticisms. A few weeks later still and it was Nicolas' third marriage. This time the witnesses whom he chose were Mathilde Agostinelli (the wife of Robert) and Nicolas Bazire, former private secretary of Édouard Balladur who had become a managing partner at the Banque Rothschild.



When will the French open their eyes to see what they should do? Full story/Permalink

Wednesday 23 July 2008

Fresh scent may hide toxic secret

Innocuous-sounding 'perfume' in detergents, air fresheners made with dangerous chemicals

By LISA STIFFLER

The scented fabric sheet makes your shirts and socks smell flowery fresh and clean. That plug-in air freshener fills your home with inviting fragrances of apple and cinnamon or a country garden.

But those common household items are potentially exposing your family and friends to dangerous chemicals, a University of Washington study has found.

Trouble is, you have no way of knowing it. Manufacturers of detergents, laundry sheets and air fresheners aren't required to list all of their ingredients on their labels -- or anywhere else. Laws protecting people from indoor air pollution from consumer products are limited.

When UW engineering professor Anne Steinemann analyzed of some of these popular items, she found 100 different volatile organic compounds measuring 300 parts per billion or more -- some of which can be cancerous or cause harm to respiratory, reproductive, neurological and other organ systems.

Some of the chemicals are categorized as hazardous or toxic by federal regulatory agencies. But the labels tell a different story, naming only innocuous-sounding "perfume" or "biodegradable" contents.

"Consumers are breathing these chemicals," she said. "No one is doing anything about it."

Industry representatives say that isn't so.

"Dr. Steinemann's statement is misleading and disingenuous," said Chris Cathcart, president of the Washington, D.C.-based Consumer Specialty Products Association, in a statement.

"Air fresheners, laundry products and other consumer specialty products are regulated under the Federal Hazardous Substances Act and subsequently have strict labeling requirements," he said. "Companies producing products that are regulated under FHSA must name on the product label each component that contributes to the hazard."

Table

Millions are spent annually to ensure that fragrances in the products are safe, according to a joint statement from the Fragrance Materials Association, which represents fragrance manufacturers, and the Research Institute for Fragrance Materials, which works closely with the association.

Ingredients are routinely tested, and chemicals that are considered dangerous are present at levels much too low to cause harm, according to the groups.

But there are numerous reports of people -- particularly those with asthma, chemical sensitivities and allergies -- having strong adverse reactions, researchers said.

That's a problem when public restrooms in restaurants or airplanes use air fresheners, or when hotels wash towels and sheets in scented laundry supplies. And even when the concentrations are low in individual products, people are exposed to multiple sources on a daily basis.

Aileen Gagney, Asthma and Environmental Health Program manager with the American Lung Association in Seattle, herself an asthma sufferer, has a rule of thumb to help avoid exposure: "If it smells bad, it's bad; if it smells good, it's bad."

But even that won't always work.

According to Steinemann, even products labeled "unscented" sometimes contain a fragrance and a "masking" fragrance to make them odor-free.

People, Puget Sound at risk?

For Steinemann's research, published Wednesday in Environmental Impact Assessment Review, she selected a top-selling item from six categories of products: dryer sheets, fabric softeners, detergents, and solid, spray and plug-in air fresheners.

Then she contracted with a lab to test the air around the items to identify the chemicals people could be breathing.

Ten of the 100 volatile organic compounds identified qualified under federal rules as toxic or hazardous, and three of those -- 1,4-dioxane, acetaldehyde and chloromethane -- are "hazardous air pollutants" considered unsafe to breathe at any concentration, according to the study.

The labels gave no indication that the irritating and potentially dangerous chemicals were present, so Steinemann checked the product's Material Safety Data Sheets. These technical documents provide ingredient information for the safety of workers and emergency responders. They, too, disclosed little detail, mostly citing ingredients such as "essential oils" and "organic perfume."

"It's a reasonable expectation to think that laundry products and air fresheners would be free of chemicals that can cause cancer," said Erika Schreder, a staff scientist with the Washington Toxics Coalition.

"But as this UW study shows, it's disturbingly easy to find toxic chemicals in everyday products like these because companies don't have to say what's in their products."

Cathcart, of the Consumer Specialty Products Association, said the information's not on the package because the "chemicals are not present in the products at levels deemed hazardous under the law. Given the limited space on product labels, it is important to include the relevant information consumers need to make intelligent use, storage and disposal decisions."

The threat isn't limited to people. Steinemann and others worry that the chemicals in consumer products flow from homes to the outdoors.

"These chemicals get into our water systems and into Puget Sound," she said. They are "extraordinarily hard to get out of the environment."

Steinemann's research was paid for using discretionary money awarded to her as a UW professor; she wanted to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest. She has also submitted for publication a study that goes further to examine ingredients in cleaning and personal-care products.

Regulatory gaps

With fears growing over chemicals in consumer products -- lead in toys, bisphenol A in plastic baby bottles, phthalates in shower curtains and cosmetics -- environmentalists and health advocates are calling for stricter regulations of chemicals in everyday goods. They also want shoppers to have more readily accessible information.

Manufacturers and trade groups representing consumer products routinely counter that there's plenty of testing and oversight from within the industries and from government regulations to ensure safety.

In the fragranced-products arena, they point to industry Web sites with information on product ingredients and suggest contacting companies with specific questions.

Critics maintain that's not enough.

"There's obviously a loophole," said Michael Robinson-Dorn, a UW law professor who aided Steinemann's research. "We regulate many of these chemicals in other circumstances, yet when they're in products that we're in contact with daily, in some cases, we don't wind up finding out about them."

He said the items can slip between regulatory cracks by falling into the jurisdiction of multiple government agencies, none taking ownership.

"Any time you have a product that is regulated by many different agencies, it's easy for them not to react," he said.

In the absence of strong laws, the marketplace is starting to regulate itself.

After the Natural Resources Defense Council last fall found troubling levels of phthalates -- plasticizing chemicals that can potentially harm developing babies -- in air fresheners, Walgreens pulled the products from its shelves.

Details on chemical risks

Last month, NRDC and other environmental groups sued the Environmental Protection Agency to force manufacturers to test air freshener safety and label products with a full ingredient list.

Steinemann's study could push the process along.

"Consumer demand for less-toxic products will encourage companies to reformulate their products," she said. "This is a case where a little information could have a great public benefit."

Full story/Permalink

Monday 14 July 2008

The Great HPV Vaccine Hoax Exposed


A NaturalNews Special Report by Mike Adams

(NaturalNews) For the last several years, HPV vaccines have been marketed to the public and mandated in compulsory injections for young girls in several states based on the idea that they prevent cervical cancer. Now, NaturalNews has obtained documents from the FDA and other sources (see below) which reveal that the FDA has been well aware for several years that Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) has no direct link to cervical cancer.

NaturalNews has also learned that HPV vaccines have been proven to be flatly worthless in clearing the HPV virus from women who have already been exposed to HPV (which includes most sexually active women), calling into question the scientific justification of mandatory "vaccinate everyone" policies.

Furthermore, this story reveals evidence that the vaccine currently being administered for HPV -- Gardasil -- may increase the risk of precancerous cervical lesions by an alarming 44.6 percent in some women. The vaccine, it turns out, may be far more dangerous to the health of women than doing nothing at all.

If true, this information reveals details of an enormous public health fraud being perpetrated on the American people, involving FDA officials, Big Pharma promoters, and even the governors of states like Texas. The health and safety of tens of millions of young girls is at stake here, and what this NaturalNews investigative report reveals is that HPV vaccinations may not only be medically useless; they may also be harmful to the health of the young girls receiving them.

This report reveals startling facts about the HPV vaccine that most people will find shocking:

• How it may actually increase the risk of precancerous lesions by 44.6 percent.

• The FDA has, for four years, known that HPV was not the cause of cervical cancer.

• Why mandatory HPV vaccination policies may cause great harm to young girls.

• Why HPV infections are self-limiting and pose no real danger in healthy women

• Little-known FDA documents that reveal astounding facts about Gardasil

• How Big Pharma promoted its Gardasil vaccine using disease mongering and fear mongering

Read the full report here Full story/Permalink

Depleted Uranium Contaminates Europe

Depleted Uranium Contaminates Europe By Lauren Moret

By Lauren Moret

"Did the use of Uranium weapons in Gulf War II result in contamination of Europe? Evidence from the measurements of the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE), Aldermaston, Berkshire, UK," reported the Sunday Times Online (February 19, 2006) in a shocking scientific study authored by British scientists Dr. Chris Busby and Saoirse Morgan.

The highest levels of depleted uranium ever measured in the atmosphere in Britain, were transported on air currents from the Middle East and Central Asia; of special significance were those from the Tora Bora bombing in Afghanistan in 2001, and the "Shock & Awe" bombing during Gulf War II in Iraq in 2003.

Out of concern for the public, the official British government air monitoring facility, known as the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE), at Aldermaston, was established years ago to measure radioactive emissions from British nuclear power plants and atomic weapons facilities.

The British government facility (AWE) was taken over 3 years ago by Halliburton, which refused at first to release air monitoring data to Dr. Busby, as required by law.

An international expert on low level radiation, Busby serves as an official advisor on several British government committees, and co-authored an independent report on low level radiation with 45 scientists, the European Committee on Radiation Risk (ECRR), for the European Parliament. He was able to get Aldermaston air monitoring data from Halliburton /AWE by filing a Freedom of Information request using a new British law which became effective January 1, 2005; but the data for 2003 was missing. He obtained the 2003 data from the Defence Procurement Agency.

The fact that the air monitoring data was circulated by Halliburton/ AWE to the Defence Procurement Agency, implies that it was considered to be relevant, and that Dr. Busby was stonewalled because Halliburton/ AWE clearly recognized that it was a serious enough matter to justify a government interpretation of the results, and official decisions had to be made about what the data would show and its political implications for the military.

In a similar circumstance, in 1992, Major Doug Rokke, the Director of the U.S. Army Depleted Uranium Cleanup Project after Gulf War I, was ordered by a U.S. Army General officer to write a no-bid contract "Depleted Uranium, Contaminated Equipment, and Facilities Recovery Plan Outline" for the procedures for cleaning up Kuwait, including depleted uranium, for Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR), a subsidiary of Halliburton.

The contract/proposal was passed through Madeleine Albright, the Secretary of State, to the Emirate of Kuwait, who considered the terms and then hired KBR for the cleanup.

Aldermaston is one of many nuclear facilities throughout Europe that regularly monitor atmospheric radiation levels, transported by atmospheric sand and dust storms, or air currents, from radiation sources in North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia.

After the "Shock and Awe" campaign in Iraq in 2003, very fine particles of depleted uranium were captured with larger sand and dust particles in filters in Britain.

These particles traveled in 7-9 days from Iraqi battlefields as far as 2400 miles away.

The radiation measured in the atmosphere quadrupled within a few weeks after the beginning of the 2003 campaign, and at one of the 5 monitoring locations, the levels twice required an official alert to the British Environment Agency.

In addition to depleted uranium data gathered in previous studies on Kosovo and Bosnia by Dr. Busby, the Aldermaston air monitoring data provided a continuous record of depleted uranium levels in Britain from the other recent wars.

Extensive video news footage of the 2003 Iraq war, including Fallujah in 2004, provided irrefutable documented evidence that the US has unethically and illegally used depleted uranium munitions on cities and other civilian populations.

These military actions are in direct violation of not only the international conventions, but also violate US military law because the US is a signatory to The Hague and Geneva Conventions and the 1925 Geneva Gas Protocol.

Depleted uranium weaponry meets the definition of a Weapon of Mass Destruction (WMD) in two out of three categories under US Code TITLE 50, CHAPTER 40 Sec. 2302.

After action mandates have also been violated such as US Army Regulation AR 700-48 and TB 9-1300-278 which requires treatment of radiation poisoning for all casualties, including enemy soldiers and civilians, and remediation.

Dr. Busby's request for this data through Halliburton from AWE, and subsequently provided by the Defence Procurement Agency, was necessary to establish verification of Iraq's 2003 depleted uranium levels in the atmosphere.

These facts demonstrate why Halliburton (AWE) refused to release the 2003 data to him, and it obviously establishes that weaponized depleted uranium is an indiscriminate weapon being distributed all over the world in a very short period of time, immediately after its use. Search Our Archive Site Search Our Site Web

The recent documentary film BEYOND TREASON details the horrific effects of depleted uranium exposure on American troops and Iraqi civilians in the Gulf region in 1991; not to speak of those civilians continuing to live in permanently contaminated and thus uninhabitable regions.

Global increases since 1991 of melanoma, infant mortality, and frog die-offs can only be explained by an environmental contaminant. Alarming global increases in diabetes, with high correlation to depleted uranium wars in Iraq, Bosnia/Kosovo, and Afghanistan, demonstrate that diabetes is a sensitive indicator and a rapid response to internal depleted uranium exposure.

Americans in 2003 reported visiting Iraqi relatives in Baghdad who were suffering from an epidemic of diabetes.

After returning to the US following 2-3 weeks in Iraq, they discovered within a few months that they too had diabetes.

Japanese human shields and journalists who worked in Iraq during the 2003 war are sick and now have symptoms typical of depleted uranium exposure.

Likewise, after the US Navy, several years ago, moved depleted uranium bombing and gunnery ranges from Vieques Island in Puerto Rico to Australia, health effects there are already being reported.

The documentary film BLOWIN' IN THE WIND, has an interview with a family with two normal teenage daughters, living near the bombing range where depleted uranium weaponry is now being used.

The parents showed photos of their baby born recently with severe birth defects. The baby looked like Iraqi deformed babies, and like many of the Iraqi babies, died 5 days after birth.

Other than anonymous British government officials denying that Iraq was the source of the depleted uranium measured at Aldermaston by AWE, and some unnamed 'establishment scientists' blaming it on local sources or natural uranium in the Iraq environment, there is no one, as of this writing, willing to lend their name or office to refuting this damning evidence reported by Dr. Busby.

All of the anonymous statements used by the media thus far are contradicted by the factual evidence found in the filters, which was all transported from the same region.

The natural abundance of uranium in the crust of the earth is 2.4 parts per million, which would not become concentrated to the high levels measured in Britain during a long journey from the Middle East. These particles traveling over thousands of miles would dilute the concentration rather than increase it.

There are no known natural uranium deposits in Iraq which make it impossible for these anonymous claims to have scientific credibility.

Unnamed government sources blamed local sources in Britain such as nuclear power plants; however that would also leave evidence of fission products in the filters which were not in evidence.

The lowest levels measured at monitoring stations around Aldermaston were at the facility, which means it could not be a possible source. Atomic weapons facilities would be more likely to produce plutonium contamination, also not reported as a co-contaminant at Aldermaston.

In other words, all factual evidence considered, the question must be asked, what were the media's anonymous experts and government officials basing their claims on?

Dr. Keith Baverstock exposed a World Health Organization (WHO) cover-up on depleted uranium in an Aljazeera article, "Washington's Secret Nuclear War" posted on September 14, 2004. It was the most popular article ever posted on the Aljazeera English language website.

Baverstock leaked an official WHO report that he wrote, to the media several years ago after the WHO refused to publish it. He warned in the report about the mobility of, and environmental contamination from, tiny depleted uranium particles formed from US munitions.

Busby's ECRR report challenged the International Committee on Radiation Protection (ICRP) standards for radiation risk, and reported that the mutagenic effects of radiation determined by Chernobyl studies are actually 1000 times higher than the ICRP risk model predicts.

The ECRR report also establishes that the ICRP risk model, based on external exposure of Hiroshima and Nagasaki victims, and the ECRR risk model, based on internal exposure, are mutually exclusive models. In other words, the ICRP risk model based on external exposure cannot be used to estimate internal exposure risk.

The report also states that a separate study is needed for depleted uranium exposure risks, because it may be far more toxic than nuclear weapons or nuclear power plant exposures. In July of 2005, the National Academy of Sciences reported in their new BEIR VII report on low level radiation, that there is "no safe level of exposure".

The report also finally admitted that very low levels are more harmful per unit of radiation than higher levels of exposure, also known as the "supralinear" effect.

This is extremely alarming information on low level radiation risk, since the AWE data from Aldermaston confirms that rapid global transport of depleted uranium dust is occurring.

Dr. Katsuma Yagasaki, a Japanese physicist at the University of the Ryukyus in Okinawa, has estimated that the atomicity equivalent of at least 400,000 Nagasaki bombs has been released into the global atmosphere since 1991, from the use of depleted uranium munitions.

It is completely mixed in the atmosphere in one year. The "smog of war" from Gulf War I was found in glaciers and ice sheets globally a year later.

Even more alarming is the non-specific catalytic or enzyme effect from internal exposures to nanoparticles of depleted uranium. Soldiers on depleted uranium battlefields have reported that, after noticing a metallic taste in their mouths, within 24-48 hours of exposure they became sick with Gulf War syndrome symptoms.

Who is profiting from this global uranium nightmare? Dr. Jay Gould revealed in his book THE ENEMY WITHIN, that the British Royal family privately owns investments in uranium holdings worth over $6 billion through Rio Tinto Mines.

The mining company was formed for the British Royal family in the late 1950's by Roland Walter "Tiny" Rowland, the Queen's buccaneer.

Born in 1917 through illegitimate German parentage, and before changing his name, Roland Walter Fuhrhop was a passionate member of the Nazi youth movement by 1933, and a classmate described him as "...an ardent supporter of Hitler and an arrogant, nasty piece of work to boot."

His meteoric rise and protection by intel agencies and the British Crown are an indication of what an asset he has been for decades to the Queen, as Africa's most powerful Western businessman.

Africa and Australia are two of the main sources of uranium in the world. The Rothschilds control uranium supplies and prices globally, and one serves as the Queen's business manager.

Filmmaker David Bradbury made BLOWIN' IN THE WIND to expose depleted uranium bombing and gunnery range activities contaminating pristine areas of eastern Australia, and to expose plans to extract over $36 billion in uranium from mines in the interior over the next 6 years. Halliburton has finished construction of a 1000 mile railway from the mining area to a port on the north coast of Australia to transport the ore.

The Queen's favorite American buccaneers, Cheney, Halliburton, and the Bush family, are tied to her through uranium mining and the shared use of illegal depleted uranium munitions in the Middle East, Central Asia and Kosovo/Bosnia.

The major roles that such diverse individuals and groups as the Carlyle Group, George Herbert Walker Bush, former Carlyle CEO Frank Calucci, the University of California managed nuclear weapons labs at Los Alamos and Livermore, and US and international pension fund investments have played in proliferating depleted uranium weapons is not well known or in most instances even recognized, inside or outside the country.

God Save The Queen from the guilt of her complicity in turning Planet Earth into a "Death Star."
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Sunday 13 July 2008

The British Occult Secret Service

The British Occult Secret Service

By Michael Howard

Since the time of Elizabeth I, British secret services have worked according to the principle of ‘the end justifies the means’. Money, bribery, blackmail – these are their recruitment methods...
– Nikolai Patrushev, head of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), October 2007

It is not really surprising that historically occultism and espionage have often been strange bedfellows. The black art of espionage is about obtaining secret information and witches, psychics and astrologers have always claimed to be able to predict the future and know about things hidden from ordinary people.



Gathering intelligence is carried out under a cloak of secrecy and occultists are adept at keeping their activities concealed from sight. Like secret agents they also use codes, symbols and cryptograms to hide information from outsiders. Occultists and intelligence officers are similar in many ways, as both inhabit a shadowy underworld of secrets, deception and disinformation. It is therefore not unusual that often these two professions have shared the same members.



The ‘father of the British Secret Service’ was the Elizabethan lawyer, politician, diplomat and spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham. He was a Protestant and as a young man during the bloody reign of the Catholic Queen Mary was forced to flee abroad to escape persecution. While in exile, Walsingham learnt Italian and French and became acquainted with the work of the famous Venetian Secret Service that used its spying skills for trade and commerce under the cloak of diplomacy.




William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley

When Queen Elizabeth I was crowned Francis Walsingham returned to England. He was appointed as a secretary to the English ambassador to the French court in Paris and also worked as a secret agent reporting back the intelligence he gleaned to Queen Elizabeth’s Secretary of State, Sir William Cecil, later Lord Burghley. Between 1568 and 1570 Walsingham, who had become a Member of Parliament, worked in England in domestic counter-espionage exposing Catholic plots against the monarchy.




Cecil Williamson

In 1570 Walsingham was appointed as the new ambassador to France. He proceeded to set up his own network of undercover agents in France, Italy, Spain and the Low Countries. The late Cecil Williamson, who worked for British Intelligence during World War II and later ran a witchcraft museum, told this writer that Walsingham often used witches
as spies.



The Mysterious Dr Dee


Dr. John Dee

One of the famous occultists he is known to have recruited was Queen Elizabeth’s court astrologer and the magical architect of the British Empire, the Welsh magician Dr John Dee. Walsingham was involved in the machinations for the proposed marriage of the Duc d’Anjou and Elizabeth. At the spy master’s personal recommendation, the queen
dispatched Dee to France with orders to report back on the progress of the marriage negotiations. The magus travelled to the Duchy of Lorraine and drew up the birth charts of both the Duc and his brother, who was also regarded as a possible husband for the English monarch. Dr Dee, probably influenced by Walsingham, diplomatically reported back to London that the stars suggested a political alliance would be far wiser than matrimony and the queen took his advice.



In 1573 Sir Francis returned to London and became a privy councillor. This placed him at the heart of government and he proceeded to set up what amounted to the first organised foreign espionage service to operate from England. In 1566 he had put in place a pan-European network of spies extending as far to the east as Turkey and Russia, where Dr Dee reported on the goings-on at the Tsar’s court. This network mostly gathered intelligence on the military activities of the Spanish, who were England’s primary enemies at this time. Walsingham was also responsible for foiling the Catholic plot whose exposure led to the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots. Using Dr Dee’s psychic powers, he was apparently able to discover that the plotters were passing secret messages to the imprisoned Scottish queen hidden in bottles of wine.



While travelling in Europe in 1562, Dr Dee had come across a book written by Abbot Trimethus of Spanhiem (1462-1516). This was a guide to writing ciphers and secret codes for magical purposes and Dee informed
Sir William Cecil about his discovery. On his return to England Dr Dee adapted the abbot’s cryptography and gave it to Sir Francis Walsingham for use by his secret agents. He also passed on the political and military intelligence he had acquired during his travels across Europe. It has been alleged that Dee used the famous Enochian magical alphabet as a code to disguise this information. If he had been arrested his captors would not have understood it and dismissed it as nonsense.



In 1587 Dee even claimed he had received a spirit message from one of his angelic contacts concerning a threat to the English Fleet. The message said that a group of disguised Frenchmen working for the Spaniards was secretly visiting the Forest of Dean. The forest was the centre for English ship-building and the French agents planned to bribe disloyal foresters to burn it down. Dr Dee sent his supernatural intelligence to Walsingham and the saboteurs, who were masquerading as squatters, were arrested.




Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor & Stephen Báthory of Poland


Information supplied to Sir Francis Walsingham from his European spy network convinced him that a Spanish armada would be launched against England in 1588. He asked Dee to use his knowledge of astrology to calculate the weather prospects for an invasion. The magus told him there would an impending disaster in Europe caused by a devastating storm. When news of this prophecy was leaked and reached Spain, naval recruitment fell and there were desertions of sailors from the Spanish Fleet. In Lisbon an astrologer who repeated the prediction was charged
with spreading false information. In an act of psychological warfare, Dr Dee also informed Emperor Rudolf of Bohemia (the modern Czech Republic) and King Stephen of Poland that the predicted storm would “cause the fall of a mighty empire.” Rudolf, who was an occultist and Dee’s patron when he stayed in Bohemia, passed on the warning to the Spanish ambassador.




Francis Drake

It is a fact that in 1588 a great storm did scatter the ships of the Spanish Armada in the English Channel and aided the English victory. This metrological event was popularly credited to a magical ritual performed by the buccaneer Sir Francis Drake on the cliffs at Plymouth. Superstitious people believed Drake was a wizard and sold his soul to
the Devil in exchange for success over the Spanish. It is claimed that he also organised several covens of witches to work magically to raise the storm and prevent the invasion. Meanwhile, as a result of scrying in his shewstone or crystal, Dr Dee saw a symbolic vision of a castle with its drawbridge drawn up (England) and the image of the elemental king of fire. As a result he urged the Navy to employ fire-ships against the Armada and they did so with good results.



After Sir Francis Walsingham’s death in 1590, and the ascension to the English throne of the Scottish king James, Dr John Dee fell into royal disfavour. The new king had an unhealthy obsession with witchcraft and his early reign was dominated by this preoccupation. It led him to employ the Secret Service in his own personal vendetta against suspected witches. James I ordered its agents to hunt down alleged practitioners of witchcraft and expose their alleged plots against the monarchy. One of those involved was the Earl of Bothwell, accused of high treason for organising a coven of Scottish witches to work magic against the king in an attempt to seize the throne. To assist his
secret agents in their new witch-hunting activities, King James persuaded Parliament in 1604 to pass a new and stronger Witchcraft Act to deal with the problem. The Bill was rushed through and it was made law within three months.



Dashwood & the Hellfire Club


Sir Francis Dashwood

In the 18th century the Secret Service became concerned at the activities of the so-called ‘Hellfire Club’ founded by Sir Francis Dashwood, later the Chancellor of the Exchequer and a close friend and political adviser of King George III. As a young man Dashwood went on the Grand Tour of Europe that was compulsory for aristocrats and he was initiated into a Masonic lodge in France. While visiting Italy he developed anti-Catholic views, violently broke up a celebration of the Mass and insulted the Pope. Even though he was an aristocrat, Dashwood was disgusted at the vast wealth of the Roman Church compared with the poverty of its devoted worshippers. He also became fascinated by classical mythology and decorated his country house at West Wycombe in Buckinghamshire with murals, paintings and statues of Greek and Roman gods and goddesses.


Sir Francis Dashwood founded a secret society called the Order of the Friars of St Francis of Medmenham (more popularly known as the Hellfire Club) named after the abbey he had purchased on the banks of the River Thames where its meetings were held. Rumours circulated in the coffee houses of London that the Friars practised sexual orgies featuring aristocratic ladies and prostitutes dressed up as nuns. There were also satanic rites such as Black Masses where the naked body of a noblewoman acted as an altar. However, according to one senior member of the
Hellfire Club, this occult mummery was just an amusing diversion for the dandies. The inner circle of the Order was actually dedicated to the serious revival of the pagan Eleusian Mysteries and the worship of the Bona Dea or Great Mother Goddess. Dashwood’s present-day descendant, also called Sir Francis, confirmed this fact in a BBC radio
interview some years ago, It has been claimed secret agents infiltrated the Hellfire Club because of its many famous members. They included the Earl of Sandwich, John Montagu, who was the First Lord of the Admiralty, the Paymaster General Thomas Potter, several members of Parliament, the Lord Mayor of London, a son of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Earl of Bute, who was the prime minister, and it has been claimed even the Prince of Wales. At least four members of the group were known to be actively involved in espionage. They was a radical MP called John Wilkes, a transvestite French diplomat, Chevalier D’Eon de Beaumont, the American statesman and philosopher Benjamin Franklin, and Sir Francis Dashwood himself. Wilkes had allegedly recruited the chevalier into the British Secret Service.



During his stay in Russia on the Grand Tour Dashwood had spied on the court of the Tsar through his close friendship with the Grand Duchess Catherine. In Italy he gathered intelligence on the exiled Stuart dynasty and their supporters, although the head of the British Secret Service in Rome believed Dashwood was a Jacobite agent. In fact he was only pretending to support the Stuart cause and was passing on information about their activities directly back to London. In later years Sir Francis and Benjamin Franklin were involved in a clandestine plan to reconcile the American colonists and the British government to prevent the War of Independence.



Rudolf Hess & the British Occult Connection

During World War II British Intelligence invited many occultists into its ranks because it needed their specialist knowledge and skills. The assistant director of Naval Intelligence during the war was Lt. Commander Ian Fleming RN, best known later as a thriller writer and the creator of the famous fictional spy James Bond 007. Fleming was also
interested in astrology and numerology and he was a friend of the notorious magician Aleister Crowley, who had worked for MI6 (the Secret Intelligence Service) during World War I and in the 1920s and 1930s spying on Germans with occult interests (see ‘The Magus Was A Spy’ by Dr Richard Spence in New Dawn No. 105, November-December 2007).




Ian Fleming

Ian Fleming conceived an audacious plan to lure a high-ranking member of the German government into defecting to Britain so as to provide a morale-boosting propaganda coup. This idea had been inspired by a novel written by Fleming’s brother, Peter, called Flying Visit (Jonathan Cape 1940). Peter Fleming was a journalist and also worked for both MI5 (the Security Service) and the propaganda section of the clandestine Special Operations Executive (SOE). The novel imagined that Hitler’s plane crash-landed in England and he was captured. The Reichminister and
deputy fuehrer himself, Rudolf Hess, was chosen as a suitable candidate for the actual plot. This was because he was a supporter of peace with Britain and was also under the influence of astrologers and occultists. It was believed this could be used against him.



Commander Fleming recreated The Link, a defunct Anglo-German friendship society of the 1930s that had a wealthy membership of Nazi sympathisers drawn from the British Establishment. Ironically, or perhaps coincidentally, The Link had been founded by Admiral Sir Barry Domville, an ex-director of the Naval Intelligence Department (NID), after he retired in 1930. Domville was arrested and interned in May 1940 because MI5 believed he was plotting a fascist coup d’etat supported by aristocratic peacemongers. The admiral was a friend of Major-General J.F.C. ‘Boney’ Fuller CBE, a famous military analyst who designed the tactics for the first tank battle in World War I. Fuller also invented the concept of blitzkrieg used so successfully in World War II by the German Panzers. Fuller was an open admirer of Hitler (he attended the fuehrer’s 50th birthday party in 1939), a leading member of Sir Oswald Moseley’s British Union of Fascists (BUF), a friend of Ian Fleming and a leading disciple of Aleister Crowley. In the 1930s Fuller formed the extreme-right wing Nordic League (aka the White Knights of Britain), allegedly established by Nazi Agents. However in the 1950s he was a member of a MI6 supported group of Russian émigrés engaged in anti-communist propaganda. It has been suggested that Fuller was not interned during the war with other leading fascists such as Mosley and Domville because he was a MI6 double-agent.




Sir Oswald Moseley & J.F.C. Fuller


Ian Fleming’s idea was to persuade the German High Command in Berlin, and especially Rudolf Hess, that when war broke out The Link had not disbanded but had gone underground. It had allegedly regrouped and recruited even more prominent pro-Nazi members in the British Establishment including aristocrats and royalty. These were represented by the NID as influential people with the political muscle to overthrow prime minister Winston Churchill’s national wartime government, call a ceasefire and agree to a peace treaty with Germany. Under its terms Britain would keep control of its Empire and Germany would have free reign in occupied Europe. The Nazis also hoped that British troops would be sent to fight alongside the German Wehrmacht and the SS against the Soviet Union in a joint anti-communist crusade.



Hitler did not want to invade and occupy Britain. Instead he would have preferred to negotiate a treaty with a sympathetic new government in London. It has been suggested that the only reason the fuehrer abandoned Operation Sea Lion – the proposed invasion of Southern England – and instead invaded the Soviet Union was to force Churchill to accept peace terms. If the Red Army had been defeated Britain would truly have been standing alone, as Hitler did not believe the Americans had the political will to enter the war. Unfortunately he underestimated the ability and resolve of the Soviets to defend their motherland and also the clandestine support that the US was already offering Great Britain.



The NID plot to ensnare Rudolf Hess used bogus astrological predictions combined with political intelligence. Hess was persuaded that a Scottish aristocrat, the Duke of Hamilton, was willing to negotiate peace terms on behalf of the influential people at the top of British society who wanted to end the war. The duke had met Hess at the Berlin Olympics in 1936 and the deputy fuehrer for some reason thought he was a member of the surviving Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Ian Fleming commissioned an astrologer to produce a faked astrological forecast indicating that 10 May 1941 would be a propitious date for Rudolf Hess to fly to Scotland and meet secretly with the Duke of
Hamilton and other members of the so-called British ‘peace party’. Hess’ occult advisors had also told him there would be an unusual planetary conjunction on 10 May. On that day six planets would be aligned in the zodiac sign of Taurus and conjoined to the full moon. At the same time Hitler’s chart showed ‘malefic’ astrological aspects.
Hess saw himself in the role of a messianic hero saving Germany from possible future defeat by making peace with the British. All the (false) reports reaching the deputy fuehrer about the political situation in England and the astrological aspects convinced him that his mission would be a success.




Rudolf Hess & Plane wreck after flight to scotland


Rudolf Hess flew to Scotland on 10 May 1941 in the firm belief that on landing he would be met by the Duke of Hamilton and the Duke of Kent and whisked off to London for a private audience with King George VI. He had been convinced by the misinformation fed to him by British Intelligence that these three men represented a genuine peace movement capable of removing the warmonger Churchill and agreeing to German terms. Hess had also previously met the Duke of Windsor when he had visited Berlin before the war. As a result Hess was persuaded that some
members of the German-descended royal family were sympathetic to Nazism. Certainly the Duke of Saxo-Coburg, formerly Prince Charles Edward, a grandson of Queen Victoria and a close friend of the Duke of Windsor, had willingly embraced Nazism. In fact Hitler had appointed him as the head of the German branch of the Red Cross that was responsible for exterminating the mentally sick and physically disabled.


Unfortunately instead of meeting pro-Nazi aristocrats and royals when he landed, Hess was captured by a local farmer and a Home Guard unit. They handed him over to the police and he was transferred to London to be interrogated by MI5. Unfortunately the British government completely mishandled the capture of Hess. It has been suggested that Churchill believed the subterfuge by the NID and SIS suggesting leading members of the British Establishment might be pro-German may have been based on fact. For that reason the government did not capitalise on Hess’ ‘peace mission’. The German High Command had also disowned him and said that his flight had been unauthorised. They also suggested that Hess might be insane so his value for propaganda purposes was undermined and diminished.



Rudolf Hess’ apparent defection caused widespread panic in Berlin concerning the influence of occultism on the Nazi Party. The Gestapo immediately launched Operation Aktion Hess. On the direct orders of Hitler, they rounded up hundreds of occultists, psychics and astrologers, including Hess’s leading occult advisor Ernst Schulte-Strathaus. In June 1941 a decree was issued banning all public performances of clairvoyance, astrology, fortune-telling or telepathy. Anybody associated with Hess and his esoteric interests was thrown into concentration camps and occult secret societies were closed down. Because of staff shortages in the Gestapo, officers from the Naval Intelligence Service were drafted in to interrogate some of the arrested psychics. It has been claimed that they recruited some of them for secret operations using dowsing on maps with pendulums to hunt down British submarines.



It has also been claimed that Ian Fleming and the NID was involved in a plot to silence the Spiritualist medium Helen Duncan, the penultimate person to be charged under the old Witchcraft Act of 1736. She was arrested in 1944 after holding a séance during which allegedly the spirit of a dead sailor from the sinking of the HMS Bolham physically
manifested. As the news of the loss had not been publicly released, and the Admiralty was keeping it secret for morale purposes, Duncan became a target for the security services. She and other psychics were regarded as a serious threat to national security and they became the object of a MI5/NID dirty tricks operation to silence leaks. This
suggests that the Intelligence Services actually believed these mediums had genuine powers. Duncan’s arrest and subsequent trial, which in fact was condemned by Winston Churchill as a waste of public funds, was allegedly meant to deter other mediums. The War Office was paranoid that military secrets about the forthcoming D-Day landings in Normandy would be revealed at séances and become public knowledge or passed to the Germans.



Bibliography:

Derek Wilson, Sir Francis Walsingham (Constable 2007)

Richard Deacon, John Dee (Muller 1968)

Donald McCormack, The Hellfire Club (Jarrolds 1958)

P.Mannix, The Hellfire Club (Four Square 1961)

M.R.D. Foot, SOE: The Special Operations Executive 1940-46 (BBC publications 1984)

J.M. McKenzie The Secret History of the SOE 1940-1945 (St Ermins Press 2000)

Nigel West, The Secret War: The Story of SOE (Hodder & Stoughton 1992)

Richard Deacon, The History of British Secret Service (Frederick Muller 1979)

Donald McCormick, The Life of Ian Fleming (Peter Owen 1993)



MICHAEL HOWARD has had a lifelong interest in intelligence matters
and the strange links between the occult and politics. Since 1976 he
has edited The Cauldron newsletter (www.the-cauldron.fsnet.co.uk)
featuring witchcraft, folklore and Earth Mysteries. He is the author of
Secret Societies: Their Influence and Power from Antiquity to the
Present Day, published by Destiny Books USA.



© Copyright New Dawn Magazine, www.newdawnmagazine.com.
Permission granted to freely distribute this article for non-commercial
purposes if unedited and copied in full, including this notice.




Article from: http://www.newdawnmagazine.com/
Article/The_British_Occult_Secret_Service.html

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Saturday 12 July 2008

BBC’s Pro-Israeli Bias



In its near 86 year history, BBC has a long, unbroken and dubious distinction. Today it's little different from its corporate-run counterparts in America, Britain and throughout the world. In fact, on its tailored for a US BBC America audience, what passes for news matches stride for stride what people here see every day - mind-numbing commercialism, shoddy reporting, pseudo-journalism, celebrity and sports features, and other diverting and distracting non-news that should embarrass correspondents and presenters delivering it. It offends viewers and treats them like mushrooms - well-watered, in the dark, and uninformed about the most important world and national issues affecting their lives and welfare.

That's the idea, of course, and has been since BBC's inception. John Reith was its founder and first general manager. Reassuring the powerful, he set the standard adhered to thereafter: "(You) know (you) can trust us not to be really impartial." BBC never was and never is.

Impartiality has no place on BBC nor does its claim about "honesty, integrity, (and being) free from political influence and commercial pressure." How can it? Its Director-General, Executive Board Chairman, BBC Trust Chairman and senior managers are government-appointed and charged with a singular task - to function as a "propaganda system for elite interests." On all vital issues - war and peace, state and corporate corruption, human rights, social justice, or coverage of the Middle East's longest and most intractable conflict, Westminster and the establishment rest easy. They know BBC is "reliable" - pro-government, pro-business and dismissive of the public trust it disdains. Now more than ever.

This article covers one example among many - BBC's distorted, one-sided support for Israel and its antipathy toward Palestinians. In this respect, it's fully in step with its American and European counterparts - Israeli interests matter; Palestinian ones don't; as long as that holds, conflict resolution is impossible. Therein lies the problem. With its reputation, world reach, and influence, BBC's coverage exacerbates it.

Key BBC Terms In Its Israeli - Palestinian Coverage

In October 2006, Electronic Intifada.net listed BBC's "key terms" in its conflict coverage - to "find a balance" that, in fact, tilts strongly toward Israel. For example:

-- pre-meditated assassinations are called "killings" or occasionally "targeted killings" if Israeli sources say it;

-- the separation or apartheid wall is called a "barrier, separation barrier, West Bank barrier, (or simply) this wall;" sometimes "fence" is used as well; no hint of its real purpose or that the World Court ruled it illegal; no mention either that it's unrelated to security and simply a land-grab scheme and effort to heighten Palestinian isolation;

-- East Jerusalem - BBC recognizes West Jerusalem as part of Israel; East Jerusalem is considered occupied with its status "still to be determined in permanent status negotiations between the parties....We recognize no sovereignty over the city;" The phrase "Arab East Jerusalem" is avoided; so is any mention that Israeli settlements encroach on it and aim to annex it entirely; Palestinians want the city for their capital; it belongs to them; Israel won't allow it; BBC won't explain it;

-- Gaza - Israel nominally disengaged in summer 2005; in fact, it never did; it merely redeployed its forces, and maintains rigid control over the Territory's land, coast and airspace; it invades and attacks at will and maintains a brutish mediaeval siege; all movement in and out of Gaza is restricted; so are Gazans' access to food, water, health care, fuel, electricity and other life essentials; the result is a deep humanitarian crisis; BBC ignores it; instead it merely refers to an "end to Israel's permanent military presence," not an end to its occupation, repression, continued incursions, mass killings, targeted assassinations, and systemic use of torture;

The Green Line - it separates Israel from the West Bank, but BBC reporting blurs it; it doesn't call it a border because that implies internationally recognized status; instead it fudges by calling it "the generally recognised boundary between Israel and the West Bank;"

-- Intifada - more fudging when referring to causes; value judgments are avoided; so is truth; don't say Ariel Sharon's September 29, 2000 Haram al-Sharif provocation incited a popular uprising; package his visit with Palestinian frustration over a failed peace process and say it "sparked the (second) intifada (rather than it) led (to it or) started (it);"

-- Jewish - distinguish between "Israeli" or "Jewish" to avoid religious or racial connotations; stress political ones instead; ignore how Israelis stress Jewishness by relating to "the promised land," one "without people for a people without a land," a Jewish homeland, Israel's biblical connection, and raising the issue of anti-semitism against harsh Israeli critics; when they're Jewish call them self-hating;

-- Occupied Territories or Occupation - BBC refers to East Jerusalem and the West Bank, not the Golan Heights; after Israel "disengaged," Gaza is in political limbo; BBC distinguishes between the "occupied territories" and Palestinian Land or Palestinian Territories; calling Gaza and the West Bank "disputed territories" is preferred; in fact, there's no dispute; they're both Israeli occupied Palestinian land;

-- settlements and outposts - BBC distinguishes between them when, in fact, they vary only in size; BBC avoids calling them illegal; they're all illegal but adjectives aren't used unless they're vital to a story; in all reports, BBC is one-sided; it stresses that Israel disputes international law; anti-Israeli value judgments aren't made; the rule of law is dismissed; Palestinian rights are ignored; the growing number of Israeli settlers is fudged, downplayed and generally not mentioned;

-- Palestine - BBC acknowledges that no independent state exists but the "peace process" aims to create one; unmentioned is that negotiations are fake and their reports try to hide it; so do deceptive words to appease pro-Israel critics; BBC obliges them;

-- "relative calm" or "quiet" periods - it refers to quiescent Palestinian resistance, no Israeli deaths, but not ongoing Israeli attacks and killings;

-- right of return - BBC ignores international law and UN Resolution 194; it promotes the Israeli position instead; and

-- "terrorists" - a loaded term applying only to Palestinians; never Israelis; most often other words are used like "bomber, attacker, gunman, kidnapper, insurgent (or) militant;" Palestinian self-defense is never called resistance, and Israeli incursions aren't ever called aggression.

Media "Rules of Engagement" in Covering the Middle East

In June 2002, Robin Miller listed "The Media's Middle East Rules of Engagement." BBC's Israeli-Palestinian coverage adheres to them rigidly:

Rule 1 - "View the Middle East (ME) through Israeli eyes;" Palestinians are terrorists and aggressors; Israelis are victims who retaliate; self-defense is their motive; so is avoiding the truth;

Rule 2 - "Treat American and Israeli governmental statements as (truthful) hard news;" avoid any information that contradicts them;

Rule 3 - "Ignore the historical context;" avoid mentioning six decades of dispossession, occupation, and hundreds of preceding years during which Palestine was the Palestinian homeland; also suppress the idea that a Jewish homeland first originated with Zionism's late 19th century's founding and didn't exist prior to that;

Rule 4 - "Avoid the fundamental legal and moral issues posed by the Israeli occupation;" say nothing about Geneva, UN Resolution 194, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and all other recognized international human rights laws;

Rule 5 - "Suppress or minimize news unfavorable to the Israelis;" this rule is ironclad and unforgiving; open debate isn't tolerated; facts are suppressed; aggressors are called victims; self-defense is called terrorism; news is carefully "filtered," minds manipulated, and truth conspicuously absent; BBC excels at it and lets Israel get away with murder;

Rule 6 - "Muddy the waters when necessary;" major US media do it; so do human rights organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch; they tread lightly on Israeli-Palestinian issues and slant their views accordingly; so does BBC;

Rule 7 - "Credit all Israeli claims (as fact), even if wholly unfounded;" if Israelis say it, it's true; BBC approves;

Rule 8 - "Doubt all Palestinian assertions, no matter how self-evident;" if Palestinians say it, it's false or at best an unsubstantiated claim; most often ignore, downplay or fudge it;

Rule 9 - "Condemn only Palestinian violence;" treat it as a crime against innocent Israeli victims; ignore any reference to self-defense against Israeli aggression and rule of law violations; and

Rule 10 - "Disparage the international consensus supporting Palestinian rights;" better still - ignore it or condemn it as biased or anti-semitic.

Add one more rule for good measure. Repeat any lie often enough and most people will believe it. It's foolproof and works every time.

Independent Analysis of BBC's Israel - Palestine Coverage

In 2005, the BBC commissioned a study to review the impartiality of its Israeli - Palestinian coverage. It consisted of an independent panel, the Communications Research Centre at Loughborough University, and British - Israeli international lawyer Noam Lubell. Their published April 2006 findings weren't what the broadcaster wished. Highlights from them showed BBC coverage:

-- rarely covered daily Palestinian hardships and repression under occupation;

-- was incomplete, misleading, and failed to consistently provide a full and fair account of the conflict;

-- overlooked important themes; in the study period it most notably ignored Israeli annexation of land in and around East Jerusalem;

-- omitted a substantial amount of important news vital to Palestinian concerns;

-- failed to convey the disparity in the Israeli and Palestinian experience; specifically that one side is dominant and the other under occupation and forced to endure dependence indignities and hard line repression;

-- seldom used the term occupation; mentioned military occupation only once during the study period;

-- reported nothing about nearly four decades of occupation and repression;

-- misportrayed Israel's Gaza disengagement as a positive step; failed to clarify it as a ruse and that Gaza remains occupied, invaded and attacked at will;

-- failed to report Israeli assertions that relocating Gaza settlers would strengthen Israel's control of the West Bank and East Jerusalem;

-- never clarified that Gaza settlements were illegal; that Gazans face ongoing hardships and stressed instead the "controversy" of withdrawing among Israelis;

-- misused or misportrayed the term "terrorism" and only applied it to Palestinians;

-- omitted any reference to historical background and failed to put stories in proper context;

-- provided inadequate analysis and interpretation of key events and issues;

-- failed to explain the meaning of Zionism;

-- failed to provide background of the 1967 and 1973 wars;

-- consistently misportrayed Hamas; described it as formally committed to Israel's destruction; ignored Hamas' acceptance of the Arab peace proposal and its willingness to recognize Israel in return for an end to the occupation;

-- mischaracterized the Oslo Accords as positive; ignored its deficiencies and betrayal;

-- mentioned the Intifada with no explanation of cause or justification;

-- failed to cite international law and UN resolutions; their call for an end to Israel's occupation; and the fact that Israel ignores international rulings contrary to its interests;

-- ignored Palestinians' legal right to return or restitution if they choose not to;

-- ignored humanitarian and human rights laws;

-- failed to explain extrajudicial executions are illegal;

-- mischaracterized the Separation Wall that the World Court ruled illegal;

-- misrepresented the status of Jerusalem;

-- gave unequal access to Israeli officials and spokespersons; stations none of its correspondents in Occupied Palestine; has them all inside Israel; results in a huge disparity in reports favoring Israel while disparaging Palestinians;

-- misportrayed Israelis as peace-seeking and Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims as aggressors;

-- stressed Israeli victimhood, the importance of Israeli deaths and injuries, and relative unimportance of a disproportionate number of Palestinian ones;

-- responded to criticism defensively; continued to repeat past errors cited; showed deference to Israeli issues and the pro-Israeli Lobby;

-- ignored its own established editorial standards, including on terminology; as a result, consistently showed bias, a lack of clarity and precision and did little to improve comprehension and understanding;

-- overall - BBC falls far short of fair and impartial reporting and has done little to redress pointed out deficiencies; one positive note - the analysis found no evidence linking anti-Semitic behavior to BBC reports; it also found none dispelling it.

Glasgow University Media Group Study of Middle East News Coverage - It's "Bad News from Israel" and BBC

Researchers Greg Philo and Mike Berry conducted the study between 2000 and 2002, and their above quoted 2004 book title discusses it. Little has changed from then to now, BBC's reporting highlights it, and it's "bad news" for kept-in-the-dark viewers of major UK news and current affairs coverage.

Former BBC Middle East correspondent Tim Llewellyn agrees and explained in his unsparing comments about his former employer. He called it "dishonest - in concept, approach and execution....(it) favours the occupying soldiers over the occupied Arabs, depicting the latter, essentially, as alien tribes threatening the survival of Israel, rather than vice versa." It depicts the Israeli-Palestinian conflict "as a battle of two (equal) forces (with equally) right and wrong responsibility. It is the tyranny of spurious equivalence." As the UK and world's leading broadcaster, BBC is justifiably blamed.

"Bad News from Israel" explains how - by consistently showing pro-Israel bias in virtually all its reporting and at times in the extreme. Beyond the book's timeline, correspondent Chris Morris' January 2004 "Lost hope in Mid-East conflict" report is a case in point. It's about an expectant Palestinian woman confronted at a checkpoint. Prevented from passing, she gives birth and miscarries.

Morris is sympathetic but sides with the soldiers. "You can't blame (them, he says) for being jumpy at checkpoints....because there are Israeli victims too, children among them, killed by snipers and suicide bombers from the West Bank. What would you have done? Would you have taken the risk? Or would you have played it safe, fearful of a trap? And so it goes on - another week in the Middle East."

Even worse, the greater issue is ignored - an instance reflecting daily life in Occupied Palestine plus regular killings and abuse. Morris turns a blind eye. He highlights suicide bombings instead - "A Palestinian mother in her early 20s blows herself to bits and takes the lives of four young Israelis, after tricking them into believing she was ill." He continues - "A Jewish settler is killed on the West Bank, leaving five children without a father, including triplets just three months old." Reports like his are commonplace on BBC. Israeli lives matter. Palestinian ones don't. Philo and Berry document the evidence.

Their study covers what media should report, a content analysis of their coverage, and how focus group interviews show how viewers are ill-served and left uninformed. Below are some results that apply to today:

-- little or no historical context was provided; origins of the conflict were omitted; in the 2000 timeframe covered, BBC (and ITN) devoted 3500 lines of text to the Intifada, but a scant 17 to context or history;

-- reporting consistently was pro-Israel and justified the most extreme actions and lawlessness; at the same time, Palestinian resistance was highlighted and condemned as terrorism;

-- in the authors' words: "There (was) no evidence from our analysis to suggest that Palestinian views were given preferential treatment on the BBC. The opposite (was) in reality the case;"

-- BBC justified Israeli violence as "response" or "retaliation;" in contrast, Palestinian resistance was called "horrific," an "atrocity," "terrorism," or even "mass murder;"

-- some BBC reports were rife with errors whether intentionally or from ignorance;

-- reports focused on Israeli security and right to exist; comparable Palestinian rights got little mention; nor did their impoverishment, deplorable daily existence, or a brutish four-decade military occupation;

-- Israeli deaths were highlighted; Palestinian ones played down or ignored; regular Israeli incursions got little mention or weren't reported;

-- as a result, only 4% of focus group respondents knew Palestinians were driven from their homeland; only 10% that Israel occupied Palestine; some believed Palestinians were the occupiers; some viewed the conflict as a border dispute; 80% didn't know the origin of Palestinian refugees or that they were dispossessed; two-thirds didn't know Palestinian casualties exceeded Israeli ones; more knowledgeable respondents had access to books and other material that dispel BBC bias and inaccuracies;

-- senior BBC journalists interviewed told researchers that they were instructed not to give explanations; to dumb-down the news for easy listening and do it in "20-second attention span" segments; researchers believe BBC has it backwards; this type reporting alienates viewers; accuracy and more context enhances viewership; under heavy Israeli Lobby pressure, BBC and other major media report propaganda; truth is the first casualty, and viewers remain uninformed; today it's worse than ever.

BBC's Coverage of Gaza Under Siege

BBC reports little about Gaza under siege and the humanitarian crisis it caused. Instead, accounts like its January 2008 one are common. It's headlined "Gaza's rocket threat to Israel" and highlights homemade Qassams "fired by Hamas and other Palestinian militants at Israeli population centres near the Gaza Strip." They've "killed 13 people inside Israel, including three children. In some months, more than 100 launches have been recorded by the Israelis."

No mention is made of Israeli incursions, their frequency, the use of F-16 air-to-surface missiles, their accuracy and destructive power, high-tech battle tanks in civilian neighborhoods, and other sophisticated weapons freely used, including illegal ones. Nor is there mention of hundreds of Palestinian deaths, injuries, inflicted Israeli destruction, and use of Palestinians as human shields. Instead, the Israeli town of Sderot is highlighted because it's "the only large Israeli population centre within the original Qassam's range." BBC describes them in detail to over-hype their destructive potential. In fact, they're crude, inaccurate and limited in range. They hardly compare to Israel's high-tech weapons that when unleashed against a civilian population are devastating.

Later in BBC's report, it admits "Qassams are very primitive missiles and their main effect on Israelis in the area is psychological torment (and that) Israeli casualties have been relatively light." In contrast, Israeli attacks on Palestinians kill and injure many hundreds and inflict immense psychological terror against a civilian population. It's gone on for six decades, shows no signs of ebbing, but BBC won't explain it.

Nor does it report on Gaza under siege, the collective punishment of its people, the humanitarian crisis it caused, and Israel's lawless act that BBC should expose and denounce. Instead it features reports like a May 10 one about a "Gaza mortar attack kill(ing an) Israeli." Israeli air strikes followed, five Hamas members were killed and four others injured. BBC featured an Israeli government spokesperson saying "We hold (Hamas) accountable for today's attack and the murder of civilians." No Palestinian response was aired, and BBC merely ended saying that "The Gaza Strip has been controlled by Hamas since last June when they ousted their rivals from the Fatah movement." No context, no background, no fair and impartial reporting, no truth, and no possible way for viewers to understand.

BBC suggests that Palestinians are responsible for their own condition, that a humanitarian catastrophe is their fault, and that Israel has every right to terrorize and starve them to submission for its own security and self-interest. By BBC's standards, Israel may rightfully lock down 1.5 million people, collectively punish them, continue a repressive occupation, and refuse to negotiate in good faith, or at all. BBC is dismissive. Palestinian suffering is inconsequential, yet consider its outrage from a single Israeli death. It's also contemptuous of Hamas, ignored its months-long unilateral ceasefire, and refuses to report its willingness to recognize Israel in return for a Palestinian state inside pre-1967 borders.

BBC views the conflict from an Israeli perspective. It features government officials to explain it, and reports whatever they say as fact. This turns reality on its head, makes lawless actions justifiable, results in double standard journalism, and lets Palestinians suffer the consequences. Why not and who cares. They're just Arab Muslims in the land of Israel where Jews alone matter and not a hint of even-handed reporting exists. Now more than ever in the conflict's seventh decade, and BBC's reporting exacerbates it.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

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