-Caveat Lector- Euphorian wrote:
> -Caveat Lector- > > January 24, 2003 > http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1-553590,00.html > Documents 'show Saddam's chemical plans' > by pa news > > Iraqi documents obtained by the BBC appear to suggest that > Saddam Hussein is preparing to use chemical weapons against Western > troops in the event of war, it was reported today. The following newsletter out of the UK has been forwarded to most of the lists I'm on, except this one. The first part of it addresses the issue of this story you've posted. Propaganda on both sides of the Atlantic is flowing fast and furious in the face of the growing opposition to this criminal conspiracy to war. The more the opposition grows, the more outlandish will be the "reports" of the "need" to bomb Iraq. It is extremely prudent at this pivotal time to heed the warning notice posted at the beginning of every post to this list - "Caveat Lector"! -------- Original Message -------- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: BBC: FALSE NEWS ALERT PRESS RELEASE: IMMEDIATE BBC'S "INDEPENDENT EXPERT" IS EX CIA STATION CHIEF IN IRAQ >From Ian Henshall, publisher 911dossier [EMAIL PROTECTED] Friday 24 January On the influential Today programme the BBC headlined it's 8.00am news bulletin with with the claim to an exclusive story implying that Iraq has chemical weapons, but failed to provide any hard evidence a nd indeed sreriously misled its audience. The news bulletin said that a document, handwritten in arabic, supplied by the partisan Iraqi National Congress (INC) was pronounced as genuine by "three independent experts", all unnamed. However, none of these "independent experts" is a native arab speaker and one is Bob Bear, ex-CIA Station Chief in Iraq. The BBC also admitted to 911dossier that the experts only agreed that the document "appears" to be genuine. The other "experts" are Toby Dodge an unknown academic from Warwick University and Bill Tierney, described as a former weapons inspector. It has been accepted that the former weapons inspectors contained several espionage personnel from the UK and the US. The BBC failed to inform listeners that the INC is a pro-Bush setup which has been promised a share of the spoils following a successful conquest of Iraq. Many key INC figures are ex-Saddam henchmen complicit in chemical attacks on Iran sponsored by the US in the 1980's. The conduit for this pro-Blair story Gordon Carrera, described as a senior reporter, admitted some of these facts on the much lower profile 7.00am session of the Today Programme, but the news team ignored this revelation and continued describe the experts as independent an hour later when most listeners were tuned in. The BBC has a pattern of ignoring its own discoveries when they don't fit the Blair line. For instance in the Genoa police attacks the BBC referred to "reports" of police brutality when in fact their own correspondent had given a graphic eye witness description. After this highly misleading 8.00 headline report, Today failed to interview any anti-war figure for a comment, in flagrant breach of the BBC's legal obligation for impartial and balanced reporting. The vast majority of the UK public opposes an attack outside the UN, recent polls show. Instead they interviewed Richard Perle a long standing lobbyist for radical Zionist groups in support of Ariel Sharon, but failed to mention his background and gave him a "soft" interview, pushing for an illegal attack on Iraq in defiance of the UN Security Council. The second item on the same bulletin was an unlikely scare story, which claimed that a group of alleged terrorists arrested in Italy was likely to be attacking London because they had a map of London among an unknown number of other documents, including a map of Nato facilities in Italy, with those facilities circled. It was not stated whether the map of London was a tourist AtoZ of London, indeed the the report gave few details of the alleged map which was the lynchpin of the story. The headline news story had another serious flaw. Even if the story is true it assumes that Iraq has no reason to fear a US WMD attack. In fact the US has stated that it is prepared to use WMD's against Iraq and revelations under the US Freedom of Information Act show that the in the 90's the US produced biological weapons in useable amounts in flagrant violation of the biological weapons treaty which the US recently withdrew from. There is considerable evidence to support the Cuban government's claim that Cuba has been attacked by US biological weapons. Moreover the story is inherently implausuble because it is accepted that Iraq used chemical weapons against Iran. If Iraq has continued a secret programme, why does it suddenly need to go out and buy protection suits now, as the INC alleges. Currently the UK establishment is in denial of world opinion on the illegal Iraqi attack plan. The UK corporate media has accepted the Bush/Blair line as fact that the rest of the world will soon support the attacks, even though Bush Junta claims of support from eg Saudi Arabia and Turkey have been exposed as false repeatedly for the last nine months. Unable to influence world opinion Blair has turned his attention on the UK media where the BBC boss is Greg Dyke a financial backer of Blair's Labour Party, with a strategy of scare stories and unfounded reports to support the contention that Iraq is an imminent threat, the only legal justification for the planned attack. Blair's spin doctors know that like the allegations presented in the Blair Iraq Dossier which the arms inspectors found to be false, the true story will not get out as widely as the falsehood. Blair is counting on the BBC to collaborate with this strategy, as so far he has proved right. The BBC has never told its audience during the so-called Iraq crisis that Israel possesses nuclear weapons which it certainly threatens its neighbours with, although it repeatedly "reminds" its audience that Saddam Hussein used WMD's against "his own people", although in fact the Halabja attack was initially blamed on Iran. There follows an open letter to Richard Sambrooke, head of news at the BBC who has claimed that he is NOT co-operating with the Blair governemnt to feed false scare stories to justify the invasion of Iraq that many believe the Bush Junta and Blair government have decided upon. OPEN LETTER TO RICHARD SAMBROOKE, HEAD OF NEWS AT THE BBC DEAR MR SAMBROOKE, I was interested to read your letter to Medialens, who criticised you for bias on the Iraq issue. You do not address the vital questions: You fail to recognise the emotional side to the BBC's credulous reports of Blair's scaremongering, a particularly gross example of which occurred today. You seem to be unaware of your legal obligation to provide balance. You say you have given a voice to the anti-war movement (how kind!), but you have operated a news blackout on two of the biggest questions af all: 1. Israel has nuclear weapons which it uses to threaten its neighbours 2. The Official Story of the 911 attacks has changed radically and cannot be true. What is the truth? It is widely believed that the Bush Junta was complicit in the attacks by letting them happen to promote its pre-existing agenda of conquest and war. ABUSING YOUR JOURNALISTS First you say that some correspondents are abusive when they write to you on reading Medialens' reports. I am a little uncertain at your remarks condemning abuse of your journalists. Examples would be useful. I wrote to John Sweeney after his disgracefully unbalanced report from Iraq accusing him of being in bed with George Bush and being complicit in an illegal war - is this unreasonable abuse, I wonder. It's certainly not like being in Iraq and having a bomb dropped on you by Sweeneys friends in Whitehall or Washington, is it? I sometimes even use the expression media whores. In my view the use of tabloid language is justifiable, indeed many of your journalists seem to have lucrative second jobs as media whores in Fleet Street - Sweeney for instance. SCAREMONGERING You say that you are NOT scaremongering - you have a public duty to relay Tony Blair's warnings of terrorist attacks. Perhaps. But you fail to distinguish between factual and emotional content. Yes, you could be accused of irresponsibility if you did not relay Tony Blair's latest warning, but this does not justify making it into a headline story with an emotional tone of intense fear and total credulity. After Bowling for Columbine (you did see that, didn't you?) very many of your viewers will now be aware of the strategy of the pro-Bush Washington media corporations and their UK allies like Blair: instilling fear. It's not only what you report it's how you report it. You defend the scaremongering by saying that the public understands the difference between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaida. I find this claim intriguing. Intuitively it is nonsense and a recent poll confirms that the public is very confused on the matter, and indicates the public does indeed believe in the alleged connection. Did you make this silly claim because you thought that David Cromwell as a well-informed individual would not realise the public confusion that exists, confusion that you must surely be aware of? How many times have your employees listened respectfully to Bush Junta officials telling your listeners lies on this matter and not contradicted them? Yes, you do have an obligation to do this. The public regards most politicians as liars and they look to the mass media and other politicians to expose these lies. But whether you like it or not, when you relay statements uncritically people infer they are true. I find it hard to believe that you do not understand this. In this case it's worse than that. It is now clear that Blair's statements of only weeks ago concerning sites in Iraq were false: the inspectors confirm this. After the pathetic "Iraq dossier", it is possible that Bush/Blair's allegation that Iraq has WMDs is wholly false. Why do you allow your employees to refer to Iraq's WMD's as if they certainly exist? What other news source than Blair would you treat with such credulity a second time? Do you not feel ashamed that today the headline news was an alleged document form Iraq supplied by the highly partisan INC and verified only by "three independent experts" who you failed to name? BALANCE Over the Bush Junta's plans for Iraq the public is particularly at odds with the views of the Tory and Labour front benches. But you have a legal obligation to provide balance. You may think balance means balance between the leaderships of Labour and Conservatives at Westminster, Mr Sambrooke, but if so you are heading for a head-on collision with reality. Your frequent interviews with Mr Richard Perle, a pro-Sharon lobbyist currently advocating an illegal attack on Iraq, have had no balancing factor, and indeed Perle is addressed as if he is a serious commentator and on many occasions recently has been given the last word. You might calculate that the anti-war movement is so accustomed to corporate media bias that it is grateful that, for instance, you were kind enough to give Noam Chomsky five minutes on Radio 4 today. But you would be wrong - the anti-war movement now is filled with major UK figures who do not expect to be treated like poor relations - people who, unlike Noam Chomsky, you cannot ignore. People who understand that that exercising bias in favour of the warmongers could be seen as complicity in a criminal enterprise, Mr Sambrooke. Chomsky is a giant global figure, he gave the keynote address to the World Social Forum in Brasil last year - in your language he is the unofficial leader of the global opposition. Peter Mandelson on the other hand is a local MP for a safe Labour seat who's only serious electoral fight, to get elected onto the Labour National Executive, ended in defeat. Precisely why does he get ten times the exposure of Noam Chomsky or for that matter Tam Dalyell? Was Mandelson all over the BBC putting the case for war last week because of the respect he commands? Hardly - to much of the public he is a discredited and somewhat sinister figure who lied to his building society and whose ego cost the taxpayer a fortune over the Millennium Dome affair. I understand that you have a difficult job, Mr Sambrooke. Both your ultimate bosses are New Labour cronies, the mirror image of the BBC under the Conservatives. INK is currently making proposals which would replace the current regulatory structures by a Journalism Council a professional ethics body which would clarify the balance requirement in a pluralistic society. It would regulate broadcast journalists and editors along the lines of the General Medical Council for doctors. The Journalism Council will liberate you from political pressures from your bosses, and inded liberate them from the bullies at Westminster and I urge you to support it. THE BBC AND ISRAEL On the Today programme today you repeated yet again the allegation (as fact) that Saddam Hussein attacked "his own people" with chemical weapond at Halabja. You failed to mention the more relevant point that these weapons were supplied by criminals who could be arrested now at no loss of life, among them Donald Rumsfeld, that the Halabja attack was credibly blamed on the Iranians at the time, (a fast dispersing gas suitable for attack but not defence was used), and that most of the time the BBC regards the Kurdish victims of the attack as a repressed ethnic group and NOT Saddam Hussein's own people. The BBC also takes no regard for the view that to attack ANYONE with WMD's is equally bad and that it racist to assume that it is worse against one's "own people". By contrast the BBC NEVER mentions the killer fact which for many destroys the Bush Junta's war arguments. Israel certainly HAS A LARGE NUMBER OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS which it threatens its neighbours with. Unlike Iraq, Isreal is in what many see as a war of aggression against Palestine and has been for many decades. The BBC rarely if ever mentions two more relevant facts: Israel has been in breach of UN resolutions since 1966, and at the time of the first Gulf War the US governemnt promised the arab world that it would make peace in Palestine its top priority. Why does the BBC repeat allegations as historical facts and ignore the most relevant facts of all? THE BBC AND THE 911 ATTACKS You correctly say that you have given coverage to opponents of the proposed war, but so far as I am aware you have utterly failed to convey to the public at any time the fact that there are serious reasons to doubt the veracity of the Official Story of the event which started the whole nightmare, the 911 attack. The alleged threat from Iraq is, acording to Bush/Blair, that Iraq might lend some WMD's to Al Qaida to use against America. Before 911 that idea was laughable. But now we know that - BEFORE 911 - the Afghan invasion plan, the PATRIOT Act and the war with Iraq were all planned by the Bush Junta. The Official Story has changed on many key points in the face of unarguable evidence, for instance the tale from Blair and the Bush Junta that the 911 attacks were unthinkable has been belied by a host of official documents, reports and warnings. Many Americans including some of the 911 victims, are alleging criminal complicity by the Junta in allowing the attacks to happen or worse. I accept that the BBC has informed the public that the anthrax attacks probably came from within the US government, though not very loudly, and that Bush acquired the Presidency through voter frauds in Florida. I congratulate you on this, but you then ignore your own facts and continue to refer to Bush as if he was a legitimate President worthy of automatic respect. You don't seem to believe your own reporters, Mr Sambrooke. The veracity of the Official Story on 911 should have been a vital part of the Iraq war debate. Gore Vidal raised the issue cogently in a recent four page article in The Observer. Everybody in politics except you seems to have read it. I fear you are living in a cocoon called the present, Mr Sambrooke, like many of your viewers who do too much tv watching. My advice to you and everyone else in the establishment power structure is to remember. Remember what happened to Richard Nixon and his cronies. If you were still in nappies then, remember what happened to Enron, financial sponsor of New Labour, whoise MD Ken Lay a longitme crony of "President" Bushremember Neil Bush and the Savings and Loan he left bankrupt. Politicians come and go, Blair possibly faster expected, but the public and the truth will always be there for you to answer to, Mr Sambrooke. A bit more courage is required at this point. Thank you for finding the time to read this and good luck in your very difficult job. Ian Henshall publisher 911dossier.co.uk 911 BRIEFING FOR RICHARD SAMBROOKE AND GREG DYKE To put it bluntly, many people in America (in defiance of the Bush Junta's tame media) believe that the top level in the White House was criminally complicit in the attacks, which they allowed to happen or even helped actively in order to promote: oil grabs in Afghanistan and now Iraq; a bonanza for the arms business; the political fortunes of George Bush and Ariel Sharon; and if the threats of Perle and Rumsfeld are to be believed a new US military empire across the Middle East. There is a mass of evidence to support this thesis, assembled on 911dossier.co.uk. It has been advertised prominently in The Independent. In spite of several emails to you and others, I have never had any enquiry from any BBC reporter seeking help with this story. To your shame, you have failed to report that attorney David Shippers and many 911 victims have started a lawsuit alleging criminal complicity by the Bush White House in the 911 attacks. Shippers and the 911 victims are not radical leftists or muslim fanatics or conspiracy theorists. Indeed Shippers led the impeachment of Bill Clinton by the US Congress. You certainly took his views seriously then, didn't you? Have you not noticed that the Official 911 Story is now quite different in many respects? It was falsely stated that the hijacked planes were invisible because their transponders had been switched off, that Mohammed Atta's passport was found in the smouldering ruins of the Twin Towers (didn't you small a rat at that point?), that the White House was ignorant of the attacks until around 9.00am. As a newsman surely you are aware of the rule of thumb that when the story changes it is false. Mr Sambrooke, for a man in charge of news you seem unusually naive. Do you not recall that last two major two Republican administrations have committed criminal acts against American democracy (Watergate and Iran-Contra) involving bloody and illegal war (Vietnam, Nicaragua, and Iran-Iraq conducted by their then ally Saddam Hussein with chemical weapons supplied by Rumsfeld), conspiracies conducted by felons like John Poindexter recently appointed to senior office by the Bush Junta, and Gordon Liddy jailed for Watergate crimes and now an associate of Richard Perle. Are you not aware that Freedom of Information Act documents prove that in Operation Northwoods the Pentagon proposed to commit mass murder to frame Fidel Castro and justify an invasion of Cuba? The plan was only halted in the Oval Office itself. Do you imagine that the Blair government has discreetly conducted its own investigation of the 911 attacks? Keith Hill, deputy Chief Whip, has assured me in writing that any such investigation, which I requested, `would be a matter for the American government`. Ian Henshall ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- >From Ian Henshall, chair of INK and proprietor of The Tea and Coffee Plant. INK is the umbrella trade organisation for the UK alternative press. Comment is written in a strictly personal capacity. To get future Crisis Newsletters or be removed, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For an archive go to 911dossier.co.uk. For INK administration contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----------------------------- SOURCES ON THE CRISIS GENERAL NEWS SITES AND FREE NEWSLETTERS 911dossier.co.uk. For an overview of the crisis and an archive of Ian Henshall's newsletters Mario Profaco. Mostly mainstream press reports on global issues. Send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For a daily digest of US and global news send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] or visit http://legitgov.org/index.html#breaking_news On Line Journal. Alternative news site http://www.onlinejournal.com, Unlike middle-of-the-road site alternet, run by CIA crony David Corn, this is real honest opposition to the Junta Truthout.com. A general news site from mainstream Democrat activists World Socialist Web Site. Global news from a socialist perspective. Unlike the mainstream Left in the UK, they are accusing Bush of criminal complicity in 911. https://wsws.org/ www.spin-on-this.com Hilarious black humour at the expense of Bush/Blair and others The Konformist. They relay stuff from a very wide variety of off-beat sources and topics, from 911 to whales. [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.counterpunch.org/ Alexander Cockburn and many others. Fine polemics and radical writing. http://www.stopwar.org.uk/ UK anti-war coalition for latest action updates. INVESTIGATIVE SITES http://www.unansweredquestions.org/top_11.html http://www.fromthewilderness.com or http://www.copvcia.com Mike Ruppert, legendary ex-cop, has documented Bush prior knowledge of 911. Emperor's clothes. They have raised some of the most tightly argued objections to the official 9-11 story. http://www.tenc.net/ or email [EMAIL PROTECTED] This is a California-based network pioneering non-hierarchical research into 911: http://www.cooperativeresearch.org http://globalresearch.ca/. Has exposed the oil connection in Afghanistan, Bin Laden/Bush links, Atta-ISI links http://www.thememoryhole.com. An archive of the seminal mainstream stories that have run once and once only. http://www.infowars.com/resources.html#hegel archive of reports indicating Bush's prior knowledge of 911 whatreallyhappened.com a sort of anti-Mossad Drudge Report with stacks of allegations of Mossad involvement in the 911 attacks. Hugely visited. www.9-11.co.uk. a broad listing of 911 topics. http://www.apfn.org/apfn/WTC.htm This populist site has the best contacts with US military dissidents. Dick Eastman. US populist, news group activist, often first with the news. Email [EMAIL PROTECTED] to receive a startling barrage of emails. You don't get more radical than this. http://uk.indymedia.org/ A global network PEACE SITES AND OTHERS www.stopwar.org.uk the key UK peace site run by the stop the war co-alition <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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