1000 degrees? You’d need metal fingers to touch that…

Bit of a shame that really nick, as truth is, invasions of both Iraq and Afghanistan happened on back of 9/11 and despite extensive evidence of deep Saudi involvement, the 9/11 commission avoided full investigation.

Nonetheless, the classified 28 pages of the joint intelligence committee report into 9/11 were finally released on Friday, after being classified for 13 years… this intelligence was available to those in government before 9/11 was used to help drum up support for invading Iraq.

Explosive Declassified Report Details Saudi Ties to 9/11

Members of the Saudi royal family were sending money to a woman connected to the 9/11 hijackers

Prince Bandar, who served as the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States from 1983 to 2005, and his wife allegedly sent money to the wife of Osama Bassman. Bassman is suspected of having provided assistance to Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, two of the terrorists involved in the hijacking. Bassman’s wife reportedly received a monthly stipend from Bandar’s wife of $2,000, and the F.B.I. found cashier’s checks totaling $74,000 in the couple’s residence. According to the document, Bassman also cashed a check from Bandar for $15,000.

A suspected Saudi agent provided help to two hijackers

Omar al-Bayoumi, a suspected Saudi intelligence officer, co-signed a lease and provided the first month’s rent and security deposit for hijackers al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar, and helped the duo find flight schools, according to the report. Al-Bayoumi also received a monthly salary from a company called “Erean,” which the report claims has ties to Saudi Arabia and Osama Bin Laden, even though he only showed up for work on one occasion and was “known to have access to large amounts of money from Saudi Arabia, despite the fact that he did not appear to have a job.”

Two men conducted a “dry run” on a flight to D.C., with tickets paid for by the Saudi government

In 1999, Mohammed al-Qudhaeein and Hamdan al-Shalawi reportedly asked flight attendants a handful of suspicious questions and tried to enter the cockpit of the airplane twice. Al-Qudhaeein and al-Shalawi were flying to Washington, D.C., where they planned to attend a party at the Saudi Embassy. The two claimed the embassy also paid for their tickets aboard the flight.

The U.S. phone number of the Saudi ambassador was found in an al Qaeda operative’s possessions

Abu Zubaida, a senior al-Qaeda operative who was captured in Pakistan in 2002, had a telephone number in his phone book that could be linked to that of Prince Bandar’s Colorado residence. The telephone number of a bodyguard at the Saudi Embassy in Washington, D.C., was also found among Zubaida’s belongings.

A man on a U.S. government watchlist snuck into the country with Prince Bandar

An unnamed suspect who was on the State Department’s watch list was reportedly “able to circumvent the Customs Service and the Immigration and Naturalizations Service because he was traveling with the Saudi prince.”

Certainly puts this in a new light:

Just don’t mention Al-Yamamah

Where’s the option to stop mankind ever discovering the technology for atomic weapons, let alone being stupid enough to get all reservoir dogs with it.

Dunno about you guys, but I look forward to the day when I have less to worry about, though I seem to have bit of a knack for getting into trouble:

(To be fair, I go to a lot of trouble on behalf of others too)

Can comebody explain the democracy in this situation to me please:

Especially when the Royal veto comes into play…

The Queen also vetoed entirely a private member’s Bill, the Military Actions Against Iraq (Parliamentary Approval) Bill 1999, that would have transfered the power to authorise military strikes against Iraq from the monarch to Parliament

It is widely assumed that the royal prerogative, the authority to declare war, rests now with the prime minister rather than the Queen herself.

However, these documents raise questions about how much power the monarch still has over the elected government of the day.

Ah, here we go:

seems the story first broke in 2003, shortly before the Invasion began…

The United States is conducting a secret ‘dirty tricks’ campaign against UN Security Council delegations in New York as part of its battle to win votes in favour of war against Iraq.

Details of the aggressive surveillance operation, which involves interception of the home and office telephones and the emails of UN delegates in New York, are revealed in a document leaked to The Observer.

The disclosures were made in a memorandum written by a top official at the National Security Agency – the US body which intercepts communications around the world – and circulated to both senior agents in his organisation and to a friendly foreign intelligence agency asking for its input.

The memo describes orders to staff at the agency, whose work is clouded in secrecy, to step up its surveillance operations ‘particularly directed at… UN Security Council Members (minus US and GBR, of course)’ to provide up-to-the-minute intelligence for Bush officials on the voting intentions of UN members regarding the issue of Iraq.

Of course, that was long before Edward Snowden began to reveal the full extent of the surveillance program.

Remains to be seen if there will there be any mention of it in the Chilcot Report…

I read somewhere recently that the NSA and GCHQ had monitored members of the UN in the run up to the invasion of Iraq, in order to gain leverage.

Struggling to find the link at the mo… wonder if it’s mentioned in the Chilcot report

I think Thatcher would have explained why destabilising the Middle East was a bad idea

Apart from arming Saddam in the 1st place…

Wonder if any of the 2.6 million words bring this into question:

The Queen also vetoed entirely a private member’s Bill, the Military Actions Against Iraq (Parliamentary Approval) Bill 1999, that would have transfered the power to authorise military strikes against Iraq from the monarch to Parliament

It is widely assumed that the royal prerogative, the authority to declare war, rests now with the prime minister rather than the Queen herself.

However, these documents raise questions about how much power the monarch still has over the elected government of the day.

Lib Dem MP Julian Huppert said the fact there had been a “fight to to keep this quiet” showed the significance of the Whitehall document.

“It’s quite concerning there is wider influence, and secretive influence, of the monarchy in these things than had previously been revealed,”

Worth remembering the Queen is commander in chief of the Armed Forces (in Australia, Canada+NZ too, among others) and is privy to Joint Intelligence Committee meetings and reports.

Not forgetting the confidential off the record weekly meetings between the Queen and the Prime Minister of Her Majesty’s Government:

Let’s just hope John Chilcot is all above board…

Wonder if any of the 2.6 million words bring this into question:

The Queen also vetoed entirely a private member’s Bill, the Military Actions Against Iraq (Parliamentary Approval) Bill 1999, that would have transfered the power to authorise military strikes against Iraq from the monarch to Parliament

It is widely assumed that the royal prerogative, the authority to declare war, rests now with the prime minister rather than the Queen herself.

However, these documents raise questions about how much power the monarch still has over the elected government of the day.

Lib Dem MP Julian Huppert said the fact there had been a “fight to to keep this quiet” showed the significance of the Whitehall document.

“It’s quite concerning there is wider influence, and secretive influence, of the monarchy in these things than had previously been revealed,”

Worth remembering the Queen is commander in chief of the Armed Forces (in Australia, Canada+NZ too, among others) and is privy to Joint Intelligence Comittee meetings and reports.

Not forgetting the weekly meetings between the Queen and the Prime Minister of Her Majesty’s Government:

What’s your beef?

One thing I’m sure they wouldn’t let slip was that Ken Clarke was Paymaster General when the Al-Yamamah oil for arms deal was set up:

According to legal sources familiar with the records, BAE Systems made cash transfers to Prince Bandar every three months for 10 years or more.

BAE drew the money from a confidential account held at the Bank of England that had been set up to facilitate the Al-Yamamah deal. Up to £2bn a year was deposited in the accounts as part of a complex arrangement allowing Saudi oil to be sold in return for shipments of Tornado aircraft and other arms.

Both BAE and the government’s arms sales department, the Defence Export Services Organisation (Deso), allegedly had drawing rights on the funds, which were held in a special Ministry of Defence account run by the government banker, the paymaster general.

Those close to Deso say regular payments were drawn down by BAE and despatched to Prince Bandar’s account at Riggs bank in Washington DC.

In fact, many of the people in this photo of Ken Clarke’s wedding (‘The Cambridge Mafia’) were involved in setting up the Al-Yamamah deal:

But to avoid straying too far off topic, where does Michael Gove fit in to all this?

He started his career writing speeches for Peter Lilley and Michael Howard*, both members of the ‘Cambridge Mafia’

*(Michael Howard was in the Department of Trade and Industry, responsible for liasing with the City of London when the Al-Yamamah deal was set up… in this role he was under Leon Brittan)

Not forgetting Theresa May’s role in editing the letters of the Lord Mayor of the City of London, Fiona Woolf, regarding her relationship to Leon Brittan when she was chosen as the 2nd head of the child abuse inquiry…

John Rentoul’s tongue is firmly (and moistly) up Blairs arse

There is always more to the story…

The writing’s on the wall…

Blair had motive too, but closer to the business end…

Malcolm Rifkind is said to have helped with Stephan Kock’s career

Who assassinated David Kelly ?

Well, some say it has something to do with a certain Stephan Kock and his contacts in ’Group 13′

Group 13

Group 13 is rumoured to be a secret cadre of ex-SAS and military intelligence operatives. Group 13’s remit seems to lay in the same shadowy realm as ‘The Increment’ ie deniable covert actions such as assassinations. Both units are rumoured to be run via the Foreign Office, through the SIS. The main difference appears to be that Group 13 tends to recruit mostly ex-SAS as apposed to serving members. Group 13 have been linked to various controversial incidents such as:

the 1990 assassination of Gerald Bull – designer of the so-called Supergun, meant for Saddam’s regime

the death of Biological weapons expert Dr David Kelly in 2003

the 1984 shooting of WPC Yvonne Fletcher outside the Libyan Embassy

It should be noted that no hard evidence has been presented for Group 13’s role in any of the above incidents.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/the-supergun-plot-murders-and-a-report-we-cant-ignore-9382688.html

A few weeks ago, I was handed a sensational document. It concerns events of more than 20 years ago, when a group of British businessmen and officials set out to smuggle arms to Saddam Hussein, in defiance of a United Nations embargo.

According to the report, when it looked as though the plot might become public, those thought likely to be responsible for blowing its details were murdered. They included Gerald Bull, the artillery expert and designer of the Iraqi Supergun, shot on the doorstep of his flat in Brussels in March 1990; and, nine days later, Jonathan Moyle, the defence journalist, found hanging in a hotel room in Chile.

The report names the late Stephan Kock, allegedly of MI6, as commissioning the killings, and identifies the British former SAS personnel who carried them out.

Bear in mind that Stephan Kock was heavily involved in Astra Holdings, which along with the supergun affair, also has ties to the dodgy South African Nukes, David Cameron and the ill gotten £17.8 million in Conservative Party funds… (A matter which involved Dr David Kelly)

All our main companies were involved with Space Research Corporation (“SRC”) and the late Dr Gerald Bull who was behind the Supergun and other secret projects which Astra companies were also involved in. In 1989 I realised we had a hugely dangerous individual on our main Board and the BMARC Board who was an MI6 agent. This individual, Stephanus Adolphus Kock had high level political connections to Thatcher, Heseltine, Younger, Hanley, etc as well as MI5 and MI6 connections.

It is now clear to me that he was involved in the murder of Dr Gerald Bull in Brussels on 22nd march 1990 and Jonathan Moyle in Santiago, Chile on 31st March 1990. BMARC was the only company outside the Atomic Weapons research Establishment and Government Arms depots with the capability to store nuclear bombs like Redbeard and WE177.

Yep, I’ve already linked to this book, but what the hey…

Whatever happened to the heroes?

I would tell you, but they’d have to kill you.

More on Gerald Bull in this, which will also have some relevance to the Chilcot Report

A dope ditty in here too:

Politics is all a lot of bullshit really, isn’t it…

On the subject of intimidation, here’s a few interesting snippets:

Whips can often be brutal to backbenchers to secure their vote, and will resort to a mixture of promises, threats, blackmail and extortion[4] to force an unpopular vote. A good whip will know secrets and incriminating information about Members of Parliament. A whip should know major figures in an MP’s local constituency party and the MP’s agent.

For a minister, the consequences for defying the party whip are absolute: they are dismissed from their job immediately, if they have not already resigned, and return to being a backbencher. Sometimes their votes in Parliament are called the “payroll vote”, because they can be taken for granted. The consequences for a back-bencher can include the lack of future promotion to a government post, a reduction of party campaigning effort in his or her constituency during the next election, deselection by his or her local party activists, or, in extreme circumstances, “withdrawal of the whip” and expulsion from the party.

How relevant is this[/url] under the circumstance…

The earlier version of the Sky News report, which has now been completely scrubbed from all published versions available online, suggested that the sudden uprising was not spontaneous, but carefully planned.

The report quoted Sky News political correspondent Sophy Ridge accusing one of Corbyn’s own whips, Conor McGinn MP, of coordinating the resignations to “try to cause maximum impact”:

Meanwhile, the party’s leaders in the Lords – Baroness Smith of Basildon, Labour leader in the Lords, and Lord Bassam, the chief whip – are likely to boycott shadow cabinet meetings while Mr Corbyn remains, a spokesman for the House of Lords said.

Former shadow education secretary Lucy Powell, who resigned on Sunday, insisted the resignations were not a ‘planned coup’ against Mr Corbyn, but a reaction to the ‘seismic’ events which have shaken Westminster in recent days.

But Sky’s Senior Political Correspondent Sophy Ridge said she understood that the man choreographing the resignations is Conor McGinn, Labour MP for St Helens North.

She said: ‘He’s ringing shadow cabinet members and ministers, organising the timings and co-ordinating the resignations to try to cause maximum impact.

‘This is significant because he’s one of Jeremy Corbyn’s Whips – tasked with ensuring party discipline.’

The censored Sky News passages confirm that Conor McGinn worked closely with Hilary Benn, Corbyn’s now resigned Shadow Foreign Secretary, in coordinating the sudden spate of resignations.

Benn, a supporter of the disastrous 2003 Iraq War, was Secretary of International Development under Tony Blair.

In addition to McGinn, the deleted Sky News paragraphs reveal that two of Corbyn’s other most senior whips had also been involved the coordinated mutiny: Baroness Angela Smith of Basildon, who as of May 2015 has been Leader of the Opposition in the House of Lords; and Lord Steve Bassam, Jeremy Corbyn’s chief whip.

Democracy at work…

“because you can’t instill respect by intimidation”

How do party whips work?

(Aside from dirt books and cleaning up indiscretions involving minors?)

I want my party back

Whose party?

How did Tony Blair first come to prominence?

(Might be a clue in there somewhere…)

Why has the media been so down on Corbyn from day one anyhoo?

Interesting…

Angela Eagle leadership website registered days before she resigned[/url]

Website registration data appears to show that the domain “angela4leader.org” was set up two days before she resigned

It also came before Hilary Benn was sacked by Jeremy Corbyn early Sunday morning – the spark that set off a major rebellion in the Labour shadow cabinet.

Angela Eagle is expected to announce a run for the leadership of the Labour Party in the coming days.

The website was registered at 6pm on Saturday 25 June, according to its publicly available “whois” information – while Mr Benn was sacked hours later.

It was was not registered by Ms Eagle herself, but Joe McCrea, a PR executive who served as a special adviser in Downing Street during Tony Blair’s tenure.

A spokesperson for Ms Eagle admitted to Buzzfeed that she knows Mr McCrea personally, but said she had not unauthorised the purchase and had been unaware of its existence.

Ms Eagle did not cite Mr Corbyn’s move to sack Mr Benn as a reason for her resignation from the shadow cabinet on Monday morning.

However, the discovery may damage her credibility among supporters of Mr Corbyn, and may convince critics that some Labour figures – if not necessarily Ms Eagle herself – had prior knowledge of the shadow cabinet rebellion.

Politics is a very dirty game… whether we like to admit it or not, there is an element of animal instinct in it all; just look at a crow’s parliament, or ‘the pecking order’; when the group mentality kicks in, things can get very dark and primitive.

When there’s an established order, anyone seen to challenge that order is likely to become a target for a co-ordinated attack, as the hive mind takes over.

The problem is, given the current global situation, where we’re approaching the 1% having more wealth (and thus power over lobbying, global investment, industry, arms trade, media etc) than the other 99%, the system needs a bloody great hoof up the arse before we’re all screwed…

The centre ground is never going to have the sheer bollocks neccesary for that to happen.

This is interesting and leads to bigger questions about just how much of politics and media is choreographed well in advance by PR firms which taint the value of democracy:

Labour coup plotters protected by media giant tied to Blairite PR firm, linked to coup[/url]

A Sky News report identifying three senior Labour Party whips as the Blairite “choreographers” of Labour opposition to Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership was inexplicably self-censored on Monday. But the censorship comes as little surprise given Sky News’ longstanding connections to a powerful PR firm tied to former Prime Minister Tony Blair. The firm, Portland Communications, is not only directly connected to the Labour coup plotters, but had anticipated a Shadow Cabinet “mass resignation” contingency plan to oust Corbyn at least six months ago – long before the EU referendum results.

Five paragraphs identifying the Blairite ringleaders of the coup were deleted from a Sky News report hours after being quoted in an investigation by The Canary.

The Canary reported that the individuals identified were part of a wider network of Blairite elites affiliated to the Fabian Society, who have seen Jeremy Corbyn’s landside victory in Labour leadership elections as a direct threat to the New Labour ‘old guard’ in the party.

Yet shortly after the publication of our story, including passages quoted from Sky News identifying core instigators of the mass resignations, Sky News updated its report with a new version of the article, in which those passages were removed.

The earlier version of the Sky News report, which has now been completely scrubbed from all published versions available online, suggested that the sudden uprising was not spontaneous, but carefully planned.

The report quoted Sky News political correspondent Sophy Ridge accusing one of Corbyn’s own whips, Conor McGinn MP, of coordinating the resignations to “try to cause maximum impact”:

Meanwhile, the party’s leaders in the Lords – Baroness Smith of Basildon, Labour leader in the Lords, and Lord Bassam, the chief whip – are likely to boycott shadow cabinet meetings while Mr Corbyn remains, a spokesman for the House of Lords said.

Former shadow education secretary Lucy Powell, who resigned on Sunday, insisted the resignations were not a ‘planned coup’ against Mr Corbyn, but a reaction to the ‘seismic’ events which have shaken Westminster in recent days.

But Sky’s Senior Political Correspondent Sophy Ridge said she understood that the man choreographing the resignations is Conor McGinn, Labour MP for St Helens North.

She said: ‘He’s ringing shadow cabinet members and ministers, organising the timings and co-ordinating the resignations to try to cause maximum impact.

‘This is significant because he’s one of Jeremy Corbyn’s Whips – tasked with ensuring party discipline.’

The earlier version of the article can still be viewed via Google’s cache feature here.

From Sky, to Portland, to the Labour MP who tabled the motion against Corbyn

But an exclusive investigation on Tuesday by The Canary’s Steve Topple has found that Portland is directly linked to the anti-Corbyn uprising. Portland Communications’ Advisory Board includes Blair spin doctors Alastair Campbell and Jimmy Leach, along with Kitty Ussher, former Parliamentary Private Secretary to Margaret Hodge, who was Blair’s Trade Minister until 2007.

It was Margaret Hodge who first tabled a motion of no confidence against Jeremy Corbyn on Friday.

The Canary asked Portland Communications by email whether the firm, or people affiliated with the firm, were involved in the mounting campaign to oust Corbyn, but received no response.

Tony Ball, Tim Allan’s former boss at Sky, later also went on to join Portland Communications’ leadership team himself.

Sky News Editor-at-Large Adam Boulton is personally close to the Blairite network. In 2006, Boulton married Tony Blair’s communications advisor Anji Hunter. The wedding was attended by Blair, and several other senior Blairite officials including Portland’s Alastair Campbell, along with Peter Hain, David Blunkett and Tessa Jowell.

If it was indeed planned months in advance, is the Brexit referendum simply being used as leverage, when the real issue is the Chilcot report being released next week?

Picture the scene… you’re tangled in a Rose Bush on the grounds of a Manor, with little pricks all up in your bidness and the bloodthirsty gamekeeper is prowling the grounds with his 12 bore.

You can’t get out of the bush alone, so have to lipread with your friend who is deftly making their way through the foliage with secateurs.

The only reason you got into this predicament was to pick a rose for your beloved, but it turns out she’s a hoe (not in the gardening sense)

Fair bit of potential for getting hurt there.

Have you ever tried to protect someone, then they screw you over?

something like that could be a big source of division…

Not sure who the artist is, but it has something to do with Supernatural if that helps…

That guy looks like Guy Martin…

Anyhoo, less of the fury:

You wanna bonus?