Spying on the Victims

FAMILY of Jean Charles de Menezes held gathering outside Stockwell tube station where he was killed.  This was early in January, 2006. Below, the big guy on the left was using a big camera taking close-ups of faces in the crowd.

The family of Jean Charles de Menezes are going to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, using Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights, on the right to life,  to challenge the decision by British authorities that nobody should be prosecuted for his death.


The 27-year old Brazilian electrician was on his way to work when he was shot dead by police marksmen on a tube train at Stockwell, on July 22, 2005. Some thought the way he was shot several times at close range suggested an army-style killing rather than police action.

They had supposedly mistaken him for a terrorist suspect they were pursuing for attempted bombings the day before.  The police story carried by the press was that Jean Charles had been wearing an unseasonal bulky coat, such as might be concealing a bomb or a weapon, and that he had vaulted ticket barriers in his hurry to escape pursuit and get on to the tube.

In fact Jean Charles was not wearing a big coat at all, just a light denim jacket, and he used his season ticket to go through the barriers in the normal way. An inquest held at the Oval in 2008 heard how police had been watching the south London block of flats where he lived, and followed him, although the man they were supposed to be watching had left London the night before and was out of the country. At one point a plain-clothes officer actually sat next to Jean Charles on the bus. When the electrician alighted at Stockwell he unknowingly passed two other police watchers as he walked to the tube.

Meanwhile, if any officer had any doubts that they were pursuing the right man, they could not get through. The communications officer in the crowded control room at Scotland Yard could not make himself heard above the excited din of those following the chase.

The inquest returned an open verdict.

Cressida Dick, the officer in charge at the Yard received a medal and was promoted acting Deputy Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. She is now Assistant Commissioner of Special Operations.    
Speaking about the family's decision to go to Strasbourg with the case, Patricia da Silva, a cousin of Jean Charles de Menezes said: "For 10 years our family has been campaigning for justice for Jean because we believe that police officers should have been held to account for his killing.
“Jean's death is a pain that never goes away for us.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/11664591/Family-of-Jean-Charles-de-Menezes-launch-Strasbourg-human-rights-case.html

 An interesting sidelight on this battle for justice is that while the authorities claimed there was insufficient evidence to prosecute anybody over Jean Charles' death, the police did put in an effort to spying on the family and their supporters and friends. They were subject to surveillance as were the relatives of Cherry Groce, who was shot by armed police in Brixton, and Ricky Reel, the student victim of a racial attack.  A report acknowledged that the information collected by a controversial undercover unit "served no purpose in preventing crime or disorder".


http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jul/23/undercover-police-spied-on-families-de-menezes-groce-reel

The family and friends of Stephen Lawrence, murdered in south-east London, were spied on as they campaigned for justice. In fact, far more police work went into infiltrating and spying on their campaign than into pursuing the murder suspects. It is likely that one reason south London police were reluctant to proceed against Stephen's killers, besides institutional racism, was that one of the gang involved was the son of a professional criminal and police informer.

But more than one police force was engaged in spying on the Lawrence campaign.

"Greater Manchester Police has admitted that it spied on people attending the Inquiry into the murder of Stephen Lawrence, making it the fourth constabulary known to be involved.
When the MacPherson Inquiry took place in 1998, it held a number of hearings outside London. A GMP memo was issued on 8 October asking for ‘information or intelligence on groups or individuals who are likely to be attending’ to be given to a Detective Chief Inspector in Special Branch.
The spying appears to have been motivated by wholly political concerns. There was no anticipation of any threat to public order, there is no suggestion of anything criminal, and the memo makes no mention of anything untoward.

http://campaignopposingpolicesurveillance.com/2015/05/26/yet-more-spying-on-the-lawrence-campaign/


Since there was no suggestion of illegal activity or threatened disorder from any of these campaigns, which were simply out to seek the truth and obtain justice, would we be unreasonable to suggest that what the police were after was any 'dirt' they could find or make up to try and discredit witnesses and campaigners, and cover up their own wrongdoing?

Trade unionists digging out the truth about blacklisting, mainly in the building industry, have come upon evidence that those compiling illegal files and selling information to employers were able to work hand in glove with police officers and undercover agents infiltrating the unions and meetings. So officers paid for by the taxpayer, including the workers, were being used to target workers who took up perfectly legitimate issues of safety and conditions, and help unscrupulous employers penalise them and their families by denying them work.

Environmental and other campaigns have also been targeted by undercover police, who went so far as to form relationships with women in groups they were infiltrating, and even father children by them, before disappearing on to other work. It is also well known that where campaigns are infiltrated, provocations and actions that land people in trouble with the law can follow. In perhaps the most notorious case an undercover agent named as perpetrator of a store bombing has been promoted and found an academic post.

While the government and tame media pretend that police need more powers for surveillance to protect us from terror, a campaign to raise public awareness of what the snoops and agents are really up to has been formed, and is promising new exposures coming along.

This is the Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance, COPS,
http://campaignopposingpolicesurveillance.com/


 

Searching for Justice for Jeremiah Duggan

JEREMIAH DUGGAN.  Unlikely 'suicide'.  Normally cheerful student 'phoned home in terror before meeting his death at Wiesbaden.


A LONDON family's long search for truth and justice for the death of their son in Germany reached Barnet Coroner's Court this week, and reports of the case have brought to public notice the sinister international cult headed by Lyndon LaRouche, little known in Britain, but long notorious in the United States, where it began, before extending its activity to continental Europe.

Jeremiah Duggan was just 22, and studying at the Sorbonne in Paris in 2003 when, worried over the prospect of war on Iraq, he bought a paper called Nouvelle Solidarite, and was invited by the seller to attend a youth anti-war conference being organised in Wiesbaden, Germany, by the Schiller Institute. 
What he was not to know was that Nouvelle Solidarite is produced by Lyndon LaRouche's supporters  in France, and the cultural-sounding Institute (Friedrich Schiller was an 18th century philosopher and poet) was founded by LaRouche's German wife, Helga Zepp LaRouche.

At the conference, Jeremiah apparently disagreed with some of the things he heard, - some of the speakers seemed to blame Jews for the war - and he said so. But he agreed to attend a cadre school to continue discussion. He was not to make it.  His body was found by the side of an autobahn on the outskirts of town. German police accepted that he had run out into the road, and been struck by two vehicles, and recorded it as "a suicide by means of a traffic accident".

The Duggan family and friends have never accepted this explanation. For one thing they say Jeremiah was a cheerful, healthy young man, happy with his studies and his girlfriend, and had no reason to end his life in the horrible way described. For another, his mother Erica Duggan received a 'phone call from Jeremiah on the night that he died, saying he was in serious trouble and sounding terrified. In May 2010 the High Court ordered a fresh UK inquest after judges said evidence of possible foul play must be investigated.

At the new inquest in Barnet, as well as hearing Erica Duggan retell that 'phone call, the court heard from Paul Canning, a forensic photographic expert Paul Canning who said that after examining pictures from the scene, "the only possible conclusion is that it must have been a set-up".

Mr Canning, who has over a decade of experience working with the Metropolitan Police, said there was no evidence of contact between Mr Duggan and two vehicles - a Peugeot 406 and a Volkswagen Golf - which the German investigation found had been involved in his death.

He said: "After making a lengthy examination of the photographs I conclude that, based on my experience of attending hundreds of fatal and very serious road traffic accidents, that in examining the scene of the accident, the road, Jeremiah's body and both vehicles involved, I could find no traces of blood, hair, tissue or clothing on the vehicles or road, except round the immediate vicinity of Jeremiah's body."

He added that both vehicles and Mr Duggan appeared to have traces of a wet sandy substance which was not present at the scene and therefore placed them elsewhere before the alleged accident - perhaps a builders yard or quarry. .

He said the damage to the Peugeot, which is claimed to have hit Mr Duggan, appeared to have been caused by a "heavy metallic instrument" or possibly another car rather than a person. He described damage on the Volkswagen, which is said to have run Mr Duggan over after he jumped out and hit the Peugeot, as "inconsistent".

Coroner for north London Andrew Walker asked: "Are you saying the damage to the vehicles is unlikely to have been caused by an impact with a person?"

"Yes sir, in my opinion," Mr Canning replied.

"Is it likely that damage to the vehicle has been placed there?"

"After looking at the photographs the only possible conclusion I could find was that it was placed there and further, that it looks like pre-existing damage that was undertaken prior to this incident."

"Are you saying this was a constructed road traffic collision?"

"It certainly looks that way, sir."

Written evidence from forensic pathologists said Mr Duggan’s body had not suffered from drag marks or head injuries consistent with being run over by a car, the inquest heard.

After Mr Duggan’s death on March 27, 2003, a witness told the family of the chaotic scenes at the LaRouche conference, the court heard. Jeremiah's father Hugh Duggan said: “All their members, 40 to 50 of them, were gathered into a room and addressed by Helga LaRouche, the wife of LaRouche, at this stage she said, ‘Jeremiah Duggan is dead. We believe he was a spy sent to harm the organisation and now we want you to pack up and go home right away. Don’t talk among yourselves about this and don’t talk to others.”

That summer Hugh Duggan arranged a meeting with the German ambassador in London to discuss his concerns over the far-right group’s involvement in the lead up to his son’s death, the inquest heard. Mr Duggan told the court: “The first thing he (the German ambassador) said was, ‘We know all about LaRouche. We have been after him for years’.”

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/death-of-british-student-jeremiah-duggan-killed-after-attending-farright-cult-must-have-been-a-set-up-10261696.html

If the authorities in Germany knew all about LaRouche they, and particularly the police in the State of Hesse where the Wiesbaden institute is situated,  seem to have been quick to accept the "suicide" story which the LaRouchites proffered. British police have been slow to follow up the call for a new investigation, saying they were awaiting evidence from Germany. Most if not all the efforts to investigate what happened have been pursued by the Duggan family themselves.

I regret to say I never met young Jeremiah Duggan, nor knew the family, but as it happens I did know his grandfather Hans Freund, who died in 2007. Having left Germany as a refugee from the Nazis, Hans joined up to fight them in World War II, taking part in the campaigns in north Africa and in a daring prisoner of war escape. Later he was involved as a Communist Party member in the underground struggle against the Apartheid regime in South Africa, a cause he continued to support after coming to Britain. Best-known and loved in London as a hearty Jewish choral singer, Hans also joined the Jewish Socialists' Group, which was how I came to know him.  A good-humoured, even jovial man, modest about his own role and background, but a source of strength and encouragement. 
http://www.sacsobu.org/memoriam09.html#3
http://www.ajr.org.uk/journalpdf/1990_april.pdf

I'm sure Jerry Duggan must have taken courage, intelligence and good humour from both the Jewish and Irish sides of his family.

Like Jeremiah Duggan, and I suppose many other people, I started my acquaintance and active involvement in politics through buying a paper off someone in the street, though thankfully it was not Nouvelle Solidarite but Newsletter, the paper of the Socialist Labour League, when I was 17, and though neither still exist I'm alive to tell the tale.


From 1976-8 I was employed as a poorly-paid hack on the daily News Line.  One morning my colleague the late Jack Gale took a 'phone call, and hand over the mouthpiece, turned to ask me whether the reformist party in Sweden was called the Social Democrats? Which I confirmed.
Jack had taken a call from someone saying they spoke for the "Swedish Labour Party", asking for information about a former British soldier who had turned up in Sweden. This was a man who had testified about torture used by British forces on prisoners in South Yemen. But I also recognised the name "Swedish Labour Party" as one used by an organisation which Lyndon LaRouche had established in Sweden. We did not ring them back with any information.

Lyndon LaRouche, often using the name "Lyn Marcus", had been among a group of left-wing dissidents around the US Socialist Workers Party, America's original Trotskyist organisation, who opposed its leadership and made contact with the Socialist Labour League, led by Gerry Healy in Britain.  Unable to remain long in any group that he was not leading, LaRouche/Marcus (Tim Wohlforth recalls his "gargantuan ego") soon broke with the rest and set off on his own direction.  

Still posing as some kind of left-wing revolutionary, setting up the National Caucus of Labor Committees, while concentrating on recruiting students, LaRouche began to systematically inculcate violent hostility to other groups among his followers, going well beyond ordinary sectarianism. They turned to organised violence and thuggery.  

Armed with chains, bats, and martial-art nunchuk sticks, NCLC members assaulted Communist Party, SWP, and Progressive Labor Party members and Black Power activists, on the streets and during meetings. At least 60 assaults were reported. The operation ended when police arrested several of LaRouche's followers; there were no convictions, and LaRouche maintained they had acted in self-defense. Journalist and LaRouche expert Dennis King writes that the FBI may have tried to aggravate the strife, using measures such as anonymous mailings, to keep the groups at each other's throats.^[45][46


http://www.lyndonlarouche.org/newamericanfascism.htm

Opponents doubted whether LaRouche's organisation could operate in the way it did without some complicity from state forces. Although he did serve a prison sentence for fraud, LaRouche seems to have led a charmed life, and his organisation and publications have had no shortage of funds or prestigious contacts as they expanded their activities to Europe. Former members describe the organisation as functioning like a cult, while the LaRouchite Executive Intelligence Review, circulating among business and political circles, combines often well-informed analysis with bold conspiracy theory.

Among other things the LaRouche movement has claimed the British Royal Family heads a global drug smuggling racket, the Tavistock Institute in London is a British intelligence front for brainwashing subjects, and that Jessica Duggan's quest for truth about her son's death is part of a conspiracy orchestrated by the British Foreign Office.  

Back in 1977, when we got that 'phone call from the LaRouchites to News Line, little or nothing had been published about them in Britain. But there had been plenty in the left-wing press in the United States, including The Bulletin published by our co-thinkers in the US Workers League. They were also starting to get attention in Germany. Thinking we ought to publish something about this organisation and its expansion to Europe, I gathered what material we had and wrote an article.


To my surprise, our editor Alex Mitchell, who was away much of the time working on a project and series of articles called Security and the Fourth International, assisted by Dave North of the Workers League (nowadays Socialist Equality Party), came into the office looking worried, after a meeting with Gerry Healy, and said there was no way we could publish anything about Lyndon LaRouche and his organisation. By way of an explanation, he remarked that the last thing we wanted was some "LaRouchite nutter throwing a bomb into the printshop".

That made me feel I'd been irresponsible, instead of conscientious, and I did not argue. All the same, and though it was not the only time I was told something could not go in the paper, there was something odd about this. Much of what I had written had come straight from our US comrades. What's more, as part of the Security and the Fourth International campaign we had not only accused the Socialist Workers Party in the United States of harbouring FBI agents, which it did, but implied that it had a hand in the murder of Trotskyists, including Tom Henehan in the United States and even a Sri Lankan comrade. If all this was true - and I never questioned it - we were being brave and bold in publishing it, but apparently could not do the same with what we knew about the LaRouchite movement.

Anyway, my article never saw the light of day, and within a year -albeit for other reasons - I was exiled from the News Line office, ostensibly to cover the firefighters' strike in the West Midlands, and then sacked by Gerry Healy.  Thus ended my brief career as a professional journalist.

In the Autumn of 1985, Gerry Healy exited the Clapham centre in somewhat greater haste than I had, and public disgrace over his treatment of party members, particularly young women comrades. According to Alex Mitchell, and others who went with Healy, he was still a great revolutionary and the victim of an MI5 conspiracy. Former London mayor Ken Livingstone endorsed this line. Alex Mitchell returned to his native Australia to resume his journalistic career, and in a memoir published in 2012 he recalls hearing that Healy had denounced him too as an intelligence agent; but this does not seem to have inspired him to re-examine his own previous accusations.

In 1986, the Swedish prime minister Olaf Palme was assassinated, and a former member of the LaRouche organisation in Sweden, renamed European Workers Party, was arrested though later discharged as a suspect. The LaRouchites denounced efforts to throw suspicion their way, but their Swedish organisation seems to have undergone a crisis after this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Workers_Party

In recent years, despite its increasingly right-wing image and reputation for extremism, the LaRouche organisation seems to have continued acquiring wealthy and influential friends, including some in Russia and eastwards. Perhaps the investigation of Jeremiah Duggan's death will threaten to uncover a real and bigger conspiracy.

   
Who's your friend?

American fascist Lyndon LaRouche, his wife and colleague Helga-Zepp LaRouche and current Putin's aide Sergey Glazyev, then Russian parliament chairman of the Economic Affairs Committee, June 2001

Turkish Entanglement

DIFFERENT REPORTING.  Mail didn't have name or photograph. Turkish papers, evidently better briefed, had both, and claimed to know whom arrested Brit had been working for.


What is the score with Steve Kaszynski, the British journalist arrested in Turkey over a month ago, and accused of links to a banned terrorist organisation?  His arrest was reported somewhat inadequately in the British press at the time, and one or two people who knew him commented, though not saying much.

With so much attention focused on the election in the past six weeks, and on the plight of refugees on the Med, as well as on police violence in the United States, I'm not complaining that the case of one man apparently caught up in Turkish conspiracies and state machinations has not been in the spotlight.

But an online search brought up next to nothing in the British press, and no one has replied to an enquiry on Facebook I made. 


One website, taking its name though I suspect not its politics from the late peace campaigner Brian Haw, notes that the Daily Mail reported a British man had been arrested, but without managing to give either a name or a photograph.

Turkish reports were supplied with both, and with the accusation that the arrested man had been no mere innocent astray, nor even a misguided revolutionist, but was a British agent, albeit working for the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), German intelligence service.
http://rt.com/uk/247385-british-national-arrested-turkey/ 

From this the Haw site has woven a plot to divert attention from Turkey's involvement with Western powers and Israel in waging war on Syria, and a Gladio-style strategy of tension inside the country.  I'm a bit dubious about neat conspiracy theories in which disparate pieces are made to fit, and more than dubious about this one.
 
But I'm willing to think something 'funny' is going on.  

http://brianhaw.tv/index.php/index/3132-daily-mail-claim-they-do-not-know-name-of-invisible-brit-called-steve-kaczynski-arrested-in-turkish-dhkp-c-gladio-operation-06-04-2015



  http://www.aa.com.tr/en/turkey/490109--turkey-briton-linked-to-hostage-takers-to-appeal-arrest 

Incidentally one voice that was raised in defence of Steve Kaczynsky and those arrested with him was that of the hardline Republican Sinn Fein in Ireland, who reject the accomodation reached by the Provisionals with the British government. In a statement calling for the "release of arrested comrades in Turkey" the RSF said that in particular "Cihan Keskek and political activist Steve Kaczynski ... are close friends of the Republican Movement in Ireland. Steve is a regular reader of the republican monthly SAOIRSE. Only some weeks ago, Cihan and Steve met with a representative of Republican Sinn Féin."
https://rsfnational.wordpress.com/2015/04/03/r-s-f-demand-release-of-arrested-comrades-in-turkey/

This makes it seem extra strange that the British and indeed Irish media have so far had little to say
about the case.  An item in the Times on April 7 did say Steve Kaczynski had worked for the BBC for some time, since which he had contributed to left-wing publications. http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/uk/article4403794.ece

I have come across some of his contributions in left-wing publications, e.g. http://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/365/political-prisoners-in-turkey/ and on websites. I would not have thought this branch of journalism, however good the work, pays very well.  Not at all, in my experience.

Anyway, here are how the arrest was reported in Turkey:

Briton detained in raids against terrorist organization

MEHMET SOLMAZ

ISTANBUL

Published April 3, 2015 Turkish police detained Stephan Shak Kacynski, a British national of Polish origin, in operations against the terrorist organization DHKP-C in Istanbul on Thursday. He is accused of having close ties with the organization.

Among the suspects detained at the Turkish National Police's dawn raids at several locations in Istanbul on Thursday against the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C) was Stephan Shak Kacynski, a British national of Polish origin.

The 52-year-old freelance journalist is accused of having links to the terrorist organization that killed a prosecutor on Tuesday and attacked a police headquarters on Wednesday.

He was reportedly at the offices of İdil Culture Center associated with the group when he was detained by police.

Speaking to Daily Sabah, officials from the British Embassy in Ankara stated that they "closely working with Turkish partners to tackle DHKP-C." However, no comments were made on the claims that the detained British national is allegedly a spy working for British intelligence. "We condemn group's acts of terrorism in Istanbul this week. Condolences to the family of the prosecutor Mehmet Selim Kiraz. We are aware of the detained British national and we are offering consular assistance to him," the statement added.

Kacysnki, who occasionally writes articles on the terrorist organization on various websites, is a frequent traveler to Turkey. According to media outlets, he is a former member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, a Marxist-Leninist movement and he monitored the trial of an Austrian national accused of joining a DHKP-C rally for the Scottish Socialist Party. He was present as an observer on trials of DHKP-C members in the 1990s and early 2000s. Turkish media outlets, quoting intelligence sources, reported that Kacysnki was involved in the "activities" of the terrorist organization in Germany and Greece and often visited Istanbul and had contacts with various groups affiliated with the DHKP-C.

Turkish police had rounded up dozens of supporters of terrorist organizations in operations against the group in Istanbul and several other cities. Apart from Kacyznski, six senior figures of DHKP-C and members of a band known for its support of the terrorist organization, were detained in operations in Okmeydanı, a working-class neighborhood on Istanbul's European side. Okmeydanı is known as one of the strongholds of the DHKP-C and it is often the scene of violent riots by the organization's supporters. Along with suspects, police seized several weapons, ammunition and jammer devices. Turkish media reported that the raided places had tight security and police had to remove a set of 11 steel doors in one location to enter inside before the suspected militants burned or destroyed evidence that might link them to the organization.

The terrorist organization is known for having support from abroad, especially from far-left organizations in Europe. The support from abroad for the DHKP-C is not confined to individuals. Greece and Syria, two neighbors of Turkey, is known for harboring members of terrorist organizations. Greece houses Lavrion, a refugee camp where the militants, treated as asylum seekers, are trained by senior leaders of the organization. Syria, where the terrorist group was founded in 1994, is also known for openly harboring militants, especially at a time of strained relations between Turkey and its southern neighbor. According to reports in the Turkish media, the DHKP-C has a "base" in Syria's coastal city of Latakia and supported by al-Mukhaberat, formidable intelligence service of the al-Assad regime. An article in the Yeni Şafak newspaper quoting intelligence sources says 52 DHKP-C members are trained at the base and Turkish intelligence suspects they may carry out attacks in Turkey. The article also points out that Mihraç Ural, a Turkey-born militant who heads a splinter group of a movement that the DHKP-C fell out with, now coordinates training of DHKP-C members in Syria.
http://www.dailysabah.com/nation/2015/04/03/briton-detained-in-raids-against-terrorist-organization

But while this report links the armed organisation to what might be called traditional enemies, a subsequent article points in a different direction:

British citizen detained in DHKP-C terror probe works for German spy agency BND

DAILY SABAH

Published April 4, 2015

AA Photo
 

The investigation into Stephan Shak Kacynski, a British national of Polish origin, has revealed that the suspect who was recently detained under the scope of the DHKP-C probe is a spy working for Germany's Federal Intelligence Service Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND).

Kacynski and several others were arrested under the scope of the DHKP-C operation on Saturday.

According to reports, Kacynski was not only responsible for giving instructions to the terrorist organization and providing communications between the DHKP-C and BND, but was also responsible for providing funding from Europe. It was reported that he occasionally participated in protests organized by the terrorist organization and frequently contacted the organization in Istanbul.

Stephan Shak Kacynski was among the suspects detained at the Turkish National Police's dawn raids at several locations in Istanbul on Thursday against the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C).

The 52-year-old freelance journalist is accused of having links to the terrorist organization that killed a prosecutor on Tuesday and attacked a police headquarters on Wednesday.

Kacysnki, who occasionally writes articles on the terrorist organization on various websites, is a frequent traveler to Turkey. According to media outlets, he is a former member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, a Marxist-Leninist movement and he monitored the trial of an Austrian national accused of joining a DHKP-C rally for the Scottish Socialist Party. He was present as an observer on trials of DHKP-C members in the 1990s and early 2000s. Turkish media outlets, quoting intelligence sources, reported that Kacysnki was involved in the "activities" of the terrorist organization in Germany and Greece and often visited Istanbul and had contacts with various groups affiliated with the DHKP-C.

http://www.dailysabah.com/investigations/2015/04/04/british-citizen-detained-in-dhkpc-terror-probe-works-for-german-spy-agency-bnd

This is not the first time that the finger of allegations has been pointed at one of Turkey's NATO allies. It was claimed that a Canadian intelligence agent was involved in helping British nationals cross into Syria to join ISIS.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2991628/Man-held-Turkish-authorities-helping-three-
British-girls-cross-Syria-join-ISIS.html  

Whatever the truth of such allegations, or the Turkish government's motives for making them, it looks as though what is really happening in Turkey is more complicated than any conspiracy theory.

Meanwhile, it is not just the established media that is being strangely quiet about this case. Hopefully as soon as parliament is back in business there will be questions asked. But also maybe friends on the Left, some of whom say they have met Steve Kaczynski and that he is a nice guy, will be raising calls for his release - and perhaps considering their own investigation?

Willie comes back to haunt the Highlands (and Britain's secret state)

REMEMBERING WILLIAM McRAE and raising questions about his death. Ex-policeman Donald Morrison (in blue) and campaigner Mark MacNicol by memorial cairn.

 IT could make a strong episode of 'New Tricks',  and it featured in the background of one of Ian Rankin's 'Rebus' novels.  Last year the case was the subject of a play by Mark MacNicol, 3,000 Trees.  But the death of Scots lawyer Willie McRae, on April 6, 1985, was real, and so far as many people are concerned, remains a mystery to be investigated.
    
At a time when some newspapers and political opponents seem intent on character assassination of  Scottish National Party leaders, campaigners are suggesting that McRae, a prominent SNP activist, might literally have been assassinated.


The lawyer had left Glasgow the evening before, to drive to his holiday home in Dornie, a former fishing village on the coast of Wester Ross, in the Highlands. He was found badly injured in his  crashed car next morning. The car was straddling a burn on the moor a short distance from the A887 and A87 road junction, near Glenmoriston.

He was taken to hospital, where medical staff found a gunshot wound behind his right ear. Police later recovered a weapon near where the car had been found, and McRae's death was officially ruled to have been suicide.
  
But thirty years later, an online petition has been launched, urging Scotland's Lord Advocate Frank Mulholland to call a Fatal Accident Inquiry into Willie McRae's death.  Roughly equivalent to an Inquest in England, Fatal Accident Inquiries are normally held only if the fatality occurred at work, or if there are suspicious circumstances.

Unlike a coroner's inquest, a Fatal Accident Inquiry is not held with a jury.

WILLIAM McRAE

Many people suspect that Willie Mcrae was not only murdered, but  murdered  with the  involvement of state security services.

"There are many who claim William was killed by 'them' - the same 'them' that killed Hilda Murrell", Michael Strathan, friend of William McRae, quoted in the News on Sunday, 5th November 1987.

Hilda Murrell, whose body was found outside her home town of Shrewsbury, had been the target of surveillance by both private and state agencies, because of her opposition to nuclear power but also because it was thought her nephew, serving in the Royal Navy, might have asked her to hide material about the sinking of the Admiral Belgrano during the Falklands war.

http://hildamurrell.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilda_Murrell

Willie McRae was an unusual character, a wartime naval officer and aide de camp to Moutbatten, he helped draft israel's maritime law and became professor emeritus at the University of Haifa.  Yet beside his open political campaigning with the SNP. serving for a time as vice chairman of the Party, there are stories of his having links to clandestine nationalist groups preparing armed struggle. McRae's old partner insists the only contacts the lawyer had with such people was in his professional capacity.


Supplying fashionable topicality, the Scottish Sunday Express ran a story in December claiming McRae had gathered information about a paedophile ring among the judiciary.
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/546839/McRae-killed-because-Scottish-judiciary-paedophile-ring-reveal-says-friend

What is known is that like Hilda Murrell, McRae upset the nuclear industry, in his case organising a campaign to stop them dumping radio-active waste from Dounreay in the Galloway hills.  And he was under secret state surveillance.  Former police officer Donald Morrison has confirmed that he was watching McRae and says the Special Branch followed the lawyer when he left home that final evening.

http://www.scottishrepublicansocialistmovement.org/Documents/willie%20news%2015-15.PDF

http://www.heraldscotland.com/sport/spl/aberdeen/partner-welsh-breaks-10-year-silence-special-branch-watched-mcrae-1.687613

Mark MacNicol, who last year produced the play 3000 Trees about the McRae case, says the aim of the petition is to show there is serious public concern about the death of McRae, sufficient to justify a Fatal Accident Inquiry (FAI).

"It is unrealistic for us to expect an FAI would actually find out who killed Willie McRae," he said: "But a satisfactory result would be that an FAI overturns the suicide verdict and replaces it with a verdict of unlawful death."

The petition, launched on campaigning website 38degrees.org.uk, states there are sufficient questions to warrant a "long overdue FAI" into McRae's death.

MacNicol said there are number of serious allegations that require thorough investigation, such as McRae being under "highly aggressive" surveillance by Special Branch, which has led to an inquiry being "avoided by multiple Lord Advocates since 1985".

The petition also outlines concerns which have been raised about other aspects of the case, such as the gun with which McRae was said to have shot himself being found a distance away from his vehicle, according to one of the first witnesses on the scene. It is also said McRae left Glasgow with briefcases which were missing from the car when he was found.

Over 6,500 signatures have been gathered for the petition so far. The campaign group will investigate other action - such as judicial review - if it is rejected by the Lord Advocate.

A Crown Office spokesman said: "Crown Counsel are satisfied with the extensive investigations into the death of William McRae and have instructed that an FAI will not be held into the circumstances of Mr McRae's death."



But whatever the authorities decide, it looks as though poor Willie Mcrae is back to haunt the Highlands  - and the British secret state.

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/new-calls-for-fresh-inquiry-into-death-of-snp-activist-willie-mcrae.121832023

https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/fatal-accident-inquiry-for-willie-mcrae

No, I am not 'Charlie'

NOR ARE MILLIONS OF MUSLIMS TO BLAME FOR A HANDFUL OF KILLERS.

NO, I am not 'Charlie'. And if  this nonsense continues much longer I might have to seriously consider changing my first name!

I am NOT 'Charlie'.  And if you want to know why I am not joining those generally good people who have unthinkingly hastened to identify with that awful magazine, here is one reason why:

I learnt a new French word from this cover. Les Allocs, from les allocations familiales, family allowances, and roughly translatable in a current British context as 'Benefits'.  We are used to British media and politicians whipping up hostility against so-called "benefits scroungers" and immigrants, but not to anyone suggesting the papers that target both are somehow left-wing or anti-establishment.

The 'Charlie Hebdo' cover refers to the "sexual slaves of Boko Haram", a subject whose humour is a bit above my intellect, then depicts a crowd of ugly women in Muslim attire, all heavily pregnant,  screaming "Hands off our 'Allocs'(Benefits)".

Tres drole, and very amusing.

Of course, I may not have grasped the hidden subtleties of this cartoon, nor be sufficiently au fait with sophisticated French thought and humour to understand that this was really aimed against racism and misogyny, rather than appealing to both; and to the age old bitterness against the lower orders and lesser breeds living and multiplying - "parish-fed bastards" as was the cry of the Yeomanry at Peterloo.

I don't know whether the liberating aim would have been what the thugs had in mind who attacked a pregnant Muslim woman in the Paris suburb of Argenteuil last Thursday, tearing off her veil and headcovering, and kicking her in the stomach for good measure. The young woman suffered a miscarriage and lost her baby on Monday. I don't know whether she appreciated the irony.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/19/world/europe/muslim-woman-suffers-miscarriage-after-attack-in-france.html?_r=0

I had been going to add another 'Charlie Hebdo' cover featuring a black-clad bearded Orthodox Jew with an extra-long proboscis talking about the Holocaust , which I had seen posted on the internet, but it appears this was a spoof-cover produced by supporters of the antisemite Dieudonne.  I don't know whether 'CH' itself has done anything as unpleasant, but I note that friends who are normally sensitive to anything resembling antisemitism elsewhere were trying to find excuses for this caricature,  so long  as they thought it was genuine.  Such was the wave of enthusiasm for unrestrained freedom of speech.

I am not "Charlie", and nor am I any kind of apologist for the gunmen. Since they are dead, we don't know for sure what their motives were, or those of whoever sent them.  I don't buy the "lone nutters" theory, for these killers were either well-briefed and efficient, or very lucky, managing to strike at the CH office just when an editorial meeting was taking place. Perhaps if the French security services had been as effective at surveillance of those who'd already come on the radar, and stopping them getting guns, both the 'Charlie Hebdo' attack and the supermarket siege might have been prevented.

Still, I don't want to indulge in armchair detection, still less to be smug about those inferior French cops.  The two worst shooting incidents in Britain, at Hungerford (1987) and Dunblane(1996), were carried out by local characters, both white and neither of them Muslim, obsessed with guns, and with legally held firearms. Since then the law has been changed. But Nigel Farage, who blames events in France on "multiculturalism" , said last year that the restriction on hand guns should be scrapped. Maybe those journos who hang on Farage's every word should remind him and his fellow gobshites that culture and headscarves don't kill, guns do.

As for the disgusting media baron Rupert Murdoch, who wants us to hold all Muslims responsible for the killings in France, I don't recall him as a 'born-again Christian' apologising for the actions of his co-religionist Anders Breivik in Norway, any more than for the Inquisition, the Nazi Holocaust, or the massacres of mainly Muslim people at Sabra and Shatila camps in Lebanon, and Srebrenica in Bosnia, committed by men proud to wear the cross.  But I do remember that it was one of Murdoch's former minions, ex-Fox News commentator Glenn Beck, who blamed Breivik's victims, comparing the young people at a Norwegian Labour Party summer camp to Hitler Youth.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/norway/8660986/Norway-shooting-Glenn-Beck-compares-dead-teenagers-to-Hitler-youth.html

The gunmen who attacked 'Charlie Hebdo' were not "representatives of the oppressed", however, and there is no point in misguided leftists appointing themselves defence lawyers, and dragging in everything from bombing of Iraq to joblessness in France to "explain" if not exonerate the gunmen.
As for those who killed customers in a kosher supermarket, their crime did nothing for the Palestinians, but came as music to Mossad ears, boosting Netanyahu's effort to persuade Jews to leave France so he use them to reinforce his armed camp. The real hero of the day, and some would say, true Muslim, was the young shopworker Lassana Bathily, from Mali, who helped people hide and saved their lives.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/paris-shootings-muslim-man-hailed-a-hero-for-hiding-hostages-in-jewish-supermarkets-walkin-refrigerator-9970045.html

Had the CH gunmen, or whoever sent them, really cared about France's Muslims, or been confident of their support, they could have mobilised a popular campaign against the paper's insults, instead of relying on guns. It might even have had longer-lasting results. But that would have involved convincing people, persuading them to act, and that their actions count. Once they are mobilised, they might want to take up other issues, like unemployment or exploitation. And as they gain confidence, and allies, they might be less likely to stay within the bounds of religion or outmoded authority. Who knows where it might end?

There are of course plenty of French Muslims and innigrants who are politically articulate and as capable of organising as anyone else. It is my guess that the last thing whoever planned these gun attacks wants is to encourage mass organisation or participation in politics. That two supposed heroes could find nowhere to hide among an estimated five million Muslims is significant. It also symbolises the kind of isolation their mentors would like to see imposed on the entire Muslim community.

That so many of my friends on the Left are torn between "free speech" fundamentalism and deferential respect for 'Charlie Hebdo''s intellectual pretensions on the one hand, and a
patronising assumption that the gunmen are legitimate expressions of an otherwise cowed,uneducated and inarticulate poor community on the other; with no attempt to look critically at either terror or bourgeois 'freedoms'.  These are two faces of the emptiness that lies today behind so much phrasemongering and "theoretical" erudition.

From Under the Covers to Lecturing in College

 FROM RADICAL ACTIVIST to respectable academic? The roles of police agent Bob

Just over a month ago, on October 23, 2014, the Metropolitan Police Service agreed to pay £425,000 to a woman called Jacqui whose child was fathered by a man called Bob Lambert. Obviously this was no ordinary paternity suit. Jacqui said she did not know at the time of her relationship with Lambert that that he was an undercover police officer. The Met agreed to pay up in return for Jacqui dropping a legal action alleging assault, negligence, deceit and misconduct by senior officers.

Jacqui was a 22-year-old campaign activist when she met Lambert, who was passing himself off as a fellow campaigner and using the pseudonym Bob Robinson. She gave birth to their son in 1985. When the boy was two years old his father vanished, and she told BBC News she had received psychiatric care after learning the officer's real identity.

Jacqui was one of several women who said they were duped into relationships with officers who were spying on them. Scotland Yard said it "unreservedly apologises for any pain and suffering" but added that “the Metropolitan Police Service has never had a policy that officers can use sexual relations for the purposes of policing”. Scotland Yard had previously refused to either confirm or deny whether Bob Lambert was a Special Demonstration Squad operative, despite his own admissions to journalists. However, it was forced to change its position in August 2014 after a legal ruling.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/woman-who-child-undercover-cop-4496691

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-29743857

Fathering children under a false idenitity then doing a runner is not all that Bob Lambert has been accused of.  In June 2012 Green MP Caroline Lucas said in Parliament that Lambert  had planted a fire bomb that caused £340,000 worth of damage to the Harrow branch of Debenhams department store in 1987 as part of his undercover work in the Animal Liberation Front. Lambert denied this. Two animal rights campaigners served four years in prison for attacks such as this.

In 2013, it was reported that while undercover with London Greenpeace, Lambert had co-authored the 'McLibel leaflet', which resulted in a defamation lawsuit from McDonald's Corporation that took ten years to resolve.

After his own time undercover Lambert was in charge of other police officers doing the same kind of work.  He deployed officers into Reclaim the Streets as well as campaigns for justice by families of black people whose deaths were mishandled by police, such as Stephen Lawrence. In addition to his role in the Special Demonstration Squad, he was head of the Muslim Contact Unit from its establishment in 2002.

So what is Robert Lambert doing with himself these days? No longer wearing his hair long like he did in wilder times, the under the covers police agent  is now a 'respectable' academic.   
After his career in the police force, he became a lecturer at the University of St. Andrews and a part-time senior lecturer at the London Metropolitan University. He was co-director of the European Muslim Research Centre in the Department of Politics at Exeter University until August 2011.^[3][4]
Robert Lambert works part time lecturing on Criminology and Policing at London Metropolitan University.

Besides environmental and anti-racist campaigners, trade unionists defending their right to work and organise believe they have scores to settle with Lambert. Dave Smith of the Blacklist Support Group says the "expert" on Muslim terror has a dark past, not confronting terrorism but infiltrating peaceful campaigning groups. "He is directly implicated in police attempts to spy on, smear and discredit Stephen Lawrence's family campaign regarding police failures to investigate Stephen's racist murder in 1993, and also in the 'mysterious' passing on of Special Branch files to a private company paid by large construction firms to compile a blacklist of trade unionists active in the building trade, many of who were victimised and fired."

Now a college lecturer himself, long blacklisted building worker Dave is joining with others to tell London Metropolitan University it has no business employing Robert Lambert. " He is a known liar, spy and exploiter of women - not in any way a fit person to be trusted teaching students at a University that likes to portray itself as 'progressive'.
'
We aim to keep up pressure on London Met until they fire him. Join us in our picket of the University building where he works this Friday."

12.00 – 2.00pm
LMU Tower, 166-220 Holloway Road, London N7 8DB
Contact
Islington Against Police Spies, email: islingtonagainstpolicespies@gmail.com
.
For more information on Bob Lambert and other undercover police activities, contact:

Www.campaignopposingpolicesurveillance.com

http://policespiesoutoflives.org.uk/

See also:
http://blog.newhumanist.org.uk/2011/11/was-met-in-bed-islamists-my-interview.html

Lies, Spies and Custard Pies

NOT ALL COMEDY.  Mark Thomes made spies' activity subject of Edinburgh show. But while he was interested in what arms dealers were up to, the police were more interested in him.

WELL-KNOWN comic Mark Thomas is among a group of journalists who are taking the Metropolitan Police to court for spying on them in the name of national "security". This makes a change from the things we heard about police officers allegedly turning a blind eye to illegal activities by hacks working for the Murdoch press with whom they swapped information. It also contrasts with the way intelligence services have used some newspapers with whom they could plant stories for public disimformation.

But the six who say they were spied on by police are independent, or relatively independent, journos, who dedicated themselves to uncovering wrongdoing by the rich and powerful, rather than doing their dirty work.

Mark Thomas made his name and his Channel 4 show The Mark Thomas Comedy Product changed its name to simply The Mark Thomas Product, after he investigated the practice of avoiding inheritance tax by declaring art, furniture, homes and land available for public viewing. He went after Tory politician Nicholas Soames, who eventually paid the tax, and Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown changed the law. But Channel Four decided Thomas was going too far when he  wanted to take up corporate accountability and corporate manslaughter law.

We might see a connection here with industrial snooping and blacklisting. Many building workers, for instance, found their names had been added to blacklists after they protested over risky conditions at work or became safety reps. Recently the Blacklist Support Campaign (BSC) has been asking how much information on workers was passed on by police, and why its own activities, rather than those of unscrupulous employers or blacklisters, have been monitored by the police.

Ironically, much of the police snooping on journalists and campaigners like Mark Thomas, as well as the BSC,  appears to have been carried out by the Metropolitan Police 'National Domestic Extremism and Disorder Intelligence Unit' (NDEDIU), whose supposed purpose is to monitor and police so called 'domestic extremism'. The background used to step up such surveillance has been fear of violence and terrorism.

Far from engaging in such activities, those targeted can honestly claim to have exposed the forces behind them.  Mark Thomas adopted various guises to visit arms fairs and show how dealers in torture and death were not too fussy about their customers. The parliamentary committee which oversees weapons exports, the House of Commons Quadripartite Select Committee, commended him for his undercover work, which led to official warning letters being issued to a number of companies.  His work in this area is covered in As Used on the Famous Nelson Mandela: Underground Adventures in the Arms and Torture Trade, a book chronicling his experiences undercover, his political activism and his projects designed to find and report loopholes in arms trading laws, which culminated in a controversial un-broadcast Newsnight report about the Hinduja brothers.


Just as environmental and other campaigns were infiltrated by spies and provocateurs, including policemen who befriended and slept with women activists, so the campaign against the arms trade was infiltrated. Mark Thomas made this the material for his Edinburgh fringe show this year

For years, Martin appeared to work tirelessly for Campaign Against Arms Trade. He was warm, funny and apparently loyal. He was a good friend, turning up at the police station after Thomas's first arrest for activism. He was so loved that he was asked to be godparent to one activist's child. But he was being paid to spy on the group by BAE Systems, Britain's largest arms manufacturer. Who could ever have imagined it? This was a man who put a custard pie in the face of the former BAE head honcho, Richard Evans. A spy wouldn't do that, would he?

http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2014/aug/04/mark-thomas-cuckooed-edinburgh-festival-2014-review

http://www.spinwatch.org/index.php/issues/more/item/4289-martin-hogbin-was-a-spy

In a statement released last week the National Union of Journalists says six of its members have discovered that their lawful journalistic and union activities are being monitored and recorded by the Metropolitan Police. They are now taking legal action against the Metropolitan Police Commissioner and the Home Secretary to challenge this ongoing police surveillance.

The NUJ members involved in the legal challenge include Jules Mattsson, Mark Thomas, Jason Parkinson, Jess Hurd, David Hoffman and Adrian Arbib.

All of them have worked on media reports that have exposed corporate and state misconduct and they have each also previously pursued litigation or complaints arising from police misconduct. In many of those cases, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner has been forced to pay damages, apologise and admit liability to them after their journalistic rights were curtailed by his officers at public events.

The surveillance was revealed as part of an ongoing campaign, which began in 2008, during which NUJ members have been encouraged to obtain data held about them by the authorities including the Metropolitan Police 'National Domestic Extremism and Disorder Intelligence Unit' (NDEDIU).

Michelle Stanistreet, NUJ general secretary, said:

    "It is outrageous that the police are using their resources and wide-ranging powers to put journalists under surveillance and to compile information about their movements and work on secret databases. There is no justification for treating journalists as criminals or enemies of the state, and it raises serious questions for our democracy when the NUJ is forced to launch a legal challenge to compel the police to reveal the secret evidence they have collected about media workers.

    "The union will continue to give its full support to the members involved in the case and we are committed to putting a stop to this unacceptable state interference and monitoring that labels our members as domestic extremists."

Mark Thomas said:

    "In my view, the police surveillance and the collation of data on journalists point to a police spying culture that is out of control and without proper oversight.

    "The fact that none of the journalists are suspected of criminality but all of them cover stories of police and corporate wrong doing hints at something more sinister, that the police seem to be spying on those who seek to hold them to account.

    "The inclusion of journalists on the domestic extremist data base seems to be a part of a disturbing police spying network, from the Stephen Lawrence family campaign to Hillsborough families, from undercover officers' relationships with women to the role of the police in the construction blacklist.

    "Personally my entries relate to a network of collaborations, the police appear to be in contact with private security firms to collect data on myself, as well as (bizarrely) an employee at the Open University.

    "This legal action is part of a process to try and hold the police to account."

Freelance photographer Jess Hurd, some of whose moving human interest work was exhibited at a gallery near me, said:

"I have faced intimidation, surveillance and on occasion violence, from the police all my professional life. It should not be the case that I sometimes fear going to work. The very creation of a 'domestic extremist' database which stores details on innocent people feels like state intimidation.

    "Either the police do not like the journalistic work that we do or the trade union and press freedom campaigns we have been involved in, either way this is no justification for targeted state surveillance and squandered tax payers money."

  Jason N. Parkinson, freelance video journalist, said:

    "My file is 12 pages long and holds around 140 separate surveillance logs spanning nearly a decade. The files make it very clear they have been monitoring my movements, with whom I associate and even what clothing I wear, in order for police intelligence units to build up a profile of me and my network of associates and contacts.

    "The files also show signs that my social media and internet activities have been monitored. They also logged that I was asked to give a speech at a conference in 2011, which ironically was about police surveillance.

    "Some of the most worrying logs have been of my activities away from work. In July 2008, an officer spotted me, 'on Forty Lane Wembley NW9 on his bicycle'. For no reason at all, there appears to have been a search of voter registration records and the CRIS database, where information on witnesses and victims of crime are held.

    "This pulled up my previous address, my current address and the name of my ex-partner, who, it appears, was then checked for a criminal record on the Police National Computer. Another log noted my visit to a supermarket and recorded my vehicle registration number.

    "The disclosure of my domestic extremist files seem to show what I had suspected for the last eight years, the police have been keeping journalists that cover political protest under surveillance and it is not merely an intimidation tactic that should be ignored, as some have suggested in the past.


   Frances O'Grady, TUC general secretary, said:

    "There is growing concern that the authorities are using surveillance against union members, journalists and campaigners. Political policing has no place in a democratic society, it threatens press freedom and any unjustified conduct must stop.

    "I fully support the NUJ members in their campaign to know what information is being held about them in secret. We must expose and challenge wrongdoing wherever it exists and act against those who undermine the rights of journalists, union members and everyone who supports an open, transparent and democratic society."


    https://www.nuj.org.uk/news/nuj-members-under-police-surveillance-mount-collective-legal/?

Look Behind the Barbarity in northern Iraq

AS the US and British governments appear to dither about how to help the victims of ISIS barbarity in Iraq and Syria, and whether to step in to the conflict, many people are remarking on the bitter irony that this bloody mess is a result of the West's previous intervention, that is the invasion of Iraq.

They may be right, as far as this goes, but I would ask whether ISIS and the sectarian war it brings to a horrific head is the entirely unintended result of a war and occupation that went wrong, or part of an imperialist policy that succeeded all too well?

We know now that the Iraq war was not aimed at destroying Saddam Hussein's supposed Weapons of Mass Destruction, about which Tony Blair went to such lying lengths. It was not aimed either at stopping a sectarian war in Iraq, which scarcely existed before the invasion and occupation. It was not about "War on Terror", for which Iraq was not the base (aside from the terrorist Mojahideen e Khalq operations against neighbouring Iran, which the US supported). That would seem to leave the popularly believed assumption that it was a war about oil, though not in the sense that the Iraqis were sitting on scarce oil and refusing to sell it (quite the contrary) or even big oil companies had their eye on Iraqi oilfields for profits (though of course they do).

It was the overall US strategy of maintaining its supremacy by controlling as much as possible of the world's energy supplies, and for this destroying any kind of independent development by countries like Iraq.

From the outset there were warnings that the occupiers would follow a divide-and-rule policy, carving up Iraq. To the physical destruction wrought by "Shock and awe" was added the destruction of Iraq as a modern state and the imposition of a confessional constitution modeled on that bequeathed to Lebanon by France, so that religious divisions are given permanence, and scramble for privilege and supremacy. Secular Iraqis, those for whom religious belief or not took second place to progress or patriotism, lost out, as did minorities. As for women, mothers who had been used to their mode of dress being a matter of choice learned from their daughters that going out unveiled could be a fatal risk.

Sectarian gangs could be a cover for death squads targeting not just political opponents but educated Iraqis, thousands of whom - including doctors, teachers, geologists and engineers - were killed or driven into exile, or 'disappeared'. Many Palestinian families in Iraq found themselves refugees for a second time (and since the Syrian war, a third). But would the invaders of Iraq deliberately foment, rather than attempt to contain, sectarian strife?

Watchers had noticed the move to Iraq of British officers with special experience in Northern Ireland. On September 19, 2005, two British Special Forces soldiers dressed in Arab clothes and driving an unmarked car, were captured in Basra. They were reportedly members of the Special Reconnaissance Regiment (SRR, and according to British accounts were on a surveillence mission. But the equipment they had with them suggested a more offensive role, and the suspicion raised by Iraqis, and nasty-minded people like me, was that they were posing as terrorists and acting as agent provocateurs, on a mission to plant bombs in a mainly Shi'ite area, a 'false-flag' terrorist attack.

Whatever the truth, the army and the SAS launched an operation to forcibly free its men from the Iraqi police hands, so that they would not give anything away under interrogation or before any court.

On April 1, 2005, the top of the Malwiya minaret in Samarra had been damaged by a bomb. Built in about 850 AD as part of the caliph Al-Mutawakkil's Great Mosque, this minaret is unique, its name 'malwiya' means "snail shell", because it is a hollow conical spiral, looking like some of the pictures one sees of the Biblical Tower of Babel.

Some reports said innsurgents had attacked the tower because U.S. troops had been using it as a lookout position. But Tony Blair in his January 21, 2011 Iraq Inquiry testimony said insurgents had attacked the mosque to incite Sunni-Shiite violence and further destabilize the country.

Another Samarra mosque, al-Askari, was severely damaged by explosives on February 22, 2006 at about 6:44 a.m. The mosque, and shrine of the two imams, Ali al-Hadi and Hassan al-Askari, was one of the holiest sites for Iraqi Shia, and blame focussed immediately on Sunni militants, although as one man from Samarra told me, the city's historic mosques and shrines had long been a source of pride to local people no matter what their religious affiliation or lack of it.

There were also questions such as, how any mere amateurs with home made bombs could have caused such damage to the mosque's thick walls; and how they could have got their explosives into place for what seemed like a skilled demolition job, while evading the US occupiers curfew and patrols.

Nevertheless, the mosque's bombing sparked off violence against Sunnis , with 168 mosques attacked, ten imams killed, and well over 1,000 people killed all told. The normal daily patrols of US coalition forces and Iraqi security forces were temporarily suspended in Baghdad during the few days following the bombing.

Discussing whether outside forces could have been responsible for attacks like those on the Samarra mosques or the many car bombings that have taken civilian lives in Iraq, an Iraqi friend Munir shook his head. " The CIA does not have suicide bombers". I replied: "Maybe not. But the Saudis have". I was not referring to the Saudis' own personnel so much as to those recruited and trained by organisations set up with Saudi money, such as Taliban and al Qaeda.

Even while Tony Blair was warning the Iranian regime against interferance in Iraq (where its influence over the Shia-dominated Iraqi government was an unintended consequence of the US-led invasion), we were seeing reports that most of the armed infiltrators entering Iraq came over the Saudi border. The Saudi ruling family are the allies of our own and US imperialism, and certainly good customers for armaments, as well as generous with backhanders for politicians. But they are also waging their own war for hegemony in the Muslim world, mainly but not exclusively against Iran and Shi'ites. It was with this in mind that Saudi backing propelled the Taliban into power in Afghanistan, But we should not forget either that the 9/11 hijackers were mostly Saudis, like Osama Bin Laden, and according to CIA reports received Saudi money from not just private but government sources.

If there was any doubt whether al Qaeda was involved in the attack on al Askhari mosque, as the Iraqi government alleged, there was no need to question their connection with the outrage on Sunday, October 31,2010, when more than 100 people were taken hostage in an attack on the Our Lady of Salvation Syriac Catholic cathedral in Baghdad,during Sunday evening Mass, and at least 58 people, including children, were killed. The attackers referred to their victims as "infidels", and shouted out allegations about supposed offences committed against Muslims by Christians in Egypt. Witnesses reported that though the gunmen spoke Arabic, they spoke with non-Iraqi accents, even foreign dialect.

The then al-Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq claimed responsibility.

It may be that the ISIS eruption has got out of hand and has gone further than any of its backers intended

But there are a few questions I would ask, for which I claim no originality or ingenuity:

One, how come that after seeing events like that attack on the Baghdad christian Mass four years ago, the CIA and MI6 and other agencies, with all their experts, and sources of intelligence - human and electronic - were so taken by surprise by what has happened in Mosul and northern Iraq - or at least, their governments were?

Two, remembering all we heard after 9/11 about tracking down sources of aid and weapons to al Qaida etc, how come these governments and agencies, with all their surveillance and hacking into communications and transactions by companies,trade unions, and ordinary individuals like you and me, have seemed unable - or unwilling - to touch the flow of money and resources to the real terrorist groups?

Three, how is it that volunteers from as far afield as Britain, the United States and as I heard the other day,Indonesia, have been able to reach ISIS in landlocked northern Iraq, without its own airport, and not traveling by magic carpet so far as I am aware.

Four - assuming that the ISIS forces' heavy modern military equipment, unusual for a supposed rebel guerrilla force, was all captured (what with, catapults?) who trained them to use it?

It is traditional for the youngest child of the family to ask four questions as part of the Passover ceremony, but if my four seem too simple and obvious to bother answering, I'll add a fifth. Why have they been passed over without being asked, let alone answered, by those clever people we see on TV?

 http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/nov/01/baghdad-church-siege-survivors-speak

  http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/iraq-crisis-how-saudi-arabia-helped-isis-take-over-the-north-of-the-country-9602312.html

http://scholarworks.wmich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3286&context=honors_theses

Nearly 40 years after Birmingham bombings, families still kept from finding out truth

 I was in Birmingham yesterday, and as I hastened from a crowed city centre pub through busy early evening streets to New Street station, my mind briefly went to that other November evening almost forty years ago when bombs ripped through two other pubs nearby, blasting people, glass and rubble about in bloody shambles.

It was on November 21, 1974.

At 20:11 a man with an Irish accent telephoned the Birmingham Post newspaper and said: "There is a bomb planted in the Rotunda and there is a bomb in New Street at the tax office".^[8] A telephoned warning was also sent to the Evening Mail newspaper.^[9] The Rotunda was a 25-storey office block that housed the "Mulberry Bush" pub on its lower two floors.^[10] The police started to check the upper floors of the Rotunda but failed to clear the crowded pub at street level. Six minutes after the warning, at 20:17, the bomb exploded inside a duffel bag, devastating the pub.^[8] Ten people were killed in this explosion and dozens injured, including one woman who was so badly wounded she was given the last rites administered by the Catholic Church to those on the point of death.
Police were attempting to clear the nearby "Tavern in the Town" basement pub on New Street below King Edward House, when at 20:27 a second bomb exploded there, killing another 11 people and leaving many with appalling injuries. The bodies of the dead and injured were strewn about the ruined pub.^[3] A passing West Midlands bus was wrecked in the blast.^[11] The explosion was so powerful that several victims were blown through a brick wall into an area just below the main front entrance to King Edward House. Their remains were wedged between the rubble and underground electric cables; it took hours for firemen to remove them.^[12] The two pubs were about 50 yards (46 m) apart.^[3] Buildings near the pubs were damaged and passersby in the street were struck by flying glass from shattered shop windows.
A third device, an "Eversoft Frangex" bomb,^[13] was placed outside a branch of Barclays Bank on Hagley Road but failed to detonate.^[14]
Altogether, 21 people were killed and 182 people were injured. Most of the dead and wounded were young people between the ages of 17 and 25, including two brothers, Desmond and Eugene Reilly. One of the victims, 18-year-old Maxine Hambleton, had not been a customer. She had just gone into the "Tavern in the Town" to hand out tickets to friends for a party. She was killed seconds after entering the pub and had been standing beside the bag containing the bomb when it exploded. Her friend Jane Davis, aged 17, was the youngest victim of the two bombings

It was immediately assumed by the authorities and media that this was the work of the Provisional IRA, although neither they nor Sinn Fein have ever claimed or admitted responsibility. Six Irish men who had been living in the Birmingham area were arrested that night on their way to the Belfast ferry and the following year sentenced to life imprisonment. It took 16 years of campaigning and protests before their sentences were quashed, and the "Birmingham Six" were released as innocent.

More immediately after the bombing there was a wave of revulsion and hatred against Irish people in the West Midlands and around the country, and within two days the government was able to bring in the Prevention of Terrorism Act which it had been preparing. This has not prevented terrorism but it did enable police harassment and persecution of Irish people in particular, and has become permanent legislation that can be put to other use.

By sheer coincidence, while I was returning from Birmingham, a friend was posting an item on Facebook. Thirty-nine years after the Birmingham bombings relatives of victims have sought an inquiry, and are trying to get at the truth themselves, without much help it seems.     

 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-1702947

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-12664938

That was from last year, and since then though David Cameron appeared to agree there should be an investigation, the government doesn't seem to have moved.  Birmingham campaigners have continued their efforts to get attention. They protested when Martin McGuiness was speaking, sought a meeting with Gerry Adams at a London conference, and went to Warrington to meet Paddy Hill, one of the "Birmingham Six", who deplored the bombings, and told them that while under interrogation he had given three names to police of people he thought were involved.


http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/local-news/birmingham-pub-bombings-campaigners-reveal-6286695

http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/local-news/birmingham-pub-bombings-campaigners-set-6206380

West Midlands police have reportedly re-opened their investigations, something they previously said could not be done without fresh evidence. But today comes news that shows things in another light.

Justice For The 21 (J421) campaigner Julie Hambleton, whose 18-year-old sister Maxine was among those killed when the bombs devastated the Mulberry Bush and the Tavern in the Town in Birmingham city centre, contacted the police and CPS to ask for records about the case.

But she said that the West Midlands Police Counter Terrorism Unit (CTU) said that files are so top secret that they cannot be accessed.
he sought access to the full transcripts of the trial of the Birmingham Six at Lancaster Crown Court in 1975, which she had been told were in the MoJ’s possession.

“They said it was out of the boundaries of cost and that the files should be in the National Archive,” said the 50-year-old lecturer.

“Yet the National Archive had already told me they held some of the transcripts, and the rest were with the Government.

“It just gets murkier and messier.”

 Julie Hambleton had been meeting a Detective Chief Superintendant Kenny Bell, head of the West Midlands Counter Terrorism Unit.

“On the last two meetings with Mr Bell he told us we would need half a day to go through the whole of the 1993 investigation in detail,” she said.

“But, all of a sudden, he has told us that the file is top secret and cannot be accessed."

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/birmingham-pub-bombings-police-launch-1150663

http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/local-news/police-denying-victims-families-access-6311838

In the aftermath of the Birmingham bombings I was in the West Midlands, and involved in opposing the Prevention of Terrorism Act, and I remember some people saying they did not believe the bombs were the work of the IRA.  They also told me that not only were the pubs bombed not obvious targets but both were popular with Irish people.

A biographer of Ruairi O Bradaigh, then Sinn Fein president, says the IRA  leadership and  supporters were "horrified" by the bombings. Ó Brádaigh "made inquiries and confirmed that the IRA leadership had not sanctioned the bombs". Others have said that low-ranking members of the IRA were involved but the bombings were a "mistake".  Sinn Féin called the bombings "wrong" and said that if "issues relating to the IRA concerning the Birmingham bombings are still to be addressed, then it is very clearly the Sinn Féin position that this should happen".


Some time ago I wrote about the women from Ballymurphy who were demanding an inquiry into the British Army shootings of people in their town.
 http://randompottins.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/ballymurphy-to-bogside-extra-ghosts-at.html
Unlike the people of Derry, who obtained the truth, if not justice, for the Bloody Sunday murders, but like those of Ballymurphy, the Birmingham victims have yet to be awarded either.

And we might also bracket Birmingham with the Dublin and Monaghan bombings which occurred in May 1974, killing 33 people and wounding hundreds. The Ulster Volunteer Force later claimed responsibility though many believe they were assisted by, if not acting as a cover for, the British Army.

However complicated the truth about these awful events, and whatever discomfort it brings to politicians, the relatives of those who died, and indeed the people of both these islands, are entitled to demand it.