Back to Jail for Con-Man "Lawyer" who acted for War Criminals and boasted he'd funded Cons

GIOVANNI di Stefano has been sentenced to fourteen years in jail for a series of frauds on “desperate and vulnerable victims”  whom  he tricked into thinking he was a bona fide lawyer.

 Di Stefano was convicted on 25 charges, including deception, fraud and money laundering
 He pleaded guilty to another two counts of fraud and further three counts ordered to lie on file

Di Stefano, 57,became known as the Devil’s Advocate for taking on “unwinnable” cases, though the Law Society said he was not qualified, nor entitled to act as a lawyer at all.

Judge Alistair McCreath, the Recorder of Westminster, noted there were many offences over significant periods of time. The fact that the victims – which included a disabled man seeking damages for the loss of an arm – were all “desperate and vulnerable” and faced losses which were not just financial but also included the “raising and dashing of false hope” were aggravating factors, the judge said.

The judge said the case was not just about money. "It is also about something different and great – it is about the real distress you caused to so many people. You had no regard for them nor for their anguish,” he said. “Your only concern was to line your own pockets.”

.
Among the offences to which Di Stefano pleaded guilty was stealing £150,000 compensation that should have gone to a man who had lost an arm in a car crash. The money was due as part of an insurance policy but di Stefano had it paid in to his business account and “duly stole it”. This was a “wicked” crime and is one which “stands in a league of its own”, according to the judge.

But then Di Stefano, a former associate of Serb war criminal 'Arkan' and director of Dundee football club, was always in a league of his own. And he had quite a long run.

He reportedly served a six-month sentence for fraud and false pretenses in 1975 in Ireland, and a three-year sentence for obtaining property by deception and other charges in 1976 in the UK. Di Stefano insisted that these convictions were those of a different person, called "John" instead of "Giovanni", although they shared the same surname, birthday and birthplace.

Then in June 1984 he was arrested again and charged with fraud before being released on bail. He was again arrested in August of that year and refused bail. In 1986, Di Stefano was tried for conspiracy to obtain property by deception and fraudulent trading, and was convicted after a 78-day trial, jailed for five years, and prohibited from being a company director for 10 years; In 1990 a Solicitors' Disciplinary Tribunal ruled that Di Stefano could not be employed by any British solicitor without permission from the Law Society,

Di Stefano claims to have been freed on appeal, though records indicate his appeal was unsuccessful. After three years in jail however he was back in business, attempting to clinch deals in America and New Zealand before turning up in Yugoslavia in 1991. He obtained Yugoslav citizenship thanks to his "friend" Slobodan Milosevic, and became an associate -political and business - of Zelijko Raznjatovic, better-known as Arkan, leader of the so-called Serb Volunteer Guard, or "Tigers", irregulars operating for the Serb Interior Ministry, who enjoyed rape and pillage as a perk for their job of 'ethnic cleansing'.

In 1997 Di Stefano wrote warning British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook that British soldiers would be killed if they made any attempt to bring in Arkan as a war criminal. The businessman-"lawyer" also boasted to the Sunday Times that he had met John Major several times, and that he had donated £10,000 to the Tory party before his conviction and another £20,000 after release. He insisted there was nothing irregular about this.

"I am a Conservative. I'm the epitome of conservative.
It is not an offence to give money to politicians for their services" (Sunday Times, July 27, 1997)

As Arkan expanded into various businesses in Serbia, from flowers to a football club, Di Stefano too began popping up as fairy godfather offering to invest money in cash-strapped British soccer clubs - Dundee, Norwich, Northampton Town, - and even a doomed Northumberland colliery. Somehow, while still abroad, he knew where to dangle his carrot.

Arkan boasted that he would go to the Hague if wanted, and bring down all sorts of people. He was gunned down himself in a Belgrade hotel, and obviously no longer required the services of his lawyer and partner Di Stefano. Then Di Stefano came under investigation in Italy in connection with business affairs. But somehow he survived to fight another day.

Tony Clarke, the Labour MP for Northampton South, who fought attempts by di Stefano to take over Northampton Town football club, said: "Everything about this man is shrouded in mystery. The authorities need to take a very close look at his legal qualifications, because if he is not legally qualified, heaven knows how that affects the cases he has been involved in."

Somehow, qualified, disqualified, or whatever, Di Stefano claimed some big name clients, big bad name that is - time-share racketeer John Palmer, road-rage killer and bullion robber Kenneth Noye, Dr.Harold Shipman, property tycoon and thug-employer Nicholas "tenants are scum" van Hoogstraten. Indeed he was remarkably successful for Van Hoogstraten, who was sentenced to 10 years for the killing of a business rival in 2002, but released on appeal, even though two of his associates remained serving life sentences.

Van Hoogstraten was ordered to pay the victim's family £6 million in a civil case.
He was estimated at being worth £500 million, though he said his assets in the UK had been placed in the names of his children. His assets in property and farming in Zimbabwe were estimated at £200 million. It may be through Van Hoogstraten that Di Stefano claimed Robert Mugabe as a friend. His ambition to represent Saddam Hussein on trial was less successful, but all in all the lawyer-who-wasn't has enjoyed a brilliant and long career, knowing all the top gangsters. Is this really the end for Giovanni?

Will nobody stop Dame Pauline?

NEVILLE-JONES. Cameron's adviser has 'form'.

TORY leader David Cameron is grabbing the headlines from obliging media with a speech damning "multi-culturalism" and accusing Muslim organisations of fostering separation and being akin to the British National Party.

Who is helping David Cameron with his homework? Up pops the new leading thinker heading Cameron's advisers, Dame Pauline Neville Jones. On TV tonight she admits that her target is not just those who use or advocate violence and terrorism, but anyone whose ideas "threaten the liberal foundations of our society". I'd guess that could include us Marxists, as well as Muslims, folks.

Especially, once that "multicultural" idea is out, those of you whose efforts to be more British than the British aren't judged sufficient. Whether it's your origins or ideology that are "alien" you'd better watch it!

We've met Dame Pauline before. Back in the days when people were being butchered as "Muslims", even if secular ones, while much of the Left preferred looking the other way and had not discovered the word Islamophobia. Pauline Neville-Jones was a Foreign Office political director and chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee. She stood with Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd for maintaining the arms embargo on Bosnia. Hurd said easing it would only create a "level killing-field". While the Chetniks (Serb nationalists) could sow cluster-bombs and anti-personnel mines, Britain would not let those resisting them even buy mine detection equipment.

Neville-Jones was senior British official at the Dayton peace negiotiations imposed on Bosnia. "Balkan experts remember her from Dayton as a 'very tough' negotiator who was continually pushing the Bosnians to accept the de facto partition of their nation". (Francis Wheen, Guardian, 4 September 1996).

Three months after quitting the Foreign Office, Lord Hurd joined NatWest Markets, investment arm of the National Westminster Bank, on a salary of £250,000 a year. His qualifications for the world of finance were not obvious, but he knew people, and he had a helper - Dame Pauline. The dire duo went out to Belgrade in 1996 for breakfast with Slobodan Milosevic, whose government was strapped for cash, with Serbian workers demanding unpaid wages. NatWest helped Milosevic sell off the post and telephone system, PTT, and obtained a contract to advise on debt management. It eyed up Serbia's electricity industry and oil for further privatisation. While it was Italian and Greek money that went into the telecomms deal, NatWest did well out of tending advice, and so did Lord Hurd and Dame Pauline.

Then Neville-Jones was off to fresh fields. She became a BBC international governor in January 1998. In 2004 the Corporation was brought to heel over its coverage of Iraq, and the Blair government's dodgy dossier on Weapons of Mass Destruction. Following the Hutton report, and after Greg Dyke was made to resign as director general, some people questioned Dame Pauline's objectivity as a governor. It was revealed that besides her intelligence past, she held £50,000 shares in the privatised former Ministry of Defence firm QinetiQ and had earned £133,000 the previous year as chairman.
http://www.bilderberg.org/milne.htm#qinetiq

Last year, the US Carlyle group, - whose investors have included George Bush senior, Colin Powell, former Defense Secretary James Baker and, at one time, members of the Bin Laden family - floated Qinetiq on the stock exchanges, and once again Dame Pauline must have done well out of it. But money, though it doubtless comes in handy, is not her first interest, and off she went last February for an "Intelligence Summit" in Arlington, Virginia, though I dare say her US hosts didn't see her out of pocket for this.

Among those taking part with her were former CIA directors John Deutch and James Wooley, as well as Steve Pomerantz, former director of "counter-terrorism" for the FBI. Not to be confused with Cointelpro, the FBI's programme of domestic infiltration, disruption and assassinations which has been reinstated as part of "Homeland Security". But also billed to appear were Colonel Oded Shoham, Israel army reservist, Yoram Hessel , "former senior Mossad officer", and Israeli-born Yousef Bosasky, now director of the Congress Task Force on Terrorism.

Another speaker was Rachel Ehrenfield, who two years previously warned of dangerous efforts by Tony Blair and the World Bank to pressure Israel into concessions that would lead to "an independent terrorist Palestine state".

Now I'm not suggesting that the head of David Cameron's political advice circle would have agreed with all those she might have rubbed shoulders with at Arlington, anymore than in Belgrade ten years previously. But I can see people asking whether her advice on multiculturalism and Muslims is well-meant, and even questioning her right to lecture anyone on association with extremists.

Death of right-wing "Mystery Man", Sir Alfred Sherman

TOGETHER AGAIN "We could never have defeated Socialism if hadn't been for Sir Alfred," declared Lady Thatcher, at book launch for his "Paradoxes of Power", July 28, 2005.

I am happy to read of the death, on August 26, of Sir Alfred Sherman, former adviser to Margaret Thatcher and subsequantly to Radovan Karadzic, both of whom are regrettably still alive.

A friend of mine once happened to be standing outside the London School of Economics when Sir Alfred, who was a visiting Fellow, was pausing on the steps with some dignitaries. Who should pass by but Professor Bill Fishman (author of East End Jewish Radicals), who evidently recognising Sherman as a fellow east Londoner chirped out "Wotcha Alf! How's the Communist Party going?"

My friend reckons Sir Alfred visibly cringed.

Born in Hackney in 1919, the son of poor Jewish immigrants, Sherman was educated at Hackney Downs and went on to Chelsea Polytechnic, but he had joined the Communist Party as a teenager, and left college to join the International Brigade fighting in Spain. I once asked another International Brigader from London, the late Charlie Goodman, about the future Sir Alfred's role in the Civil War. He said "We did not see much of him, he was a bit of a mystery man, he wasn't in the frontline".

He wouldn't say any more.

Of course the Brigades like any other army needed back up in the rear, and young Sherman having suffered rickets may not have been all that fit for frontline duty. But we know that besides fighters against the fascists, the Comintern sent political commisars and agents to Spain, whose job was to maintain orthodoxy in the ranks, and report on dissenters, many of whom -whether Spanish or internationals -were despatched by the GPU killing machine.

Whatever the truth, young Alfred Sherman was taken prisoner in Spain and repatriated to Britain in 1938. He worked in a factory until the Second World War, when he served in the British army, in the Middle East. Many International Brigade veterans, Charlie Goodman among them, have testified to the suspicion and discrimination they encountered in the forces, but Sherman was promoted and served in Field Security, and Occupied Enemy Territory Administration.

After the war he became a student at the London School of Economics and was president of the Communist Party's student branch there in 1948, but he was expelled from the CP that year for "Titoist deviationism".

After graduating he became a journalist, working as The Observer correspondant in Belgrade for a time, as did another future champion of Serb nationalism and enemy of the Tito tradition, Nora Beloff, formerly with the Foreign Office. We might note that Observer proprieter Sir David Astor had links with British intelligence, and it was this newspaper which, together with The Economist, found work for Kim Philby when MI6 wanted to place its man in Beirut.

Sherman also managed a stint as an economic adviser to the Israeli government in the 1950s. He reputedly gave advice to Ben Gurion. But although the Israeli Labour Party dominated governments at that time he moved closer to the General Zionists, "free enterprise" advocates who wound up in the right-wing Likud. In Britain, Sherman became a leader writer for the Jewish Chronicle in 1963, going on to work for the Daily Telegraph two years later and eventually becoming its leader writer in 1977.

It was as local government reporter for the Telegraph, proclaiming the virtues of privatisation before his time, that he became a favourite of Sir Keith Joseph, joining the Tory party in 1970, and going on to write speeches for Sir Keith about the need to curb trade unionism, subsidies and taxes, and let the market rule. When Thatcher and Joseph founded the Centre for Policy Studies, in 1974, they found a job as director for Sir Alf.

Having praised the Tory Wandsworth council's pioneering privatisation of public services, and sale of council housing (which led so legend has it to yuppies asking taxi drivers to take them to "south Chelsea" when they wanted to cross the river to their gentrified Battersea homes), Sir Alf was a bit more consistent than others in defending the disgraced Dame Shirley Porter later on.

The Tesco heiress and leader of Westminster city council, having tried her hand selling council-owned cemeteries for peppercorn amounts (the council had to spend far more to buy them back), and shoving poor tenants into asbestos-ridden flats, was brought down by a scandal over keeping council-owned homes empty in marginal wards, till they could be sold to private buyers who were more likely to be Tory voters.

Notwithstanding his denunciation of social engineering aimed at greater equality, Sir Alfred thought this reversal for gerrymandering purposes was fine.
Writing in the Spectator he blamed Harold Wilson's subsidies to the hotel industry (not to be confused with Westminster council's putting homeless families, and public money, into vermin-infested B&Bs). This expansion had brought low-paid hotel and catering workers, many of them undesirable foreign immigrants, into desirable neighborhoods, he said; so Lady Porter was merely trying to reverse the trend.

Sir Alf, the son of impecunious Russian immigrants, had no sympathy for those who had come in since, especially not if they were black, or Arab, or other lesser breeds. Besides writing Margaret Thatcher's speeches he is credited with influencing her notorious remarks in a 1978 TV interview about the British public fearing being "swamped" by immigrants.

Disliked by Establishment Tories who found him crude and offensive, a sort of "thinking man"'s Alf Garnett, Sir Alf was denied a job in the 1979 Tory government despite the use its leader had made of his aggressive anti-immigrant line, and in 1983 he lost his job at the Centre for Policy Studies, getting his knighthood for services rendered instead.

Nothing daunted, Sir Alf moved if anything further to the Right, via the Monday Club and an organisation called Western Goals, which aimed at combatting the "menace of liberalism and communism" in British society, denouncing the work of charities like Oxfam, War on Want and Christian Aid, and defending "European culture" from non-European immigrants, whom it thought should be "resettled" somewhere else.

Sir Alfred's son Gideon became a director of the Western Goals Institute, but it was Sir Alf himself, the one time International Brigade "fighter against fascism" who had the dubious honour of inviting France's Front National leader Jean-Marie Le Pen to address a fringe meeting at the Tory party conference in 1987.

In 1993 a BBC reporter who had been able to visit the Serb nationalist leader Radovan Karadzic's forces in Bosnia was suprised when they boasted to him of the "British Lord" who was giving their leader advice. On enquiry he discovered that the "Lord" was but a Knight, Sir Alf no less. At a meeting in the House of Commons the following year organised by the newly-formed and badly misnamed Committee for Peace in the Balkans, and chaired by Alice Mahon, Labour MP, someone (I forget if it was me) mentioned this connection between a right-wing Tory and the Chetnik ethnic cleansing genius. Who should pop up to confirm it but Sir Alf himself, who declared "I am an adviser to Dr.Radovan Karadzic, and I am proud to be an adviser to Radovan Karadzic!"

He went on to claim that Bosnian Muslims were working to a plan devised by the Kremlin, and informed us that Muslim sharia law, and strict dress code for women, had been imposed in central Bosnia. Having not long returned from Bosnia, where the imams would have had considerable difficulty imposing the chador on the women I met at the trade union offices, serving in the forces , or broadcasting a rock concert on the student radio station, I found the picture he presented quite amusing. What was less amusing at this "peace" gathering were the Labourites (I was told they were from the shadowy Socialist Action) who sneered "in war people get killed" when someone mentioned atrocities, and the sinister figures with Chetnik cross badges who moved around videoing members of the audience, particularly Bosnian refugees. (Apparently the ban on filming in the Palace of Westminster did not apply to them).

Sir Alfred Sherman was not the only boy from Hackney Downs who wound up falling for the charms of ethnic cleansers. Harold Pinter, on the same side as whom I've often been, as well as admiring his work, naievely lent his name to the Committee to defend Slobodan Milosevic. (Incidentally, I was disappointed by Milosevic's death, as I had wanted to see a proper trial, fully covered in the media, at which he ought to have been able to call not just defenders like Sherman but Lords Owen and Hurd as character witnesses).

But in Alfred Sherman's case, if we say that he and Karadzic were birds of a feather, it is hard to say which one's friendship discredited the other. He may have been a bit of a "mystery man" sometimes, but it's clear Sir Alfred Sherman was a thoroughly nasty piece of work.

"War -what is it good for?"

"As on a May morning, on Malvern hills,
Me byfel a ferly of fairy, me thought".
Langland's PIERS PLOWMAN had a vision
of rich and poor striving for wealth and gluttony.
Nowadays he'd see laid out beneath Malvern
the former DERA establishment, now QinetiQ,
and part of Carlyle Group.

It's the economy, stupid. Well, it is for some people

Carlyle group floats QinetiQ shares

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
DWIGHT EISENHOWER

QinetiQ plays an important part in the war on terrorism, ...We are ideally placed to help government authorities and private companies address the numerous security challenges faced in many environments, ranging from Aviation and Maritime Security to Corporate and IT Security, Law Enforcement, Resilience and Defence."
http://www.worldsecurity-index.com/details.php?id=387

CARLYLE is the US private equity group that was dubbed "the president's club" with George Bush senior, Colin Powell and former US Secretary of State James Baker III on the board, and former US Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci as chairman. Specialising in buying up war industry it has done pretty well out of the military spending boom since 9/11 and America's "war on terror"; ironic, since the Bin Laden family were major shareholders till someone decided it didn't look good.

In 2003 Carlyle bought a 31 per cent stake in QinetiQ, the company carved out of Britain's Defence Evaluation and Research Agency, for £42 million. Some 4,000 jobs were lost in the past few years, but profits grew. At least 80 per cent of QinetiQ's work remains for the British government, though it also has US contracts.

On Friday, February 10, QinetiQ was floated on the stock exchange for the first time and since investors don't fear peace will break out in the foreseeable future, shares priced at 200p moved up to 213p as they rushed to buy.
Carlyle was able to raise £160 million and still holds a £180 million stake in the company. QinetiQ executives Sir John Chisholm and Graham Love saw the shares for which they each paid a few hundred thousand pounds now worth well over £20 million. So, if you'd had a few hundred thousand to spare a few years back, and seen which way the wind blew you could have done the same. Mind you, it would have helped if you'd already been in there, and known the right people.

Carlyle's began as a company in September 1987. Founders Stephen Norris and David Rubinstein had done well in brokerage dealings and knowing tax loopholes. They called it after the Carlyle hotel in New York, to give it a luxury image. Carlyle didn't sell shares to just anybody, but drew big name politicians and big private investors.

It was in November that year that President Reagan promoted security adviser Frank Carlucci to be secretary of Defense. He wasn't in the job long, but he was able to re-organise the Pentagon's procurement system. Useful experience. He also made 13 trips abroad. In January 1989, six days after quitting Defense, Carlucci joined the Carlyle.Group.

Fred Malek had joined Carlyle in September 1988, after resigning as chairman of the Republican National Committee. There had been reports that while working for Nixon he compiled figures on the number of Jews working in the Bureau of Labor and Statistics. Malek, a friend of George Bush senior, found a place for young George Dubya on the board of Caterair, a Carlyle subsidiary, in February 1990. It was not a great success, and George Dubya left it off his resume when running for governor of Texas in 1994.

The following year Carlyle sold off Caterair for less than it had acquired it, leaving the falling airline catering business to concentrate on its core arms and security interests. It had bought BDM Consulting, a defence consultancy, with useful expertise for defence buyouts in 1990. Via BDM it also bought Vinnel Corp, a construction company that had branched out into training the Saudi National Guard. BDM had been accused by rivals of buying influence in the Pentagon, by hiring the wife of a naval officer in charge of procurement, Melvyn Paisley. Paisley was later convicted in corruption investigations, but BDM was not badly affected.

The following year Carlyle acquired an interest in Harsco, manufacturers of military vehicles, which enabled it eventually to buy United Defense. Soon after this it acted as broker for Prince Alwaleed of Saudi Arabia to buy $590 million stock in Citicorp, America's largest bank. In 1992 Carlyle together with Northrop-Grunman won control of LTV Corp's defense and aerospace division, selling its holding on to Northrop two years later.

In February 1993, Richard Darman who had been director of the Office of Management and Management in the outgoing Bush administration joined Carlyle, and the following month he was joined by former Secretary of State James Baker. Later that year George Soros invested $100 million in Carlyle Partners II.

Though George Dubya. may have been coy over his career with Carlyle's less successful ventures, a few weeks after he became governor of Texas the University of Texas Investment Management Company placed a $10 investment in the Carlyle Group.

In September 1997, Carlyle bought United Defense for $850 million, one of the company’s largest buyouts ever. United Defense has plans to build the Army a 60-ton mobile howitzer called Crusader.

In March 1998, former Tory prime minister John Major joined Carlyle as European adviser. He went on to become chairman of Carlyle Europe in May 2001. In May 1999—Former US President George Herbert Walker Bush visited South Korea on behalf of Carlyle, cultivating business and political ties that resulted in Carlyle’s investing more than $1 billion in South Korea’s struggling economy.

In July 1999, former Connecticut State Treasurer Paul Silvester had to resign a position at Park Strategies after the FBI launched an investigation into a series of investments he made with Connecticut State Pension funds before he left office. Among the investments is a $50 million placement with Carlyle Asia. In September Silvester pleaded guilty to corruption. But in January 2001, SBC Communications, a Carlyle client, gained FCC approval to offer long-distance phone service in Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas, after the US Justice Department had rejected the company’s request. Approval was given on the last day of FCC Chairman William Kennard’s tenure. Three months later, Kennard was given a job at Carlyle.

September 11, 2001 came the attacks on the World Trade Centre and though less devastatingly, the Pentagon. Carlyle companies stood to do well from increased military spending in the "war on terror" and more immediately security contarcts such as clearing supposed anthrax threats. But news reports about the bin Laden family's involvment in Caryle forced them to luiqidate these holdings. .

In December 2001 Carlyle floated United Defence shares after newly approved military spending temporarily secured the Crusader project. The company earned $237 million in one day on the sale of shares, and on paper made more than $800 million. In April 2002, Cynthia McKinney, a Democratic congresswoman from Georgia called for an investigation into the September 11 attacks, pointing out the President’s extensive ties with the Carlyle Group.

In May 2002 the US Army was forced to investigate whether its own officials illegally lobbied Congress in support of the Crusader in the face of the program’s cancellation. In August 2002 United Defense announced the cancellation of the Crusader program, but said it had won the contract to build another gun that would replace Crusader.

Dame Pauline Neville-Jones, a former chairman of the British Joint Intelligence Committee, associate of Lord Hurd and adviser to John Major, now an adviser to Tory leader David Cameron, became chair of QinetiQ while still on the BBC board of governors. A supporter of the war in Iraq who disapproved of BBC critical reporting, she was one of the "two posh ladies" who ex-BBC chair Greg Dyke blamed for his resignation. (The other being Sarah Hogg, former head of John Major's policy advisory unit) Some people asked how QinteiQ and Dame Pauline's defence interests tallied with BBC "independence". The dame denied Dyke's claims, but resigned herself a month befor her term as governor was completed. http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1318577,00.html

Dame Pauline, who did well helping NatWest Markets advise accused war criminal Slobodan Milosevic on Serbia's telecomms privatisation, owned a 0.04 per cent stake in QinteiQ acquired at the same time as Carlyle bought in. She served as non-executive chairman for four years, retiring last summer, and was paid a salary of £135,000 in 2005-06. It is thought she would have paid no more than £60,000 for her holding, but with flotation it should be worth at least £440,000 giving her a profit of at least £380,000.

If you'd like that kind of money you could always try the national lottery.

For more info. on QinetiQ, its website is
http://www.qinetiq.com/

And now here's a little plug for the latest piece of ingenuity from QinetiQ: http://www.engadget.com/2006/02/08/qinetiq-exploding-ink-could-enable-point-and-click-f

QinetiQ exploding ink could enable point-and-click fuses

UK defense contractor QinetiQ has filed a patent for an explosive ink that could allow fuses to be designed on a computer and then printed directly onto ordinary paper. The ink is stable when wet, and only becomes active when a current is fed through a metal strip placed on top of the printed fuse. Once the fuse is activated, it can be used to trigger just about any kind of explosive device, from fireworks to munitions. (We don't even want to know what happens if you get a paper jam.) Somehow, we expect the defense industry to do its best to keep this one under lock and key, and we sort of hope they succeed, if only so we can avoid having to wait as TSA officials disassemble our portable inkjet every time we pass through customs.
..
I'm just waiting to see if Abu Hamza had any of this on order. The press keeps reporting "discoveries" made under Finsbury Park mosque, though he'd been ousted from there long before he was arrested.
I know the Bin Ladens disowned their prodigal son Osama and have given up their share in Carlyle holdings.
But I'd be careful of anyone offering to flog me hooky printer ink right now. What happens if there's a heat-making paper jam?

The Perils of Pauline

From breakfast in Belgrade....

SET to make £400,000 from a controversial defence deal which the National Audit Office has been asked to look into, a former Foreign Office intelligence chair and adviser to John Major, Dame Pauline Neville-Jones is off to Washington next month for a gathering of "security" and intelligence experts.

In a deal which could yield up to 800% profit for US arms equity group Carlyle, the government has agreed to the flotation of QinetiQ, the former Defence Establishment Research establishment in which it holds a 56 per cent stake. Carlyle bought a one third share of QinetiQ in March 2003, for £42 million. This is expected to be worth £341 million at flotation, if the company meets valuation hopes of £1.1 billion. Carlyle is expected to sell at least half its stake, potentially netting £170 million from the deal.

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,9067-1983170,00.html

Dame Pauline, a close aide of Lord Hurd as Tory Foreign Secretary, became a BBC governor, and was chair of QinetiQ until September last year, when she was replaced by former General Motors and BP executive Sir John Chisholm. She has recently been appointed a security adviser to new Tory leader David Camerdon, but still looks to benefit from the Carlyle deal.

The Independent reported on January 15, 2006

Fresh QinetiQ bonanza: Cameron's adviser to make nearly £400,000
MPs round on £1.1bn listing of old MoD body, where US venture capitalist paid £42.4m for a one-third stake

Dame Pauline Neville-Jones, who last week became a policy adviser to David Cameron, the new leader of the Conservative Party, is set to make around £400,000 from the controversial flotation of defence research group QinetiQ.
http://news.independent.co.uk/business/news/article338591.ece

This is not the first time Dame Pauline has reaped rich rewards from the coincidence of her official appointments with controversial deal involving public assets and privatisers.

As Foreign Office political director and chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee, Pauline Neville-Jones stood with Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd for maintaining the arms embargo on Bosnia. The Foreign Office made sure the BBC always referred to the Bosnian people and their government as "the Muslims", implying the war was between three equally bloodthirsty warring ethnic factions, so that as Old Etonian Hurd said, lifting the embargo would only "create a level killing field".

Neville-Jones was senior British official at the Dayton peace negiotiations imposed on Bosnia. "Balkan experts remember her from Dayton as a 'very tough' negotiator who was continually pushing the Bosnians to accept the de facto partition of their nation". (Francis Wheen, Guardian, 4 September 1996). Slobodan Milosevic must have found the British representatives very helpful.

Three months after quitting the Foreign Office, Lord Hurd obtained a new job with NatWest Markets, investment arm of the National Westminster Bank, on a salary of £250,000 a year. He had no known qualifications or experience in finance, but he presumably knew a lot of people, and he had an enthusiastic helper - none other than Dame Pauline.

On July 24, 1996, the dynamic (some say dire) duo went for a "discreet breakfast" in Belgrade with Slobodan Milosevic. The Serb president had shifted much of his own loot via discreet banks in Cyprus and property deals, but his government was hard up, workers were clamouring for unpaid wages, and he needed to get the army ready for trouble at home as well as in Kosova.

NatWest agreed to prepare the Serbian post and telephone system, PTT, for privatisation -- for a fee of more than $10million. It also obtained a contract to advise the Milosevic government on debt management. It eyed up Serbia's electricity industry and oil for further privatisation.

Dame Pauline has pointed out that it was largely Italian and Greek money that went into the telecomms deal. (Last thing we heard Italian authorities were still probing the amounts involved) NatWest's role -and hers and Lord Hurd's -was purely advisory. But none the less remunerative.

Dame Pauline became a BBC international governor in January 1998. Her role came in for critical attention in 2004 when the Corporation was brought to heel after the Hutton report. Some blamed her for Greg Dyke's resignation as director general. It was revealed that besides her intelligence past, she held £50,000 shares in defence firm QinetiQ and had earned £133,000 the previous year as chairman.
http://www.spinwatch.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=245

....to dinner in Arlington, VA

So who will host Dame Pauline in the United States next month?
On February 17-20 she will be at the 2006 "Intelligence Summit", being held at the Hyatt Regency Crystal City, Arlington, Virginia. Described as a "non-profit" (hence tax-free) "educational" forum, this is concerned with countering "terrorism", and threats to the security of the United States or its allies:

Homeland Security Session: Some of our allies have very different approaches to domestic security. What can we learn form Singapore, Taiwan, the United Kingdom and Israel? This is a must session for law enforcement and first responders from the national, state and local levels of every free nation around the world.
http://www.intelligencesummit.org/about.php

I'd hazard a guess that their definition of what constitutes "terrorism" and threats to security will be fairly wide, but that it will not include attacks on Cuba, blowing up Cuban airliners, coup plots in Chile and Venezuela, Mossad and MI6 operations in the Middle East, or the fascist "strategy of tension" in Italy. And certainly not bombs dropped from a safe strategic height.

Dame Pauline's fellow participants will include former high-ranking US air force and army officers, and former CIA directors John Deutch and James Wooley. Also Steve Pomerantz, former director of "counterterrorism" for the FBI. Not to be confused with Cointelpro, the FBI's programme of domestic infiltration, disruption and assassinations which has been reinstated as part of "Homeland Security"?

Besides the obviously counter-revolutionary bias, there appears to be a more particular slant on the "Intelligence Summit" Among others billed to appear are Colonel Oded Shoham, Israel army reservist, and Yoram Hessel , "former senior Mossad officer"., along with Israeli-born Yousef Bosasky, now director of the Congress Task Force on Terrorism.

Presided over by journalist John Loftus, the Intelligence Summit is tip of an iceberg in which right wing US and Zionist "security" interests have been compacted, the offshoot of a body that was originally supposed to combat racism!.

Originally incorporated as the International Holocaust Education Center(3), after 9/11 IHEC rapidly expanded its educational mission from fighting racism to fighting terrorism, and is now known as the Intelligence and Homeland Security Education Center.

Now that's what I call hijacking!

To sample its real flavour, I had a look at an an article by another Intelligence Summit speaker, Rachel Ehrenfeld, director of the American Center for Democracy, Published in 2004, and entitled "Blair's Palestine Problem", it perceives a dangerous influence in Downing Street:-

"However, the pressure put on Israel by the British premier Tony Blair and World Bank President James Wolfenson will only assist in the creation of an independent terrorist Palestine. Arafat’s replacement, Mahmoud Abbas, is widely perceived as being more pragmatic than his predecessor, especially since he keeps repeating his commitment to peace. But at the same time, like Arafat, he calls on the Palestinian people to "continue the struggle…to raise the Palestinian flag on the walls of Jerusalem, the capital of our independent Palestinian state."

Wow! If he really wants peace he should roll over on his back, tell his people to do likewise, and invite Kahane's mad followers from the 'States to tramp in over them. That might just almost satisfy the Ehrenfelds.

But Ehrenfeld's article does indicate where the Board of Deputies of British Jews gets its dafter ideas from. Referring to the Palestinian charity Interpal, which has since successfully sued the Board for linking it with terrorism, she wrote:

"Why does the Blair administration allow a HAMAS front to openly operate in the UK? After all, following US pressure, the European Union as well as the UK have outlawed HAMAS as a terrorist organization and prohibited the collection of money to assist terrorist organizations for any purpose, including civilian. Is the electoral support of the anti-Israeli lobby that crucial to the Blair administration staying in power?"
Blair;s Palestine Problem Dr. Rachel EhrenfeldFrontPageMagazine.com December 24, 2004 http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=16411

What is this powerful "anti-Israel lobby"? How come we had not seen it? Could Ehrenfeld perchance be alluding not to the Foreign Office Arabist bogy of old, but to the "Muslim vote"?

The latest issue of FrontPage says:
"With Hamas' victory in the Palestinian elections, the Islamist yearning to purge the world of Jews returns to the limelight. What causes this craving ...."

Don't know about any craving, but I can recognise a right-wing US-Zionist raving .....

I was going to say Dame Pauline, moving from breakfast in Belgrade to dinner in Arlington had come up in the world, but now I'm not so sure. Still, I suppose the money is still good. It has been at most stages in her career.

Gun Law and the Devil's Advocate

COULD THIS BE SADDAM'S SAVIOUR?
Arkan's associate, Giovanni Di Stefano



Law n'Order

LAW in "liberated" Iraq is reaching Western standards. Sure, wasn't Gun Law a Western?. Lawyer Adel al-Zubeidi was to represent former Vice-President Taha Yassin Ramadan in the forthcoming trial of Saddam Hussein and henchmen. But he was killed and another attorney wounded when gunmen shot up their vehicle on Tuesday.

This was the second killing of a defence lawyer. Saadoun al-Janabi was abducted by masked gunmen the day after the opening session. His body was found later with bullets in his head.

Holding the US-led occupation forces and the Iraqi government responsible for failing to maintain order, defence team head Khalil al-Dulaimi said if their security could not be guaranteed the November 28 trial would be rendered "null and void" because of the "very dangerous circumstances that prevent the presence" of the lawyers.

Abdel-Haq Alani, a key coordinator on the defense team, told Associated Presse from London that the Americans were obliged to protect defense lawyers as "the occupying power." The United States maintains that status ended when the coalition returned sovereignty to the Iraqis on June 28, 2004.

So US forces can carry on besieging and bombing Iraqi towns to get rid of "insurgents, and British tanks can smash their way through Basra to free SAS men who shot their way through a checkpoint with a carload of explosives. But we are not to call it an "occupation" any more, because Iraqis now enjoy "sovereignty"?!

OK, so I'm no lawyer. It would not surprise me if this time next year we'll be asked to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Russian tanks going to the assistance of the civil power in Hungary (with a little regime change); and the Egyptian people's welcome for Anglo-French forces coming to help keep the Suez canal running smoothly. (They tried to topple Nasser too, only on that occasion Washington put a block on things).

Getting back to these attacks, they do rather go against the idea that all the killings and ambushes in Iraq are carried out by Saddam Hussein supporters. Including the many killings of educated Iraqis, union and community activists, and professionals, that might suggest a systematic campaign, but largely go unreported. And the way foreign aid workers or journalists who don't toe the US line are the ones who get kidnapped.

I'm not awfully worried what happens to Saddam Hussein, except for what it shows about what's happening to many decent Iraqis. All the same, it would be nice for him to get a fair and proper trial - just think of all those past arms suppliers and friendly heads of government he could call as his witnesses. Can you hear me, Maggie?


Devil's Advocate

Like I say, I'm no lawyer. Nor according to the Law Society, is Giovanni Di Stefano. But recognised or not he is one of Saddam Hussein's defence team. Now if Di Stefanno had been shot I'd not be shedding tears except from laughter, but we must wait. Apparently the Anglo-Italian wheeler-dealer's departure for Baghdad was delayed by more pressing business.

As noted in "Private Eye" (28 October) he has been speaking on behalf of Nadine Milroy-Sloane, imprisoned for perverting the course of justice after falsely accusing Neil and Christine Hamilton of rape. (it couldn't happen to a nicer couple). Di Stefano told the "Daily Star" he believes "we have strong ground for appeal".

Miss Milroy-Sloane is certainly more appealing than a lot of his clients.
Giovanni Di Stefano first gained notice as a customer rather than provider of legal services. He appeared on six counts of fraudulent trading in 1984, and spent three years inside before being freed, he says on appeal, though others dispute this. Whatever the circumstances he turned up in Yugoslavia in 1991, and soon had Yugoslav citizenship granted by Milosevic.

He became an associate -political and business - of Zelijko Raznjatovic, better-known as Arkan, leader of the so-called Serb Volunteer Guard, or "Tigers", irregulars operating for the Serb Interior Ministry, whose opponents they removed or silenced. Along with ruthless ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, they enjoyed rape and pillage, robbing fellow-Serbs when they had run out of "enemy" civilians.

In 1997 Di Stefano wrote warning British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook that British soldiers would be killed if they made any attempt to bring in Arkan as a war criminal. The businessman-"lawyer" also boasted to the Sunday Times that he had met John Major several times, and that he had donated £10,000 to the Tory party before his conviction and another £20,000 after release. He insisted there was nothing irregular about this.

"I am a Conservative. I'm the epitome of conservative.
It is not an offence to give money to politicians for their services" (Sunday Times, July 27, 1997)

As Arkan expanded into various businesses in Serbia, from flowers to a football club, Di Stefano too began popping up as fairy godfather offering to invest money in cash-strapped British soccer clubs - Dundee, Norwich, Northampton Town, - and even a doomed Northumberland colliery. Somehow, while still abroad, he knew where to dangle his carrot.

Arkan, took to boasting that he would go to the Hague if wanted, and bring down all sorts of people. He was gunned down himself in a Belgrade hotel. His threats and his business activity had got up the nose of the bigger gangsters, both state and private. Then Di Stefano came under investigation in Italy in connection with business affairs. But somehow he survived to fight another day.
Tony Clarke, the Labour MP for Northampton South, who fought attempts by di Stefano to take over Northampton Town football club, said: "Everything about this man is shrouded in mystery. The authorities need to take a very close look at his legal qualifications, because if he is not legally qualified, heaven knows how that affects the cases he has been involved in."

Somehow, qualified, disqualified, or whatever, Di Stefano claimed some big name clients, big bad name that is - time-share racketeer John Palmer, road-rage killer and bullion robber Kenneth Noye, Dr.Harold Shipman, property tycoon and thug-employer Nicholas "tenants are scum" van Hoogstraten.

Some of these might just have been chosen for publicity-value, like his claims to have met Osama Bin Laden. But the "mystery man" seems to have been able to wave his magic wand for not only Palmer, but Hoogstraten. The latter has been restored to his Sussex mansion even though two of his associates are serving life for the murder of a business rival who got in the way.

Could Giovanni di Stefano yet pull it off for Saddam Hussein?
I doubt it. But then like I said, I'm no lawyer..


.