American Legendary Hero Eustace Mullins 1923-2010

American political writer, author, biographer, historian and the last surviving protege of the 20th century intellectual giant poet and writer, Ezra Pound, Eustace Mullins died Tuesday, Feb. 2, at the home of his caretaker in a small town in Texas.

In 1949, Mr Eustace Mullins saw first hand the injustice of Jewish Gulagism inside America when he visited Ezra Pound during his period of incarceration in 'St. Elizabeth's Hospital for the Mentally Ill' in Washington, D.C. between 1946 and 1959. Ezra Pound was being held as a political prisoner on the behest of Jewish cabal President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Ezra Pound, famed poet and PATRIOT, was convicted of treason by the U.S. of America for his calls for peace during WW2. He was well aware who was behind the manufactured conflict. His consciousness compelled him to act and when he attempted to alert the warring nations that JEW central-bankers and their pimps were responsible for the new Bankster war, he was arrested.

If you ask anyone these days who Ezra Pound was, 99.9 % would answer "poet" Sure, Ezra Pound was a poet, and his poetry was censored... but in reality more than his poetry, his whole person was censored, quarantined from the outside world, by the Rothschilds et al.... Ezra Pound became the most dangerous person on the planet. The Antichrist Freemasonic elite 'legal system' gave him but one choice either play insane or die by hanging... Had his message been propagated, the world would be very a very different place today... Eustace Mullins in his book This Difficult Individual, Ezra Pound touches on this subject while he was alive. Now gone and may God bless his soul, we can only hope that unpublished notes may surface. (More on Ezra Pound in a future post)

Initially Ezra Pound was not allowed any visitor either in Europe where he was caged like an animal (Much worse than Saddam Hussein) once back in America's madhouse he was found insane by eight 'certified federal psychiatrists', confined in a straight-jacket in a hospital for the Insane, overlooking Washington, DC, to rot for the rest of his life.

In 1949, EUSTACE MULLINS was introduced to EZRA POUND, who was then a librarian at the Library of Congress. He often visited Pound at the madhouse called 'St. Elizabeth Hospital' where Pound guided Mullins, urging him to research the global JEW conspiracy. He started his research that same year he met Ezra Pound, and spent three years going through 2000 books at the Library of Congress to get the material for the "SECRETS OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE"

Mullins' most notable work, Secrets of the Federal Reserve, the only book burned in Germany since Hitler, was written in consultation with George Stimpson, founder of the National Press Club. Mullins himself says that at the time he was writing his first book, he was on the staff of the Library of Congress, but that shortly after it came out in 1952, he was fired. This is repeated by Boller and George (They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, and Misleading Attributions, by Paul F. Boller, Jr. and John George, published by Oxford University Press (1989), p. 15. The word "discharged" is used, rather than fired.)

According to Eustace Mullins, based upon his research combined with the research and experience of Dr. Ezra Pound, there exists only ONE Conspiracy, that being, the Rothschild Central Bank Conspiracy.

All else are simply lower level spin offs conspiracies. They are dependent upon the major conspiracy. Eustace says...

"what isn't a conspiracy?"

All the same people at the top of the corporations, one way or the other, are Sabbatean/Freemasonic Rothschild agents, who would take their secrets to the graves.

When Eustace published his ground breaking documentation of the Federal Reserve Bank in 1952, he brought the story out into daylight for the first time. In order to counter what he did, Rothschild agents came up with the concept and called Eustace a "conspiracy theorist (i.e. nut)."

There is nothing more to the story. All else is distraction I'm afraid. The problem isn't in any way political, it's strictly economic. The simplicity of the problem and the solution alludes most all people on the planet. That's why the problem persists in plain sight.

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Eustace Mullins' last interview: by Gnostic Media

Eustace Mullins Pt. 1 Download

Eustice Mullins Pt. 2Download

The man who has all of the pieces to the global conspiracy puzzle - considered the greatest conspiracy theorist alive. But did he create these conspiracy theories? Or did he discover real conspiracies?

In honor of free speech and critical thinking I present you with the most powerful interview I've done to date with one of the most controversial - and yet respected - people in the entire world, Eustace Mullins, the last living protégé of Ezra Pound. Eustace joins me for this explosive two part series on the history of the Federal Reserve, WWI, WWII, the Rothschilds, JP Morgan, the New World Order, banking, Zionism, farming, G. Edward Griffin's The Creature from Jekyll Island, Ron Paul, the gold standard, and the state of world affairs. He'll be joining me with his only protégé, Jesse Lee, who will help guide our discussion through the many rabbit holes of history, uncovering some of the most startling information many of you have ever heard."





A MUST WATCH: Eustace Mullins in Canada

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Adolf Hitler alive: weird conspiracy theories

The discovery that the skull believed to be Adolf Hitler's was actually a woman's has reignited conspiracy theories

Rumours of Hitler’s survival have been widespread for years, with some even claiming he is alive today.

While that is unlikely – the Nazi leader would celebrate his 121st birthday in April – the possibility that he made it out of the Berlin bunker has been seriously put forward on several occasions. Here are four of the strangest theories.

Hitler fled on a 'ghost convoy' to Argentina

Several prominent Nazis – including 'architect of the Holocaust' Adolf Eichmann and Dr Josef Mengele, the 'Angel of Death' – certainly did flee to Argentina.

And the arrival of two U-Boats in the South American country in the weeks after the war led to more speculation that Hitler joined his former underlings there. But Heinz Schäffer, one of the officers on the U-Boats, has alwas strenuously denied being part of a 'ghost convoy'.

The two U-Boats, U-530 and U-977, surrendered at Mar del Plata in Argentina in July and August 1945 respectively.

Hitler 'fled to Antarctica in a U-Boat'

Among the theories of Hitler's whereabouts after the fall of Nazi Germany in 1945 was that he was smuggled out of Germany and onto a U-Boat.

From there, the story goes, the Nazi leader was taken to a secret military base in Antarctic. In the late 1950s British and American forces found the base and destroyed it with atomic weapons.

The theory falls down on three major points. One, there was never a German military presence in Antarctica, despite a pre-war mission there to see whether a whaling base would be feasible.

Two, while the two U-Boats mentioned above did arrive in Argentina after the war, they could not possibly have made it to Antarctica. The sea ice in the winter blocks all access to the land where any base would have been.

Three, while atomic bombs were detonated in the southern hemisphere in 1958, they were atmospheric tests, hundreds of miles above the surface of the Earth. All three took place between 1400 and 2150 miles north of Antarctica.

Using secret rocket technology, Hitler fled to a Nazi base on the moon

The point when Hitler conspiracy theories lose touch with reality altogether. The Nazis' development late in the war of high-technology weapons – including the V2, an early ballistic missile, and the Me 262 jet fighter – inspired some to believe that Germany had secretly won the space race.

It was also suggested that the Nazis had made contact with UFOs and that they had made it to the Moon as early as 1942. Furthermore, Russian and American astronauts actually made it there in the 1950s, and stayed at a Nazi lunar base.

For added measure, it is claimed that the Moon is perfectly habitable for humans, but that NASA claims it is barren and airless in order to stop Third World countries visiting it.

Hitler is alive and well and staying in San Diego

Well, not really. This one is a joke – but there is a structure, visible on Google Maps, that might make you think otherwise. A barracks building in the US Navy base in San Diego's Coronado island, known as the 'Seal's Lair', is very definitely in the shape of a swastika.

In 2007, the US Navy said it was going to redesign the 1960s-built edifice, spending around $600,000 (£375,000) to make it less master-racy. They admitted they noticed the shape when it was built, but didn't think anyone would spot it from the ground.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/6242144/Adolf-Hitler-alive-weird-conspiracy-theories.html

So you thought you knew Hitler?

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The Real Reasons Behind Fed Secrecy

By Ron Paul

Last week I was very pleased that the Financial Services Committee held a hearing on the Federal Reserve Transparency Act, HR 1207. The bill has 295 cosponsors and there is also strong support for the companion bill in the Senate. This hearing was a major step forward in getting the bill passed.

I was pleased that the hearing was well-attended, especially considering that it was held on a Friday at nine o’clock in the morning! I have been talking about the immense, unchecked power of the Federal Reserve for many years, while the attention of Congress was always on other things. It was gratifying to see my colleagues asking probing questions and demonstrating genuine concern about this important issue as well.

The witness testifying in favor of HR 1207 made some very strong points, which was no surprise considering the bill is simply common sense. It was also no surprise that the witness testifying against the bill had no good arguments as to why a full audit should not be conducted promptly. He attempted to make the case that the fed is already sufficiently accountable to Congress and that the current auditing policy is adequate. The fact is that the Fed comes to Congress and talks about only what it wants to talk about, and the GAO audits only what the current laws allow to be audited. The really important things however, are off limits. There are no convincing arguments that it is in the best interests of the American people for anything the Fed does to be off limits.

It has been argued that full disclosure of details of funding facilities like TALF and PDCF that enabled massive bailouts of Wall Street would damage the financial position of those firms and destabilize the economy. In other words, if the American people knew how rotten the books were at those banks and how terribly they messed up, they would never willingly invest in them, and they would fail. Failure is not an option for friends of the Fed. Therefore, the funds must be stolen from the people in the dark of night. This is not how a free country works. This is not how free markets work. That is crony corporatism and instead of being a force for economic stabilization, it totally undermines it.

If the Fed gave its actual arguments against a full audit, they would not have mentioned anything about political independence or economic stability. Instead they would admit they don’t want to be audited because they enjoy their current situation too much. Under the guise of currency control, they are able to help out powerful allies on Wall Street, in exchange for lucrative jobs or who-knows-what favors later on. An audit would expose the Fed as a massive fraud perpetrated on this country, enriching a privileged few bankers at the top of our economic food chain, and leaving the rest of us with massively devalued dollars which we are forced to use by law. An audit would make people realize that, while Bernie Madoff defrauded a lot of investors for a lot of money, the Fed has defrauded every one of us by destroying the value of our money. An honest and full accounting of how the money system really works in this country would mean there is not much of a chance the American people would stand for it anymore.

Iran Is Still NOT The Problem

By Karl Schwarz


Americans need to wake up to the fact that the Israelis, US, UK and France continue to try to manipulate world media and world opinion regarding Iran. They are knowingly lying to achieve that end.

I met Dr. ElBaradei and his wife one Saturday morning in Vienna and we had a long talk. He is the Director General of the IAEA, the non-proliferation watch dog of the UN. The IAEA is based in Vienna Austria.

Fact: Iran has absolutely no nuclear weapons program. The CIA has known that all along, but lies are the operative word of the day, every day, at the CIA, DoD and our federal government.

Fact: It is the CIA that is waging a covert war of terrorism, provocation and attempts at internal disruption. That is happening right now in the Baluchistan province of Iran where the IPI Pipeline it being built connecting Iran oil and natural gas supplies to Pakistan and India.

Fact: There are greedy interests in the UK and US that want to be the ones selling oil and natural gas to Pakistan and India, via their yet to be achieved 'pipeline dream' of Turkmenistan, through Afghanistan and Pakistan to the ocean.

Fact: The easiest route from Turkmenistan to the ocean is across IRAN, but then the US and UK would have to eat crow and change their policies.

Fact: The IAEA has inspected the Iran facilities on multiple occasions, even surprise inspections, and no evidence whatsoever has been found of any nuclear weapons program.

Fact: Iran has the world's second largest known reserves of uranium. As a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran has the absolute right to build nuclear generation plants to make electricity to power their economy. Problem is Israel does not want any nation in the Middle East to be prosperous and have modern infrastructure and economies.

This is why Iraq had to be destroyed according to Zionist Jew Neocon Edward Luttwak, stated in 1991 before Desert Storm:

"Saddam is not like the Saudi Princes who spend the bulk of their lives outside of their country, and who fritter away the Kingdom's oil profits on prostitutes and bottles of champagne in Paris. No, Saddam is building railways! Creating electrical networks! Highways and other important elements of a serious State infrastructure! After eights years of war against the Iranian regime of Khomeini, he desperately needs to demobilize his Republican Guard, which incorporates so many of this technical elite, in order to rebuild the war-devastated country. These people are his technicians, his engineers. If they are put to work in the way Saddam wishes, they will rapidly make Iraq the most advanced power in the region, and we cannot allow this to happen."

That was in my email update December 5, 2005 titled 'Enemies Within Our Gates' and was also cited in the book "Neoconned".

Fact: They even have the absolute right to enrich and use their own uranium for peaceful purposes.

Fact: Certain parties in the US and UK do not want Iran to process uranium and sell it to India and other nations to power their nuclear electrical plants. That would cut into the monopoly (and profits generated by same) that the US and UK have on the enrichment and sale of enriched uranium to generate electricity.

It is all about control, profiteering, not a non-existent Iran nuclear weapons program.

Fact: Now we have Robert Gates pushing a lie that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons. Never, not once, has the DoD admitted that on one side they are planning for war and on the other side the CIA is trying to create the excuse through lies just like they did in Afghanistan and Iraq.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1253820685869&pagename=JPost%2FJP Article%2FShowFull

I find such media manipulation from the French to be quite disgusting, since it was that nation that aided Israel with nuclear technology so it could become a rogue nuclear weapon possessing nation. Israel has never signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and actually uses its possession of nuclear warheads to extort other nations, including the US.

What Israel could not get from the French, they stole nuclear weapons technology from the US with insider help within our government and certain US DOE labs.

I find Secretary of Defense Robert Gates knowingly lying about the matter to be equally despicable.

Fact: The US lied about Afghanistan and they lied about Iraq. Now they are lying about Iran but the greedy elite thugs of the UK and US do not control or profit from the vast oil, natural gas and uranium reserves that Iran has. That is the problem.

Fact: Certain greedy elite want to be the ones to profit from the sale of those Iranian assets, just like they are trying to do in their grand fiascos in Afghanistan and Iraq. That is their objective with their latest wave of lies.

Fact: If you have never read about such, the Rense website has had a US Air Force paper posted for years so people can read the ugly truth about Israel. If you have never read it, take to time to learn how a 'shitty little nation' is actually a nuclear terrorist and blackmail artist to get their way in the Middle East.

http://www.rense.com/general35/isrnuk.htm

Fact: During the Bush Administration the CIA intentionally, willfully, and with intent to entrap, tried to sneak fake NUCLEAR WEAPON PLANS TO IRAN.

http://articles.latimes.com/2006/jan/04/world/fg-intel4

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CIA Gave Iran Bomb Plans, Book Says

By Josh Meyer, Times Staff Writer| January 04, 2006

WASHINGTON - In a clumsy effort to sabotage Iran's nuclear program, the CIA in 2004 intentionally handed Tehran some top-secret bomb designs laced with a hidden flaw that U.S. officials hoped would doom any weapon made from them, according to a new book about the U.S. intelligence agency. But the Iranians were tipped to the scheme by the Russian defector hired by the CIA to deliver the plans and may have gleaned scientific information useful for designing a bomb, writes New York Times reporter James Risen in "State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration."

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http://www.gulfnews.com/region/Iraq/10225290.html

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'CIA ignored facts on nuclear weapon plans'

By Joby Warrick Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service

Published: July 02, 2008, 00:08

Washington -- A former CIA operative, who says he tried to warn the agency about faulty intelligence on Iraqi weapons programmes, now contends that CIA officials also ignored evidence that Iran had suspended work on a nuclear bomb. The onetime undercover agent, who has been barred by CIA from using his real name, filed a motion in federal court late on Friday asking the government to declassify legal documents describing what he says was a deliberate suppression of findings on Iran that were contrary to agency views at the time. The former operative alleged in a 2004 lawsuit that CIA fired him after he repeatedly clashed with senior managers over his attempts to file reports that challenged the conventional wisdom about weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the Middle East.

End Insert

Fact: Anyone in the CIA that dares to report that IRAN DOES NOT HAVE ANY NUCLEAR WEAPONS PROGRAM are drummed out of the CIA and then attacked to discredit them.

Fact: The US government thinks nothing at all about such things a 'baiting', lying, manipulation of intelligence and the truth and even ENTRAPMENT. Even many of the 'terrorists' that have been arrested since 9-11-2001 were instances that the CIA or FBI were literally the sellers of bomb making equipment and then trumpeting about what a great job they are doing defending America.

If one follows the media regarding Iran, the lies, the constant misstatement of facts, just like Afghanistan and Iraq, it is apparent that they are trying to manipulate and stage another armed robbery of the Iranian people just like they have done to Afghanistan and Iraq.

Wake up America. These idiots in DC think America can afford endless wars and no, we as a nation cannot.

“A Whole Lot Like Déjà Vu”
Congressman Paul presents a balanced view of the Iranian nuclear program while pointing out who really benefits from the administration’s more-of-the-same foreign policy.

Iran: US, UK, France deceiving world on their nukes

Iran's ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency has accused the US, Britain, and France of deceiving the international community over their nuclear programs.

In an exclusive interview with Press TV, Ali Asghar Soltaniyeh rejected remarks by President Barack Obama of US, British Premier Gordon Brown, and Nicolas Sarkozy of France over Iran's nuclear program.

The three leaders earlier attacked the Islamic Republic over its second under-construction enrichment facility, located 100 kilometers south of Tehran, calling it a "deception."

"I categorically reject that there have been any concealment or any deception," Soltaniyeh said on Saturday.

IAEA Safeguards Agreements declared that Iran is only obliged to inform the UN nuclear watchdog of the existence of enrichment plants 180 days before the introduction of nuclear materials into the facility.

The Iranian envoy noted that he gave a letter to the agency on September 21 and informed the deputy general, elaborating that its new plant would be operational in about 540 days.

He added that there were no obligations to inform the IAEA sooner, according to the agency's document 153.

"It is a pity that none of these three leaders have legal advisers to inform them that according to comprehensive safeguards we are only obliged to inform six months before we put nuclear material."

"This site does not have any nuclear material at all now," according to Iran's representative to the IAEA.

"The problem is that we are the victim of negligence of those who claim that they know in fact the international law. They are talking in the UN but they are not aware of the very principles of the Statue of the IAEA."

Soltaniyeh also clarified that Washington, London, and Paris deceive the people around the world by violating the Non-Proliferation Treaty articles.

"Those three countries in fact have violated for the last 40 years NPT articles."

"The United Kingdom has under secret program of the nuclear submarines so-called trident with over 30 billion pounds and the people of the world and even the British people are not well aware of that. This is a real deception that Mr. Brown has to answer the international community because this is a shocking threat to the international peace and security.

"France is also working on the nuclear weapon programs continuously."

"Americans are working hard on the nuclear weapon posture review. These are all deceptions and concealment."

The western countries have a "long-term strategy" and a "hidden agenda" to "destroy and jeopardize the spirit of cooperation between Iran and the IAEA in order to find an excuse and pretext for sanctions and other measures," Soltaniyeh concluded. PressTV

Obama, Sarkozy and Brown's Iran Nuclear Speech at G-20 Summit :

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Good morning. We are here to announce that yesterday in Vienna, the United States, the United Kingdom, and France presented detailed evidence to the IAEA demonstrating that the Islamic Republic of Iran has been building a covert uranium enrichment facility near Qom for several years.

Earlier this week, the Iranian government presented a letter to the IAEA that made reference to a new enrichment facility, years after they had started its construction. The existence of this facility underscores Iran’s continuing unwillingness to meet its obligations under U.N. Security Council resolutions and IAEA requirements. We expect the IAEA to immediately investigate this disturbing information, and to report to the IAEA Board of Governors.

Now, Iran’s decision to build yet another nuclear facility without notifying the IAEA represents a direct challenge to the basic compact at the center of the non-proliferation regime. These rules are clear: All nations have the right to peaceful nuclear energy; those nations with nuclear weapons must move towards disarmament; those nations without nuclear weapons must forsake them. That compact has largely held for decades, keeping the world far safer and more secure. And that compact depends on all nations living up to their responsibilities.

This site deepens a growing concern that Iran is refusing to live up to those international responsibilities, including specifically revealing all nuclear-related activities. As the international community knows, this is not the first time that Iran has concealed information about its nuclear program. Iran has a right to peaceful nuclear power that meets the energy needs of its people. But the size and configuration of this facility is inconsistent with a peaceful program. Iran is breaking rules that all nations must follow — endangering the global non-proliferation regime, denying its own people access to the opportunity they deserve, and threatening the stability and security of the region and the world.

It is time for Iran to act immediately to restore the confidence of the international community by fulfilling its international obligations. We remain committed to serious, meaningful engagement with Iran to address the nuclear issue through the P5-plus-1 negotiations. Through this dialogue, we are committed to demonstrating that international law is not an empty promise; that obligations must be kept; and that treaties will be enforced.

And that’s why there’s a sense of urgency about the upcoming meeting on October 1st between Iran, the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, and Germany. At that meeting, Iran must be prepared to cooperate fully and comprehensively with the IAEA to take concrete steps to create confidence and transparency in its nuclear program and to demonstrate that it is committed to establishing its peaceful intentions through meaningful dialogue and concrete actions.

To put it simply: Iran must comply with U.N. Security Council resolutions and make clear it is willing to meet its responsibilities as a member of the community of nations. We have offered Iran a clear path toward greater international integration if it lives up to its obligations, and that offer stands. But the Iranian government must now demonstrate through deeds its peaceful intentions or be held accountable to international standards and international law.

I should point out that although the United Kingdom, France, and the United States made the presentation to Vienna, that Germany, a member of the P5-plus-1, and Chancellor Merkel in particular, who could not be here this morning, wished to associate herself with these remarks.

I would now like to turn to President Sarkozy of France for a brief statement.

PRESIDENT SARKOZY: (As translated.) Ladies and gentlemen, we have met yesterday for a meeting — a summit meeting of the Security Council on disarmament and nuclear disarmament. I repeated my conviction that Iran was taking the international community on a dangerous path. I have recalled all the attempts that we have made to offer a negotiated solution to the Iranian leaders without any success, which what has been revealed today is exceptional. Following the enriching plant of Natanz in 2002, it is now the Qom one which is revealed. It was designed and built over the past several years in direct violation of resolutions from the Security Council and from the IAEA. I am expecting from the IAEA an exhaustive, strict, and rigorous investigation, as President Obama just said.

We were already in a very severe confidence crisis. We are now faced with a challenge, a challenge made to the entire international communities. The six will meet with the Iranian representatives in Geneva. Everything — everything must be put on the table now.

We cannot let the Iranian leaders gain time while the motors are running. If by December there is not an in-depth change by the Iranian leaders, sanctions will have to be taken. This is for the peace and stability. Thank you.

PRIME MINISTER BROWN: America, the United Kingdom, and France are at one. Iran’s nuclear program is the most urgent proliferation challenge that the world faces today.

As President Obama and President Sarkozy have just said, the level of deception by the Iranian government, and the scale of what we believe is the breach of international commitments, will shock and anger the whole international community, and it will harden our resolve.

Confronted by the serial deception of many years, the international community has no choice today but to draw a line in the sand. On October the 1st, Iran must now engage with the international community and join the international community as a partner. If it does not do so, it will be further isolated.

And I say on behalf of the United Kingdom today, we will not let this matter rest. And we are prepared to implement further and more stringent sanctions.

Let the message that goes out to the world be absolutely clear: that Iran must abandon any military ambitions for its nuclear program. Thank you.

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Goldstone: Holocaust shaped view on war crimes

Judge Richard Goldstone, the head of a United Nations commission that this week charged Israel with committing war crimes in the Gaza Strip during its offensive there last winter, believes bringing war criminals to justice stems from the lessons of the Holocaust, according to a lecture he delivered in Israel in 2000.

Goldstone spoke about the subject at Jerusalem's Yakar: Center for Tradition and Creativity, at a lecture attended by former Supreme Court president Aharon Barak. The Israeli jurist introduced Goldstone as "a dear friend" with "very deep ties to Israel." Goldstone, in turn, said Barak was his hero and inspiration.

In the lecture, concerning international efforts to bring war criminals to justice, Goldstone said the Holocaust has shaped legal protocol on war, adding that it was "the worst war crime in the world."

He also said the perception of war crimes against humanity should resonate differently to Jewish ears, in light of how the Holocaust shaped conventions relevant to the subject.

Goldstone added that as a jurist, he viewed the Holocaust as a unique occurrence because of how it affected judicial protocol on war, as well as international and humanitarian judicial approaches.

The laws that had been in place before the Holocaust were not equipped to deal with crimes of the Holocaust's scale and therefore sought to define a new crime, which they labeled a crime against humanity, he said.

These crimes were so great, he explained, they went beyond their direct victims or the countries in which they were perpetrated, to harm humanity as a whole. This definition, he said, meant that perpetrators were to be prosecuted anywhere, by any country.

This rational, he went on to say, constituted the basis for the concept of universal jurisdiction, which is being applied by some countries where Israel Defense Forces officers are charged for alleged violations during their command in the West Bank and Gaza.

The formative event of the universal jurisdiction concept, Goldstone told listeners, was the trial that Israel gave the high-ranking Nazi officer Adolf Eichman in 1961.

The international tribunals that judged Serbian war criminals for their actions in Bosnia, and the establishment of tribunals to review the actions of perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide - in which South Africa-born Goldstone served as chief prosecutor - also relied on lessons drawn from the Holocaust, he said at the lecture.

He noted that no similar courts were set up to look into the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia in the '70s or Saddam Hussein's acts against Iraqi Kurds.

The first time such tribunals were set up were for Bosnia, Goldtone said, because this was the first time after the Holocaust that such occurrences happened in "Europe's backyard." The war in Bosnia led to the formation of tribunals on crimes against humanity, he said, because European men with "blue eyes and light skin" again carried out actions similar to those observed in the Holocaust.

Israel, he added, was one of the first countries to support the formation of permanent court of law for crimes against humanity - a proposal that came up following the successful performance of the special tribunals on Bosnia.

However, that changed, he said, after Egypt insisted at the Rome conference that the mandate of this permanent court include occupied territories. This prompted Israel to join the six other countries that voted against the formation of the International Court of Justice, including the United States, China and Libya.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1115581.html

The perils of an Israeli airstrike on Iran

Israel Crosses the Threshold

American and Israeli military planners have been examining options for an attack on Iran for almost three decades. There is no shortage of possible targets: Iran has dozens of nuclear-related sites that are known to western officials.

Yet military experts in Washington and Tel Aviv acknowledge that a surprise airstrike would be likely to succeed only in delaying Iran’s development of nuclear weapons. It would also present daunting logistical and political challenges with no guarantee that even a sustained assault on known facilities would eradicate Tehran’s nuclear threat.

With President Barack Obama committed to diplomatic pressure, the most likely military scenarios involve Israeli airstrikes that would require mid-air refuelling and long flights through potentially hostile Arab air space. “Anyone who meets regularly with senior Israeli officials knows that Israel is considering military options ... with an understanding that they pose serious problems and risks,” said Anthony Cordesman, a former Pentagon planner.

The three likeliest targets for an Israeli attack are reactors at Bushehr and Arak and a centrifuge production facility at Natanz. All are 1,000 miles or more from Israel, at the outer operating margins of Israeli air force bombers.

The Bushehr light water reactor is being built and fuelled by Russia and is not yet operational. Any attack on it would be certain to infuriate Moscow and might provoke the Russians into supplying Iran with more advanced anti-aircraft defences.

The heavy water reactor at Arak has been at least partially sheltered from air attack and is not expected to be completed for several years.

The Natanz facilities have also been sheltered underground and are defended by short-range Russian TOR-M surfaceto-air missiles.

The Israeli air force is equipped with US-supplied GBU-28 earth-penetrating bombs designed to destroy underground targets. Israel may also have developed its own variant of a nuclear-tipped bunker-busting bomb.

Yet the real problem for military planners is that no outside agency has a clear idea of where else Iran may have hidden its weapons-related technologies, notably the long-range missiles that might one day deliver nuclear warheads.

“It is doubtful that even the US knows all the potential targets,” said Cordesman. “They may now be in too many places for an Israeli strike to destroy Iran’s capabilities.”

US experts believe that while Israel unquestionably has the military capability — and may have the political will — to mount a long-range attack, it could not sustain the kind of long-term barrage that Washington launched against Baghdad in the early phases of two Gulf wars.

The diplomatic uproar that would be certain to follow any Israeli attack might limit Tel Aviv to a one-off operation that it could never hope to repeat. “That would not be on the scale required to do more than delay parts of the Iranian programme,” said Cordesman.

Only if America joined in would Iran have reason to worry. There is no immediate likelihood of a US military strike; but there are still some in Tel Aviv who believe that an Israeli raid might force Obama’s hand and persuade the Pentagon to join the attack.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article6850890.ece

Tests on skull fragment cast doubt on Adolf Hitler suicide story

The Observer, Sunday 27 September 2009

Bone with bullet hole found by Russians in 1946 came from an unknown woman, not the German leader

A general view of what Russian officials claim to be a fragment of Adolf Hitler's skull, at an exhibition in Moscow, Wed April 26, 2000. Photograph: Mikhail Metzel/AP

In countless biographies of Adolf Hitler the story of his final hours is recounted in the traditional version: committing suicide with Eva Braun, he took a cyanide pill and then shot himself on 30 April 1945, as the Russians bombarded Berlin.

Some historians expressed doubt that the Führer had shot himself, speculating that accounts of Hitler's death had been embellished to present his suicide in a suitably heroic light. But a fragment of skull, complete with bullet hole, which was taken from the bunker by the Russians and displayed in Moscow in 2000, appeared to settle the argument.

Until now. In the wake of new revelations, the histories of Hitler's death may need to be rewritten – and left open-ended. American researchers claim to have demonstrated that the skull fragment, secretly preserved for decades by Soviet intelligence, belonged to a woman under 40, whose identity is unknown. DNA analyses performed on the bone, now held by the Russian State Archive in Moscow, have been processed at the genetics lab of the University of Connecticut. The results, broadcast in the US by a History Channel documentary, Hitler's Escape, astonished scientists.

According to Connecticut archaeologist and bone specialist Nick Bellantoni, it was clear from the outset that something was amiss. "The bone seemed very thin; male bone tends to be more robust," he said. "And the sutures where the skull plates come together seemed to correspond to someone under 40." In April 1945 Hitler turned 56.

Bellantoni had flown to Moscow to inspect the gruesome Hitler trophies at the State Archive, which included the skull fragment as well as bloodstains from the bunker sofa on which Hitler and Braun were believed to have committed suicide. He was allowed only one hour with the Hitler trove, during which time he applied cotton swabs and took DNA samples. "I had the reference photos the Soviets took of the sofa in 1945 and I was seeing the exact same stains on the fragments of wood and fabric in front of me, so I knew I was working with the real thing."

The samples were then flown back to Connecticut. At the university's centre for applied genetics, Linda Strausbaugh closed her lab for three days to work exclusively on the Hitler project. "We used the same routines and controls that would have been used in a crime lab," she said. To her surprise, a small amount of viable DNA was extracted. She then replicated this through a process known as molecular copying to provide enough material for analysis. "We were very lucky to get a reading, despite the limited amount of genetic information," she said.

The result was extraordinary. According to witnesses, the bodies of Hitler and Braun had been wrapped in blankets and carried to the garden just outside the Berlin bunker, placed in a bomb crater, doused with petrol and set ablaze.

But the skull fragment the Russians dug up outside the Führerbunker in 1946 could never have belonged to Hitler. The skull DNA was incontestably female. The only positive physical proof that Hitler had shot himself had suddenly been rendered worthless. The result is a mystery reopened and, for conspiracy theorists the tantalising possibility that Hitler did not die in the bunker.

For decades after the war the fate of Hitler's corpse was shrouded in secrecy. No picture or film was made public. As the Soviet Army secured control of Berlin in May 1945, Russian forensic specialists under the command of the counterintelligence unit Smersh (an acronym for "Death to Spies") dug up what was presumed to be the dictator's body outside the bunker and performed a post-mortem examination behind closed doors. A part of the skull was absent, presumably blown away by Hitler's suicide shot, but what remained of his jaw coincided with his dental records, a fact reportedly confirmed when the Russians showed his surviving dental work to the captured assistants of Hitler's dentist. The autopsy also reported that Hitler, as had been rumoured, had only one testicle.

But Stalin remained suspicious. In 1946 a second secret mission was dispatched to Berlin. In the same crater from which Hitler's body had been recovered, the new team found what it believed was the missing skull fragment with a bullet exit wound through it. The Russians also took fragments of Hitler's bloodstained sofa.

Even this failed to satisfy Stalin, who clamped a secrecy order on all matters related to Hitler's death. Unknown to the world, Hitler's corpse was interred at a Smersh centre in Magdeburg, East Germany. There it remained long after Stalin's death in 1953. Finally, in 1970, the KGB dug up the corpse, cremated it and secretly scattered the ashes in a river. Only the jawbone, the skull fragment and the bloodstained sofa segments were preserved in the deep archives of Soviet intelligence. The bunker was destroyed in 1947 and eventually paved over. Then, in 2000, the Russian State Archive in Moscow staged an exhibition, The Agony of the Third Reich. The skull fragment was displayed, but only photographs of Hitler's jawbone were on view. The head of the archive, Sergei Mironenko, said he had no doubt the skull fragment was authentic. "It is not just some bone we found in the street, but a fragment of a skull that was found in a hole where Hitler's body had been buried," he said.

In the wake of Bellantoni and Strausbaugh's findings, Mironenko's confidence was clearly misplaced. But could the fragment of skull belong to Eva Braun, who died at 33 and was laid alongside her beloved Führer in the same crater? "We know the skull corresponds to a woman between the ages of 20 and 40," said Bellantoni, but he is sceptical about the Braun thesis. "There is no report of Eva Braun having shot herself or having been shot afterwards. It could be anyone. Many people were killed around the bunker area."

Sixty-four years later, the world is still in the dark about what really happened in Hitler's bunker on 30 April 1945.

Uki Goñi is author of The Real Odessa (Granta), about the escape of Nazi war criminals from Europe

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/27/adolf-hitler-suicide-skull-fragment

The Great Escape?

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BILDERBERGERS WANT GLOBAL CURRENCY NOW

By James P. Tucker, Jr. | American Free Press

But nationalists and populists around the world ready to fight to retain financial sovereignty

Bilderberg has had front-men call anew for creating a global currency and establishing major European Union-style regions for the administrative convenience of a planned world government. Both steps were taken in September, one by the new Bilderberg-crowned prime minister of Japan and one separately by the UN.

The Geneva-based UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) called for a global currency in a report made public on September 7. UN countries should agree on a global reserve bank to issue the currency and to monitor the national exchange rates of its members, UNCTAD said. The dollar’s role in international trade should be reduced to protect emerging markets from the “confidence game” of financial speculation, it said.

Heiner Flassbeck, a former German deputy finance minister, is co-author of the report calling for a global currency. He worked with then U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers in 1997-98 to contain the Asian financial crisis. Summers is a longtime Bilderberg luminary and has been photographed by AFP at annual secret Bilderberg confabs.

Eliminating national currencies has long been a goal of Bilderberg as a crucial step in its plan to establish a world government. A nation’s currency is a symbol of sovereignty, so Bilderberg wants to divide the world into three giant regions, each with its regional currency, for the administrative convenience of its world government bureaucrats.

Bilderberg used its immense power to get Yukio Hatoyama’s Democratic Party of Japan elected over the Liberal Democratic Party, which had led the nation for 64 years. Hatoyama obediently called for an Asian economic bloc, similar to the EU, complete with a regional currency.

Bilderberg’s goal is an “Asian-Pacific Union” and an “American Union,” both modeled after the EU. The EU has its common currency, the euro, and a European Parliament that can impose laws on the once sovereign nations of Europe and a European Court superior to the highest courts of member states. The EU is effectively a single super-state.

The “American Union” is to evolve from the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, as it extends throughout the Western Hemisphere. The common currency is to be the “amero.” Fortunately, Bilderberg’s efforts in the Western Hemisphere have been stalled but the campaign continues using “free trade” propaganda.

Ultimately, the UN is to function as a world government with the General Assembly serving as a world parliament. Bilderberg, a secret organization of international financiers and political leaders, will serve as a world shadow government that dictates to the UN.

AFP correspondent James P. Tucker Jr. is a veteran journalist who spent many years as a member of the “elite” media in Washington. Tucker is the author of Jim Tucker’s Bilderberg Diary. Bound in an attractive full-color softcover and containing 272 pages—loaded with photos—the book recounts Tucker’s experiences over the last quarter century at Bilderberg meetings. $25 from AFP. No charge for S&H in U.S.

Keeping Iran honest

Iran's secret nuclear plant will spark a new round of IAEA inspections and lead to a period of even greater transparency

By Scott Ritter

It was very much a moment of high drama. Barack Obama, fresh from his history-making stint hosting the UN security council, took a break from his duties at the G20 economic summit in Pittsburgh to announce the existence of a secret, undeclared nuclear facility in Iran which was inconsistent with a peaceful nuclear programme, underscoring the president's conclusion that "Iran is breaking rules that all nations must follow".

Obama, backed by Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy, threatened tough sanctions against Iran if it did not fully comply with its obligations concerning the international monitoring of its nuclear programme, which at the present time is being defined by the US, Britain and France as requiring an immediate suspension of all nuclear-enrichment activity.

The facility in question, said to be located on a secret Iranian military installation outside of the holy city of Qom and capable of housing up to 3,000 centrifuges used to enrich uranium, had been monitored by the intelligence services of the US and other nations for some time. But it wasn't until Monday that the IAEA found out about its existence, based not on any intelligence "scoop" provided by the US, but rather Iran's own voluntary declaration. Iran's actions forced the hand of the US, leading to Obama's hurried press conference Friday morning.

Beware politically motivated hype. While on the surface, Obama's dramatic intervention seemed sound, the devil is always in the details. The "rules" Iran is accused of breaking are not vague, but rather spelled out in clear terms. In accordance with Article 42 of Iran's Safeguards Agreement, and Code 3.1 of the General Part of the Subsidiary Arrangements (also known as the "additional protocol") to that agreement, Iran is obliged to inform the IAEA of any decision to construct a facility which would house operational centrifuges, and to provide preliminary design information about that facility, even if nuclear material had not been introduced. This would initiate a process of complementary access and design verification inspections by the IAEA.

This agreement was signed by Iran in December 2004. However, since the "additional protocol" has not been ratified by the Iranian parliament, and as such is not legally binding, Iran had viewed its implementation as being voluntary, and as such agreed to comply with these new measures as a confidence building measure more so than a mandated obligation.

In March 2007, Iran suspended the implementation of the modified text of Code 3.1 of the Subsidiary Arrangements General Part concerning the early provisions of design information. As such, Iran was reverting back to its legally-binding requirements of the original safeguards agreement, which did not require early declaration of nuclear-capable facilities prior to the introduction of nuclear material.

While this action is understandably vexing for the IAEA and those member states who are desirous of full transparency on the part of Iran, one cannot speak in absolute terms about Iran violating its obligations under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. So when Obama announced that "Iran is breaking rules that all nations must follow", he is technically and legally wrong.

There are many ways to interpret Iran's decision of March 2007, especially in light of today's revelations. It should be underscored that what the Qom facility Obama is referring to is not a nuclear weapons plant, but simply a nuclear enrichment plant similar to that found at the declared (and inspected) facility in Natanz.

The Qom plant, if current descriptions are accurate, cannot manufacture the basic feed-stock (uranium hexaflouride, or UF6) used in the centrifuge-based enrichment process. It is simply another plant in which the UF6 can be enriched.

Why is this distinction important? Because the IAEA has underscored, again and again, that it has a full accounting of Iran's nuclear material stockpile. There has been no diversion of nuclear material to the Qom plant (since it is under construction). The existence of the alleged enrichment plant at Qom in no way changes the nuclear material balance inside Iran today.

Simply put, Iran is no closer to producing a hypothetical nuclear weapon today than it was prior to Obama's announcement concerning the Qom facility.

One could make the argument that the existence of this new plant provides Iran with a "breakout" capability to produce highly-enriched uranium that could be used in the manufacture of a nuclear bomb at some later date. The size of the Qom facility, alleged to be capable of housing 3,000 centrifuges, is not ideal for large-scale enrichment activity needed to produce the significant quantities of low-enriched uranium Iran would need to power its planned nuclear power reactors. As such, one could claim that its only real purpose is to rapidly cycle low-enriched uranium stocks into highly-enriched uranium usable in a nuclear weapon. The fact that the Qom facility is said to be located on an Iranian military installation only reinforces this type of thinking.

But this interpretation would still require the diversion of significant nuclear material away from the oversight of IAEA inspectors, something that would be almost immediately evident. Any meaningful diversion of nuclear material would be an immediate cause for alarm, and would trigger robust international reaction, most probably inclusive of military action against the totality of Iran's known nuclear infrastructure.

Likewise, the 3,000 centrifuges at the Qom facility, even when starting with 5% enriched uranium stocks, would have to operate for months before being able to produce enough highly enriched uranium for a single nuclear device. Frankly speaking, this does not constitute a viable "breakout" capability.

Iran has, in its declaration of the Qom enrichment facility to the IAEA on 21 September, described it as a "pilot plant". Given that Iran already has a "pilot enrichment plant" in operation at its declared facility in Natanz, this obvious duplication of effort points to either a parallel military-run nuclear enrichment programme intended for more nefarious purposes, or more likely, an attempt on the part of Iran to provide for strategic depth and survivability of its nuclear programme in the face of repeated threats on the part of the US and Israel to bomb its nuclear infrastructure.

Never forget that sports odds makers were laying 2:1 odds that either Israel or the US would bomb Iran's nuclear facilities by March 2007. Since leaving office, former vice-president Dick Cheney has acknowledged that he was pushing heavily for a military attack against Iran during the time of the Bush administration. And the level of rhetoric coming from Israel concerning its plans to launch a pre-emptive military strike against Iran have been alarming.

While Obama may have sent conciliatory signals to Iran concerning the possibility of rapprochement in the aftermath of his election in November 2008, this was not the environment faced by Iran when it made the decision to withdraw from its commitment to declare any new nuclear facility under construction. The need to create a mechanism of economic survival in the face of the real threat of either US or Israeli military action is probably the most likely explanation behind the Qom facility. Iran's declaration of this facility to the IAEA, which predates Obama's announcement by several days, is probably a recognition on the part of Iran that this duplication of effort is no longer representative of sound policy on its part.

In any event, the facility is now out of the shadows, and will soon be subjected to a vast range of IAEA inspections, making any speculation about Iran's nuclear intentions moot. Moreover, Iran, in declaring this facility, has to know that because it has allegedly placed operational centrifuges in the Qom plant (even if no nuclear material has been introduced), there will be a need to provide the IAEA with full access to Iran's centrifuge manufacturing capability, so that a material balance can be acquired for these items as well.

Rather than representing the tip of the iceberg in terms of uncovering a covert nuclear weapons capability, the emergence of the existence of the Qom enrichment facility could very well mark the initiation of a period of even greater transparency on the part of Iran, leading to its full adoption and implementation of the IAEA additional protocol. This, more than anything, should be the desired outcome of the "Qom declaration".

Calls for "crippling" sanctions on Iran by Obama and Brown are certainly not the most productive policy options available to these two world leaders. Both have indicated a desire to strengthen the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Iran's action, in declaring the existence of the Qom facility, has created a window of opportunity for doing just that, and should be fully exploited within the framework of IAEA negotiations and inspections, and not more bluster and threats form the leaders of the western world.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/sep/25/iran-secret-nuclear-plant-inspections

Obama to Usher In New World Order at G-20

President will announce Friday morning a significant expansion of the consortium of countries that tackles global economic and climate change issues.

In a surprising late-night twist on the eve of the G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh, FOX News has learned President Obama will announce Friday morning a significant expansion of the consortium of countries that tackles global economic and climate change issues.

Obama will tell reporters that the G-20, comprised of 19 industrial and emerging-market countries plus the European Union, will supplant the smaller Group of Eight nations, G-8, as the go-to group for solving the world's economic ills.

"This decision brings to the table the countries needed to build a stronger, more balanced global economy, reform the financial system, and lift the lives of the poorest," the White House said in a statement.

The G8 will retain its national security focus, but be replaced by the broader G-20 on the issues of climate change, financial regulatory reform and global imbalances.

President Obama pressed for the change at the last G-8 Summit in Italy, expressing his displeasure at the unwieldy array of G-8 meeting variations.

Obama said, "There is no doubt that we have to update and refresh and renew the international institutions that were set up in a different time and place. What I've noticed is everybody wants the smallest possible group, the smallest possible organization, that includes them. So, if they're the 21st largest nation in the world, they want the G-21, and think it's highly unfair if they have been cut out."

Though the news itself was an unexpected turn, the reasoning behind it was written in the tea leaves Thursday when Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner sang the praises of broadened global cooperation; making special note of the strides China, a non-G-8 country, has made in financial reforms.

The more inclusive approach will allow countries such as Brazil, China, and India, who have griped about not being part of the G-8, to now have a bigger stake in strengthening global cooperation and economic stability. President Obama also supported their inclusion, noting fewer meetings would be more effective.

The G-20 started ten years ago as a group of Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors from industrialized and developing economies, but has involved Heads of State Summits, such as the one taking place Friday.

The G-8's members are Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. The European Commission attends as well.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/09/25/obama-announce-expansion-global-cooperation/

What they said at the UN

Wednesday, 23 September 2009

Morning Session (9:00 a.m. - 1:30 p.m.)

• Secretary-General of the United Nations
  H.E. Mr. Ban Ki-moon
• President of the General Assembly
  H.E. Dr. Ali Abdussalam Treki
• Brazil
  H.E. Mr. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, President
• United States of America
  H.E. Mr. Barack Obama, President
• Libyan Arab Jamahiriya
  H.E. Colonel Muammar Al-Qadhafi, Leader of the Revolution
• Uganda
  H.E. Mr. Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, President
• Qatar
  His Highness Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, Amir
• Turkmenistan
  H.E. Mr. Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov, President
• Chile
  H.E. Mrs. Michelle Bachelet Jeria, President
• Uruguay
  H.E. Mr. Tabaré Vázquez, President
• Algeria
  H.E. Mr. Abdelaziz Bouteflika, President
• Republic of Korea
  H.E. Mr. Lee Myung-bak, President
  
• France
  H.E. Mr. Nicolas Sarkozy, President
  
• Sweden
  H.E. Mr. Fredrik Reinfeldt, Prime Minister
  
• Italy
  H.E. Mr. Silvio Berlusconi, President of the Council of Ministers
  
• United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
  H.E. Mr. Gordon Brown, Prime Minister

Afternoon Session (3:00 p.m. - 7:30 p.m.)

• Argentina
  H.E. Mrs. Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, President
• Tajikistan
  H.E. Mr. Emomali Rahmon, President
• China
  H.E. Mr. Hu Jintao, President
• Monaco
  His Serene Highness Prince Albert II
• Colombia
  H.E. Mr. Álvaro Uribe Vélez, President
• Russian Federation
  H.E. Mr. Dmitry Medvedev, President
• South Africa
  H.E. Mr. Jacob Zuma, President
• Czech Republic
  H.E. Mr. Václav Klaus, President
• El Salvador
  H.E. Mr. Carlos Mauricio Funes Cartagena, President
• Equatorial Guinea
  H.E. Mr. Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, President
• Dominican Republic
  H.E. Mr. Leonel Fernández Reyna, President
• Iran (Islamic Republic of)
  H.E. Mr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President
• Bolivia (Plurinational State of)
  H.E. Mr. Evo Morales Ayma, President
• Ukraine
  H.E. Mr. Victor Yushchenko, President
• Poland
  H.E. Mr. Lech Kaczyński, President
• Australia
  H.E. Mr. Kevin Rudd, Prime Minister

The BBC is part of the conspiracy

By Brian Wheeler, political reporter, BBC News

The BBC is part of a "conspiracy" preventing the "radical changes" needed to UK democracy, the corporation's former director general has said.

Greg Dyke told a Lib Dem conference meeting he wanted a commission to look into the "whole political system".

But he said: "I fear it will never happen because I fear the political class will stop it."

The BBC said its political coverage was taken extremely seriously and was highly regarded by the public.

Mr Dyke said major changes he had wanted to make to the BBC's coverage of politics had been blocked.

He told the Liberal Vision fringe meeting about the expenses scandal and how it had changed voters' attitudes: "The evidence that our democracy is failing is overwhelming and yet those with the biggest interest in sustaining the current system - the Westminster village, the media and particularly the political parties, including this one - are the groups most in denial about what is really happening to our democracy."

'Westminster conspiracy'

Mr Dyke, who was forced to stand down as director general in 2004 after the Hutton report into the death of government scientist Dr David Kelly, said there had never been a greater separation between the "political class" and the public.


We want more influence over our lives and we are not just prepared to hand it over to this strange bunch of people who stand for Parliament
Greg Dyke

"I tried and failed to get the problem properly discussed when I was at the BBC and I was stopped, interestingly, by a combination of the politicos on the board of governors, one of whom was married to the man who claimed for cleaning his moat, the cabinet interestingly - the Labour cabinet - who decided to have a meeting, only about what we were trying to discuss, and the political journalists at the BBC.

"Why? Because, collectively, they are all part of the problem. They are part of one Westminster conspiracy. They don't want anything to change. It's not in their interests."

He said the expenses scandal had been "British democracy's Berlin Wall moment" but he feared the opportunity to change the system was fading away.

He called for an end to "pathetic jeering, shouting and childish behaviour" and the "pomp and ceremony" in Parliament.

'Scared'

An independent commission should look at ideas such as moving the seat of democracy out of Westminster, a fully elected upper chamber with no whipping system, proportional representation, cutting the number of MPs by half, and reforming their pay and expenses, he added.

"It's time to be radical. Our current model was designed for the 18th Century. It doesn't fit 21st Century Britain," he told the meeting.

And he added: "We want more influence over our lives and we are not just prepared to hand it over to this strange bunch of people who stand for Parliament because they have been knocking on people's doors for 10 years."

Speaking afterwards, he referred to an internal review of the BBC's political coverage carried out at the beginning of the decade, to which all political parties were asked to contribute.

He said "there was a lot of pressure from the government of the day not to change anything", adding: "If you are in power what you want is you want to be covered and you don't want anybody else to be covered and they were scared that we were going to stop covering them."

He denied the BBC had caved in to pressure from the government but added: "A lot of the governors were what I call semi-politicians and they liked the present system and.... maybe they were right - it's not the job of the BBC to change the political system and to start questioning the political system.

"I happen to not agree with that but, you know, we didn't get anywhere."

Asked what specific changes he would like to see in the BBC's coverage, he said: "Most of the politicians didn't want a different way of covering politics.

"They wanted their mugs on the telly basically and we might have moved away from that."

He denied his comments were meant as a criticism of BBC journalists in particular, but added: "In the end political journalists live in the same narrow world as politicians do and they don't see a need to change because they think it's the world. They just don't understand that out there it's very different."

In a statement, the BBC said Mr Dyke was "entitled to his views".

It added: "Our news is highly regarded by the public. Anyone looking at the depth and range of our political coverage will know how seriously we take the reporting of politics and political institutions."

BBC Anchor Who Reported on WTC7 23 minutes before collapse Agrees There May Be a 'Conspiracy'

The BBC is part of the conspiracy:

CIA Torturers Running Scared

By Ray McGovern | Consortium News

For the CIA supervisors and operatives responsible for torture, the chickens are coming home to roost; that is, if President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder mean it when they say no one is above the law – and if they don’t fall victim to brazen intimidation.

Unable to prevent Holder from starting an investigation of torture and other war crimes that implicate CIA officials past and present, those same CIA officials, together with what those in the intelligence trade call “agents of influence” in the media, are pulling out all the stops to quash the Justice Department’s preliminary investigation.

In what should be seen as a bizarre twist, seven CIA directors — including three who are themselves implicated in planning and conducting torture and assassination — have asked the President to call off Holder.

Please, tell me how could the whole thing be more transparent?

The most vulnerable of the Gang of Seven, George Tenet, is not the brightest star in the heavens, but even he was able to figure out years ago that he and his accomplices might end up having to pay a heavy price for violating international and U.S. criminal law.

In his memoir, At the Center of the Storm, Tenet notes that what the CIA needed were “the right authorities” and policy determination to do the bidding of President George W. Bush:

“Sure, it was a risky proposition when you looked at it from a policy maker’s point of view. We were asking for and we would be given as many authorities as CIA had ever had. Things could blow up. People, me among them, could end up spending some of the worst days of our lives justifying before congressional overseers our new freedom to act.” (p. 178)

Tenet and his masters assumed, correctly, that given the mood of the times and the lack of spine among lawmakers, congressional “overseers” would relax into their accustomed role as congressional overlookers.

Unfortunately for him, Tenet seems to have confined his concern at the time to the invertebrates in Congress, not anticipating a rejuvenated Justice Department that might take its role in enforcing the law seriously.

Tenet proudly quotes his former counterterrorism chief, Cofer Black (now a senior official at Blackwater): “As Cofer Black later told Congress, ‘The gloves came off that day.’” That day was Sept. 17, 2001, when “the president approved our recommendations and provided us broad authorities to engage al-Qa’ida.” (p. 208)

Presumably, it was not lost on Tenet that no lawmaker dared ask exactly what Cofer Black meant when he said “the gloves came off.” Had they thought to ask Richard Clarke, former director of the counterterrorist operation at the White House, he could have told them what he wrote in his book, Against All Enemies.

Clarke describes a meeting in which he took part with President George W. Bush in the White House bunker just minutes after Bush’s TV address to the nation on the evening of 9/11.

When the subject of international law was raised, Clarke writes that the president responded vehemently: “I don’t care what the international lawyers say, we are going to kick some ass.” [p. 24]

It only took Bush six days to grant the CIA the “broad authorities” the agency had recommended.

It then took White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, Vice President Dick Cheney’s lawyer David Addington, and William J. Haynes II, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s lawyer, four more months to advise the president formally that, by fiat, he could ignore the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war.

This gang of lawyers so advised at the turn of 2001-2002, beating down objections by William Howard Taft IV, Secretary of State Colin Powell’s lawyer. Bush chose to follow the dubious advice of imaginative lawyers in his and Dick Cheney’s employ; namely, that 9/11 ushered in a “new paradigm” rendering the Geneva protections “quaint” and “obsolete.”

Prosecutorial Warning

Addington and Gonzales did take care to warn the president, by memorandum of Jan. 25, 2002, of the risk of criminal prosecution under 18 U.S.C. 2441, the War Crimes Act of 1996. Their memo said:

“That statute, enacted in 1996, prohibits the commission of a ‘war crime’ by or against a U.S. person, including U.S. officials. ‘War crime’…is defined to include any grave breach of the GPW [Geneva] or any violation of Article 3 thereof (such as outrages against personal dignity)…Punishments for violations of Section 2441 include the death penalty….

“…it is difficult to predict the motives of prosecutors or independent counsels who may in the future decide to pursue unwarranted charges based on Section 2441. Your determination [that Geneva does not apply] would create a reasonable basis in law that Section 2441 does not apply, which would provide a solid defense to any future prosecution.”

With that kind of pre-ordered reassurance, President Bush issued a two-page executive directive in which he states, “I accept the legal conclusion of the Department of Justice and determine that common Article 3 of Geneva does not apply to either al Qaeda or Taliban detainees…”

This is the smoking gun on Bush’s key role in the subsequent torture of “war on terror” prisoners. The Senate Armed Services Committee issued a report last December stating that that Feb. 7 memorandum “opened the door” to abusive interrogation practices.

Unhappily for Bush and those who carried out his instructions, on June 29, 2006, in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Geneva DOES apply to al-Qaeda and Taliban detainees.

One senior Bush administration official is reported to have gone quite pale at the time, when Justice Anthony M. Kennedy raised the ante, warning that "violations of Common Article 3 are considered 'war crimes,' punishable as federal offenses."

What about U.S. criminal law? Despite the almost laughable attempts by lawyers like Addington and John Yoo to get around the War Crimes Act by advising that only the kind of pain accompanying major organ failure or death can be considered torture, those involved are now in a cold sweat — the more so, since those dubious opinions have now been publicly released.

Evidence of Torture

In releasing the sordid, torture-approving memoranda written by Justice Department lawyers and a critical “Special Review” by the CIA’s own horse’s-mouth Inspector General, Obama and Holder had to face down very strong pressure from those with the most to lose — former CIA directors and the functionaries (some of them in senior CIA positions to this very day) who were responsible for seeing to it that “the gloves came off.”

Now, out in the public domain is all the evidence needed to show that war crimes were committed — “authorized” as legal by Justice Department Mafia-type lawyers recruited for that express purpose — but war crimes nonetheless.

Torture, kidnapping, illegal detention — not to mention blatant violations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) outlawing eavesdropping on Americans without a court warrant.

The stakes are incredibly high. No wonder the CIA and its “agents of influence” (see Saturday’s lead story in the Washington Post) are going all out.

According to the story, seven former CIA directors wrote a letter to Obama on Sept. 18 asking him to “reverse Attorney General Holder’s August 24 decision to re-open the criminal investigation of CIA interrogations that took place following the attacks of September 11.”

This is the saddest commentary on CIA covert action operatives’ disdain for the law since their predecessors loudly applauded former Director Richard Helms for lying to Congress about the CIA role in the overthrow of Salvador Allende on 9/11/73.

The largest CIA cafeteria was bulging with welcoming supporters of Helms, when the court got finished with him. They then took up a collection on the spot to pay the fine the court had imposed after he was allowed to plead nolo contendere.

Among the most transparent parts of the letter from the Gang of Seven is their corporate worry that “there is no reason to expect that the re-opened criminal investigation will remain narrowly focused.”

Their worry is all too real. Evidence already on the public record shows that the first three listed – Michael Hayden, Porter Goss and George Tenet – could readily be indicted for crimes under U.S. and international law, including:

--Illegal eavesdropping by the National Security Agency (Hayden was NSA director when he ordered his employees to violate the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires warrants from a special court before wiretaps are undertaken.)

--assassination planning without notification to Congress (Goss, whose uncommonly abrupt departure in May 2006 was never looked into by the Fawning Corporate Media [FCM]); and Tenet (who turned out to be right about at least one thing — that “things could blow up.”)

The other “distinguished signatories” were:

John Deutch, arrogant to the point of criminality, Deutch disregarded the most elementary rules governing protection of classified information, and had to be given a last-minute pardon by President Bill Clinton.

R. James Woolsey, the man who outdid himself in trying to tie Saddam Hussein to 9/11, and in pushing into the limelight spurious intelligence from the fabricator known as “Curveball.” (Remember those fictitious biological weapons labs for which Colin Powell displayed “artist renderings” to the U.N. on Feb. 5, 2003?)

William Webster, known mostly at Langley for his handsome face and his devotion to his late-afternoon matches with socialite tennis partners. (Folks like Webster should recognize that, once they have reached what my lawyer father used to call “the age of statutory senility,” they should be more careful regarding what they let themselves be dragged into.)

James R. Schlesinger, “Big Jim” launched his brief stint as CIA director by warning us CIA employees that his instructions were “to ensure that you guys do not screw Richard Nixon.” To give substance to this assertion, he told us that the White House had said he was to report to political henchman Bob Haldeman — not Henry Kissinger, the national security advisor. More recently, Schlesinger led one of the see-no-evil Defense Department “investigations” of the abuses of Abu Ghraib.

Quite a group, this Gang of Seven.

Their letter also is condescending toward President Obama: “As President you have the authority to make decisions restricting substantive interrogation… But the administration must be mindful that public disclosure about past intelligence operations can only help al-Qaeda elude US intelligence and plan future operations.”

The seven then proceed to repeat the canard alleging that such collection “have saved lives and helped protect America from further attacks.”

It reads as though Dick Cheney did their first draft. Actually, that would not be all that surprising, given his record of doing quite a lot of CIA’s drafting for eight long years.

Hold firm Holder.

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He was a CIA analyst for 27 years, working under nine CIA directors and seven presidents, he now serves on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

Nuclear Agency Demanding Iranian Missile Blueprints

Iran stopped meeting with the International Atomic Energy Agency last year over Western allegations of covert Iranian nuclear weapons work because the nuclear agency was demanding access to the designs for its Shahab-3 missile and other secret military data, according to both Iranian and IAEA officials.

The United States and other Western states have cited Iran's refusal to cooperate with the IAEA on resolving issues related to intelligence documents on a purported covert nuclear weapons programme as further evidence of its guilt.

"They've been asking for Shahab-3 drawings for about a year," Iran's ambassador to the United Nations in Vienna, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, told IPS in an interview. "We found out a year ago and that's when we stopped the meetings with IAEA."

A senior official of the IAEA familiar with the Iran investigation, who insisted on anonymity as a condition for being interviewed, confirmed to IPS that the agency had requested not only that Iranian officials discuss the details of the Shahab-3's reentry system, but access to the actual engineering designs for the missile.

"We want them to explain to us that the design studies are not for nuclear weapons," said the official. "We're saying, you say you've done reentry vehicle reengineering [on Shahab-3], so show us some documentation."

The latest IAEA report, dated Aug. 28, notes that the agency "has been unable to engage Iran in any substantive discussions about these outstanding issues for over a year", but it does not link the Iranian disengagement to the demand for military secrets.

The Sep. 15, 2008 report said, however, that in a Sep. 5 letter Iran had "expressed concern that the resolution of some of these issues would require Agency access to sensitive information related to its conventional military and missile related activities."

Asked whether this request would not compromise Iran's national security secrets, the official conceded to IPS, "Yes there will have to be some compromise on their part, because the charges are serious. If someone is accused of nefarious crimes, it is in their interest to share a little of their security to show they are baseless."

Defending the IAEA's request, the official said, "All verification is a compromise of national security. Natanz [the Iranian uranium enrichment facility] is the most heavily verified enrichment plan in the world. It's a compromise of national sovereignty."

Soltanieh said he had protested the demand for such conventional military secrets at meetings of the IAEA Governing Board in 2008 and 2009. "They denied they asked for this information," said Soltanieh.

The Iranian ambassador first expressed concern about being asked to give the IAEA access to national security secrets about its missiles and other conventional military technology in a letter to ElBaradei Sep. 5, 2008.

The September 2008 IAEA report strongly implied without saying so explicitly that the agency was seeking access to actual plans for the missile. It said the IAEA had "proposed discussions with Iranian experts on the contents of the engineering reports examining in detail modeling studies related to the effects of various physical parameters on the reentry body from the time of the missile launch to payload detonation."

The most recent report of the IAEA, dated Aug. 28, 2009, referred to "the need to hold discussions with Iran on the engineering and modeling studies associated with the re-design of the payload chamber referred to in the alleged studies documentation to exclude the possibility that they were for a nuclear payload."

In a letter to IAEA director general Mohamed ElBaradei Sep. 4, 2009, Soltanieh complained that the report which had just been released had "reflected the unjustified previous requests by your staff in Tehran [for] discussing with Iranian military staff the issue of missiles and explosives!"

He noted that the director general had on several occasions "emphasised that the Agency is not intending to enter into the domain of the national security of Member States".

The agency also requested "additional information and documentation, and access to individuals, in support of [Iran's] statement about the civil and conventional military applications of its work in the area of EBW detonators," according to the September 2008 IAEA report.

The IAEA further asked to meet individual scientists named in one of the intelligence documents as being part of the purported Iranian nuclear weapons research programme. The senior IAEA official acknowledged in the interview with IPS, however, that it would be relatively easy for an outside agency to identify individuals who belonged to an organisation.

"It's not difficult to cook up such a document," the official said.

In his letter to ElBaradei, Soltanieh said these IAEA requests represented "interference in confidential conventional military activities of a Member State, related to its national security..."

The IAEA has offered to "discuss modalities that could enable Iran to demonstrate credibly that the activities referred to in the documentation are not nuclear related, as Iran asserts, while protecting sensitive information related to its conventional military activities."

But the senior IAEA official interviewed by IPS made it clear that such modalities would not preclude access to the documentation on the Shahab design.

Iran's enemies, especially the United States and Israel, are eager for intelligence on the design of the Shahab-3's reentry vehicle.

According to a detailed analysis by the Armed Combat Information Group (ACIG), the upgraded version of the Shahab-3 has an improved guidance system and warhead, as well as completely new re-entry vehicle with a different guidance system based on rocket-nozzle steering rather than a spin-stabilised re-entry vehicle.

The new reentry vehicle is smaller than the previous version, according to the former head of Israel's Ballistic Missile Defense Organisation. That gives the improved version greater precision.

But the most significant feature of the new variant, according to the ACIG analysis, is the capability for changing trajectory repeatedly during re-entry and in the missile's terminal phase. That capability allows the Shahab-3 to evade the radar systems associated with Israel's Arrow 2 missile.

If Israeli and the United States were able to get more information on the design of the reentry vehicle, they would be able to make adjustments in the Arrow 2 system to increase its effectiveness against the Iranian missile.

The IAEA secretariat is well-known to be major source of intelligence on Iran for the United States and Israel. In the 1990s, 10 of the 35 members of the U.S. mission to the United Nations in Vienna were Central Intelligence Agency personnel, according to the 2007 book "The Italian Letter", by journalists Peter Eisner and Knute Royce.

Ambassador Soltanieh told IPS that the IAEA safeguards department, to which the Iranians pass much sensitive information, has repeatedly leaked that information – usually out of context - to journalists for stories portraying the Iranian nuclear programme in a menacing light.

"Leakage of confidential information is a matter of serious concern," said Soltanieh. "In many cases, we give information to inspectors and soon it is in the media."

A Western diplomatic source in Vienna who insisted on not being identified said, "I don't think it would help a lot to get the specific plans of Shahab-3." For one thing, he observed, "They could be working on other studies and we wouldn't know about it."

The official admitted that it was "always difficult to prove that something is nonexistent".

Nevertheless, it would be "much safer for Iran to compromise on these issues than to keep its present attitude," the official said.

*Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam", was published in 2006.

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48509