Norway’s incompetent police were to blame for high death toll in mass killings

Right now the people of Norway, and especially the families of those killed, are grieving for the dead, and are more concerned with looking after survivors than with apportioning blame for what happened last week. The mood is one of sorrow more than of anger.

I predict that the mood will change radically in the days and weeks ahead.

It took the police over an hour and a half to reach the island of Utoeya.

I know that if I were a parent of one of the victims of last week’s massacre I would certainly be demanding to know why it took the police so long to take action to save my child’s life.

These young people were calling and texting their families and friends for the best part of two hours while they tried to evade a gunman who was able to pick them off at his leisure. “Where are the police? When are they coming?” were the questions they asked over and over again.

There is NO excuse for this. This was negligence and incompetence on a grand scale. Norway is a rich and well-resourced country. It has a well-equipped police force and emergency services. It isn’t Iraq or Gaza. There is no shortage of police personnel, cars, or helicopters.

It was the delay in getting armed police to the island that gave the madman all the time he needed to systematically hunt down and execute his victims.

Media helicopters were hovering over the island, filming the killings from the air, long before the police arrived (it takes ten minutes to get from Oslo to Utoeya by helicopter). That is an absolute disgrace.

Norway’s Justice Minister Knut Storberget praised the police for their “fantastic” work after the attacks. Fantastic? Hardly. Unless he was using the word in its original sense of “impossible to believe”.

The police themselves have been defending their dismal performance in responding to the attacks. “I don’t think we could have done this (reach the site of the massacre) faster,” Police Chief of Staff Johan Fredriksen told journalists in Oslo. If that’s true, it’s a damning admission.

If the Norwegian police can’t reach the scene of an ongoing crime less than 20 miles (30 kilometers) from the country’s capital city in less than an hour and a half, and if they seriously believe that they did a good job in getting there in that time, they should all resign without delay, including – and especially – Police Chief Fredriksen.

Even assuming they had to go from Oslo (were there no police closer to the scene?), they averaged approximately 12mph (about 19kmph) – less than the speed of the average cyclist – in response to an emergency in which children were being picked off by a lunatic with an automatic weapon.

By any standards this was a dazzling display of stupidity and ineptitude.

It has been argued that the police didn’t expect anything like this to happen, and that they were “wrong-footed”. That might be true (although “flat-footed” would seem to be a more apt description), but it’s not good enough. Their job is to be prepared for all eventualities. Even allowing – generously – for their having been “taken by surprise”, an hour and a half is at least an hour longer than it should have taken them to get to Utoeya island. No matter which way you cut it, this was a pathetic response, and it almost certainly cost the lives of the majority of those killed. Even the gunman himself commented that he was surprised at how long the police took to get there and stop him.

Engine failure is said to have delayed the arrival of one commando police boat by ten minutes. This is a lame excuse to say the least. They had plenty of boats, and there was no shortage of civilian boats – and helicopters – that could have been commandeered.

This was a Keystone Kops response to an emergency situation that called for competence, preparedness and efficiency. Scores of lives were lost on the island of Utoeya as a result of police stupidity and lack of professionalism.

The families of those who were killed or injured have every reason to be angry and to demand a full public inquiry and, in the meantime, the immediate resignation of the Chief of Police and every senior police officer who contributed to this tragedy of errors.

Holistic Spain Network will be launched on 26 July 2011

Only a week to go until the launch of my holistic network, at HolisticSpain.net.
Holistic Spain is a network of holistic resources – including therapists, teachers, training programs, health-orientated holidays and retreats, hotels and so on – covering the whole of Spain. We will also be offering a free information and referral service. Launch date is 26 July 2011. Please visit the site for further information.

Press Release

Solo queda una semana para el lanzamiento de mi red holística en at HolisticSpain.net.
Holistic Spain es una red de recursos holísticos que incluye, entre otros, a terapeutas, profesores, programas de formación, retiros y vacaciones orientadas a la salud y hoteles en toda España. También ofreceremos un servicio gratuito de información y referencias. La fecha de lanzamiento es el 26 de julio de 2011. Visite el sitio web para obtener más información.

NOTA DE PRENSA

Pasties and Hot Sauce

“World’s oldest woman enjoyed pasties with hot sauce” was one of the headlines on the BBC website this week.

Apparently a Brazilian woman thought to have been the world’s oldest person has died at the age of 114.

“Reports” like this really annoy me.

Are we supposed to infer that pasties with hot sauce is the recipe for great longevity?

Maybe this old lady – well, dead lady, to be more precise – only started eating pasties with hot sauce a month ago, and that’s what killed her.

Maybe if the reporter who submitted this article had taken the trouble to question members of the woman’s family they’d have told him or her: “She was doing fine until she started eating those damned pasties with hot sauce.”

We just don’t know.

It’s like those non-meat eaters who delight in telling you that GB Shaw was a vegetarian, and he lived to the age of 94 (after which, ironically, he became dead meat himself).

Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian too, but they never mention him.

Incidentally, Shaw’s father had a bad squint (is there such a thing as a good squint?) which Oscar Wilde’s father, who was a renowned Dublin surgeon at the time, tried – without success – to correct. So Shaw the elder died with his squint intact. For all we know his family had it framed and mounted.

Anyway, to get back to the point I was making, Shaw was a veggie and he lived to be 94. It’s hardly scientific proof of anything, is it? George Burns smoked fifteen cigars every day for most of his adult life, and he lived to be 100. Are we to conclude that smoking cigars is marginally better for one’s health than living on lettuce?

Turtles are herbivores, and they live twice as long as humans. But are they herbivores by choice, you have to wonder, or because they can’t move fast enough to catch anything tasty? They’re not exactly designed to be effective predators. It’s hard to imagine a turtle sneaking up on a gazelle at a watering hole and lunging for its throat. By the time a turtle crept up on any animal it would already have died of old age.

Unless it was a parrot, of course. Some species of parrot can live up to 100 years. But parrots, like most humans, are omnivores, so their longevity can’t be attributed to not eating meat. On the other hand they don’t smoke cigars, so where does that leave us?

So where is Osama bin Laden’s vast army of devoted followers?

No evidence of any kind has been offered to support the claim that Osama bin Laden was killed in the way described, if at all. Apart from the fact that the story changed every few hours (initially, for example, we were told that he’d been buried at sea in accordance with Muslim tradition; then, when it was pointed out that there is no such tradition, they told us he’d been buried at sea to avoid giving him a burial shrine), there are too many inexplicable and inconsistent elements in the White House’s version of events. For instance, Obama – who would have to have given the order to kill (or, let’s talk plainly, murder) bin Laden – said he was “95% sure” that the man who was shot was bin Laden, and that “it looked like him”. Interviewed later on the CBS news show “60 Minutes”, Obama admitted: “There was no direct evidence of his (bin Laden’s) presence. At the end of the day, this was still a 55/45 situation.”

Are we to believe that an executive presidential order was given to kill an unarmed man whose identity hadn’t been ascertained beyond considerable doubt?

Obama implied, in the first interviews he gave after the alleged raid, that he and his national security team – including Hillary Clinton – had watched events unfold via a live satellite link. The White House even put out a photo which appeared to show the president and his team monitoring the raid live on TV. A few days later, however, on on 4 May, the head of the CIA, Leon Pinetta, was forced to admit in an interview on PBS that there had been no live footage of the raid! He said that prior to the commencement of the raid the signal had been cut off, and that this blackout had lasted some 20 to 25 minutes. Quote: “Once those teams went into the compound there was a time period of 20-25 minutes where we really don’t know exactly what was going on.” Which means that president Obama could not possibly have identified Osama bin Laden when he gave the order to kill the man he was only “55/45″ sure was him.

So at what stage did he give the order to kill? This question was put to Leon Pinetta. He replied: “The US navy seals made the final decision to kill bin laden, rather than the president.”
Oh really? I’m sorry, but I find that very hard to believe. The decision on whether to kill bin Laden or take him prisoner had huge political and security ramifications, as well as implications in terms of international law. There is no way that a decision of this magnititude and sensitivity would have been left to a Navy seal. To claim otherwise is nonsensical.

And if the man really was bin Laden, the head of a worldwide network of terrorists and the mastermind of the 9-11 attacks, surely the correct course of action would have been to interrogate him at length before – or instead of – shooting him in the head? It is inconceivable to me that they would kill the leader of a global terror network without at least making some attempt to extract information from him. Hundreds of men suspected of being members of al Qaeda have been imprisoned and in many cases tortured for years in CIA detention camps, ostensibly in the hope of extracting information from them that might help to avert future terrorist attacks. And here, in their custody and putting up no resistance, was the alleged Godfather of terrorism, the man who knew everything there was to know about the global terrorist network – and they executed him on the spot?

When I read the initial reports of the raid to kill bin Laden, my first thought was, “What a load of baloney”. And my second thought was, “And next they’ll tell us that he was a few months from carrying out another big terrorist attack”. But then I thought, no, that would be just too corny. People are gullible, but surely they’re not that gullible. But, sure enough, the BBC headlines a few days later announced: “Bin Laden was planning another terrorist attack.” This information was supposedly gleaned from bin Laden’s computer files (this would be the same computer that they initially claimed he didn’t possess). The report stated that bin Laden was planning a bomb attack on the US rail system to mark the anniversary of the 9.11 attacks.

Odd, isn’t it, that he waited ten years to carry out a “follow-up” attack. If he was so big into anniversaries, why didn’t he carry out an attack on the first anniversary of 9-11? Or the third? Or the 5th?

And, gosh, how lucky for America that Superman – sorry, Barack Obama – found and killed him just in time to save the lives of all those people! Can we see those files? Don’t be silly. They’re classified – just like the photos, the videotape, the “DNA evidence” and everything else about this fairy tale.

The photographs of bin Laden’s body weren’t released because they were “too gory”. What – like the photos of Uday and Qusay Hussein? “That’s not who we are”, said Obama. No qualms about shooting an unarmed woman in front of a child, but anxious to avoid ruffling the delicate sensitivities of his fellow Americans (maybe) with photos of a dead body. And even this explanation was “revised” twenty four hours later, when the reason for not showing the photos became to avoid inciting his followers to violence!

In fact photos of dead leaders tend, more than anything, to demoralise their followers. And it has always been customary, when wanted criminals are killed, to put their remains on public view to prove beyond doubt – especially to their followers – that they really are dead. This has always been the procedure, from Billy the Kid to Che Guevara. The images don’t have to be gory. A good mortician can do cosmetic miracles with even the most damaged and disfigured features.

By the way, where ARE all these millions of devoted followers we’ve heard so much about over the past ten years? If they really existed they would surely have been on the streets raising hell as soon as reports of their leader’s murder was announced. In the event, Arab reaction to news of bin Laden’s death was muted, to say the least. No doubt there will soon be a “terrorist attack” or two to emphasize the “fact” that the threat has not receded, but the fact is there would have been an immediate reaction from bin Laden’s legion of followers on learning of his death – if they existed, which they clearly do not.

The claim that bin Laden was buried at sea to avoid burying him in a grave that could become a shrine to his followers is also patently bogus, since putting the body on view for a few days – or even for a few hours and inviting journalists to inspect the corpse and take photographs – would not have precluded burying him at sea a day or two later. So what, one has to wonder, was the big rush? Why were they in such a hurry to permanently dispose of that body (if there really was a body)?

Unable or unwilling to provide tangible evidence of bin Laden’s execution, the White House then claimed that DNA testing had established bin Laden’s identity “to 99.99% certainty”. They would have to have had samples of at least two of his closest relatives on hand in order to make a match to that level of certainty. A White House spokesman stated, when asked about this, that the FBI had obtained a DNA sample from his sister, who died in Boston of brain cancer in 2005. So they came prepared with a DNA laboratory and specimens of the DNA of members of his family? And they had the foresight to have a molecular geneticist on board the ship? This would seem to suggest that they knew in advance that bin Laden’s face would be unrecognizable. And while it is theoretically possible to match DNA in a matter of several hours (they claim to have done it in two) – assuming you have all your equipment, samples and experts to hand – this would involve a lot of forward planning, and even then the results would be unreliable. It is not possible to make a reliable DNA match – the kind that would stand up in a court of law, for example – in two hours.
Furthermore, as they admitted themselves, they had samples of DNA from bin Laden’s relatives, obtained from hospitals. Isn’t it highly probable, therefore, that they also had bin Laden’s DNA? He was, after all, a patient at the American hospital Dubai and would have given blood samples. And before he became the world’s most wanted man he worked with the CIA. So they had numerous opportunities to take samples of his DNA.

And so Barack Obama was able to launch his re-election campaign at Ground Zero, the hero of the hour. All thoughts of the US’s precarious economic situation had been pushed out of the collective American mind. How lucky for him that he’d been able to track down and kill bin Laden just a few months before the tenth anniversary of the 9-11 attacks, and just days before the commemoration ceremony! According to the polls, his approval rating – which had been plummeting in recent months – jumped 25% overnight. A Hollywood scriptwriter couldn’t have come up with a better plot line.

The president was eager as a beaver to make a link between Osama bin Laden and the 9-11 attacks. “The terrorist leader that struck our nation 9/11 will never threaten American again,” he said. The crowd cheered, and nobody cared – or cared to remember – that there was never any evidence implicating Osama bin Laden in the 9-11 attacks. He wasn’t wanted in connection with these attacks, and in fact the FBI stated explicitly that they had been unable to find evidence linking him with 9-11. Obama, who formerly practiced as a lawyer, was well aware of this. Nevertheless he milked the bogus association for all it was worth. His performance was reminiscent of that of his predecessor, George W. Bush, whose ratings soared after Saddam Hussein’s capture. The Bush administration had, by that time, managed to convince more than 50% of Americans that Saddam was behind the 9-11 attacks. As that master of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, said: “If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth.”

The mainstream media, to their eternal shame and discredit (yet again), dutifully repeated this spurious association without question or qualification in their coverage of bin Laden’s alleged killing, with one news report after another referring to Osama bin Laden as “the man responsible for the 9-11 attacks”. There was no “suspected of being”, or “believed by some to have been”. No, it was simply “Osama bin Laden, the man responsible for the 9-11 attacks”. Did the media know something that the FBI, after a five year investigation, had never been able to find out?

As for the alleged raid itself, the details given out by the White House changed every few hours when the previous details didn’t add up. Proof was on the way, they assured us, in the form of photographs of bin Laden’s dead body. Two day’s later, however, the photos had failed to materialize, and in response to demands for proof they released what they said was “home movie” video footage of Osama. This turned out to be a few brief video clips of a bearded man sitting in an armchair watching TV with his back to the camera.

The sound had been removed, making it impossible to identify “bin Laden” from his distinctive voice. (Previous fake videos of “bin Laden” had been debunked because people who knew him personally said that it wasn’t his voice.) The person who shot the video took great care to shoot from an angle that only showed the side of “bin Laden’s” face, and the footage was interspersed with old stock footage of bin Laden, presumably to give a sense of continuity. “Bin Laden” himself studiously avoids looking directly at the camera.

The first question that comes to mind – or at least to my mind – looking at this footage is: why would anyone take video footage of someone watching TV coverage of Osama bin Laden – unless they were trying to convince viewers that the person in the video was bin Laden? If the video had been made by devotee’s of bin Laden – which they’d presumably have to be if they were in his secret hideout – making videos for posterity, wouldn’t they make sure to get their leader’s face in every shot? Look at Adolf Hitler’s hiome movies for comparison. In one shot we see Adolf drinking coffee. In another he is patting a dog. But always he is clearly identifiable. There is no question whatsoever that it is Adolf Hitler we are looking at.

If the “bin Laden” videos are supposed to be “home movies”, the same objection applies. Who would make home movies while being careful not to film the face of the subject? Go and have a look at your own home videos, and see how many clips you can find that only show the backs of people’s heads. And why take footage of bin Laden watching himself on TV? And why is he on every channel? Are we meant to believe that he’s watching live news reports of himself (in a house with no satellite dish and no TV cable)? And why is this “bin Laden” using his right hand to operate the TV remote control when bin Laden was left-handed?

This whole performance is as fake as it is farcical. It wouldn’t fool a two year-old. Or so you would think. But incredibly, it has fooled millions of people. Even normally intelligent and astute observers like Noam Chomsky have accepted this blatant pile of hooey as fact.

If the alleged killing of Osama bin Laden were merely a pretext for ending the “war on terror” – a way of tying up loose ends, as it were – and removing all the paraphernalia of surveillance, security checks, body scans at airports and so on, we might even roll our eyes and go along with the yarn. But no, the alleged death of bin Laden is being cited as justification for stepping up these “security measures” and increasing the number of troops on the ground in countries like Iraq, Afghanistan and now Pakistan. No sooner had the supposed killing of bin Laden been announced than the US Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, was telling a press conference in Rome “Let us not forget that the battle to stop al Qaeda and its affiliates does not end with one death,” she said. “We have to renew our resolve, not just in Afghanistan and Pakistan but around the world.”

It is worth reminding ourselves that this is the woman who claimed, when she was vying for nomination as a presidential candidate, that on a trip to Bosnia she had come under sniper fire and had to make a desperate dash for the airport building. She was forced to admit that she had lied – or “mis-spoke”, as she put it – when CBS video footage of the trip showed her standing on the tarmac, smiling and obviously perfectly safe, while a group of children read poetry to her. So we know for sure that Hillary is no stranger to the concept of inventing heroic tall tales as a popularity booster.

But the most depressing aspect of all this isn’t the fact that the story is patently bogus from start to finish – we have come to expect this kind of thing from the American government – but that it has been accepted unconditionally by so many people, and in particular journalists who ought, at this stage, to know better. The media have become little more than the mouthpiece of the US government and the Pentagon, publishing press releases verbatim and without any attempt at critical evaluation.

The alleged raid to kill Osama bin Laden has been widely reported as fact without any corroborative evidence to support it, when it is as plain as the nose on your face that the details given out by the White House simply do not stack up. This is really disgraceful and represents a new low in journalistic standards. The most basic rule of journalism – that information must be checked and independently verified before it is presented to the public as fact – appears to have been completely abandoned. Clearly no lessons have been learned from previous occasions when the media failed to scrutinize claims emanating from the White House – including the claim by the Bush administration that Saddam Hussein was six months from launching a nuclear attack on the US. Colin Powell stood up in front of the UN and the world to make this claim, brandishing “photographic evidence” of chemical weapons factories, missile launch pads, planes that had been redesigned to launch chemical weapons and even audio tapes purported to be of Iraqi generals discussing plans to attack America (in English). At least a quarter of a million people died as a result of the military action that was taken on the basis of that piece of fiction. The invasion of Iraq was only possible because it had popular support, and that support largely came about as a result of uncritical media coverage. And now we are seeing the same thing happening again.

The issue here is not whether Osama bin Laden is dead, or whether he was killed. Most of the people who are skeptical of the US government’s version of events accept that he is dead (indeed, many believe he has been dead for years). The question is, when and how did he die? Who killed him? Why was he killed? How and when did US intelligence learn of his whereabouts? When did Obama know? Why did Obama give order to kill a man on the basis of “55/45″ identification? How was he positively identified if, as it is claimed, the house was in darkness? Why wasn’t bin Laden interrogated? Why was his wife handed over to the Pakistani authorities (who are suspected of colluding with al Qaeda), instead of being taken into US custody and questioned? How did she sustain a gunshot wound to the back of her leg if she was shot lunging towards a SEAL? Where is al Qaeda? Why did the US government produce and release a fake video? Why did they release a fake photo? Why did the US dispose of the body so hastily? Where is the evidence linking bin Laden to the 9-11 attacks? Which countries refused to take bin Laden’s body?
These and many other questions have still to be answered.

CONGRATULATIONS! TO THE PEOPLE OF EGYPT.

Way to go!

: )

Now we look to you to do the right thing by your neighbours under siege in Palestine.

Cholera kills 300 in Haiti. So where’s the vaccine?

The cholera epidemic in Haiti continues to spread. So far, over 3,000 cases have been reported, and almost 300 people have died from the disease.

Health officials say they have stepped up disease prevention measures and are “racing against time”, with medics “administering intravenous drips to patients” etc.

So what’s wrong with this picture?

Just this: While the health authorities are supposedly “doing everything possible” to fight this outbreak, there has been no mention at all of what would appear to be the most obvious and simple solution: make the cholera vaccine available to those most at risk.

There are several cholera vaccines available, including Dukoral (which can be taken orally).

So why hasn’t the vaccine been made available? Why allow all these people to die if there is a vaccine that can give them instant immunity from the disease?

The vaccine isn’t being made available for the same reason vaccinations are never made available during the early stages of epidemics: they don’t work, and it would quickly become apparent that they don’t work, because the number of cases would continue to rise.

No vaccination program has ever stopped a viral or bacterial epidemic in its tracks (cholera is caused by a bacterium), and the cholera vaccine is no exception.

So here we see yet another epidemic running its deadly course and causing hundreds of deaths while the purported antidote isn’t being made available. We recently saw the same thing with the swine flu vaccine, whose distribution was mysteriously delayed until the disease had already lost its potency.

What is the vaccine supposed to be for, if not to prevent the disease from spreading? What’s the point of spending billions of dollars researching and developing vaccines if they are not going to be used when they are most needed? When hundreds of people are dying from the disease that the vaccination is supposedly able to prevent?

The health authorities know perfectly well that vaccination doesn’t work, and would have no effect on the course of this outbreak. As always, the vaccine will be made available (if at all) when the disease has run its natural course and people are no longer dying from it. Then the health authorities will point to the disappearance of the disease as evidence of the effectiveness of vaccination – as they have with every other infectious disease.

The risk of a cholera outbreak in Haiti has been known for some time, following the earthquake. Back in January Pier Luigi Testa, emergency co-ordinator for Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders), warned that an outbreak of cholera was to be expected. The authorities had more than enough time to organise a mass vaccination program. In fact this could have been done in just a few days, given that the vaccine can be administered orally, in a drink or on a sugar cube, making it far easier to distribute and administer than vaccines which have to be injected by trained medical personnel.

If the cholera vaccine works, as the manufacturers claim, why hasn’t it been made available to the people of Haiti, or at least to those who are most at risk of contracting this wretched disease?

Update 20 November

It is over a month since the start of the cholera epidemic in Haiti, and the death toll has now reached 1,200 – and still there is no mention of the vaccine. Why not, if, as we are told, it gives protection against the disease? If the vaccine works, why were these people allowed to die?
According to the BBC website today, the outbreak has now spread to Haiti’s largest jail, the national prison in Port-au-Prince, which houses around 2,000 prisoners. Thirty prisoners are infected with the disease, and thirteen have already died. This is a relatively small, isolated group of people. It would take less than a day to vaccinate all the prisoners (the cholera vaccination can be administered orally). Why hasn’t this happened?
The disease has also now spread into neighbouring Dominican Republic.
Again, the medical authorities – including the World Health Organization and the US Center for Disease Control – have endorsed the cholera vaccine, as, of course, have the various companies that manufacture it.
The truth is, vaccines are only ever made available when there is no immediate threat from the disease against which they are supposed to offer protection. They are never made available when they would supposedly save hundreds or thousands of lives – ie, while epidemics are ongoing. That’s because they don’t work; and the fact that they don’t work would be apparent if vaccinated populations continued to become infected.

When will America realize that Israel doesn’t want peace?

Surely no-one can now be in any doubt that Israel has no interest whatsoever in reaching a peaceful agreement with the Palestinians.

This was the best opportunity it has ever had – or is ever likely to have – to bring the conflict to an end.

If Israel wanted peace, all it had to do was agree to withdraw to the 1967 borders and stop building Jewish settlements on Palestinian land.

The fact that it has consistently refused to do so makes Israel’s true long-term intentions abundantly clear: it plans to continue with its strategy of ethnic cleansing, ghettoization and land-grabbing until it has taken over all the land that was Palestine.

Complete domination of the entire region has always been Israel’s aim.

Again and again it has deliberately scuppered efforts made by US presidents and others to find a resolution to the problem.

And what successive presidents have failed to understand is that there is no problem, as far as Israel is concerned.

The sporadic missile attacks by Hamas do very little damage (more Israelis are killed by being struck by lightning than are killed by Hamas rockets), but they provide Israel with the pretext it needs to justify the increasingly brutal “security measures” it inflicts on the Palestinian people.

One or two deaths a year is a small price to pay, from the Israeli government’s point of view, for complete control and ownership of the whole of what used to be Palestine.

Israel is not, and has never been interested in peace. In fact peace is the last thing Israel wants, since without the ongoing hostilities it would have no grounds for building barriers, separating Palestinians into cantons that are really open prisons, bombing populated areas of Palestine and Lebanon, grabbing more and more land, torturing prisoners and imposing a vicious siege on Gaza.

And without the ongoing Arab “threat”, Israel would find it difficult to justify the $4bn in aid it receives from the US government each year.

Let there be no misunderstanding about this: Israel has no intention of ever giving back the Palestinian territories it illegally occupies. The plan is, and has always been, to take over the entire region and eventually get rid of the indigenous Palestinian population altogether.

In a statement moments after the end of the 10-month partial freeze on the building of settlements, Israel’s PM Benjamin Netanyahu asked Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to continue seeking a “historic” deal. How absurd. Do the Israelis really expect the Palestinians to agree to a deal in which Israel continues to illegally occupy Palestine and carry on building Jewish settlements on Palestinian land? Of course not. This is a classic Israeli ploy to shift the blame for the breakdown to the Palestinians. By pretending to want to carry on talking, the Israelis hope to make the Palestinians appear to be responsible for the breakdown. If the Palestinians walk away from the talks, the Israelis can say, “See? We were willing to keep talking, but the Palestinians walked away!” But if the Palestinians carry on talking despite the resumption of work on the settlements, this will be taken as a tacit acknowledgment that they are willing to accept less than they are demanding.

Iran’s barbaric treatment of women

Sakineh Ashtiani

Mother of two Sakineh Ashtiani was convicted of adultery (she insists that she was tortured into making a confession) and sentenced to death by stoning. She has already been in prison for 4 years and has been subjected to physical punishment (flogging).

Yesterday, in the face of mounting international condemnation, the Iranian government “commuted” Sakineh’s sentence from death by stoning to death by hanging.

Iran has now imposed a media blackout on reporting of the case, but the death sentence is believed to be “imminent”.

You can help save this woman’s life by emailing the Iranian public relations office at:

Info@Ad.gov.ir

and letting them know how you feel about their barbaric laws and their reprehensible treatment of women.

And/or by signing this petition:

http://www.petitiononline.com/Ashtiani/petition-sign.html

If you are on facebook, go to:

http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Save-Sakineh-Mohammadi-Ashtiani-from-being-Stoned-to-Death-in-Iran/123908540984923?ref=search

You can find out more about this case at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/10565103.stm

The social network spy

Anna Chapman - Spymistress?

Anna Chapman, one of ten people accused of being part of a Russian spy ring, is being portrayed in the media as a kind of “Mata Hari” figure; a glamorous femme fatale who used her “womanly charms” to insinuate her way into the lives and the homes (and, it is insinuated in the media, the beds) of rich and influential members of American and British high society.

I was particularly interested in her because, like me, she ran – and, as far as I can see, continues to run – a successful real estate portal. Her website – which markets Russian property – is at: www.domdot.ru

I wondered if she had a facebook page (doesn’t everyone, these days?), and, sure enough, it only took me a minute to find her profile here.

Chapman gives her favourite quotation as “Trust no one”, while her “Likes and Interests” are listed as: “Corrections officer, Federal Bureau of Investigation”.
Under “Books” she has “Agatha Christie Novels”, and under “Movies” she’s written “Spy Games”.
For “University” she’s written “Jail”.

Quite the wit for a person in her predicament, facing, we are told, the possibility of life in prison. You’d think she’d be too busy getting water-boarded by the CIA and rehearsing her story with her defense lawyers to take the time to add jokey comments to her facebook page.

Could it be because she knows perfectly well that she isn’t going to spend more than a wet day in jail and is looking forward to a stellar career as a highly-paid TV talk-show guest (or even host)? I’ll give you odds of 100-1 that this savvy spy will be back in Moscow in time for Christmas, where she will be feted as a heroine and a sex symbol.

But hold the fone, Joe! Isn’t Chapman charged with being a dangerous spy? An enemy of the state? In which case how come she’s still at liberty to access the Internet to update her social network profile? Not to mention run a business in Russia? Surely she could be sending all kinds of information and secret messages to all kinds of people in the Kremlin?

Given the high level of security that has prevailed in the US in recent years – in which people have been locked up in solitary confinement just for “looking foreign” or taking part in peaceful public protests – isn’t it a bit odd that Ms. Chapman – or, to use her real name, Anya Kuschenko – is being allowed so much freedom of movement?

And why doesn’t the US president have anything to say about this whole business? So far he has made no comment other than to express the hope that the uproar would not damage the friendship and trust that has developed between the US and Russia.

Friendship and trust, eh?

If Obama bends any further backwards to appease Vladimir Putin, he’ll qualify for an entry in the Guinness Book of Records in the Limbo Dancing category.

It seems to me that there’s something decidedly fishy going on when the FBI catches a network of Russian spies operating in the United States, and it is the Russian president who expresses his outrage!

The (commie?) plot thickens…

The Internet sure does bring out the best in people!

Who knew, before the Internet arrived, that there were so many generous and helpful people in the world?
Just today I received an email from a girl called Natalia, who lives in Russia, asking if she could be my special friend and “tend to all my needs”. Wow! (I hope that means she’s going to clean my kitchen!) And she doesn’t even know how great I am. Apparently she’s arriving next week, and she wants to meet me. I can’t wait!
Not ten minutes later I received an email notifying me that I have won a UN cash grant for €20m. Holy Moley! What a stroke of luck! Though now that I think of it, my horoscope did say that I was in for an unexpected windfall – but I never expected anything like this.
I thought that would be the end of my run of luck, but the good news and offers of help kept coming.
A guy in Canada heard about my erectile dysfunction problem (hah!) and wants to send me some free Viagra samples. I’m going to have to decline, obviously; but, still, wasn’t that thoughtful of him?
And as if that wasn’t enough, a couple of hours later I received an email from the lawyer of a woman in Kentucky who has died and left me her 5 billion dollar estate. All I have to do is give this guy my bank details and I’ll be able to pick up the cash next week! (Reminder to myself: ring a truck hire company tomorrow and arrange for them to make a pickup from my bank.)
Oh, and the ex wife of the Sultan of Oman needs my help to transfer 10 million dollars out of the country. In return for my help, she’s prepared to give me 10% of the money. (Hmm… That’s only a measly million. I think I might pass on that one…)
On top of all this incredible good fortune, it would appear that I have now just won the Internet lotto. Yes! Can you believe it!? I don’t remember buying a ticket, but I guess I must have if I’ve won!
Oh, happy days.
The only thing that’s worrying me is – will there be enough room in my house to store all that cash?
Heck, maybe I can talk Natalia into holding onto some of it for me, for safekeeping…

America: The country where journalists dare not speak the truth

Helen Thomas

Apparently it is now an outrage in the land of the First Amendment right to free speech and freedom of political expression to express an unfavourable opinion of the terrorist, apartheid state of Israel.
Helen Thomas said nothing that the majority of people around the world would disagree with (as a number of polls have shown). Only in the United States – where for decades people have been brainwashed by the media and the entertainment industry to regard Israel as a benign, friendly state that can do no wrong – is it considered heretical to question Israel’s right to occupy Palestine.

Thomas went on to “outrage” American Jewish groups (who have honed being outraged into an art form) by suggesting, when asked where the occupying Israelis would go, that they could go back to the countries they came from.

She’s quite right, of course. The majority of Israeli Jews – the actual figure is around 80% – are immigrants who came to live in Israel under the apartheid state’s absurd and racist “right of return” law. Many now live in settlements built on Palestinian land. And the majority of these “settlers” have dual nationality and retain properties and business links in their country of origin. There is nothing at all outrageous in the view that they should get out of Palestine and go back to wherever they came from.

What is outrageous is the idea – which appears to have widespread acceptance in the US – that the indigenous people of Palestine can be evicted from their homes and forced to live in squalid ghettos – as “refugees” in their own country – where they are persecuted on a daily basis and deprived of their most basic human and civil rights.

The Israeli occupation is an outrage. The siege of Gaza is an outrage. The deliberate murder by Israel of thousands of innocent civilians – most of them women and children – in Lebanon and Gaza was an outrage. The hijacking of the aid ships in international waters last week and the execution of nine activists was an outrage. Yet not one politician in government – either in Europe or in the US – has dared to condemn Israel outright, or to break off diplomatic ties with this murderous apartheid regime. But when one veteran journalist dares to speak her mind and express a view that most people in the world would agree with, she is vilified and treated as if she were a terrorist, and forced to resign from a job that she’s been doing for six decades.

Far from rushing to her defence, many of Helen Thomas’ fellow journalists have stated that she ought to have been more tactful in her choice of words. But why should anyone be required or expected to tiptoe delicately around the sensibilities of a regime that is engaged in terrorism, ethnic cleansing, torture, assassination and mass murder on a daily basis? Does Israel exercise tact when it drops massive bombs on civilian “targets”, or when it razes Palestinian homes to the ground to make space for the construction of Jewish settlements?

As former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon once declared when his foreign Minister Shimon Peres warned him against taking actions that might alienate Americans:

“Every time we do something you tell me Americans will do this and will do that. I want to tell you something very clear: don’t worry about American pressure on Israel. We control America, and the Americans know it.”

How right he was.

“Melting glaciers” fiasco exposes IPCC arrogance, dishonesty and incompetence

IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri today admitted in a public statement that the IPCC claim that there was a very high chance the Himalayan glaciers would melt away by 2035 was wrong and unfounded.

He did not offer to resign (if it was up to me, he’d be in prison), but merely promised that this claim would be dropped from future statements regarding climate change (formerly known as global warming).

So what’s the big deal?

The big deal is that the allegedly melting Himalayan glaciers was one of the key “facts” that was used to persuade governments – particularly in India and Asia – to commit billions of dollars in funding to GW research and prevention. This is money that could have been used to deal with real environmental and humanitarian emergencies.

But not only that. The melting glaciers claim – and the way in was defended by Pachauri (who has no qualifications whatsoever in any field related to climate science) – provides an insight into the combination of incompetence, dishonesty and arrogance by which the IPCC operates.

Incompetence, because the claim was a physical impossibility that could have been spotted by a ten year-old schoolboy with a rudimentary grasp of maths (the figures quoted simply didn’t add up). And dishonesty because the absurdity of the claim had been brought to Pachauri’s attention by several scientists and by the Japanese government prior to its publication. Clearly, the IPCC chose not to remove the claim because it was regarded as a juicy and photogenic AGW “convincer”. (There’s nothing newspapers like more than images – even photoshopped images – of melting glaciers.)

Arrogant because when Jairam Ramesh, India’s environment minister, publicly refuted the melting glacier claim, the IPCC – and Pachauri in particular – was scathing in its denunciation of him, attempting to discredit him and accusing him of reaching his conclusions on the basis of “voodoo science”.
Here’s a newspaper account of the IPCC’s attack on Ramesh from last November:

Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the IPCC, told the Guardian: “We have a very clear idea of what is happening. I don’t know why the minister (Ramesh) is supporting this unsubstantiated research.

The government report, entitled Himalayan glaciers, looks at 150 years’ worth of data gathered from the Geological Survey of India from 25 glaciers. It claims to be the first comprehensive study on the region.

Pachauri dismissed the report saying it was not “peer reviewed” and had few “scientific citations”.

In a remarkable finding, the report claims the Gangotri glacier, the main source of the River Ganges, actually receded fastest in 1977 – and is today “practically at a stand still”…

“As long as we have monsoons we will have glaciers. There are many factors to consider when we want to find out how quickly… rainfall, debris cover, relief and terrain,” said Raina (the geologist who authored the report).

In response Pachauri said that such statements were reminiscent of “climate change deniers and school boy science”.

Many environmentalists said they were also unconvinced by the minister’s arguments. Sunita Narain, a member of the Indian prime minister’s climate change council and director of the Centre for Science and Environment, said “the report would create a lot of confusion.

“The PM’s council has just received a comprehensive report which presents many studies which show clear fragmentation of the glaciers would lead to faster recession. I am not sure what Jairam (Ramesh) is doing.”

Full report:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/09/india-pachauri-climate-glaciers

Yesterday the IPCC chairman was forced to admit publicly that Ramesh was right, and that the IPCC, Pachauri, and some of the IPCC’s “leading environmentalists” were 100% wrong.

This is an example not only of how wrong the IPCC can be with its “facts” on global warming, but also how arrogant and downright malevolent it can be towards those who challenge its claims.

Where did global warming go?

According to a report on the BBC website today:

Climate body admits glacier error
A top UN panel gave the wrong date for Himalayan glacier melt, but says it does not change the picture of man-made climate change.

Wasn’t the original claim that these glaciers were melting as a result of global warming? “Climate change” is a different animal altogether, and can include a whole range of factors (radioactive particles in the air, deforestation, oceanic pollution etc.) that have nothing at all to do with the global temperature rising as a result of human-produced CO2 emissions.

In recent months, the term “global warming” seems to have fallen into disuse by most MMGW adherents – and by the media – and the much more ambiguous term “climate change” is increasingly being used instead.

“Climate change”, of course, covers just about every contingency. If the earth warms up, that would be climate change. If a new ice age arrives, that would be climate change too.

As the climate has been changing periodically since the beginning of the earth’s history, it’s a pretty safe bet that it will continue to change in the future. Predicting “climate change” is a bit like backing every horse in a race.

So what happened to global warming? Does the abandonment of this term by MMGW adherents signal a private acceptance on their part that the much-heralded warming might not actually happen? After a decade in which global temperatures have gone steadily down and global ice is still at normal levels; and particularly after one of the coldest winters on record – not to mention the revelation that senior members of the IPCC manipulated data and resorted to blackmail and threats to prevent MMGW sceptics from publishing their views – claims of an impending rise in the temperature are beginning to strain people’s credibility.

Perhaps it’s my imagination, but it looks to me as if the goalposts in this game are on the move, and that pretty soon they’ll be telling us that “it’s not just warming that’s the problem”, and accusing sceptics of putting too much emphasis on “one particular aspect of climate change”.

Five days later, and still no air-drops to Haiti

Still no help for Haiti's earthquake victims

Five days after the Haiti earthquake struck, victims are still waiting for international help to arrive. People who were rescued from collapsed buildings are now dying from infections that could be easily treated with the antibiotic drugs stacked in crates just a hundred miles away.
The US military and air force have so far been unable to reach the earthquake zone to deliver these desperately needed medical supplies to the small island in what it likes to call its “own back yard”.
By contrast, the US Army and Air Force has no trouble at all dropping massive bombs and missiles with “surgical precision” on villages in Afghanistan and before that in Iraq – huge countries thousands of miles away from the US.
If only their medical aid delivery system was even half as efficient as their missile delivery system. But, of course, that would mean saving civilian lives instead of killing civilians, at which they’ve had so much more practice.
To make matters worse, the US military, which is in control of Port-au-Prince’s international airport, has been denying landing permission to relief flights from other countries. Brazil and France have lodged an official ­protest with Washington after US military aircraft were given priority, forcing non-US flights to divert to the Dominican Republic. The Red Cross and Médecins Sans Frontières have also complained about diverted flights.
It appears that the US wants the earthquake relief effort to be seen as a predominantly US initiative – even if this means preventing aid teams from other countries reaching those in need.
The assumption of control by the US military is also fueling suspicions that the US may be taking advantage of the disaster, and the chaos it has caused, to effectively take over Haiti. France’s cooperation minister, Alain Joyandet, criticised the US by saying that aid efforts were supposed to be about helping Haiti, not “occupying” it.

Update 19 Jan: Today, seven days after the earthquake struck, the US military finally began airdrops of food and water into Haiti.

US government saves Afghanistan from the threat of democracy

So, as expected, Karzai has been “reinstalled” as president of Afghanistan, despite the fact that there has been no election, and despite the fact that he was caught trying to rig the election that was supposed to have taken place.

The main opposition candidate, Abdullah Abdullah, decided not to run again, citing, as his reason, the fact that the officials who rigged the first election had not been sacked, and would also be in charge of the second election.
This explanation strains credibility, as the second round would have come under close scrutiny from UN monitors, and there was a better than reasonable chance that Abdullah would have won (he had almost half the votes after Karzai’s known fraudulent votes had been discounted). A far more likely explanation is that Mr Abdullah was “persuaded” by the US government via the CIA to step aside, with bribes, threats, or – more likely – a combination of both (probably something along the lines of: “If you resign from the election we’ll give you a squillion dollars and a powerful position in the next government. If you don’t resign, something bad might happen to you and your family”). Whatever it was, it was an offer he couldn’t refuse.

And so now the US’s puppet government in Afghanistan has been saved from the pernicious threat of democracy, and all those lucrative oil contracts are, for the time being at least, secure. American and British soldiers are now fighting in Afghanistan to protect a one-party state.

Oh, and “Honest Joe” Obama has proved beyond any doubt that he is as corrupt as any previous US president.

There’s one born-again every minute

You have to pass a driving test before you are allowed to drive a car; but you don’t have to know the first thing about politics to have a say in who gets to run the country (any country where governments are elected). Which leads to the kind of situation such as that in the US, where candidates get elected because they have been born again (there’s one born-again every minute), or because the candidate in question comes up with the best one-liners (supplied, of course, by a team of highly-paid script-writers, copywriters, PR experts, psychologists and astrologers) in a TV debate.

There are major differences between the US and Britain when it comes to electing leaders. In the US, candidates garner support by drawing the public’s attention to how intelligent, experienced, cool, qualified, and great in general they are. In Britain, candidates get support by expressing humility, modesty, and self-effacement. For a British politician to say: “When I am elected Prime Minister…” would be political suicide. It would be seen as arrogant and presumptuous. In the US, by contrast, any politician running for office who used the phrase: “If I am elected…” would be seen as weak, dithering and lacking in self-confidence.

No British politician would dream of citing Joe the plumber as an example of the country’s economic woes. In Britain plumbers earn more than Members of Parliament and live in luxurious villas with high walls and armed security guards at the gate. And while economic recessions come and go, people will always call a plumber when their sink gets blocked or their toilet overflows.

In the US, aspirants to high political office do not hesitate to wheel out their wives, children, and family pets for “media opportunities”. In Britain, the families of politicians are regarded as a liability and an embarrassment, and are kept locked away in secret dungeons until after the elections have taken place. (Tony Blair was a notable exception to this rule; which just goes to prove how sensible a rule it is.)

In the US, leadership contests are settled by having a shoot-out at the OK corral. In Britain, the dilemma for would-be replacements is to make it abundantly clear to all and sundry that they want the top job and are prepared to kill to get it, whilst being careful not to express anything other than sincere and wholehearted support for the person whose job they are after.

To get back to the American electorate (and, to be fair, the British electorate isn’t all that far behind in the sucker vote stakes), perhaps a solution would be to require all would-be voters to pass a basic intelligence and current affairs test. It wouldn’t have to be difficult. Polls have revealed that large swathes of the American public believe that Europe is a country, the London Underground is a branch of Al Qaeda, George W. Bush is doing a great job, Saddam Hussein personally organized the 9-11 attacks, America won the war in Vietnam, and almost every important invention – from the telephone to the internet – was invented by an American.

(Where on earth are they getting their information? Ah, yes: Fox news.)

A few simple questions would quickly eliminate electoral applicants whose IQ didn’t quite make it into double digits; and that in itself would represent a major advance. Question 1 could be something along the lines of: “What planet are you on?”

America is a big place. Can it really be so hard to find a candidate who is intelligent, sane, well-educated, non-racist, non-xenophobic, non-born-again, and filthy rich? Well, okay; that last criterion might eliminate a few people. But still, suitable candidates for the US presidency are as rare as Higgs bosons in a particle accelerator.

But at least Americans are getting to elect their leader, which is more than can be said for the people of Britain, who have been lumbered, through no fault of their own, with arguably the most ineffectual Prime Minister in British history – foisted on them by Tony Blair as revenge for their rejection of him.

I don’t think anyone doubts Gordon Brown’s sincerity. He obviously has great faith in his own sense of destiny, and sees himself as a great British statesman. Unfortunately, his inflated opinion of himself is not shared by the vast majority of the British people, who didn’t elect him, don’t like him, and don’t want him as their Prime Minister. Any normal, non-megalomaniac person would take the hint and withdraw gracefully from the fray; but Brown is determined to persevere in the face of overwhelming unpopularity, presumably in the belief that people will eventually come around to him. That will happen when pigs fly and Republican politicians learn how to pronounce the word nuclear.

For sale (price $10m): two shoes missing a heel

In the instant I saw those two shoes flying, three separate thoughts flashed into my mind in rapid succession. My first reaction was “Yes!” At last somebody has been able – and has had the cahunas – to get through George W. Bush’s hitherto impenetrable wall of security and give this piece of pond life a piece of their mind relatively up close and personal.

My immediate follow-up thought was, “What a pity he didn’t have anything a bit more lethal to throw than a pair of shoes (a grenade, for instance)”.

And my third thought – which tells you something about this internet age we live in – was:  “Those shoes will be advertised for sale on eBay within the week, and they’ll fetch a small fortune!”

In fact it took less than a week; and the fortune being offered for them isn’t all that small, even in these inflationary times.

The former coach of the Iraqi national football team, Adnan Hamad, has reportedly offered $100,000 for them.  But this bid has already been trumped by an anonymous  Saudi citizen who has apparently offered $10m for the flying footwear that so narrowly missed the world’s most wanted (or unwanted, depending on your point of view) war criminal.

Muntadar al-Zaidi, the journalist who threw the shoes, must be a fearless sole – sorry, soul – to do what he did, knowing, as he must have, that he would, at the very least, be beaten up and quite possibly tortured for his one-man protest. And, indeed, the BBC is now reporting that Mr. al-Zaidi has already been subjected to physical abuse, and has suffered a broken arm, broken ribs and internal bleeding. He now faces the prospect of seven to 15 years in an Iraqi prison under a law outlawing “aggression against a president”. So much for free speech in the new US-sponsored Iraq.

Before throwing the shoes, Mr. al-Zaidi shouted: “This is a farewell kiss, you dog! This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq.”

Apart from the implied insult to dogs, it is a sentiment with which I wholeheartedly concur.

In fact at least 100,000 innocent civilians were killed by US forces in Iraq (aided and abetted by the Royal Air Force, which carpet-bombed densely-populated civilian areas) in an illegal invasion that had nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism or weapons of mass destruction and everything to do with the US gaining control of Iraq’s oil resources.

Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi men, women and children have been maimed, orphaned, widowed or made homeless on the orders of America’s self-styled “war president”, who served only the interests of the oil corporations, deceived the American people, prevented a criminal investigation into the 9/11 attacks, and unleashed nuclear anarchy on the world.

In the early days of his campaign, Barack Obama promised that if he was elected he would indict George W. Bush for treason. However, like most of president-elect Obama’s promises, that one seems to have been forgotten, and apparently the two men are now good buddies. Next thing you know they’ll be going hunting together.

Politicians – can’t live with them, can’t shoot ‘em. But at least we can throw shoes at them. So here’s a toast to Muntadar al-Zaidi. Thank you, and well done!  You’re a brave man, and I salute you – but I don’t think I’d like to be in your… um… predicament.

Occupation 101: Voice of the Silenced Majority

“A thought-provoking and powerful documentary film on the current and historical root causes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Unlike any other film ever produced on the conflict — ‘Occupation 101′ presents a comprehensive analysis of the facts and hidden truths surrounding the never ending controversy and dispels many of its long-perceived myths and misconceptions.

“The film also details life under Israeli military rule, the role of the United States in the conflict, and the major obstacles that stand in the way of a lasting and viable peace. The roots of the conflict are explained through first-hand on-the-ground experiences from leading Middle East scholars, peace activists, journalists, religious leaders and humanitarian workers whose voices have too often been suppressed in American media outlets.”

Princess Diana moment

Every year around this time I receive a spate of phone calls and emails from journalists researching articles, radio and TV programmes about my former client (and subsequently good friend) the late Princess Diana. Not from British journalists, I hasten to add, but from journalists in the US, Japan, Australia and so on. In Britain, Diana has been virtually erased from the public consciousness by a clever PR and “perception management” campaign.

Tomorrow, 1 July is Diana’s birthday, and therefore a journalistic opportunity to write “commemorative” articles about her.
Even all these years after her death, Diana’s photo on the front page of a newspaper or magazine guarantees increased sales.

There will be another spate of requests for interviews in August, the anniversary of her death. This year, no doubt, the task for journalists will be to make connections and comparisons between Diana and Michael Jackson (of whom, by the way, Diana was a huge fan). Already, there is press speculation about whether Jackson’s funeral will turn out to be be another “Princess Diana moment”.

It is Diana’s death – and the circumstances in which she died – that journalists are mainly interested in talking and writing about, with the central question being whether it was an accident or she was assassinated.

Most of the journalists I’ve talked to about this are personally convinced that Diana’s death was a tragic accident. Journalists are by and large a conservative bunch who tend to accept official versions of events; but that isn’t going to stop them from writing articles questioning the official version of Diana’s death and outlining what they themselves privately believe to be hair-brained conspiracy theories.

Of course, people don’t buy newspapers to read stories with headings like: “Diana’s death: It was an accident”. But they do buy newspapers to read articles with titles like: “Diana’s death: Was it really an accident?” or: “Startling new information reveals that Princess Diana may have been assassinated”.

Or even “psychic claims princess was murdered”.
Hence the requests for an interview. Any new hook will do to hang an old story on.

When Diana was alive I received a constant stream of offers from British newspapers – and not only from the tabloids – to “spill the beans” about the princess.

However, I’m a big believer in client confidentiality (even if the client is no longer alive), and the only time I ever spoke about Diana to journalists was at her own request, to help her to get certain facts into the public domain. This was information that she wanted people to know about, but which would have been problematic for her to reveal herself (in particular, Prince Charles’ involvement with Camilla Parker Bowles, which I was the first to reveal in a number of press articles).
When the information was published, Diana was asked to comment on it, which gave her the opportunity to confirm it publicly. Or, in some cases, to decline to deny it, which journalists understood to be confirmation.

I was only too happy to help. Diana had been treated shabbily to say the least; and when she first came to me for advice – and I don’t think I’m betraying any confidences when I say this – she was in a desperate state, caught, as she herself put it, “between a rock and a hard place”. I advised her as best I could, though in reality our sessions were mainly an opportunity for her to talk freely about her problems to someone who was “out of the loop”, and would give her objective feedback.

It is one thing to ask for, and receive good advice; but it is quite another thing to act on that advice. Diana was constantly seeking advice, and she did recognize good advice when it was offered; but she was in the grip of powerful political forces, and her options were severely limited. From the moment she became pregnant with Wiliam – the future King of England – her fate was sealed. She became a hostage to the British Establishment, and to the shadowy forces which exist to protect it. She was never going to be allowed to disappear into the sunset with the heir to the throne. Nor, on the other hand, was she ever going to relinquish custody of her children. (Although Diana had joint custody of William and Harry with Prince Charles, her influence on them was far stronger than his.) Above all, she was never going to be allowed to marry and have children – step-siblings to the future king of England – by an Arab, least of all the son of Mohamed Al Fayed, a man who had been a thorn in the side of the British establishment for many years.

The media spotlight was on her 24 hours a day, and every move she made was closely scrutinized. And, even though she was immensely popular, she understood that this could and would change in an instant if she said or did anything that showed her in any other light than that of the adoring young wife of the prince. Diana was expected to play the role of the fairytale princess, and the people would continue to adore her – provided she did not deviate from that role.

What the public did not know was that her marriage had ended in disillusionment after only a few months, when it became apparent to her that her new husband was more interested in another woman.

Diana’s downfall was her sense of loyalty and commitment. Instead of walking away from what was clearly a disastrous situation that could only get worse – and that had always been my advice to her – she decided to fight for her marriage, in the romantic but hopelessly naive and misguided belief that everything would work out fine in the end, and that she, her husband, and their children would all live happily ever after.

It didn’t happen like that, of course. Nor was there ever any chance that it would.

In the end, Diana decided – in fact she felt she had no other option – to go public about the circumstances of her marriage. She knew that she would be criticized for taking this route (even in modern Britain, one doesn’t air one’s dirty laundry in public, least of all if one happens to be the wife of the future King).

However, Diana had reached a point where she felt that she had no other choice but to get it all “out in the open”. She was also, it is not generally realized, afraid for her own personal safety, and she saw “going public” as a kind of insurance policy.

Diana was convinced that, having served her purpose (by providing the Prince with two healthy male heirs) and having become a liability and potential threat to the Royal Family, she would be targeted for assassination by “the powers that be” and the “dark forces of the state”.

At the time, her fears were dismissed by some as paranoia (and are still dismissed as such today by many). But in fact Diana had been warned on at least two separate occasions by secret service agents concerned for her safety, that she would be wise to “keep her head down”, as there was a real possibility that “certain elements” in the British intelligence community might deem it “expedient” to take her “out of the picture”.

Diana had also become aware of a “second level of surveillance”, by which she meant secret service agents – she referred to them as “spooks” – who were not part of the official Royal protection team.

As time passed, and particularly after her divorce from Prince Charles was finalized, Diana became increasingly concerned for her own safety, and for the safety of her children. She knew that it would be she, and not they, who would be targeted, but she feared that they might somehow be caught up in any attempt to assassinate her; and she did not, in any event, want her children to be left without their mother. She understood that the danger level had risen substantially now that she was completely independent and beyond the control of the Royal Family and its many faceless minders.

“I’m convinced they’re going to kill me,” she told me one day. “They can’t poison me or shoot me, so it will have to look like an accident. A car crash would be the easiest thing to arrange, I expect.”

Diana voiced these fears to a number of people, including Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Condon, who recorded the details of his conversation with Diana in a note whose contents he kept secret until after her death. Sir Paul – whose tone suggests that he was highly sceptical of the Princess’s fears and accusations – dutifully made a note of her belief that “efforts would be made if not to get rid of her (be it by some accident in her car such as pre-prepared brake failure or whatever)… to see that she was so injured or damaged as to be declared ‘unbalanced’.”

That was in 1995. A year later, after her divorce was finalized, the plan, if there was one, to have Diana declared “unbalanced” became redundant. A more permanent solution would be required.

And a more permanent solution was arranged.

I have never had the slightest doubt in my mind that Princess Diana was murdered in a hastily-planned operation by secret service agents who had been closely monitoring her movements for years, gauging her level of threat to certain interests within the British establishment on an ongoing basis, and seizing the opportunity to assassinate her in a foreign country at a time when they deemed her level of threat to have risen too high. (Under the Intelligence Services Act of 1994, British intelligence agents are immune from prosecution in Britain for criminal offences carried out overseas; but in any event the blame for any apparent lapses in security would automatically be apportioned to Al Fayed.)

The various official investigations into Princess Diana’s death have been nothing but cover-ups, not least the British inquest, in which the presiding judge, Lord Justice Scott Baker, specifically instructed the inquest jury to reject the possibility that the Princess had been deliberately murdered.

Diana’s fears for her own safety were well-founded. Her instincts were good. The danger was real. Where she – and Mohamed Al Fayed – went wrong was in personalizing the threat and assuming that any plot to kill her would originate with members of the Royal Family. Diana suspected Charles of seeking to have her killed. Al Fayed blamed Prince Philip for ordering the murder of Diana and his son Dodi. In reality the decision to arrange this “accident” was made by people they had never met, and of whose existence they were only dimly aware.

Israelis in search of war criminals don’t have to look far

Prosecutors in Munich, Germany have today charged alleged Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk with 27,900 counts of being an accessory to murder in World War II.

The action was welcomed by Efraim Zuroff, the top Nazi-hunter at the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, which regards Mr Demjanjuk as the world’s most-wanted Nazi war criminal.

“This is obviously an important step forward,” he told the Associated Press. “We hope that the trial itself will be expedited so that justice will be achieved and he can be given the appropriate punishment.”

I’m all in favour of hunting down war criminals and forcing them to stand trial. However, if the Wiesenthal group genuinely wants to carry on this work, why not start a bit closer to home, with the war criminals who currently comprise the government and military leadership of Israel?

It is a bit rich for Jewish groups to continue to invest large amounts of time and money hunting down individuals who carried out war crimes 70 years ago when there are Israeli war criminals all around them in Jerusalem, who committed their crimes within the last 12 months.

Israelis who are genuinely in search of war criminals don’t have to look very far.

The Simon Wiesenthal Centre describes itself on its website as: “A Jewish human rights organization…. confronting antisemitism, hate and terrorism, promoting human rights and dignity, standing with Israel, defending the safety of Jews worldwide, and teaching the lessons of the Holocaust for future generations”.

Promoting human rights and standing with Israel?
This is a contradiction in terms.

How on earth can a human rights organization stand with Israel, a terrorist and apartheid state which illegally occupies large swathes of Palestinian territory and which has been condemned by every independent civil rights and humanitarian organization in the world for the atrocities it carried out – and continues to carry out – on defenseless civilian populations?

Israel continues to pursue 20th century Nazis even when they themselves have become the Nazis of the 21st century.

“The effort to bring Demjanjuk to justice sends a very powerful message that the passage of time in no way diminishes the guilt of the perpetrator,” Efraim Zuroff told AP reporters.

Quite right. But the same principle must also apply to the war criminals responsible for the persecution and slaughter of the indigenous people of the land that is currently occupied by Israel.

Where real estate is FREE for the taking!

Israeli police have evicted nine Palestinian families living in two houses in illegally occupied East Jerusalem. Jewish settlers moved into the houses almost immediately. Palestinian officials say the families lived in the houses for over 50 years.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/

You have to hand it to the Israelis. They’ve come up with a great system which guarantees a home for every Jew who comes to live in Israel (from any country in the world).

Here’s how it works: First, you identify a nice property that is currently owned by a Palestine family. Second, you turn up early in the morning with a couple of tanks and 20 armed Israeli policemen (ie, paid thugs) and evict the family from their home. Third, you give the keys of the property to some Jewish family who have just arrived from the US or France or South Africa or wherever.

Neat, or what?

The Israelis have been doing this for decades, of course. Bulldozing entire Palestinian towns and building Jewish settlements in their place. So what’s new?

What’s new is that in the past the Israeli authorities at least made a pretense of acting in the interests of Israeli “security” (“a rocket was fired from a house in this neighborhood, so we have to demolish the entire area and build a Jewish settlement”). Now they appear to have abandoned even this flimsy pretext.

The truth is that the Israeli long-term plan has always been to eradicate the Palestinian people and take over all the Palestinian territories, and to this end it has engaged in a slow but steady campaign of state terrorism, ethnic cleansing, and land-grabbing. Today, after more than five decades of brutality, and with the support of successive US governments, Israel effectively controls almost all of Palestine.

What we are seeing now – and what we saw recently in the wholesale slaughter of civilians in Gaza – is a last push by Israel to make as much ground as possible – or, to be more accurate, to take as much ground as possible – before world public opinion turns decisively against Israel and it is finally cornered into taking part in negotiations to resolve the conflict (something it has always claimed to want, but which it has done everything in its power to avoid).

We’re creating a Master Race of mice

So this week Sarah Outen (left) became the first woman to row solo across the Indian Ocean.
She set off from the west coast of Australia in April and landed on the island of Mauritius on Monday, 3 Aug, after spending a total of 124 days at sea.
Which just goes to prove that Brits will do anything to save on travel expenses.
Sarah, a biologist from Rutland, UK, said it had been “an astonishing experience” and she had seen the elements “in all their states”.
“In the last days I’d have whales surfing past the boat and albatrosses flying overhead,” she told the BBC website.
It’s when you start seeing whales flying overhead that you know you’re in trouble, Sarah.

This week there was great news for epileptic mice – but not much joy for humans with the condition.
“Scientists halt epilepsy in mice,” was the BBC website headline on Monday.
Great. Now they’ll be able to drive trucks and operate heavy machinery.
Has epilepsy been a big problem for mice? Not that I am aware of. I don’t know a single mouse whose life has been ruined by epileptic seizures.
Meanwhile, rodents everywhere have also been celebrating (with cheese and wine parties, presumably) the discovery of a drug – aptly named rapamycin – which has been found to extend life in mice, according to a study published on July 8 in the journal Nature.
The research, conducted as part of the National Institute of Aging Interventions Testing Program, took place at three separate test sites and involved nearly 2,000 genetically similar mice.
Exactly how rapamycin works is “still an open question,” says Randy Strong, a pharmacology professor at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio and one of three lead authors of the study.
And then comes the inevitable disclaimer: “Earlier human trials have shown, however, that rapamycin can have serious side effects”.
In other words the drug will kill you long before it extends your life.

I’m getting a bit tired of reading about medical “breakthroughs” in mice that never seem to translate into cures for people.
At this stage there must be a miracle cure available for every disease known to mousedom. Hardly a day goes by without news of some new medical advance that has been successfully tested on mice.
We’re breeding a master race of rodents – while we humans are still dying from the same old diseases that killed our distant ancestors.
Isn’t it about time the medical boffins came up with a few genuine cures for human diseases – such as cancer and coronary disease?
For all their “breakthroughs” with mice, they have yet to produce a single cure for any of the most common diseases that kill humans.
This is the 21st century. A cure for cancer is long overdue. Yes, I know it’s a complex and difficult disease, but you’d think that after more than a hundred years of intensive medical research – involving tens of thousands of researchers and costing countless millions of dollars – they’d have made a bit more progress towards finding a cure than they have.
In any event their failure to find cures for these common killer diseases might be a bit easier to accept if they didn’t keep reminding us in their smug and arrogant way of how clever they are.
At finding theoretical cures for diseases in mice.
The sad truth is that most of the medical research effort goes into developing (profitable) drugs to “treat” diseases, rather than finding (far less profitable) cures to eradicate them.

Netanyahu says peace is possible if Palestinians give up everything

The odious Benjamin Netanyahu has been speaking after a meeting in Downing Street with bumbling UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
Mr. Netanyahu’s message was that peace was possible if Palestinians gave up their resistance to Israel’s brutal and illegal occupation of their country. He repeatedly asserted that a demilitarised Palestinian state was needed if peace was to be attained.
There was no mention of a demilitarised Israeli state, of course, since, as we all know, Israel needs its US-sponsored army to protect itself from the people whose land it has stolen.
So basically his proposal is that Israel should be allowed to keep all the Palestinian land it has “confiscated”, and retain its huge arsenal of arms (which includes chemical, biological and nuclear weapons), while Palestinians are allowed to remain in the “refugee camps” and tent cities to which they have been banished by the Israeli government (ethnic cleansing by degrees), and give up all armed resistance to the occupation of their country.
Gee, that sounds like a good deal. For Israel.
But I have a better idea. How about if Israel gives up all its weapons, dismantles its army, navy, air force and the hired thugs it calls its police force, and gives the land it illegally occupies back to its rightful owners. And then compensates them for putting them through 60 years of hell. How would that be, Mr. Netanyahu?

When can we expect the US to condemn Israel for amassing nuclear weapons?

US President Barack Obama has condemned Iran after it acknowledged the existence of a second uranium enrichment plant.

“This site deepens a growing concern that Iran is failing to live up to its international responsibilities,” he said.
“Iran is breaking rules that all nations must follow.”

Except Israel, of course.

As we know, Israel is exempt from all the international rules, laws, regulations and treaties that apply to other countries.

“Iran must comply with UN Security Council resolutions,” Mr Obama added.

But Israel can disregard UN resolutions with impunity, and has done for decades.

Iran has never attacked its neighbours. Israel has. Repeatedly, slaughtering thousands of innocent civilians. Yet no action of any kind has ever been taken against it. Attempts to do so have always been thwarted by the US veto.

Israel is guilty of state terrorism, war crimes, crimes against humanity, illegal occupation, torture, assassination, land grabbing, ethnic cleansing, and yet it is Iran – which is guilty of none of these things – that is being threatened by the US government (and, laughably, by the bumbling, nodding dog British PM, who has turned ineffectuality into an art form).

I’m not in favour of Iran having nuclear weapons – no more than I am in favour of the US, Russia, Britain, France, India, Pakistan and North Korea having them – but this whole thing reeks of hypocrisy.

If the US, Britain, France and the other nuclear powers want to persuade Iran not to pursue the nuclear option they should start by getting rid of their own nukes. Or demanding that Israel – which has refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty – give up its nuclear arsenal.

Coincidentally both the US and Britain have, in recent days, announced plans to reduce their nuclear stockpiles. It’s almost as if they knew they would be delivering this ultimatum to Iran and wanted to be able to point out that they themselves were committed to nuclear disarmament.

But, of course, that would mean that they knew in advance about Iran’s “secret” nuclear facility and carefully picked their moment to announce this to the media.

The idea that nuclear weapons can be eradicated by gradual reduction is absurd in any event. What difference does it make whether a country has 10,000 nuclear warheads or 100?

Unilateral reduction is merely a device to justify exerting pressure on countries which are in the process of “going nuclear”. Countries like the US are never going to give up their nuclear weapons, and that being the case they will never be in a moral position to dictate to other countries on this issue. And “do as I say, not as I do (or else!)” has never been, and will never be, a reasonable or persuasive argument.