AUGUST


WEDNESDAY AUGUST 23rd 2006

FIVE WAR TONY

Back in England … jet-lagged just about licked. Going through a months worth of snail mail, (mostly junk) and flicking through the four issues of New Statesmen that arrived whilst I was away. In the cover story "Blood on His Hands" editor John Kampfner says Blair knew the attack on Lebanon was coming, but did nothing to try and stop it. Kampfner who wrote the book "Blair's Wars" —(and seems to have as good an array of sources in Whitehall and Parliament as it gets) has been better than most in recent years, at getting under Blair's skin — in terms of penetrating the layers of secrecy and and
yes-people that surround the Prime Minister. The first paragraph of his article, which should have been front page news, but as far as I know was not, says it all:

At a Downing Street reception not long ago, a guest had the temerity to ask Tony Blair: "How do you sleep at night, knowing that you've been responsible for the deaths of 100,000 Iraqis?" The Prime Minster is said to have retorted: "I think you'll find it's closer to 50,000."

(Kampfner -New Statesman August 7th 2006)



MONDAY AUGUST 21st 2006

THE MATHEMATICS OF BOMB PLOTS

… Got back from the US a couple of days ago. Jet-lag hell but no real trouble at airports. I do not mind not being able to take liquids and gels on the plane but reading about all this in the papers in the days and hours before boarding , gave me the creeps.

Whilst I may have felt some comfort in the idea that British and US intelligence were 'on to them' and stopped the plot before 'imminent' trial runs, re-connecting with the fact the authorities have known about the possibility of liquid explosives bringing down planes for over ten years, and then reading in Newsweek that less than 7% of checked luggage is screened, hardly gives one the feeling that the safety of the passengers is the top priority in all of this.

The so-called 'Bojinka' plot im 1995 "to attack multiple US-bound airplanes from Asia succeeded in trial runs in sneaking nitroglycerin onto planes in the saline solution bottles typically carried by contact lens wearers, killing one passenger on a Philippines Airlines flight. "This has always been the case," notes chemist Nick Turro of Columbia University. "It was known that you could do this." (Scientific American/news August 10th 2006)

We have to ask why they havr then let liquids on to planes for the last ten years, or at least for the last five years since 9-11 itself and the new age of airline security awareness, if there was even a shadow of a chance that someone might be able to smuggle them on to a plane to bring it down?

With the idea being pushed in the media that the possible date for this new attack would be on or around the fifth anniversary of 9-11 and that it would be "bigger than 9-11," one has to wonder.

As well as worrying about the 93% of unchecked bags in the hold below me as the headlines goaded me to, I stared doing the sums. For it to be bigger than 9-11 (just over 3000 deaths if you include the hijackers) the new plot would require blowing up eight planes each full to a 400 capacity seating level. The new plot as reported, suggested that ten planes would be targeted. It makes it easier to work out the maths.

Whilst I have little doubt that al Qaida would have loved to pull something like this off, I am not convinced they were at all near doing so. Scientific American continued that whilst it was theoretically possible to distil the necessary liquid components from readily available household products to create an explosion on a plane it was also very technically difficult due to the volatility of the compounds when mixed:

Favorites include triacetone triperoxide (TATP) and nitroglycerin, the components of which are individually harmless, but dangerous when combined. Neither of these is easy to work with, however. TATP is an atypical explosive, relying as it does on the formation of four gas molecules for every solid TATP molecule when triggered--a powerful "entropy burst," as researchers have called it. But TATP is relatively unstable--simply hitting the powder can set off the reaction--and it requires some time to produce the powerful compound. Terrorists would have to blend the constituent chemical brew and then wait for the more explosive powder to precipitate over the course of the next day, according to Tour, making it unlikely to be made on board a flight, although the brew itself is also dangerous. Nitroglycerin--the explosive ingredient in dynamite (and a common heart medication in small quantities)--would be even more difficult to handle if made on board; early experimenters suffered a slew of explosive mishaps due to its volatile nature. And many other explosives immediately fume or otherwise react as the chemicals are blended, as well as being highly sensitive to jostling. "Peroxides are very dangerous and shock sensitive," notes one university chemist who asked not to be identified.

Either the authorities have kept us in the dark for five years about the dangers from liquid explosives on planes because it is very difficult for someone to do this or they have done so because of gross negligence?

From an intelligence point of view, the plot was closed down to soon. The suspects had allegedly been under surveillance for a year, but when arrested none had actually made any bombs, none had bought airline tickets and some did not even have passports. Under a headline: "Airline plot police uncover 'suitcase bomb-making kit'" (August 18th,) The Independent said: Police investigating the alleged terrorist plot to blow up transatlantic flights found a suitcase yesterday containing items which could be used to make a bomb. (my emphasis) . An unnamed police source who had told the BBC the suitcase contained 'everything you would need to make an improvised device' was the sole meat of the Independent's story.

If this lack of hard evidence is true then one may think getting convictions would be unlikely (tell that to the Birmingham Six) but given that the Labour government has created 3,023 new offences since 1997 it is a very different world to that of the IRA bombing campaigns of the early seventies.

Some reports suggested that a suspect arrested in Pakistan had confessed to knowledge of the plot, and thus the security services in Britain had no choice but to prematurely arrest the plotters in Britain before they abandoned their attempt. One report suggested that US intelligence pressured their British counterparts to go in and make the arrests (earlier than they themselves would have chosen to do so).

We know Bush and Blair discussed the timing of the arrests before they happened, explained away as making sure that the adverse impact on the delicate fortunes of airline operators was minimised by the shock waves that would be engendered when the news went public.

In answer to the question of why the US president and the British Prime Minister were so intimately involved in the decision-making regarding the timing of the arrests, Craig Murray — the ex-British Ambassador to Uzbekistan who lost his job for exposing the human rights abuses of the US funded Uzbeki regime of Islam Karimov — said:

I think the answer to that is plain. Both in desperate domestic political trouble, they longed for "Another 9/11". The intelligence from Pakistan, however dodgy, gave them a new 9/11 they could sell to the media. The media has bought, wholesale, all the rubbish they have been shovelled.

(The UK Terror plot: what's really going on? - 14 Aug 2006.
http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/archives/2006/08/the_uk_terror_p.html

Whilst the media frenzy surrounding the "bigger than 9-11" plot filled the front pages on both sides of the Atlantic, and took the heat out of the Israeli-Hizbollah war as the main story, what was happening in Iraq barely registered. August 16th The Chicago Tribune reported on its page 10 that the number of violent deaths of civilians in Iraq stood at 3,149 ( a slightly bigger 9-11) for June of this year, and climbed to a record high in July of 3,438 ( a slightly bigger than a slightly bigger 9-11) averaging more than 110 deaths a day for that month. ("Iraq Deaths Hit Record in July" Chicago Tribune)

You have to wonder?

FRIDAY AUGUST 4th 2006

UNRAVELLING SOME OF THE HIDDEN AGENDAS IN LEBANON


“I -you know - I believe this; I believe that - that as Condi said yesterday, the Middle East is littered with, you know, agreements that just didn't work. And now it's time to address the root cause of the problem, and the root cause of the problem is terrorist groups trying to stop the advance of democracies. Hizbollah attacked Israel. I believe Hizbollah - I know Hizbollah is connected to Iran. And now it's time for the world to confront this danger.”

-- George W. Bush cited on democracynow.org headlines July 28th.


“I have long believed that its (Hizbollah's) attack across the Israeli border was planned months in advance. But I've now come to realise that Israel's assault on Lebanon was also planned long in advance - as part of the American-Israeli project to change the shape of the Middle East.”

- Robert Fisk, Middle East correspondent for The Independent (resident in Beruit for the last twenty years) The Independent July 29th 2006.




<<REWIND June 23 rd << prior to the current war in the Lebanon <<

“Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, expressed “deep regret” for army operations that have killed 14 Palestinian civilians in just nine days but insisted there was no “moral equivalence” between them and Palestinian attacks on Israel”

cited in The Independent June 23rd 2006


>> FAST FWD >>
“The obscene score card for death in this latest war stands as follows: 518 Lebananese civilians, 46 Hizbollah guerillas, 26 Lebanese soldiers, 36 Israeli soldiers and 19 Israeli civilians. In other words Hizbollah is killing more Israeli soldiers than civilians and the Israeli's are killing far more Lebanese civilians than they are guerillas.”

Robert Fisk The Independent August 3rd
(see also Fisk, “How Can We Stand By and Allow This To Go On” - The Independent July 31st)

We should also note that Israel is continuing its now barely mentioned war against Palestinians. The bottom line story of the second intifada, the bottom line story of the US-UK invasion of Iraq, the bottom line story of the war in Lebanon, has been, and remains, that the military might of Israel, the US, and the UK knowingly and routinely kills ten or twenty times the amount of civilian casualties than they themselves suffer, but accepts no “moral equivalence” and absolutely nil genuine responsibility for these actions.

Whilst we hear much in the mainstream news of how Hizbollah's rockets originated in Syria and/or Iran, we have to dig deep for mentions of the fact that Israeli weaponry originated in the USA; or that Israel's standing order of weaponry from the US has been rush supplied for use in the current war; or that such weaponry includes depleted uranium bunker busting bombs, illegal cluster bombs; and that some of these weapons -- like those prisoners of the Bush-Blair 'War on Terror,' subject to 'extraordinary rendition' -- are being routed through the UK.

The procrastination and pontificating regarding the US reigning in Israel from their onslaught on the Lebanon, is reminiscent of the Israeli blockade of Jenin in 2004 when it took the then Secretary of State Colin Powell eight days to get to Israel, by which time Ariel Sharon's soldiers had had more than enough time to lay Palestinian homes to rubble, accepting no “moral equivalence” for the sixty plus Palestinian civilians killed in the process.

Condoleeza Rice the current Secretary of State referring to the current situation said “a hasty ceasefire would not be a good thing.” (Why not? Not having an immediate ceasefire only makes sense if humanitarian concerns are less important than military and tactical objectives for continuing to bomb Lebanon). When Israeli bomber aircraft attacked the Lebanese town of Qana (July 30th) killing upwards of sixty civilians, the Israeli promise of a 48 hour respite from bombing, was promptly ignored, forgotten and buried under newer headlines of yet more bombing raids. Rice, Bush and Blair wring their hands and publicly talk about increasing “the urgency of diplomacy” but it is never urgent enough to make them want to stop the bombing.

The immediate triggers for the current crises: the Palestinian civilians killed by Israel in June resulting in one Israeli soldier being held hostage; and the two Israeli soldiers captured by Hizbollah, have to be measured against the fact that Israel currently holds 9700 prisoners (mostly Palestinian but some Hizbollah) whom it deems to be enemies of Israel. Such mass internment in Northern Ireland in the early 1970's turned the IRA from a bunch of rabble rousers into a disciplined fighting force which conducted a sporadic twenty plus year guerilla war against the occupying British Army, and in the end the British government had to talk with the IRA's political wing and release its prisoners. Amongst the prime reasons why Hamas, Hizbollah and Iraqi insurgents fight back is precisely because of the complete lack of equivalence in the killing/imprisoning power of Israel and the US compared to themselves.

The hidden agendas at work behind the current war in Lebanon include the internecine jockeying for position in the Middle East. Seeking to exploit the 'imperial overstretch' of the US (in Iraq and Afghanistan) Iran has long been prodding and pushing the boundaries regarding its nuclear ambitions. Ahmadinejad's reiteration of his call for Israel to be wiped off the map only serves to fan these flames. Whilst Hizbollah doubtless saw a window of opportunity to reassert itself in Lebanon, in the light of this current bigger geopolitical picture, there are opportunities for Israel and the US in not seeking an immediate ceasefire.

Fisk argues that there is nil chance of Israel defeating Hizbollah. It did not defeat them during its occupation of Lebanon (1980-2000) and is even less well positioned to do so now, despite Olmert's promise not to stop bombing until his current war achieves this end. Ditto the Bush-Blair promise with regard to defeating the 'terrorists' in Iraq/Afghanistan. Olmert and Bush know that, for all their superior civilian killing/mass imprisoning might that they cannot defeat the guerillas and that their bombing raids and ground operations only swell the ranks of their enemies.

Thus despite all the hot air about regret for civilian deaths the causing of such carnage is deliberate and thought out. In Israel's case it re-oils and upgrades the Israeli war machine, thus Chomsky objectively describes Israel as the US's number one military base in the Middle East, whereby Israel (though rarely stated) has long been, and remains the sole nuclear power in the Middle East. In the case of the US, the military industrial complex have never had it so good with the now annual $500 billion defense budgets.

Moreover, the current war in Lebanon allows Bush to extend his narrative of the endless war and provides very useful background, in terms of generating propaganda for the next phase … the next war (re-staing his words of July 28th “I know Hizbollah is connected to Iran. And now it's time for the world to confront this danger.”)

As the northern hemisphere experiences new levels of globally warmed sustained heatwaves, and knowing everything we knew about Bush and his friends in the fossil fuel industry; and now knowing everything that the Iraq war has reinforced and revealed about this relationship, in a world where peak oil is upon us, for Bush and his coterie, any excuse to have US led military might in the Middle East -- directly in Iraq, indirectly in Israel - is a good one. (n.b. Harper's Index August 2006 reveals that the cost of the Iraq war to the US is now equal to the estimated cost to US manufacturers of the US signing up to Kyoto protocol on global warming)

Remember the green light, pre-preparation and secret war prior to the invasion of Iraq began in late 2001. Bearing in mind that Bush has only two and a half years left at the helm, if his neo-conservative hawk-wonks really do want to take a big hit at Iran, then they are revving up their war planning and deploying their information war machinery as we speak. I hope I am wrong but remembering what we had forced on us during the countdown to the invasion of Iraq, much seems to point to us already being embarked upon the next war timetable …


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