UK: Veterans to throw down medals, urge disobedience in Downing Street Syria protest

December 7, 2015 By administrator

Special Forces veteran Ben Griffin has called on military personnel and munitions workers to disobey and block the bombing of Syria ahead of a Downing Street protest in which ex-services personnel will throw down their medals in disgust at the war.

“If you work in a bomb factory, walk out. If you fill up bombers with fuel, stop it. If you fly missions over Syria, don’t release your bombs,” Griffin, who served with the Parachute Regiment and SAS in Iraq, Afghanistan and Northern Ireland, told RT on Monday.

“Our attack on Syria will make things worse. You only need to look at the outcome of our attacks on Iraq and Libya to see that.”

“We have no confidence in the government of this country to do the right thing, so we call on the public to resist participation in the ongoing slaughter,” he added.

Griffin made his comments ahead of a planned protest by other decorated British military veterans of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Northern Ireland and Libya.

According to a blog by ex-services group Veterans for Peace UK (VFPUK), four military veterans of recent wars will cast off their medals outside Downing Street on Tuesday in protest at MPs’ decision to bomb Syria.

The action is set to take place at 1:00pm GMT on Tuesday and aims to oppose what the group terms “yet another attack on a Middle Eastern country.”

MPs voted on Wednesday to extend UK airstrikes from Iraq into Syria, despite widespread public opposition to the move.

Writing on the VFPUK website, Daniel Lenham, a Royal Air Force (RAF) veteran of Iraq and Libya, said he was casting off his decorations “in protest at the decision to bomb Syria.”

“We will hand back medals given to us for participating in previous attacks on the Middle East,” he said.

David Smith, who served with the Royal Green jackets infantry regiment, said: “I want to express my utter disgust at the decision to unlawfully bomb Syria, god help all those who are likely to suffer as a result of this action.

“I renounce all forms of state sanctioned warfare and violence.”

VFPUK claims to have 265 members, some of whom served as along ago as D-Day. The group hopes “to convince people that war is not the answer to the problems of the 21st century,” according to its website.

Livingstone: Blair guilty of ‘criminal irresponsibility’ over Iraq

December 1, 2015 By administrator

Livingstone blames Tony Blair for London 7/7 attacks

Tony Blair is guilty of “criminal irresponsibility” for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, former Mayor of London Ken Livingstone has insisted, while defending his claim that Blair is responsible for the deaths of 52 people in the 7/7 terror attacks.

Livingstone told the BBC on Tuesday the case for war in Iraq was based on information from a discredited local politician who claimed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).

He defended comments made last week that Blair “killed 52 Londoners” by ignoring warnings that intervening in Iraq would lead to terror attacks on British soil.

The original comments prompted calls for Livingstone to be removed from his role as co-convener of Labour’s defense review.

When questioned about the comments on BBC Radio 4’s Today program, he said: “I simply told the truth. Everybody knows who saw the website they [the 7/7 bombers] left; they’d actually gone to kill Londoners and give their own lives in order to do that because of our involvement in Iraq. This is the problem,” he said.

“Tony Blair was told by the security services when he took that decision this will put us at risk. We started preparing for that. We spent four years of tests and exercises because we knew that terror attack would come.

“If that had been the truth – that Saddam Hussein had had nuclear weapons, weapons of mass destruction. But to base that whole war on the testimony of one discredited local politician now in retrospect looks like absolutely criminal irresponsibility.”

Livingstone’s comments come as a new book released this week suggests that ahead of the war Blair actively ignored intelligence from South Africa which showed that Iraq did not have any weapons of mass destruction.

In the book God, Spies and Lies, journalist John Matisonn documents how South Africa had a deep understanding of Iraqi weapons systems as the country had worked with Iraq’s weapons experts during the apartheid era.

According to the Guardian, Matisonn writes that then-South African President Thabo Mbeki had requested a specialist team of South Africans be allowed to enter Iraq prior to the invasion and investigate claims for WMDs.

The team reportedly found no WMDs and their findings were sent to both the US and the UK.

However, Western authorities ignored the findings and a full-scale invasion was launched on March 19, 2003, when troops from the US, UK, Australia and Poland invaded Iraq.

UK: leader Independence Party slams EU over visa deal with Turkey “collective insanity”

November 30, 2015 By administrator

A deal to grant Turkish citizens visa-free access to the European Union is “collective insanity”, a British politician has said.

Nigel Farage, whose far right U.K. Independence Party (UKIP) wants Britain to pull out of the EU, said the agreement would open Europe and Britain to up to 75 million Turkish citizens.

Sunday’s agreement between Turkey and the European Union would grant visa-free travel for Turkish citizens from October 2016 if Ankara takes steps to stem the flow of refugees coming into Europe.

But the travel agreement would only cover countries in the EU’s Schengen zone, which the U.K. is not part of.

UKIP leader Farage told the Sun the deal was “collective insanity”.

He told the newspaper Monday: “Free EU visa travel for 75 million Turkish citizens is another reason to vote to leave the EU and take back control of our borders.”

His comments came a day after he said German Chancellor Angela Merkel wanted to “fast-track” Turkish membership of the EU.

Farage told Sky News: “And what that will mean is 75 million people will have freedom of movement to come to the rest of Europe and to this country.”

He also claimed that 8 percent of the Turkish population are Daesh sympathizers, citing a opinion poll without naming the pollster, although it raised parallels with an earlier survey in the Sun last week that claimed 20 percent of British Muslims “had sympathy” for Daesh.

Survation, which conducted the Sun survey, subsequently distanced itself from the way it was reported in the newspaper.

“Our view remains that the most meaningful way to interpret the results of this polling is in the proper context alongside a comparable sample of non-Muslims, as we did in March of this year using identical methodology and the same question wording,” the pollster said in a statement last week.

MPs Quiz Cameron: Where Are the ‘Magical’ 70,000 Moderate Syrian Rebels?

November 27, 2015 By administrator

UK Prime Minister David Cameron has been urged to identify what ground forces he intends on supporting in any potential military intervention in Syria, after the PM said there were 70,000 moderate fighters who could benefit from British airstrikes and take back ISIL-controlled land in the country.

Many lawmakers, including some from his own Conservative party, have raised questions over how Cameron reached the “magical” number of 70,000, with increased calls for any potential British involvement in Syria to back the ground forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Julian Lewis, senior Conservative MP and chairman of the Defense Committee said he was “extremely surprised” to hear Mr Cameron claim there were “about 70,000 Syrian opposition fighters on the ground who do not belong to extremist groups.”

It’s understood Mr Lewis will table a question to the House of Commons demanding clarification from the prime minister.

According to Cameron’s spokesperson, the 70,000 figure is based on “best intelligence and analysis we have.”

“The figure was provided to him by the Joint Intelligence Committee; they provided that intelligence and analysis independent of the Government. That’s the best advice we’ve received; we’ve no reason to doubt it in anyway. He [the Prime Minister] obviously felt comfortable with the analysis provided to him.”

‘Where Are These Magical 70,000 People?’

Despite Cameron’s claims that there is a 70,000-strong force of anti-Assad, anti-extremist fighters in the country, many have raised questions over the figure amid concerns any attempts to support opposition forces on the ground may end up benefiting jihadists.

MP Lewis told Sky News:

“Where are these magical 70,000 people and if they are there fighting, how come they haven’t been able to roll back ISIL/Daesh? Is it that they’re in the wrong place? Is it that they’re fighting each other? Or is it that in reality they’re not all that moderate and that there are a lot of jihadists among them?

“I think we really need to know about this so that we don’t look back on this moment as having made a big mistake on the base of misleading information that was given not by the Prime Minister but to the Prime Minister.

“The Prime Minister has conceded that air strikes alone cannot be decisive in taking on ISIL/Daesh, unless they are supported by credible ground forces. So, the only missing element is the credible ground forces.”

Fears of US ‘Train and Equip’ Failure

The concern over supporting questionable ground forces in Syria follows the US’ failed US$500 million program aimed at training and arming 5,000 “moderate” Syrian rebels.

Washington announced it was abandoning the plan after noting it was “a more difficult endeavor than we assumed” to build a ground force capable of fighting ISIL from scratch.

Despite US plans to train 5,000 fighters, only about 100 were eventually deployed to fight in Syria, with General Lloyd Austin, commander of US Central Command, embarrassingly admitting in September that only about “four or five” soldiers were still fighting in Syria.

In a further indictment of the strategy, reports also surfaced suggesting some of the fighters trained and armed by the US were linked to, or shared weapons with hard-line Islamist groups like the al-Qaeda affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra.

The concerns over the legitimacy of the alleged 70,000 fighters led Conservative MP Lewis to call for any potential British intervention to work with Syrian government forces in the fight against ISIL.

“The reality is if you want to defeat ISIL/Daesh, you need to have the regular Syrian army as part of the force that’s going to do it and that’s where the prime minister has a sticking point but he still can’t bring himself to forge an alliance with the Russians…”

Source: sputniknews

UK: Corbyn Accuses Turkey, Saudis of Undermining Anti-ISIL Coalition

November 17, 2015 By administrator

Photo/ reuters

British opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn has taken aim at the Western-led anti-ISIL strategy, criticizing Turkey and Saudi Arabia’s input in the conflict, while raising questions over the legality of the overall Western approach.

The Labour leader accused Turkey of acting in its own self-interest and undermining the campaign against ISIL through its bombing of Kurdish groups, who have previously been considered to be some of the most effective fighters against ISIL.

Corbyn calling out Turkey and Saudi Arabia for their part in the growth of ISIS on Sky news 👏👏👏

— Conor (@Conjob123) November 16, 2015

Corbyn, who strongly favors a political solution to the conflict, also questioned whether some Saudi organizations were involved in the funding and supporting of ISIL through the supply of weapons and sales of oil. The Labour leader told Sky News:

“I also think we have to ask some questions about the way in which ISIL has received weapons, has received money, has been able to sell oil, has been able to export it and the role that other countries have played in this. [This includes] the way in which Turkey has been bombing Kurdish positions on the border and the way in which Saudi Arabia, maybe not at government level, but certainly at aid-level, has been providing support to ISIL.”

At the End We’ll Need a Political Solution’

Instead of boosting military efforts, Corbyn called for greater diplomatic efforts to improve the political situation in Syria.

“In the long run there has to be a much wider political settlement in the whole region and in the Middle East, otherwise we’re going to get more of this as time goes on,” he said.

“At the end of the day, all wars have to end by a political discussion and political solution to it.”

Following the Paris terrorist attacks and France’s decision to increase its bombing campaign on the ISIL stronghold of Raqqa, Corbyn said he was doubtful the attacks alone would bring about a solution.

“I don’t think that bombing is necessarily going to bring about the solution that they believe it might.”

“There’s going to be civilian casualties from the bombing of Raqqa,” he added, noting that a combined international diplomatic approach involving the West, Russia and other regional powers would be the most effective way of coming to a resolution in the conflict.

“I think far more hopeful are the talks that took place in Vienna over the weekend, including Russia, the United States, European Union and of course the neighboring countries. I think the solution actually lies in creating some kind of acceptable government in Syria that can in turn then hopefully deal with the problem with ISIS, or ISIL.”

The opposition leader has refused to back British military intervention in Syria, arguing that he would not support such an action without a UN mandate, while he also raised questions over the legality of the UK’s shoot to kill drone program, which has been credited with killing infamous ISIL figure Mohammed Emwazi, also known as Jihadi John.

Source: sputniknews

Top UK School Defends ISIL by Banning Pro-Kurdish Speaker From Public Talk

November 11, 2015 By administrator

Britain’s University College London (UCL) banned a former student from speaking about his experience fighting alongside with Kurdish troops against ISIL in the Middle East, thus censoring the criticism of the notorious terrorist organization in public.

The UCL’s decision was called a controversial act and sparked accusations that one of the top British public universities acts like an ISIL PR-manager, not willing to spread the truth about the terrorist organization to the British public.

Macer Gifford, a former UCL student, joined the ranks of Kurdish fighting units who stopped the spread of ISIL in northern Syria. As Gifford returnd to Britain, Britain’s Kurdish society invited him to talk about his first-hand experience fighting against ISIL at UCL.

However, the university’s students’ union rejected the idea, banning Gifford’s planned talk, arguing that “in every conflict there are two sides, and at UCLU we want to avoid taking sides in conflicts.”
“Basically like everyone else I was watching the rise of Islamic State, utterly horrified… I was even more horrified that the British and the American governments weren’t doing much to help. They didn’t have a coherent and coercive policy then, and they don’t particularly have one now. So I decided to go out and join the YPG, and to fight myself,” Gifford told RT in an exclusive interview.
Well, it looks like the British institution decided not to take sides in the ongoing Syrian conflict and is in fact trying to censor the criticism of ISIL.
Of course, there are two sides of the story: one side is that the people of Kurdistan are fighting to resist the brutal ISIL regime; and the other side is Caliphate-seeking Islamic fundamentalists, who cut off the heads of their prisoners, burn people in cages, trade slaves, stone adulterers, and kill everyone who doesn’t agree with their crazy ideology. It looks like a pretty easy choice to pick a side on this one, eh? But apparently not for UCL officials, who chose to keep their moral “neutrality.”

Identity of IS frontman who claims responsibility for A321 crash revealed

November 9, 2015 By administrator

British newspaper The Sunday Times has revealed who allegedly planted a bomb aboard the Russian plane which crashed in Egypt on October 31, naming him as Abu Osama al-Masri, an Egyptian cleric and the frontman of an ISIL-offshoot group.
“The man known as Masri claimed responsibility for the Russian plane crash in an audio statement last Wednesday — the same day that David Cameron announced the suspension of British holiday flights to Sharm el-Sheikh,” the newspaper said, according to Sputniknews.com.
The statement, entitled “We Downed It, So Die in Your Rage”, was issued on 4 November, challenging Egyptian authorities to “prove we did not.” It further said it would reveal its modus operandi in due course.
The outlet says that Whitehall officials confirmed this weekend that Masri is a “person of interest” in the crash and that Britain would help Egypt or Russia in a “kill or capture” mission.
Abu Osama al-Masri is an Egyptian cleric and frontman of the Wilayat Sinai (Sinai Province) group, now considered a branch of ISIL after brokering a pact with the terrorist organization last year in Syria.
Some experts, however, have questioned the militant group’s claim of responsibility, pointing out that it has failed to provide any proof.
Intelligence officials believe that Masri’s group used an airport insider to smuggle a bomb into the luggage hold of the Metrojet aircraft last Saturday. It is feared the suspect is still at large, the report said.
Sinai Province’s leader is a former clothes importer known by his alias Abu Osama al-Masri. The 42-year-old is a former scholar of the al-Azhar University in Cairo, a 1,000-year-old Sunni Muslim institution that gave an honorary doctorate to the Prince of Wales in 2008.
Meanwhile, British officials are investigating if any Britons allied to ISIL were involved after claims that the security services had intercepted “chatter” between extremists with London and Birmingham accents in the aftermath of the explosion.

Bush, Blair plotted Iraq war 1 year before invasion had started: White House memo

October 17, 2015 By administrator

Bush and Blair are shaking hands in February 2001. (AFP photo)

A damning White House memo has revealed details of the so-called “deal in blood” forged by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President George W. Bush over the Iraq war.

The document, titled “Secret… Memorandum for the President”, was sent by then-US Secretary of State Colin Powell to President Bush on March 28, 2002, a week before Bush’s summit with Blair at his Crawford ranch in Texas, Britain’s Daily Mail reported on Sunday.

The sensational memo revealed that Blair had agreed to support the war a year before the invasion even started, while publicly the British prime minister was working to find a diplomatic solution to the crisis.

The document also disclosed that Blair agreed to act as a spin doctor for Bush and convince a skeptical public that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had Weapons of Mass Destruction, which actually did not exist.

In response, Bush would flatter Blair and give the impression that London was not Washington’s poodle but an equal partner in the “special relationship.”

Powell told Bush that Blair “will be with us” on the Iraq war, and assured the president that “”the UK will follow our lead in the Middle East.”

Another sensational memo revealed how Bush used “spies” in the British Labour Party to help him to influence public opinion in the United Kingdom in favor of the Iraq war.

Both documents were obtained and published by The Mail on Sunday. They are part of a number of classified emails stored on the private server of former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton which courts have forced her to reveal.

Blair has always denied the claim that he and Bush signed a deal “in blood” at Crawford to launch a war against Iraq that began on March 20, 2003, that has killed hundreds of thousands of people.

The Powell memo, however, showed how Blair and Bush secretly prepared the Iraq war plot behind closed doors at Crawford.

Powell told Bush: “He will present to you the strategic, tactical and public affairs lines that he believes will strengthen global support for our common cause.”

The top US diplomatic official added that the UK premier has the presentational skills to “make a credible public case on current Iraqi threats to international peace.”

Powell wrote that Blair will “stick with us on the big issues” but he needs to show the British public that “Britain and America are truly equity partners in the special relationship.”

n March 2003, the US and Britain invaded Iraq in blatant violation of international law and under the pretext of finding WMDs. But no such weapons were ever discovered in Iraq.

More than one million Iraqis were killed as the result of the US-led invasion and subsequent occupation of the country, according to the California-based investigative organization Project Censored.

The US war in Iraq cost American taxpayers $1.7 trillion with an additional $490 billion in benefits owed to war veterans, expenses that could grow to more than $6 trillion over the next four decades counting interest, according to a study called Costs of War Project by the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University.

Source: presstv.com

Tribute to Armenian Genocide victims: Tigran Hamasyan & Yerevan State Choir peform in London – Video

October 16, 2015 By administrator

The Armenian jazz pianist’s brilliant performance with members of the Yerevan State Choir is a poignant contemporary tribute to their homeland’s history

By John Fordham
The Guardian

hose who remember Tigran Hamasyan’s bone-shaking, synth-squealing, pop-jazz gigs might have done a double-take as the young Armenian pianist gravely filed on to the Union Chapel’s stage accompanied only by a bowed, hooded, orange-robed choir. Some might wonder whether 2014’s swansong of ECM Records’s globally popular choral/jazz pairing of the Hilliard vocal ensemble with Jan Garbarek had anything to do with the young virtuoso’s arrival on the same label with a solemn programme of medieval and modern Armenian vocal music, embroidered only by his jazz-steeped piano playing. But Hamasyan is devoted to his homeland’s traditions, and this year’s 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide by the Ottoman authorities gives this venture a timely poignancy.

He embraced the challenge in this performance with a typical combination of diligent study and brilliant aplomb with eight singers from the Yerevan State Choir.

The single-set gig began with a hymn by 4th-century scholar/composer Mesrop Mashtots, in which a low vocal hum was shaded by briefly flicked treble-note elisions from Hamasyan. A second Mashtots piece brought spooky microtonal vocal drifts punctuated by plucked low-note strings.

The choir began a rhythmic, short-note pulse on the animated Ov Zarmanali, and whispered behind the leader’s now groove-like chord work. Hamasyan’s streaming ingenuity erupted in an outburst of sleek arpeggios and left-hand hooks that brought a roar from the crowd, but the shift never felt like a dislocation as the choir slithered back in around him. Hamasyan jangled a drone-like chord pattern as the lean, vibrato-free voices of his partners punched out exclamatory percussive motifs. A walking bassline underpinned the sound of the male members at their most guttural (while Hamasyan’s improv almost veered into My Favourite Things), and a stamping vocal dance preceded the solemn, carol-like rumination of the encore.

Ecuador Feared Britain Would Storm Embassy to Grab Assange

October 14, 2015 By administrator

New documents reveal the staff in the Ecuadorian embassy feared that the UK authorities would attempt to storm its London embassy in an effort to spring WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, holed-up inside to avoid extradition.

Assange took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in August 2012 when the South American country granted him political asylum. He was avoiding extradition to Sweden on charges relating to sexual molestation and one count of unlawful coercion. Assange denies the accusations which were dropped in August 2015 under the statutes of limitation.
Assange was avoiding being extradited to Sweden as he feared onward extradition to the US where he is wanted, under the Espionage Act over WikiLeaks releasing the Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning material, disclosing nearly three-quarters of a million classified or unclassified but sensitive military and diplomatic documents.
The UK Metropolitan Police (MPS) announced Monday it would stop deploying officers, guarding the entrance to the embassy 24/7, which had cost US$17 million over three years. “The operation to arrest Julian Assange does however continue and should he leave the Embassy the MPS will make every effort to arrest him. However, it is no longer proportionate to commit officers to a permanent presence,” it said in a statement.

Ambassador Took Police Removal as Threat
However, it has now emerged that officials at the embassy were told of the intention to stop round-the-clock covert surveillance in August. Documents seen by BuzzFeed show that UK Foreign Office minister Hugo Swire visited the embassy on August 13 and spoke to the ambassador, Carlos Ortiz.
Following the meeting Swire said: “Ecuador must recognize that its decision to harbor Mr Assange more than three years ago has prevented the proper course of justice. As a result, some of the serious sexual allegations against him will now expire.
“It is completely unacceptable that the British taxpayer has had to foot the bill for this abuse of diplomatic relations.”
“I want to make clear that as an allegation of rape remains outstanding, the UK continues to have a legal obligation to extradite Mr Assange to Sweden.
“I have instructed our Ambassador in Quito to reiterate to Ecuador that the continuing failure to expedite the Swedish Prosecutor’s interview, and to bring this situation to an end, is being seen as a growing stain on the country’s reputation.”
Notes from the meeting, by embassy officials say: “The pressure of budget spending and what will be spent in the next five years is a concern in view of the politics of austerity that the UK government has adopted because of the economic crisis affecting the country.”

Source: sputniknews.com