Roger Lewis The tragic outrage in Manchester is a Reichstag Moment for Mrs May. Already the distraction is evident and the front page of the BBC news Web site both, for general News and the Election 2017 section is a Reset of the whole campaign up until now.

The Labour Party needs to reach out to Tommy Robinson and also the Responsible and mainstream leadership of peaceful Islam to Confirm The Islamicist extremism that does exist in the Uk and across Europe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbcT3uD94YU

There happens to be a General Election in the UK at the moment and Theresa May the Prime Minister has been losing ground

in the polls her lead has reduced from 25% when she called the election to Single figures.

Alex is way off target with this, if anything it has Hallmarks of Gladio, COG etc, pretty much a possible Reichstag event for the Neo-Liberal Fascist Theresa May.

The linked video explains how the NWO has a left and Right wing neither of which tolerate Liberty.

It is highly likely the Manchester attack is an Islamicist Terrorist acting alone or in an Autonomous cell.

That is far more likely than a centrally planned attack. The surveillance state is so strong in the US and UK

that this sort of attack can not really happen where any

sort of digital communication is used. This sort of attack is not False Flag but given the convenience to

Mrs May at this time it may well be that deep state actors have not been doing their job properly? it is

far too early to tell either way. For now, prayers for the victims and their

Families are our best respects, may God bless them.#Corbyn4PM #Labour2017

“Almost from the beginning, the CIA engaged not only in the collection of intelligence information, but also in covert operations which involved rigging elections and manipulating labor unions abroad, carrying on paramilitary operations, overturning governments, assassinating foreign officials, protecting former Nazis and lying to Congress.”

former Senator George McGovern, 1987

http://letthemconfectsweeterlies.blogspot.se/2017/05/general-election-2017-parralles-to-1951.html

The 1951 United Kingdom general electionwas held twenty months after the 1950 general election, which the Labour Partyhad won with a slim majority of just five seats. The Labour government called the general election for Thursday 25 October 1951 hoping to increase their parliamentary majority. However, despite winning the popular vote and receiving the largest percentage of the vote, the Labour Party was defeated by the Conservative Party who had won the most seats. This election marked the beginning of the Labour Party’s thirteen-year spell in opposition, and the return of Winston Churchill as Prime Minister.

https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/1951-10-23b.pdf

7 July 2005 London bombings

The 7 July 2005 London bombings, sometimes referred to as 7/7, were a series of coordinated terrorist suicide bomb attacks in central London which targeted civilians using the public transport system during the rush hour.

On the morning of Thursday, 7 July 2005, four Islamist extremists [1] separately detonated three bombs in quick succession aboard London Underground trains across the city, and later, a fourth on a double-decker bus in Tavistock Square. Fifty-two people were killed and over 700 more were injured in the attacks, making it Britain’s deadliest terrorist incident since the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, as well as the country’s first ever Islamist suicide attack.

The explosions were caused by homemade organic peroxide-based devices packed into backpacks. The bombings were followed two weeks later by a series of attempted attacks that failed to cause injury or damage. The 7 July attacks occurred the day after London had won its bid to host the 2012 Olympic Games, which had highlighted the city’s multicultural reputation.[2]

Claims of responsibility[edit]

Even before the identity of the bombers became known, former Metropolitan Police commissioner Lord Stevens said he believed they were almost certainly born or based in Britain, and would not “fit the caricature al-Qaeda fanatic from some backward village in Algeria or Afghanistan”.[26] The attacks would have required extensive preparation and prior reconnaissance efforts, and a familiarity with bomb-making and the London transport network as well as access to significant amounts of bomb-making equipment and chemicals.

Some newspaper editorials in Iran blamed the bombing on British or American authorities seeking to further justify the War on Terror, and claimed that the plan that included the bombings also involved increasing harassment of Muslims in Europe.[27]

On 13 August 2005, quoting police and MI5 sources, The Independent reported that the bombers acted independently of an al-Qaeda terror mastermind some place abroad.[28]

On 1 September it was reported that al-Qaeda officially claimed responsibility for the attacks in a videotape broadcast by the Arab television network Al Jazeera. However, an official inquiry by the British government reported that the tape claiming responsibility had been edited after the attacks, and that the bombers did not have direct assistance from al-Qaeda.[29] Zabi uk-Taifi, an al-Qaeda commander arrested in Pakistan in January 2009, may have had connections to the bombings, according to Pakistani intelligence sources.[30] More recently, documents found by German authorities on a terrorist suspect arrested in Berlin in May 2011 have suggested that Rashid Rauf, a British al Qaeda operative, played a key role in planning the attacks.[31]

Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades[edit]

A second claim of responsibility was posted on the Internet by another al-Qaeda-linked group, Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades. The group had, however, previously falsely claimed responsibility for events that were the result of technical problems, such as the 2003 London blackout and the US Northeast blackout of 2003.[32]

Conspiracy theories[edit]

Police cordon off Russell Square on 7 July 2005.

A survey of 500 British Muslims undertaken by Channel 4 News in 2007 found that 24% believed the four bombers blamed for the attacks did not perform them.[33] In 2006, the government had refused to hold a public inquiry, stating that “it would be a ludicrous diversion”. Prime Minister Tony Blair said an independent inquiry would “undermine support” for MI5, while the leader of the opposition, David Cameron, said only a full inquiry would “get to the truth”.[34] In reaction to revelations about the extent of security service investigations into the bombers prior to the attack, the Shadow Home Secretary, David Davis, said: “It is becoming more and more clear that the story presented to the public and Parliament is at odds with the facts.”[35] However, the decision against an independent public inquest was later reversed. A full public inquest into the bombings was subsequently begun from October 2010. Coroner Lady Justice Hallett stated that the inquest would examine how each victim died and whether MI5, if it had worked better, could have prevented the attack.[36]

There have been various conspiracy theories proposed about the bombings, including the suggestion that the bombers were ‘patsies‘, based on claims about timings of the trains and the train from Luton, supposed explosions underneath the carriages, and allegations of the faking of the one time-stamped and dated photograph of the bombers at Luton station.[37][38] Claims made by one theorist in the Internet video 7/7 Ripple Effect were examined by the BBC documentary series The Conspiracy Files, in an episode titled “7/7” first broadcast on 30 June 2009, which debunked many of the video’s claims.[39]

On the day of the bombings Peter Power of Visor Consultants gave interviews on BBC Radio 5 Live and ITV saying that he was working on a crisis management simulation drill, in the City of London, “based on simultaneous bombs going off precisely at the railway stations where it happened this morning”, when he heard that an attack was going on in real life. He described this as a coincidence. He also gave an interview to the Manchester Evening News where he spoke of “an exercise involving mock broadcasts when it happened for real”.[40] After a few days he dismissed it as a “spooky coincidence” on Canadian TV.[41]

Jo Moore (born 1963) served as a British special adviser and press officer. She was embroiled in scandal while working as advisor to Stephen Byers, the Transport, Local Government and Regions Secretary.

[hide]

Career[edit]

Moore began working as a press officer for local authorities in London but moved to work for the Labour Party in the early 1980s.[citation needed] She was also active in local politics in Haringey, and by the early 1990s she had become the Labour Party’s chief press officer.[1] Moore then served as Chief Press and Broadcasting Officer during the Labour Party’s 1997 general election campaign.[citation needed] In 1998 she left her job to work part-time as an Account Director at a leading lobbying company, and was appointed by Stephen Byers, initially part-time, as a Special Adviser, from 17 February 1999.[2]

9/11 email scandal[edit]

At 2:55pm BST (9:55am EDT) on 11 September 2001, after both World Trade Center towers had been hit in terrorist attacks, but before either tower had collapsed, Moore sent an email to the press office of her department which read:

It’s now a very good day to get out anything we want to bury. Councillors’ expenses?[3]

The Department did indeed announce on the following day two changes to the system of Councillors Allowances. Nearly a month later, Moore’s email was leaked to the press where it provoked opprobrium disgrace around the cynical nature of spin. Moore ultimately made a personal appearance before the cameras to apologise for what she had written.[4]

The leaked email appeared on the day after Byers had announced the placing of Railtrack, the private sector rail infrastructure company, in administration. It was eventually to be replaced by Network Rail, a not-for-profit ‘public interest company’. In November the department appointed a new Director of Communications, Martin Sixsmith.[5]

However, on 13 February 2002 the row flared up again when a leak to the press alleged that Moore had made further attempts to “bury” unfavourable railway statistics on the day of a major event.[6] It was backed up by a copy of an email from Martin Sixsmith saying “Princess Margaret is being buried [on Friday]. I will absolutely not allow anything else to be”.[7] Both Moore and Sixsmith said the email was a fabrication and Downing Street initially said the e-mail rebuke did not exist but performed a U-turn on the afternoon of 14 February after it emerged that Sixsmith had indeed sent an email in such terms (although the wording was not accurately reported).[8]

Jo Moore resigned on 15 February 2002 after Downing Street called on Transport Secretary Stephen Byers to get the continuing Whitehall spin row “sorted out”.[9] It was reported that Martin Sixsmith also resigned and it appeared that this is what Richard Mottram the Permanent Secretary had told the media and that Stephen Byers had wanted, but he had not resigned.[10]

After her resignation Jo Moore retrained to become a teacher in 2003,[11][12] and became a classroom assistant at a north London primary school.[13]

http://www.propagandamatrix.com/diocletian.html

Diocletian’s Problem-Reaction-SolutionA further example of how elites throughout history commit acts of terrorism as a pretext to create enemies and corral populations behind a tyrannical agenda
By Paul Joseph Watson

The Roman Emperor Diocletian came to power in 284 AD. He was an army general with a repressive disdain of his ‘subjects.’ Diocletian ran his government as a general runs an army, giving orders and expecting them to be carried out. He believed that only severe restrictions on personal freedoms could bring order to the empire. By 301 AD, after the conclusion of conflicts with the Germans and the Sassanids, Diocletian needed a new enemy to justify his tyrannical form of government. At the same time, the Emperor declared the economy to be in crisis and implemented astronomical taxation increases. Amongst the people there surfaced a gradual unrest towards Diocletian’s

economic policy. The Emperor needed a new enemy to regain the support of his pseudo-slaves. After the earlier successful persecution of the Manichaeans, Diocletian slowly turned his head in the direction of the Christians, and his thumb was pointing down. This, despite the fact that he had largely ignored them for the past 15 years. Across the empire, Christians made up around ten percent of the population — their number having doubled in about fifty years. Two kings had been converted: the king of Osroene in north eastern Mesopotamia and the king of Armenia. Christians were serving in Rome’s armies, and they were working as civil servants in local government or in lowly positions on the imperial staff. Diocletian could see his scapegoat.

In the autumn of 302 AD Diocletian visited Antioch in Syria for an official engagement. Prior to this of course, there had to take place the customary Pagan sacrifice. But you see this time there was a problem. As the bloodletting ritual began, there came the vocal denouncements of the on looking Christians. Many made cross signs to ward off the evil influence of the sacrifice. Prominent amongst these brave dissenters was a Christian named Romanus. Diocletian fumed. ” . . . In the first, while Diocletian was sacrificing in public, the chief interpreter of the victims’ organs reported that he could not read the future in them because of the hostile influence of Christians standing around. Diocletian burst into a rage, insisting that all in his court should offer sacrifice, and sent out orders to his army to follow suit.” (Ramsey MacMullen, Constantine, p.24).

Brave Christians vehemently decried blood-curdling Pagan sacrifices made in the name of the god of Jupiter, to whom Diocletian proclaimed himself the earthly representative of Rome.

This provided Diocletian with the perfect opportunity to launch his persecution and Romanus had his tongue cut off and languished in agony for over a year after in jail. Meanwhile, the Emperor demanded the Christians sacrifice to the gods of the state or face execution. Many refused and further retreated underground in the hope of avoiding the manic dictates of this mad general.

Diocletian’s vice-emperor, Galerius, didn’t have a hard time in persuading him that if a Palace were just to burn down, Diocletian could really accelerate his crusade against the Christians. Just by coincidence, twice within sixteen days toward the end of February, Diocletian’s palace in Nicomedia burned. The Christians were immediately blamed.

The Emperor needed a crisis to put the purge of the Christians into overdrive. This was accomplished when he had his guards set fire to his own palace in Nicomedia on two different occasions at the end of February, 303 AD. A crushing set of edicts then followed as the Christians were blamed for the blaze.

A monumental crackdown then occurred as Diocletian issued four edicts against the Christians. Christian assemblies were forbidden. Bibles were confiscated and burned, and churches were destroyed. Christians were torn limb from limb in the arena, the animals goaded on by a mindless population who had accepted at face value the guilt of the Christians. Others were imprisoned and offered release if they appeased the Emperor’s sick Pagan blood lust and made one sacrifice. The majority refused, yet Diocletian wanted disunity within the Christian ranks and so had some marked down as having made a sacrifice, even though they didn’t.

Christians were torn limb from limb in the arena. The watching audience found this acceptable now that the empire had declared them to be the equivalent of 21st century ‘terrorists.’

The purges slowly and intermittently dragged on into the year 305, but by now the Christians had become too numerous across the empire to be wiped out. Despot Diocletian retired through illness in 305 AD. The vice-emperor in the east, Galerius, began a joint rule of the empire with the vice-emperor in Rome and the west: Constantius. Constantius died in battle in 306 AD and his son, Constantine, succeeded him. The thousands of Christians butchered by Diocletian in the purge had not died in vain. Constantine was to change the world by becoming the first Christian emperor.

IN CONCLUSION: ELITES CREATE ENEMIES IN ORDER TO RE-ORDER SOCIETY IN THEIR OWN TYRANNICAL IMAGE. THEY DO SO BY COMMITTING ACTS OF TERRORISM AGAINST THEIR OWN BUILDINGS AND BEAURACRACIES, THEN CHOOSING THE SCAPEGOAT. THE ONLY DIFFERENCE IN THE 21ST CENTURY IS THAT THESE ‘ENEMIES’ ARE MORE BELIEVABLE BECAUSE THEY HAVE BEEN MANUFACTURED AND EMPOWERED BY THE ELITE. I WISH TO DRAW NO COMPARISONS BETWEEN THE 4TH CENTURY CHRISTIANS AND AL-QAEDA, BUT THEY WERE BOTH USED FOR THE SAME PURPOSE: TO BRING ORDER OUT OF CHAOS.

AND REMEMBER…”Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it.”
— George Santayana.

Reichstag fire

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Reichstag fire
Reichstagsbrand

Firefighters struggle to extinguish the fire.
Date	27 February 1933
Location	Reichstag building, Berlin, Germany
Participants	Marinus van der Lubbe
Outcome	Van der Lubbe executed Civil liberties suspended Nazi control of government entrenched

The Reichstag fire (German: Reichstagsbrand,

listen(help·info)) was an arson attack on the Reichstag building (home of the German parliament) in Berlin on 27 February 1933, just one month after Adolf Hitler had been sworn in as Chancellor of Germany. The Nazis stated that Marinus van der Lubbe, a young Dutch council communist, had been caught at the scene of the fire, and he was arrested for the crime. Van der Lubbe was an unemployed bricklayer who had recently arrived in Germany. The Nazis stated that van der Lubbe had declared that he had started the fire. Van der Lubbe was tried and sentenced to death. The fire was used as evidence by the Nazi Party that communists were plotting against the German government. The event is seen as pivotal in the establishment of Nazi Germany. The fire started in the Reichstag building, the assembly location of the German Parliament. A Berlin fire station received an alarm call that the building was on fire shortly after 21:00.[1]:26–28 By the time the police and firefighters arrived, the main Chamber of Deputies was engulfed in flames. The police conducted a thorough search inside the building and found van der Lubbe. He was arrested, as were four communist leaders soon after. Hitler urged President Paul von Hindenburg to pass an emergency decree to suspend civil liberties and pursue a “ruthless confrontation” with the Communist Party of Germany.[2] After passing the decree, the government instituted mass arrests of communists, including all of the Communist Party parliamentary delegates. With their bitter rival communists gone and their seats empty, the Nazi Party went from being a plurality party to the majority, thus enabling Hitler to consolidate his power. In February 1933, three men were arrested who were to play pivotal roles during the Leipzig Trial, known also as the “Reichstag Fire Trial”: Bulgarians Georgi Dimitrov, Vasil Tanev and Blagoi Popov. The Bulgarians were known to the Prussian police as senior Comintern operatives, but the police had no idea how senior they were: Dimitrov was head of all Comintern operations in Western Europe. The responsibility for the Reichstag fire remains an ongoing topic of debate and research.[3][4] Historians disagree as to whether van der Lubbe acted alone, as he said, to protest the condition of the German working class. The Nazis accused the Comintern of the act. Some historians endorse the theory, proposed by the Communist Party, that the arson was planned and ordered by the Nazis as a false flag operation.[5][6][7]

As archetype[edit]

An editor has expressed concern that this section may have a number of irrelevant citations. Please help improve this article by verifying these references and challenge any that are not reliable or do not support the article. (February 2017) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

The term “Reichstag fire” is used by some writers to denote a calamitous event staged by a political movement, orchestrated in a manner that casts blame on their opponents, thus causing the opponents to be viewed with suspicion by the general public. This is sometimes known as a false flag attack when the event itself is caused by proponents of a political movement to falsely accuse their opponents. In modern histories the destruction of the palace of Diocletian at Nicomedia has been described as a “fourth-century Reichstag fire” used to justify an extensive persecution of Christians.[33][34] According to Lactantius, “That [Galerius] might urge [Diocletian] to excess of cruelty in persecution, he employed private emissaries to set the palace on fire; and some part of it having been burnt, the blame was laid on the Christians as public enemies; and the very appellation of Christian grew odious on account of that fire.”[35] Tacitus’ account of the burning of Rome involved similar allegations.[36]

April 05, 2015

DIRTY TRICKS AND MISLEADING PACKAGING. WHERES THE BEEF? ON THE 2015 BRITISH GENERAL ELECTION, LESSONS FROM HISTORY.

http://letthemconfectsweeterlies.blogspot.se/2015/04/dirty-tricks-and-misleading-packaging.html

Anyone that hasn’t seen this whole drama documentary about The 1968 and 1974 coup plot against a democratically elected Left wing Labour Government under Harold Wilson should do so. The Social democracy and Left wing of British Politics is only now found in the SNP, Greens and Plaid Cymru. Consider all the cultural hype regarding the 1960’s, Harold Wilson was Prime Minister for much of it and its engine was really the post-war Labour Governments social reforms. The 70’s is painted still by the 1979 Satchi and Satchi campaign of Labour is not working, The Gnomes Of Zurich ( actually we should look at Basle and the Bank of International Settlements for the behind the scenes enablers of the Wall Street and City of London crooks these days). Anyway the point of the ramble is that Current Main Stream media will not give you a context against which to gauge the real underlying political potentials for community action and political accountability. Go Green, Go SNP Go Plaid reject the CIA moulded Neo-Liberal ( fascist) branded big budget fake products of the LIB LAB Cons. They are all Packaging and no substance. I wonder What Nye Bevan would make of it all these days. ‘I thought’, said Nye, ‘that you were a Yorkshireman but your Dad has been telling me all about Manchester. Where were you born, boy?’ With a Yorkshireman’s natural pride, I said, thinking of Sheffield’s steel, ‘Yorkshiremen are not born; they are forged.’ ‘Forged were you?’ said Nye in that musical Welsh lilt of his, ‘I always thought there was something counterfeit about you!’Harold Wilson, “Memoirs 1916-1964: The making of a Prime Minister” (Weidenfeld and Nicolson and Michael Joseph, London 1986, p.

Shares
0

Staff and agencies

Stephen Byers was involved in the decision that Martin Sixsmith should leave the Department of Transport in “symmetry” with special adviser Jo Moore, the former press chief insisted today.

Although the transport secretary said on Sunday he did “not get involved in personnel matters”, Sir Richard Mottram, the permanent secretary at the department, told Mr Sixsmith that Mr Byers ruled he should go too, the former BBC journalist claimed.

“I was told that Jo would go but that the quid pro quo for that was that I had to go as well,” he said.

Sign up to the new-look Media Briefing: bigger, better, brighter

Read more

Mr Sixsmith claimed that “sources close to No 10” had were engaging in a smear campaign about him.

He said he stood by his version of events surrounding the row about “burying” bad news, as Mr Byers faced continued pressure to quit from the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats.

On Monday, Sir Richard issued a highly unusual personal statement in an attempt to clear Mr Byers of claims that he lied over Mr Sixsmith’s resignation as the department’s press chief.

Mr Sixsmith repeated his denial that he resigned as head of communications, and said Sir Richard should not have been “forced to appear in public to defend what was a political decision taken by a politician”.

He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I didn’t lead a plot against Jo Moore, certainly not.”

Mr Sixsmith said he “did not know for a fact” who decided he should leave the department, but said he heard Mr Byers announce it on the radio as he left a hospital appointment on the afternoon of February 15.

“Since I hadn’t resigned I thought that was rather odd,” he said.

“I’ve got the greatest respect for Richard Mottram, I think he’s a very able man and I think he’s doing a very good job of running a very troubled department. I admire him as a civil servant and I like him as a person.

“I think it’s very wrong that a civil servant like Sir Richard should be forced to appear in public to defend what was a political decision taken by a politician.

“All the indications are that it was Stephen Byers who, having got to the end of his tether I suspect with Jo Moore, decided that he would accept Jo’s resignation but I was told that he would only accept Jo’s resignation if I was made to resign as well.

“I was told it had to be a two go at the same time deal rather than just Jo going.”

Mr Sixsmith said he had kept a detailed note of all of his meetings during the affair, including the key conversation with Sir Richard, at 12.30pm on Friday February 15.

“Richard told me he’d spoken to Stephen Byers about this, and that the decision was that it had to be a symmetrical resignation. I had to go at the same time as Jo.”

Mr Sixsmith said he suspected the request for the double resignation “came from the very top”.

He added: “The tricky thing was we’d then have to come up a statement to explain why I’d resigned, whereas I’d done nothing wrong.”

The statement would be to the effect there was no blame attached to Mr Sixsmith and that he had “done it for the good of the department”, he added.

Mr Sixsmith, who was for many years BBC’s Moscow correspondent, denied he had rung around political journalists in the days leading up to Princess Margaret’s funeral to say Ms Moore was trying to bury more bad news about rail performance indicators.

Mr Sixsmith said he did send an email directly to special adviser Jo Moore warning against releasing departmental news on the Friday of Princess Margaret’s funeral – although he did not realise the significance of the date at that time.

Some 30 minutes later, when he had realised that the day clashed with the royal funeral, he sent a second email, this time to both Mr Byers and Ms Moore, he said.

Until now, only the existence of the email to Mr Byers, with a copy to Ms Moore, has been acknowledged.

He said: “What I did was to send an email to say that we shouldn’t make any announcements on the day of Princess Margaret’s funeral.

“On the Monday we’d discussed what day to do it and Jo suggested the Friday. I said I didn’t think it was a good idea to do it on the Friday and I sent an email to Jo … at that moment I didn’t know about the funeral.

“It was not a good day to do it on a Friday because it was slipping out bad news. But half an hour later the email I sent and in retrospect I probably shouldn’t have done it as an email, I probably should have done it orally … to Steve Byers and Jo Moore.

“It said we shouldn’t do it on a Friday because Princess Margaret’s being buried that day and the word ‘burying’ news in this department has too many connotations. It was a very temperate email, it certainly wasn’t anything like the phrase that appeared.”

On Wednesday February 13, Mr Sixsmith said he had a phone call from journalists on the Mirror and the Express who said they had been tipped off about the email, and they had some quotes from it.

“The quotes were wrong, so they clearly hadn’t seen the email … the tip off did not come from me.”

The next morning both papers ran the story and the Department of Transport had to deal with the fall-out, he added.

He added: “I didn’t lead a plot against Jo Moore, certainly not. So it seems rather odd to me that for so long we heard this phrase, ‘nobody should be forced to go for one mistake’, and it seemed to me at that time that I was now being forced to go for no mistakes.

“I’ve certainly got no agenda against Jo Moore, no agenda against Stephen Byers. I’m interested in clearing my reputation and if possible securing my job.”

The Department of Transport had a “troubled history”, he added.

“The problem is the civil service and the politicians within the department, and that is a difficult relationship, there’s no doubt about it.

“It’s a malaise and where it stems from I can’t tell you.”

Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrat transport spokesman, Don Foster, called for Mr Byers to make a statement to MPs about the affair.

Mr Foster said: “Stephen Byers’ credibility is on the line. He must now come to the House of Commons to give his side of the story in full.

He said: “The latest damning revelations from Martin Sixsmith cast a huge cloud over Mr Byers’ tenure as transport secretary.

“Mr Byers claims to be willing to take the tough decisions. The time has come for him to take responsibility. For the sake of public confidence in the government he should resign.”

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2001/oct/09/terrorismandthemedia.Whitehall

After a time working as a media relations adviser she returned to politics as Mr Byers’ special adviser when he became secretary of state at the department of trade and industry in December 1998.

There she showed her good humour during the frantic general election campaign, when Mr Byers was put on the spot over a Labour election broadcast.

Having hired out the Curzon cinema in Soho for a press screening of the ad, Mr Byers was asked by journalists what the last film he had seen was. Replying “Bridget Jones’ Diary”, he was immediately flummoxed by the question: “What did you make of the anal sex scene?”

Ms Moore wisely stayed schtum, letting the minister dig himself out of that particular hole.

There are already calls for Ms Moore to resign. Downing Street will be angered that the memo has diverted attention from the war. While the Tories are clearly delighted that they can attack the government over this issue, as Theresa May did with relish this morning, while still showing their support for the military action.

The only thing which will save Ms Moore is the strength of her relations with senior Whitehall officials. She is close to Alastair Campbell and Anji Hunter, two of the prime minister’s closest aides: if they decide to back her then she might have a chance at survival.

If they hang her out to dry then she will be returning to the private sector.

Topics

Civil service

THE ECONOMIST – 18 SETTEMBRE 2008

Who killed New Labour?

“We meet in a spirit of hope,” the new leader of the Labour Party told its annual conference. “For

the first time in a generation”, he declaimed, “it is the right wing that appears lost and

disillusioned.” The speech ended with an incantation: “New Labour! New Britain! New Labour!

New Britain!”

That was Tony Blair, in 1994. It was a speech that announced the birth of New Labour – the flexible

social-democratic movement that dominated British politics until very recently. Next week, at this

year’s party conference, Gordon Brown – Mr Blair’s successor as Labour leader and prime minister

– will also give a speech, conceivably his last big address in those offices. This one may come to be

regarded as New Labour’s elegy.

New Labour is dying. It has lost the three vital qualities that kept it alive and vibrant. First,

discipline. A shared purpose and scowling party apparatchiks once bound Labour MPs to a party

line; now some are calling for Mr Brown to stand down – and he may yet have to, little more than a

year after he moved into Number 10. The rumblings about his leadership already constitute a crisis,

and a humiliation, for him and his party.

Second, intellectual confidence: the party that once defined the intellectual terrain of politics has

been reduced to aping its opponents’ policies. Most important, New Labour has lost the habit of

winning.

What has been one of the great election-winning forces in British political history has been routed

in a run of parliamentary by-elections and local votes. Its poll ratings are so bad – a survey released

on September 18th gave the Conservatives a 28-point lead – that recovery before the next general

election, due by June 2010, looks almost impossible. On current form, the resulting defeat may be

Labour’s worst since the second world war. In the aftermath of such a rout, some Labour supporters

fear, the party may disintegrate, with a revived Old Labour faction, wedded to the ideals of punitive

taxation and a monolithic state, reasserting its anachronistic grip.

Mr Brown, in the library

But if the demise is plain enough, the explanation is less so. Who killed New Labour? There are

three possible solutions: murder, natural causes or political suicide.

For some Labour MPs, the culprit is obvious: Mr Brown. He waited most of his life to fill the top

job, scheming and manoeuvring during his long years as chancellor of the exchequer, destabilising

the government with his simmering ambition and rows with Mr Blair. In June 2007 he finally got

his wish – and botched it. Under Mr Brown’s leadership, the party has haemorrhaged support and

credibility. Unlike John Major – who also took over in mid-term from a long-serving and iconic

predecessor, but whom the public mostly viewed as the decent if hapless leader of a disreputable

rabble – this prime minister is even more unpopular than his party.

Mr Brown’s fingerprints are all over the two most damaging mistakes of his brief premiership.

First, the calamitous episode last autumn, when he floated the idea of calling a general election,

then pulled back. It was a tragicomedy in three acts: by vacillating and then “bottling” it, Mr Brown

ruined his claim to strong leadership; by claiming that alarming opinion-poll results had not swayed

his decision, he undermined his trustworthiness; by meekly and hastily emulating a popular Tory

idea on reducing inheritance tax, he seemed plagiaristic and desperate.

The other main debacle concerned the abolition of the 10% income-tax band, a change Mr Brown

announced in 2007 in the last budget he delivered as chancellor. When it came into effect in April,

several million low-income households were disadvantaged; the resulting furore eventually led to

an emergency tax cut. And worse than both these cock-ups has been Mr Brown’s personal and

consistent failure to speak to the electorate in a language it understands—in other words, to

discharge the key communications responsibility borne by all 21st-century democratic politicians.

In place of vision and placating empathy, he seems to offer only droning iterations.

And if Mr Brown is the culprit, the remedy is plain: to get rid of him. That is the aim of the dozen

or so Labour MPs – a couple of junior officials (promptly sacked), a gaggle of former ministers and

a gang of backbenchers – who have publicly tried, but so far failed, to force a party-leadership

contest. Their stand has been touchingly unco-ordinated; more effective, it may transpire, for

seeming heartfelt rather than conspiratorial. Their aim is to pressure members of the cabinet to push

Mr Brown out, using the threat of group resignations if he refuses. Ousting him would make Labour

look chaotic, fractious and undemocratic. But the rebels calculate that short-term embarrassment is

preferable to electoral obliteration.

On September 16th David Cairns, a minister in the Scottish office, resigned, citing doubts about Mr

Brown’s leadership. There are many others in government who sympathise (and some with scores

to settle from the decade-long hostilities between Mr Brown’s acolytes and Mr Blair’s). For the

moment, however, the insurgents lack a high-profile champion. They also lack an agreed successor.

David Miliband, the clever young foreign secretary and a supposed candidate, professes his loyalty.

Ditto two of his plausible rivals, Alan Johnson, the personable health secretary, and Jack Straw, the

wily justice secretary.

Quietly in its bed

That may change if the rebellion mounts at or soon after next week’s conference; some members of

the cabinet have been less than full-throated in their support of Mr Brown. But if they think

deposing him will revive New Labour at a regicidal stroke, the rebels are mistaken. New Labour is

also suffering from a separate and incurable condition: old age.

Before 1997, no Labour government had served two full parliamentary terms in office. New Labour

has managed three, winning two landslide victories in the general elections of 1997 and 2001 and a

comfortable parliamentary majority in 2005. It has outlived the other governments of the centre-left

that were once its peers – in France, Germany, America and elsewhere. But it has not – could not –

defy political gravity indefinitely. It had to fall in the end.

Look at the evidence closely and it is clear that the decline precedes Mr Brown’s move to Number

10. Between 1997 and 2005 the party lost 4m voters. It won its last general election with just 35.2%

of the popular vote, the lowest winning share ever. The grand coalition of working- and middleclass

voters that swept Mr Blair to power in 1997- enabling him, with hubris but some justification,

to describe his party as “the political wing of the British people” – has crumbled. Disappointments

have mounted, as they must; the public craves new faces; antagonism to the Tories has faded. New

Labour understands that natural process, which is partly why it replaced Mr Blair, just as the Tories

confected an impression of change by installing Mr Major in place of Margaret Thatcher.

Yet change and attrition in personnel – a natural consequence of the government’s longevity – has

weakened New Labour too. Several of its most talented and determined campaigners – some of the

people who created New Labour – have, one way or another, departed. Peter Mandelson and David

Blunkett were obliged to leave the government twice each. Robin Cook resigned over Iraq.

Jaundiced as his relationship with the country became (not least because of Iraq), Mr Blair was by

light years the party’s biggest star.

The other natural cause that has caught up with New Labour is the economic cycle – exacerbated

and accelerated, in this case, by the credit crunch and rises in commodities prices. Inflation in

Britain has crept up and growth stalled; recession, albeit perhaps a short one, is imminent if not

already happening. The hardship may so far be mild compared with previous downturns in the

1970s and 1980s. But those are now distant memories, and for young voters scarcely a memory at

all.

For a prime minister who built his reputation, and his claim to the premiership, on economic

management, the political consequences are especially acute. When he was chancellor, Mr Brown

claimed, rashly and repeatedly, to have led Britain out of the old pattern of “boom and bust”. He

sucked up credit for economic success, for which New Labour was only marginally responsible. He

ought not to be surprised that the public blames him now.

Bushy-tailed Blair and Brown in 1994Among some Labour MPs, these twin conditions—a sense of

superannuation, and the gathering economic gloom—have induced a kind of fatalism: a belief that,

disappointing as Mr Brown may be, no other leader could resist the forces that are driving Labour to

defeat. This despair may constitute the prime minister’s best hope of avoiding a coup. And in their

way these implacable but impersonal elements offer a consoling explanation of Labour’s woes,

especially for Mr Brown himself.

By its own hand

But they are not the whole solution of the New Labour mystery either. It is true that time kills all

governments and that economic troubles often make them unpopular. But the Tories won an

election during a downturn in 1992. And it was not inevitable that three parliamentary terms would

be New Labour’s limit (Mr Blair used to talk about bequeathing a “progressive century”). There is

another factor, one which few Labour MPs wish to confront.

“It is not this or that minister that is to blame,” Mr Blair said of the Tories in that 1994 speech: it

was, he said, a whole ideology that had failed. Something similar might be said of New Labour

today. Its approach to government increasingly looks expensive, exhausted and outmoded.

New Labour emerged in the 1990s from a double epiphany on the part of Mr Blair, Mr Brown and

others: an intellectual acknowledgment that deregulation and free markets were, after all, the best

way to maximise prosperity; and a political recognition that, with the shrinkage of its traditional

working-class base, Labour would never win power again unless it courted and reassured the

middle classes.

These realisations were honed – partly in wonkathons with Bill Clinton and other New Democrats –

into a rough-and-ready political philosophy. It purported to offer a new path between socialism and

neoliberalism, promising a utopia of “ands”: competitive tax rates and quality public services,

which would be blessed with both investment and reform; patriotism and internationalism (as Mr

Blair wrote in a 1998 pamphlet on the “third way”) and rights and responsibilities; tough on crime

and tough on the causes of crime; a free market and a robust social safety net; have cake and eat it.

The Old Labour fixation on equality of outcomes was replaced by a new notion of “equal worth”.

The state was to be an “enabler” and guarantor. The poor would be “levelled up” rather than the

rich squeezed down. Mr Blair famously did not have “a burning ambition…to make sure David

Beckham earns less.”

The rhetoric was excoriated by some as vapid marketing, and by others as thinly disguised neoThatcherism.

But New Labour did, in fact, have corresponding policies. It demonstrated its

commitment to macroeconomic stability by giving the Bank of England autonomy in the setting of

interest rates; just as the New Democrats fetishised budget-balancing, so Mr Brown, as chancellor,

bound government expenditure with his fiscal “golden rules” (which he now looks set to break). But

there was also a minimum wage, assorted welfare-to-work schemes and covert redistribution of

wealth through a fiddly system of tax credits. There was lots of cash for public services, combined,

albeit belatedly, with some market-based reform; the introduction of tuition fees for universities;

more freedom for some hospitals and schools; the encouragement of competition among providers,

including private ones.

Cameron, the grave-robber

Many of these policies were initially opposed by the Conservatives, but most have now been

adopted by David Cameron, their leader since 2005. Mr Cameron has also accepted New Labour’s

social liberalism, updating his party’s official views on sexuality, and evinced (or simulated) a

concern for the poor. New Labour has succeeded in making compassion compulsory. And Mr

Cameron has embraced New Labour’s public-service reform agenda – while indicating that Britain’s

universal, tax-funded health service will remain politically sacrosanct under a Tory government.

Just as New Labour swallowed deregulation and free markets, so Mr Cameron has incorporated

many of New Labour’s central tenets. He, too, has helped to kill New Labour – but also, arguably,

to ensure some of its ideas endure, reincarnated as Tory policy.

Unfortunately, for the party and the country, New Labour was also undermined from its inception

by internal weaknesses and contradictions. These have always been visible, but now look terminal.

One of the problems is that having and eating the cake is possible only if the cake is big enough.

New Labour spent lavishly on the public services, at first as a substitute for proper reform and then

as lubrication for it. With the economy growing steadily, healthy government receipts paid for the

generous benefits and tax credits. Now, perforce, the splurge is over – and tougher times require

choices that New Labour hoped, and for a long time managed, to avoid. It has come to look rather

like a fair-weather creed.

The pressure on the budget has also revealed fissures within the Labour Party, cracks that have

opened periodically but are now gaping. New Labour, like most political parties, has always been a

precarious coalition of parliamentarians and interests, from trade unionists who submitted to the

“third way” reluctantly, to sharp-suited “modernisers”. Economic hardship and tightening spending

constraints have brought the resulting tensions into the open: witness the recent row over whether

the government should impose a windfall tax on energy companies and use the money to help poor

families meet their rising fuel bills (it didn’t).

Those disagreements may also help to save Mr Brown, since his critics have no coherent view on

the changes that ought to follow. It isn’t only the money that has run out. So have the ideas.

Although he was one of New Labour’s architects, as chancellor Mr Brown cultivated a reputation as

less New and more straightforwardly Labour than Mr Blair, perhaps because this stance

strengthened his hand in internal party politics. As prime minister, he at first seemed unenthusiastic

about Mr Blair’s efforts to inject choice and competition into the public services. But he has

recently seemed more committed, appreciating, perhaps, that simply pledging improvements,

without a credible theory of how they might be achieved, wouldn’t wash. In fact, many of his

biggest troubles as prime minister have derived from an excess of New Labour orthodoxy. His

government’s indecision over how to handle the collapse of Northern Rock, the bank that was an

early victim of the credit crunch, was partly born of a violent allergy to the term “nationalisation”,

with its whiff of Old Labour shibboleths. His quixotic determination to enact illiberal anti-terror

laws reflects a deep New Labour conviction that it must never be out-toughed on crime and

security.

A thousand cuts

All the same, the intellectual momentum that gathered under Mr Blair has dissipated. Mr Brown

may not have unravelled existing policies, but there is little sign of a new phase of reform: in

primary schools, for example, or in the powers and structure of local government. New Labour’s

push to decentralise power and decision-making – to create a new kind of state – has always been

retarded by a countervailing instinct, one that combines the retentive neurosis that British

governments of all stripes have shared with a residual old-fashioned statism. The haphazard effort

now seems to have stalled.

Finally, during New Labour’s long spell in office, the world has changed. The new worries of

terrorism and immigration favour parties of the right across Europe. New Labour, meanwhile, has

yet to hit upon a distinct and persuasive approach to the new, strategic problem of climate change or

the more immediate one of mayhem in the global economy. A deficit of imagination is a problem

for any administration, but a crippling one for governments of the centre-left, which tend to live and

die by their ideas.

“Their time is up.” Mr Blair said of the Tories in 1994: “Their philosophy is done. Their experiment

is over.” New Labour seems, at the moment, to have reached that point too. Old age, penury, Mr

Cameron, Mr Brown: they are all incriminated. But, in the end, New Labour killed itself.

CIA involvement in the Labour Party: 1945-2008

Started by John Simkin, July 14, 2008

Attempts by the CIA to destabilise Labour governments began with the Clement Atlee government (1945-51). The Strategic Services Unit (SSU) that in 1947 became the CIA had an interesting relationship with the Labour Party. They favoured its anti-imperialist policies that promised an end to the British Empire. However, they totally opposed its socialist domestic policies.

They concentrated on turning the party to the right. This is best explained by Tom Braden, a senior official in the CIA, who was head of the International Organizations Division (IOD) during this period. He explained in an interview that was included in the Granada Television program, World in Action: The Rise and Fall of the CIA (June, 1975):

It never had to account for the money it spent except to the President if the President wanted to know how much money it was spending. But otherwise the funds were not only unaccountable, they were unvouchered, so there was really no means of checking them – “unvouchered funds” meaning expenditures that don’t have to be accounted for…. If the director of CIA wanted to extend a present, say, to someone in Europe – a Labour leader – suppose he just thought, This man can use fifty thousand dollars, he’s working well and doing a good job – he could hand it to him and never have to account to anybody… I don’t mean to imply that there were a great many of them that were handed out as Christmas presents. They were handed out for work well performed or in order to perform work well…. Politicians in Europe, particularly right after the war, got a lot of money from the CIA….

Olof Palme, a warning from history.

“A pivotal, renowned, and polarizing figure domestically as well as in international politics since the 1960s, Palme was steadfast in his non-alignment policy towards the superpowers, accompanied by support for numerous third world liberation movements following decolonization including, most controversially, economic and vocal support for a number of Third World governments which were guilty of gross violations of human rights. Most famously, he was the first Western Head of Government to visit Cuba after its revolution, giving a speech in Santiago praising contemporary Cuban and Cambodian revolutionaries.

Frequently a critic of US and Soviet foreign policy, he resorted to fierce and often polarizing criticism in pinpointing his resistance towards imperialist ambitions and authoritarian regimes, including those of Francisco Franco of Spain, António de Oliveira Salazar of Portugal, Gustáv Husák of Czechoslovakia, B J Vorster and P W Botha of South Africa. His 1972 condemnation of the Hanoi bombings, notably comparing the tactic to the Treblinka extermination camp, resulted in a temporary freeze in Sweden–United States relations. Palme’s steadfast opposition to apartheid, which he labeled “a particularly gruesome system”, gave rise to theories of South African involvement in his death, which were further fueled when Eugene de Kock claimed South African security forces had orchestrated his death. His murder by an unapprehended assailant on a street in Stockholm on 28 February 1986 was the first of its kind in modern Swedish history, and the first assassination of a national leader since Gustav III. It had a great impact across Scandinavia. Local convict and addict Christer Pettersson was convicted of the murder but was acquitted on appeal by the Svea Court of Appeal.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olof_Palme

Ylva Anna Maria Lindh (19 June 1957 – 11 September 2003) was a Swedish Social Democratic politician, chairman of the Social Democratic Youth League from 1984 to 1990 and a member of parliament from 1982 to 1985 and 1998 to 2003. Joining the government as minister of environment in 1994, she was elevated to minister for foreign affairs by prime minister Göran Persson in 1998 and considered his successor as party chairman and prime minister (neither of which posts had ever been held by a woman) before her assassination in September 2003.

Assassination[edit]

Lindh died in the early morning of 11 September 2003 after a knife attack in Stockholm on the afternoon of 10 September. Just after 16:00, she was attacked while shopping in the ladies’ section of the Nordiska Kompaniet department store in central Stockholm. Lindh was shopping for new clothes for a televised debate later that night on the referendum about Sweden’s adoption of the euro (which she supported). She was stabbed in the chest, abdomen and arms. At the time of the attack, Lindh was not protected by bodyguards from the Swedish Security Service; this proved controversial, given the similarity between Lindh’s murder and that of prime minister Olof Palme in 1986 (the first murder of a government member in modern Swedish history).^{[citation needed]}

She was rushed to Karolinska Hospital, where she underwent surgery and blood transfusions for over nine hours. Lindh reportedly experienced severe internal bleeding and liver damage; her condition remained grave, although she appeared to have improved immediately after the surgery. An hour later, however, complications necessitated additional surgery; at 05:29, she was pronounced dead. After a private briefing of her relatives and the government (and contradicting news coverage that she was alive in “grave” but “stable” condition), the announcement of her death made headlines across Europe.^{[citation needed]}

Operation Gladio

Operation Gladio

Abbreviation	Gladio
Motto	Silendo Libertatem Servo (In silence, we serve freedom.)
Formation	1948
Founder	Antonio Segni
Type	• military • terrorist
Headquarters	Rome, Italy
Interest of	Daniele Ganser
Exposed by	Felice Casson, Vincenzo Vinciguerra
Subpage	•Operation Gladio/B
Secret for over 40 years, Gladio is a NATO-backed network of armed soldiers inside the nations of Europe outside effective control of national governments. Ostensibly intended for use only in case of a Soviet invasion, Gladio carried out a string of false flag terror attacks. In 1990, the European parliament asked all member states to launch investigations, but only 5 national governments did so.

Operation Gladio is a NATO-backed paramilitary network established after WW2, originally inspired by fear of the USSR. It was also called the “Stay behind network“, since if the Red Army invaded Europe, its members would ‘stay behind’ enemy lines and disrupt Soviet control. Officially non-existant, secrecy was such that these networks were hard for NATO/MI6/Deep state officials to control. Gladio was responsible for bombings, kidnappings and assassinations to such an extent that the network was publicly exposed in Italy in the 1980s and was the subject of a BBC documentary by Alan Francovich some years later.^[1] The project was adapted in the mid 1990s as “Gladio B“, using “Moslem terrorists” as a substitute enemy image for communists.

The Warning Signs of a False Flag Operation:

http://theantimedia.org/5-confirmed-false-flag-operations/

~There is an immediate comprehensive narrative, including a convenient culprit. Law enforcement, government agencies, and the mainstream media immediately proffer a narrative that completely explains the event and encourages citizens to tie their intellectual understanding of the tragedy to the emotions they experience. In his lecture at Contact in the Desert, Richard Dolan noted that a distinguishing characteristic of a false flag operation is that the official narrative IS NOT questioned by the media. There are often legislative, ideological and sociopolitical power plays waiting in the wings, which the government can immediately implement. The most striking example of this is the Patriot Act, which was written well before 9/11 but seemed to correlate entirely with the events that had transpired.

~The official narrative has obvious domestic and geopolitical advantages for the governing body. The Bush administration used 9/11 to usher in the War on Terror, which has served as a lynchpin for countless civil liberty infringements by the national security state, including ubiquitous domestic surveillance and indefinite detention. It also directly paved the way for an invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq—countries that had nothing to do with the attacks—allowing our government and defense contractors to control the natural gas pipelines and oil fields. This bears a striking resemblance to Operation Ajax.

~The narrative behind the attack serves to leverage emotions like fear, as well as patriotism, in order to manufacture consent around a previously controversial issue. For example, many of the recent domestic terror attacks, including the Aurora shooting, have exacerbated and reinforced advocacy of gun control legislation. More importantly, these attacks divide populations and invite the government and militarized local police forces to have the authority to declare martial law at will, locking down entire neighborhoods. We saw this after the Boston marathon bombing, the most striking example of this nation’s post 9/11 police state mentality.

~Military training drills and police drills occur on the day of and very near the attack itself, causing confusion to obscure eye witness testimony and allowing orchestrators to plant both patsies, disinformation and backup operatives. This is no small point. An incredible percentage of major domestic or international terror attacks have involved simultaneous “training drills.” This list includes, but is not limited to, the infamous NORAD drills of 9/11, the 7/7 London Bombings, the 2011 Norway shooting, the Aurora shooting, Sandy Hook, and the Boston Marathon. Though none of the aforementioned events can be confirmed or denied without a doubt, they bear a striking resemblance to previous false flag attacks and should be looked at with an investigative eye.

The bigger false flags that occurred in the last two decades undoubtedly utilized unimaginable amounts of money and resources. It will take time and many contributions by intrepid researchers and whistleblowers to prove them.

The cases made for and against 9/11 being a false flag “inside job” are voluminous and highly controversial. The narrative is so convoluted with disinformation that despite all of the technology and online resources at our disposal, it is highly unlikely we will know for sure how many layers of shadow and black op agencies were used—if, in fact, they were. What we do know is that shortly before the events of 9/11, then-Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld announced that $2.3 trillion dollars was missing from the Pentagon’s budget. Unfortunately, too much evidence has been destroyed or manipulated to reach a conclusive verdict as to whether it was a full blown false flag or an extreme case of state opportunism.

Remember, the story of the false flag phenomenon is one that is still being written. Our analysis of it must breach the most powerful information control filters the world has ever seen. As technology and social enlightenment make the crimes of the world’s national governments transparent, we will see shocking new chapters added to this history that will shatter mainstream perceptions of reality.

Manchester mock Islamist terror attack ‘not scripted’

13 May 2016
From the section
Manchester

Share this with Facebook
These are external links and will open in a new window
Share this with Twitter
Share this with Messenger
Share this with Email

Greater Manchester Police has rejected claims of “institutional racism” after a counter-terrorism exercise in which an actor playing an Islamist terrorist shouted “Allahu Akbar”.

Chief Constable Ian Hopkins said the phrase was “not scripted” and the actor involved was “not a police officer”.

The force has apologised for stereotyping after the mock terror attack at the Trafford Centre.

Eight hundred volunteers took part in the overnight drill on Monday.

Organisers of a protest meeting at Longsight Saath Saath on Tuesday accused Greater Manchester Police (GMP) of racism and demanded an inquiry.

‘Real world’

Mr Hopkins said: “The religious phrase used shouldn’t have been used. It has caused offence to many members of the Muslim community for which we apologised.

“It was not scripted, and I think that is really important, so nobody sat around and thought this is a good idea, and the role player that has used the phrase is not a police officer or an employee of GMP.”

However, Mr Hopkins warned: “If we are going to tackle terrorism we can only do that in conjunction with our communities… and if we isolate any of our communities we won’t get intelligence and we won’t get people working with us.

“It would do nobody any good to isolate any parts of our communities.”

Future exercises needed to take greater account of cultural and religious sensitivities at the planning stages and community groups should be brought in to advise, he added.

However, Chris Phillips, former head of the government’s National Counter Terrorism Security office, has said it is “silly to become upset” about the use of the phrase Allahu Akbar – which means “God is great”.

“We have to live in the real world,” he said.

“The police officers here were trying to do an exercise in realism and unfortunately, since the 2000s, this group of extremists have been using that phrase to commit suicide attacks across the world.”

Greater Manchester Police said the event at the Trafford Centre was not linked to any specific terror threat.

Harry ReadheadTuesday 10 May 2016 8:18 am

Anti-terror police have descended on a shopping centre in a training exercise designed to test their response to a Paris or Brussels-style attack.

An estimated 800 people made up of volunteers, fire and ambulance service personnel and the North West Counter Terrorism Unit are taking part in the role-play. Police said they wanted to make the exercise as realistic as possible.

The three-day drill, which began at midnight at Trafford Centre shopping complex on the outskirts of Manchester, involves officers armed with machine guns responding to a series of different scenarios, including ones in which there are mass civilian casualties, hostage-taking and suicide bombers.

The force wants to see how the emergency services respond to developing or ‘fluid’ situations.

Massive terror operation at Trafford Centre

The exercise has been planned since December, but police have stressed to the public there is no real threat to the shopping centre or a second location in Merseyside where another drill will take place.

Stockholm terror fears ‘after several Isis militants enter city’

Businesses housed in the shopping centres will have the opportunity to test their own terror responses.

The exercise, which is code-named Exercise Winchester Accord, is the fourth major exercise in months. Ity follows ones in London, Glasgow and Essex.

The current UK terror threat level is set to ‘severe’, which means an attack is highly likely, according to the security services.

Robert Anthony Pape, Jr.(born April 24, 1960) is an American political scientistknown for his work on international security affairs, especially the coercive strategies of air powerand the rationale of suicide terrorism. He is currently a professor of Political Science at the University of Chicagoand founder and director of the Chicago Project on Security and Terrorism(CPOST).[1]In early October 2010, the University of Chicago press released Pape’s third book, co-authored with James K. Feldman, Cutting the Fuse: The Explosion of Global Suicide Terrorism and How to Stop It.

Dying to Win[edit]

Pape’s Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism (2005) contradicts many widely held beliefs about suicide terrorism.[citation needed] Based on an analysis of every known case of suicide terrorism from 1980 to 2003 (315 attacks as part of 18 campaigns), he concludes that there is “little connection between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism, or any one of the world’s religions… . Rather, what nearly all suicide terrorist attacks have in common is a specific secular and strategic goal: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from territory that the terrorists consider to be their homeland” (p. 4). “The taproot of suicide terrorism is nationalism,” he argues; it is “an extreme strategy for national liberation” (pp. 79–80). Pape’s work examines groups such as the Al-Qaeda to the Sri Lankan Tamil Tigers. Pape also notably provides further evidence to a growing body of literature that finds that the majority of suicide terrorists do not come from impoverished or uneducated backgrounds, but rather have middle class origins and a significant level of education.

In a criticism of Pape’s link between occupation and suicide terrorism, an article titled “Design, Inference, and the Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism” (published in The American Political Science Review), authors Scott Ashworth, Joshua D. Clinton, Adam Meirowitz, and Kristopher W. Ramsay from Princeton charged Pape with “sampling on the dependent variable” by limiting research only to cases in which suicide terror was used.[11] In response, Pape argues that his research design is sufficient because it collected the universe of known cases of suicide terrorism.[12] In a rejoinder, Ashworth et al. discuss how even large samples of the dependent variable cannot be used to explain variation in outcomes, why suicide terrorism in some places but not others, if the sample does not vary.[13]Assaf Moghadam has also criticized Pape’s conclusions.[14]

Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri(Urdu: محمد طاہر القادری‎) (born 19 February 1951) is a Pakistani politician and Islamic scholar of Sufism. He was also a professor of international constitutional lawat the University of the Punjab.[3]Qadri is also the founding chairman of Minhaj-ul-Quran Internationaland also of Minhaj Institute of Qira’at and Tafizul Quran. Qadri has delivered more than 8000 lectures on various topics including radicalism.[4]

Fatwa on Terrorism[edit]

Main article: Fatwa on Terrorism

The Fatwa on Terrorism and Suicide Bombings is a 600-page (Urdu version), 512-page (English version) is an Islamic decree by Qadri which demonstrates from the Quran and Sunnah that terrorism and suicide bombings are unjust and evil, and thus un-Islamic. It was published in London as a book.[58] This fatwa is a direct refutation of the ideology of al-Qaeda and the Taliban. It is one of the most extensive Islamic anti-terrorism rulings, an “absolute” condemnation of terrorism without “any excuses or pretexts” which goes further than ever and declares that terrorism is kufr under Islamic law.[59] The launch was organised by Minhaj-ul-Quran UK. Qadri said during the launch that “Terrorism is terrorism, violence is violence and it has no place in Islamic teaching and no justification can be provided for it, or any kind of excuses or ifs or buts.”

The fatwa received widespread media attention and was positively covered by the international press.[60]

According to CNN, experts see the fatwa as a significant blow to terrorist recruiting.[61] CNN’s Amanpour show added the fatwa summary to its website and declared it to be fatwa for peace,[62] while the US State Department declares the fatwa to be significant step in taking Islam back from terrorists.[63]

Before it had been released, Douglas Murray described the Fatwa on Terrorism, in an article in the Evening Standard, as “potentially important”, although he said “A single-fatwa will not change the level of denial and self criticism inherent in so much of modern Islam”.[64]

ITV news channel questioned the credibility of the fatwa and asks if it was not by the British government because senior counter-terrorism officials from Scotland Yard and MI5 were present at the launch.[65]

The 512-page English book version of the fatwa, Fatwa on Terrorism and Suicide Bombings, (London: Minhaj-ul-Quran, 2011. ISBN 978-0-9551888-9-3) has a foreword by John Esposito and an introduction by Joel Hayward, both of whom share Qadri’s scholarly assessment that, regardless of any intention, the evil of terrorism remains evil and must be exposed, opposed and condemned.

The Fatwa on Terrorism has been officially endorsed by Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt. In January 2011, the fatwa was discussed at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2011.[66] In June 2011, Pope Benedict XVI received a copy of the fatwa from representatives of Minhaj Interfaith Relations. The Pope reportedly appreciated that it promoted peace, harmony and interfaith dialogue.[67]

The Fatwa on Terrorism has been reviewed positively by international scholars including Kemal Argon who published a review in the The Journal of Rotterdam Islamic and Social Sciences, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2011, pp. 149–160. Islamic University of Rotterdam, Netherlands.

Views[edit]

The legal-theological opinion by Qadri creates an impression that there is a consensus in Islam on the rejectors which did not exist in Islamic Prophet’s time but came about during the reign of the Fourth Caliph Hazrat Ali (RA) and challenged his authority.[68]

[69]

Escaping the Iron Cage of Hopelessness

May 24, 2017rogerglewisEdit

And a Light shone out from the fog. Such lights save some but not all ships from being dashed upon rocks.

OffGuardian

By Edward Curtin

In a previous article I argued that those who think science can solve our major social problems – in particular, world destruction with nuclear weapons and the poisoning of the earth’s ecology and atmosphere – were delusional and in the grip of the myth of science and technology. These problems were created by science when it became untethered from any sense of limits in its embrace of instrumental rationality. Once it became wedded to usefulness and the…

View original post 2,906 more words