Taxpayer-funded ‘anti-Terror’ unit involved in propaganda effort over Gaza

by Scotland Against Criminalising Communities

The Annual Report of the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), laid before Parliament last Thursday, confirms that a Government propaganda unit set up to tackle terrorism intervened to influence British public opinion during the Israeli attack on Gaza last year. The report also outlines a number of other steps taken by the Research, Information and Communications Unit (RICU), including the creation of a network of community organisations. RICU is linked to the UK Government’s Prevent programme for preventing “violent extremism.”

Activities of this sort distort democracy in the UK. They aim to mobilise public and voluntary sector workers and ordinary people as propagandists for controversial Government policies. They poison public debate by linking opposition to the Government’s foreign policy to support for “extremism.” And they do all this within a framework of Government initiatives already notorious for the massive intelligence-gathering that they involve.

The extent of RICU’s influence in Scotland is unclear. However, the circulation of propaganda from RICU appears to be one of the purposes of a new initiative, called “Common Ground,” supported by the Scottish Government.

RICU and the wider Prevent programme promote views that are at odds with the views of most Scots and with the views of the SNP. Prevent encourages support for the war in Afghanistan — most Scots want the troops to come home. RICU acted as an apologist for the UK Government when the Government failed to take a firm position against Israel’s attack on Gaza – leading SNP figures have been outspoken in their criticism of Israeli actions.

Civil liberties group Scotland Against Criminalising Communities (SACC) is calling on the Scottish Government to halt its support for the UK Government’s controversial Prevent programme and for initiatives linked to RICU. SACC also says that groups and individuals should refuse Prevent funding.

In a report published last year, SACC said:

“Prevent will not prevent terrorism, and may encourage it. If that happens, everyone who colludes with Prevent will have blood on their hands.”

Propaganda operations in the name of counter-terrorism

In its Annual Report, the Intelligence and Security Committee says — quoting in a strikingly incomplete way from an unpublished letter from the Home Secretary — that it was told:

“During the Gaza conflict RICU ensured that the Government’s position was communicated… a major counter-narrative campaign has been initiated… a network of community organisations established… local partners in priority areas have been briefed and provided with communications advice… relationships have been built with key media channels… research into audience segmentation… has been completed… [and] guidance on communicating with Somali and Pakistani [communities] in the UK has been circulated.”

RICU operates under the Government’s Prevent programme which aims, according to the Government, to “stop people becoming terrorists or supporting violent extremists.” It also has a role in other aspects of the Government’s over-arching counter-terrorism programme, called Contest, of which Prevent is a part.

A report published by SACC last November was highly critical of Contest , saying that:

“Contest isn’t simply a crime-prevention strategy. It’s an instrument for fighting the so-called global war on terror – a war for power and control of resources.” Read more…

EU ‘wastes’ millions on ‘hip hop’ dance and circus skills

By Martin Banks
www.telegraph.co.uk
18 Mar 2010

The European Commission has been accused of wasting millions of pounds of taxpayer’s money on a “pointless” arts events despite the economic crisis.

The 2010 culture programme reveals £366 million will spent on a host of events to promote wind instruments, “hip hop” dance and circus skills.

The European Laboratory for Hip Hop Dance will net £900,000 to “improve the recognition and visibility of hip hop dance in Europe” and “encourage connectivity between hip hop artists”.

Hailed as the flagship event of the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue, it is designed to raise awareness of “an often under-represented side of European culture.”.

There will also be £180,000 earmarked for a “Wind Art Festival” to address the “need to increase audience for organ performances in order to give the organ a natural role in cultural life”.

The commission said it wanted to “expose new applications of art disciplines with organs, churches and other venues on a high artistic level Europeans will be aware of the diversity of their common European cultural heritage.” The money will be used to stage 80 performances by 200 artists from all over Europe at 50 venues which organisers hope will reach 40,000 people.

Other bizarre projects include The Project of Generosity which will get £180,000 to “spread the movement of reaching out and sharing.”

Its organisers say performers will “travel through Europe, accompanied by ‘The Book of Generosity’, inviting people to add their dreams and keep on spreading generously.”

Another beneficiary of EU cash will be the TRANS-Mission project, for which £143,000 has been earmarked. It will “improve assistance to the contemporary circus sector” and “increase the professionalism of the sector and its recognition at European level”.

MEPs poured scorn on the programme, with Conservative Emma McClarkin saying the EU should be using its budget to assist the economic recovery.

“If national governments want to use taxpayers’ money on cultural projects that is their choice but British taxpayers should not have to fork out in a vain attempt to create a common European identity,” she said.

Read more…

Tony Blair takes on jobs advising South Korean oil firm and Kuwaiti Government

Tony Blair has been paid to advise a South Korean oil company and the Kuwaiti Government.

By Christopher Hope
www.telegraph.co.uk
18 Mar 2010

The existence of the arrangements were kept secret for the past 18 months and only disclosed this week by a committee which vets former ministers’ business interests.

Mr Blair is also an adviser to JP Morgan Chase, the US investment bank, and Zurich Financial Services, a Swiss firm.

Mr Blair worked for South Korea’s UI Energy Corporation, which is said to have extensive oil interests in the US and in Iraq, in August 2008.

However the existence of the deal was then kept secret since then because of “market sensitivities”, the committee said.

It was claimed yesterday that Mr Blair had asked the committee on two occasions not to disclose details of the Korean deal, and had to be chased by the committee for updates.

Details of the arrangement – identifying Mr Blair’s job as “advice to a consortium of investors led by the UI Energy Corporation” – were only eventually published on the committee’s website this week.

A spokesman for Mr Blair said the request to keep the project secret had been made by the Koreans, not by the former Prime Minister.

He said: “Mr Blair gave a one-off piece of advice in respect of a project for UI Energy in August 2008. He sought, and received, approval from the advisory committee on business appointments before undertaking this project.

“UI Energy requested of the committee that they delay public announcement for reasons of market sensitivity, which the committee agreed to do.”

The committee also detailed on its website a similarly unpublished deal with the ruling family in Kuwait. He has worked for them since June 2008, reportedly with the task of producing a £1million report on the oil state’s future over the next 30 years. Read more…

Eurozone mess forces hand of economic government

www.expatica.com
17/03/2010

The mess the eurozone finds itself in, with an unprecedented contingency plan now drawn up to bail out wayward countries like Greece, has forced Europe to sketch out a new form of cross-border economic government.

Brussels — An agreement to design terms for bilateral loans from partner countries that share the euro currency instinctively cuts against the grain of decisions taken when the currency was launched 11 years ago, expressly to prohibit bailouts for fear of encouraging imprudent spending.

It marks the first major step toward building a system where economic policy is coordinated across the many and varied landscapes of the 16-nation area.

“It was absolutely necessary to reach a deal to establish a system for financial aid to countries facing budget problems,” said Paul de Grauwe, economics professor at Belgium’s University of Louvain.

That said, “if there is no intervention at a structural and institutional level, there will be more crises and once again huge problems trying to manage them.”

Over and above the short-term ramifications of Greece’s immediate difficulties in even vaguely balancing its books, the eurozone as a whole is concerned with a lack of cohesive management of its assets.

Jean-Dominique Giuliani, head of the Robert Schuman Foundation think-tank, sees the Greek plan as “a positive step towards more lasting solutions” that could lead Europe to “progress towards the achievement of complete monetary and economic union.” Read more…

Expect a False Flag Terror Attack To Precede Invasion Of Iran

Paul Craig Roberts
Infowars.com
March 18, 2010

According to news reports, the U.S. military is shipping “bunker-buster” bombs to the U.S. Air Force base at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. The Herald Scotland reports that experts say the bombs are being assembled for an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The newspaper quotes Dan Piesch, director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at the University of London: “They are gearing up totally for the destruction of Iran.”

The next step will be a staged “terrorist attack,” a “false flag” operation as per Operation Northwoods, for which Iran will be blamed. As Iran and its leadership have already been demonized, the “false flag” attack will suffice to obtain US and European public support for bombing Iran. The bombing will include more than the nuclear facilities and will continue until the Iranians agree to regime change and the installation of a puppet government. The corrupt American media will present the new puppet as “freedom and democracy.”

If the past is a guide, Americans will fall for the deception. In the February issue of the American Behavioral Scientist, a scholarly journal, Professor Lance DeHaven-Smith writes that state crimes against democracy (SCAD) involve government officials, often in combination with private interests, that engage in covert activities in order to implement an agenda. Examples include McCarthyism or the fabrication of evidence of communist infiltration, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution based on false claims of President Johnson and Pentagon chief McNamara that North Vietnam attacked a U.S. naval vessel, the burglary of the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist in order to discredit Ellsberg (the Pentagon Papers) as “disturbed,” and the falsified “intelligence” that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction in order to justify the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

There are many other examples. I have always regarded the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Office Building in Oklahoma City as a SCAD. Allegedly, a disturbed Tim McVeigh used a fertilizer bomb in a truck parked outside the building. More likely, McVeigh was a patsy, whose fertilizer bomb was a cover for explosives planted inside the building.

A number of experts dismissed the possibility of McVeigh’s bomb producing such structural damage. For example, General Benton K. Partin, who was in charge of U.S. Air Force munitions design and testing, produced a thick report on the Murrah building bombing which concluded that the building blew up from the inside out. Gen. Partin concluded that “the pattern of damage would have been technically impossible without supplementary demolition charges at some of the reinforced concrete bases inside the building, a standard demolition technique. For a simplistic blast truck bomb, of the size and composition reported, to be able to reach out on the order of 60 feet and collapse a reinforced column base the size of column A7 is beyond credulity.”

Gen. Partin dismissed the official report as “a massive cover-up of immense proportions.”

Of course, the general’s unquestionable expertise had no bearing on the outcome. One reason is that his and other expert voices were drowned out by media pumping the official story. Another reason is that public beliefs in a democracy run counter to suspicion of government as a terrorist agent. Professor Laurie Manwell of the University of Guelph says that “false flag” operations have the advantage over truth: “research shows that people are far less willing to examine information that disputes, rather than confirms, their beliefs.” Professor Steven Hoffman agrees: “Our data shows substantial support for a cognitive theory known as ‘motivated reasoning,’ which suggests that rather than search rationally for information that either confirms or disconfirms a particular belief, people actually seek out information that confirms what they already believe. In fact, for the most part people completely ignore contrary information.” Even when hard evidence turns up, it can be discredited as a “conspiracy theory.”

All that is necessary for success of “false flag” or “black ops” events is for the government to have its story ready and to have a reliable and compliant media. Once an official story is in place, thought and investigation are precluded. Any formal inquiry that is convened serves to buttress the already provided explanation.

An explanation ready-at-hand is almost a give-away that an incident is a “black ops” event. Notice how quickly the U.S. government, allegedly so totally deceived by al Qaida, provided the explanation for 9/11. When President Kennedy was assassinated, the government produced the culprit immediately. The alleged culprit was conveniently shot inside a jail by a civilian before he could be questioned. But the official story was ready, and it held.

Professors Manwell and Hoffman’s research resonates with me. I remember reading in my graduate studies that the Czarist secret police set off bombs in order to create excuses to arrest their targets. My inclination was to dismiss the accounts as anti-Czarist propaganda by pro-communist historians. It was only later when Robert Conquest confirmed to me that this was indeed the practice of the Czarist secret police that the scales fell from my eyes.

Former CIA official Philip Giraldi in his article, “The Rogue Nation,” makes it clear that the U.S. government has a hegemonic agenda that it is pursuing without congressional or public awareness. The agenda unfolds piecemeal as a response to “terrorism,” and the big picture is not understood by the public or by most in Congress. Giraldi protests that the agenda is illegal under both U.S. and international law, but that the illegality of the agenda does not serve as a barrier. Only a naif could believe that such a government would not employ “false flag” operations that advance the agenda.

The U.S. population, it seems, is comprised of naifs whose lack of comprehension is bringing ruin to other lands.

Girl Scouts Taught How To Be ‘Hot’

Josh Saint Jacque
thepursuitofliberty.wordpress.com
March 17th 2010

UPDATE: I believe I found a PDF of the document in question. It appears to be targeted at people who are HIV positive, which begs the question, why was it being distributed to 10-14 year old girl scouts?

When you see a 10 year old girl do you think to yourself, “Man, she needs to be hotter. If only I could reach her and let her know that casual sex with multiple partners is A-OK. Oh, and she could do with some more slut gear.” If you’re like the folks at Planned Parenthood, you’re damn strait you do.

Unfortunately, this isn’t a joke and these pedophiles educators are not cartoons.

A new campaign by the Girl Scouts, with the help of Planned Parenthood, is offering girls ages 10 to 14 the inside details on how to be “hot.”

…

“Many people think sex is just about vaginal or anal intercourse… But, there are lots of different ways to have sex and lots of different types of sex. There is no right or wrong way to have sex. Just have fun, explore and be yourself!”

…

“Some people have sex when they have been drinking alcohol or using drugs. This is your choice… Plan ahead by bringing condoms and lube or putting them close to where you usually have sex.”

It becomes even more disgusting when you consider that this “no adults welcome” event was held by the United Nations, the Girl Scouts (International), and Planned Parenthood. It’s one thing for kids to understand sex, it’s another to encourage risky, life-destroying behavior – which unplanned children and STDs can certainly be for a young girl.

Source: thepursuitofliberty.wordpress.com/2010/03/17/girl-scouts-taught-how-to-be-hot/

Obama Con – Lord of The Lies – Progressive Radical Socialist – Videos

raymondpronk.wordpress.com

“When watching men of power in action it must be always kept in mind that, whether they know it or not, their main purpose is the elimination or neutralization of the independent individual – the independent voter, consumer, worker, owner, thinker – and that every device they employ aims at turning men into a manipulable “animated instrument” which is Aristotle’s definition of a slave.” ~Eric Hoffer

Obama the Lying Tyrant

President Obama s Pledge Never to Raise Taxes on Anyone Making Less Than 250 000 a Year

Barack Obama’s version of “read my lips NO NEW TAXES”

Obama Pledges to Not Raise Middle Class Taxes

Obama’s Health Care Lies And Reversals

Coulter Schools O’Reilly — OBAMA Lies About ObamaCare In U.S. Congress

More Video Clips Here…

Polar Bear Increase Disproves ‘Man-Made’ Global Warming Theory

Don O’Surber
The Daily Mail
March 17, 2010

Gerald Warner of the London Telegraph is most famous for labeling The Won “President pantywaist.” Today Gerald Warner took on the global warming hysterics…

From Gerald Warner: “Firstly, a new study, funded by Nasa (which may be feeling the need to rehabilitate itself post-Climategate) has revealed that the ridiculous claim in the notorious IPCC 2007 report that up to 40 per cent of the Amazon rainforest could be drastically affected by even a small reduction in rainfall caused by climate change, so that the trees would be replaced by tropical grassland, is utter nonsense.

That assertion has already been exposed as derived from a single report by the environmentalist lobby group WWF.” Ah, press releases from liberal lobbyists are considered science by the United Nations. Did anyone at all vet that 2007 report which won the Nobel Peace Prize?

Then there is the claim that the polar bears are dying! The polar bears are dying! The polar bears are dying!

From Gerald Warner: “The bottom line is the actual statistics, conceded even by warmists: since 1970 the world’s polar bear population has ‘declined’ from 5,000 to 25,000. Some of us would term that a quintupling, but obviously we do not share the same mathematical skills as those who predicted the imminent loss of the Himalayan glaciers. The IPCC and the whole scam it promotes is now irreversibly on the slide. If you have no devastated rainforests and those pesky polar bears keep on doing what polar bears do on cold Arctic nights, you have lost the schoolchildren – and they were almost the last supporters of man-made global warming.”

The Himalayans are not melting. The rainforest isn’t burning. The polar bears ain’t dying. But hey, we still need to stop all human activity — before it is… (dramatic pause) …too late.

The Great Global Warming Swindle

Source: http://blogs.dailymail.com/donsurber/archives/10799

False Flags, Lies & Nuclear Bombs

Youtube

Direct link to video at Youtube

Victims’ fury as RTE claims ‘no appetite’ for movie

By Ken Sweeney
www.independent.ie
Thursday March 18 2010

VICTIMS last night expressed anger at RTE’s refusal to screen an award-winning film about the survivors of clerical abuse.

The makers of the drama ‘Beyond The Fire’ were taken aback when the State broadcaster turned down an opportunity to screen the film, which has won widespread acclaim.

Despite a spate of recent clerical abuse controversies, RTE claimed there was “not much appetite” for movies about the subject.

Director Maeve Murphy interviewed a number of victims of clerical abuse — including Colm O’Gorman of the charity One in Four — before penning the script, which depicts a romance between survivors of clerical sexual abuse.

It was awarded ‘Best Feature’ at the London Independent Film Awards.

But when the distributors of the film approached RTE to screen it last month, they were told acquisitions were limited and that there was little appetite for movies about the subject.

Ms Murphy said: “This response from RTE really amazed me. I think people are now facing the truth and about everything that has happened. Films and stories are a way for people to look at this in an accessible way.”

The film-maker added: “Having their stories told can also be very cathartic for victims because their experience is acknowledged, believed and understood.” Read more…

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