A mainstream media source has finally plucked up the courage to publish the widespread concern among MOD, Cabinet Office and FCO officials and military that the Werritty operation was linked to, and perhaps controlled by, Mossad – something which agitated officials have been desperately signaling for some days.
“Officials expressed concern that Fox and Werritty might even have been in freelance discussions with Israeli intelligence agencies” write Patrick Wintour and Richard Norton-Taylor in the Guardian.
As I have been explaining, the real issue here is a British defence secretary who had a parallel advice structure designed expressly to serve the interests of another state and linked to that state’s security services. That is not just a sacking offence, it is treasonable.
UPDATE
It seems to me the questions now starting to be asked about the connection to Israel and possibly to Mossad might well have had a major effect on Fox’s sudden throwing in of the towel. If he did not believe that resigning would stop some further investigation, he might as well have toughed it out over the weekend; nobody has ever accused Fox of being thin-skinned.
The need for answers to my questions to Matthew Gould is in fact now greater, not less.
Crab, what’s “boaked”? “George Logan” and the “Tap” blog look completely mad to me.
So, if Fox-Werrity were discussing attacking Iran, could this have been part of a US/UK/Israeli rightwing scheme for preempting the normal channels and bringing the conflict about without any inconvenient discussion in the Senate/Parliament/Knesset?
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You know, maybe stage the assassination of a Saudi or something?
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Like you do?
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Like someone appears to have done?
Pure fantasy, but intriguing nevertheless!
“Personally, and with apologies to its supporters, I rank PressTV alongside the Israeli/neocon backed MEMRI website in the credibility stakes. Low.”
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it may be low but it is higher than the bbc, sky, cnn and our government ..
Boaked = puked, roughly.
He may be fae Embra….
“Broadcasting “confessions” extracted under torture goes beyond propaganda and bias, and there is obviously a good argument that such a TV station should be blocked. Conversely, had PressTV been blocked at that time, this insight into Iranian abuse would not have occurred.”
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actually presstv is being blocked because of administration errors not because of the interview which is no more than we get from sky or bbc in their propaganda efforts.
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i fox news any better or cnn .. i would suggest not .. but if one ties in the current efforts to clain an iran plot to kill a saudi diplomat .. and the apparent green light to attack iran via israel .. the banning or blocking of presstv would make sense . we cant have the enemy reporting what we are doing to them can we.
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as for bbcpersian .. i think we’re all grown up to know that the bbc is our state broadcaster .. and that the world service is very much a part of the govt propaganda machinery.
One government-controlled propaganda outlet is very much like another in its intentions. The BBC is more believable here, by a Brit. God knows if it gets any credence at all on the Iranian street. And vice versa. For anything approximating to the complete facts, no single outlet is adequate.
This is one of Press TV’s numerous complaints against OFCOM. It’s almost unreadable but it begins with a quote from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion!!!
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/181711.html
Wendy, you wrote “…not because of the interview which is no more than we get from sky or bbc…”. If you will cite an example of Sky or the BBC broadcasting a “confession” secured through abuse or torture, I’ll take this seriously.
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I regard the BBC as highly biased, but not “state run”. For instance, the BBC showed the interviews with locals in Abbottabad market who nearly all denied that the man pictured was Osama bin Laden, and even Frank Gardner expressed his doubts. Our rulers know better than to run the media outright, as doing so decreases the credibility of the media.
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As for blocking PressTV in preparation for an attack upon Iran, this had occurred to me. I don’t think there will be an invasive attack, Iran is too strong for that, though Israel might attack the nuclear facilities. We shall see.
“The BBC is more believable here, by a Brit.”
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is it? i suggest that increasingly it is not. the truth is that people are putting their faith in presstv / russiatoday for their news . it is partly for that reason presstv has to be shut down.
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the bbc abroad is laughed at these days .. very little of its reporting is taken seriously by the majority ..
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i get the impression that youve never really watched presstv or russiatoday ..
“If you will cite an example of Sky or the BBC broadcasting a “confession” secured through abuse or torture, I’ll take this seriously.”
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there was plenty of it with regard to iraq, even more with regard to KSM .. there is very little scrutiny of anything that is given to them via whitehall .. i dont really watch bbc news these days and what i do watch / hear is seemingly flawed, inaccurate and parrots neo con ambitions. there are just too many neo con propagandists and very little of the other…and very little investigation.
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as for obl reporting frank gardner is pretty much “establishment”.
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the bbc is state run, it is a bit naive to believe that it isnt influenced by govt. and it is overstaffed for reason .. except murdoch was to take over that role ..
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“I don’t think there will be an invasive attack, Iran is too strong for that, though Israel might attack the nuclear facilities. We shall see.”
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well reports of more bunker busting bombs and US troop build up .. it maybe on the cards .. but the alleged plot just isnt doing it for them .. they must have a plan b.
Wendy, the authorities made statements regarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed “confessions” extracted under torture, and multiple news organisations reported them. That is not the same as making someone record a “confession” to be transmitted on TV. Can you really imagine a BBC or Sky camera crew agreeing to that? They’d be more likely to report on the torture.
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As for the Used Car Salesman “plot”, surely they never expected that to be taken seriously enough to start a war? Where are you getting the reports of troop movements and armament build-up? Can you post links?
We witnessed today the protests London-our young foot-soldiers on PressTV -bravo
Mark Golding, I read that PressTV report. There are also BBC and Guardian reports of protesters in London, Tokyo, Frankfurt, Taipei, Madrid, Australia, Rome, Athens, etc. “Organisers claim 950 protests held in over 80 countries”. I wish I could have joined the London protest.
Of course, the BBC is displaying a burning car in Rome on the front page of the BBC News website with the headline “Berlusconi vows to punish rioters”. There are links about the multiple international protests, but they’re not prominent.
Clark: Of course, the BBC is displaying a burning car in Rome on the front page of the BBC News website with the headline “Berlusconi vows to punish rioters”. There are links about the multiple international protests, but they’re not prominent.
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The international breadth of the protests is impressive but the numbers of most of the protests seem to be fairly small. If the BBC are correct then there were only around 500 protesters in London. According to my copy of the Yomiuri, there were 80 people at the Tokyo protest. But this may grow, of course.
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While I think it is very useful of Press TV and others to put a spotlight on Bahrain, it is quite noticable that Press TV is almost silent on protests in Iran, that they are apparently very bothered by kettling but not by beatings, rape and torture by the Basiji of its own protesters, as well as death sentences handed out to prominent protesters and they seem to be very quiet about the uprisings in Syria except to occasionally blame “Zionists”.
Gordan Logan:- Your posts on this blog are absolutely stunning. I was in the RAF in Cyprus in the 1970’s when the body bags of SAS soldiers from the conflict in Aden were coming through on a regular basis. Once Ghadafi made peace with Tony Blair he sent the SAS to Libya to train them in how to defeat Al-Queda hence their ability to remain fighting and winning the war.
I never thought that the RAF would bombard a neutral nation. The TNC are now on the run and without NATO would not last a week. Thousands of TNC rebels have been killed and I do not see where their replacements are coming from.
I’m kinda surprised by all the love that PressTV and RT are receiving around here. Of course the BBC is biased, but of course that is equally true for PressTV and RT. The BBC is good at hiding British flaws and highlighting the flaws of British enemies, while RT is good at hiding Russian flaws and exposing the flaws of Russia’s enemies. I can’t but help be reminded of the well meaning lefties who used to argue that China was a communist paradise under Mao. Except that back then the world was a much larger place, information moved a lot slower and perhaps the average population weren’t quite so cynical. Seriously, we should all understand that all the ‘big boys’ around the globe are fucking swine. Swine that like to fight each other, there are no goodies. Read Orwell’s ‘Homage to Catalonia’ if you have any doubts.
The state broadcaster, as I call the BBC, has just broadcast a profile, i.e. a puff piece, on Jeremy Heywood. Just putting us in the picture sort of stuff. Jolly good chap. Toodle pip. Onwards and upwards.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b015ygj5/Profile_Jeremy_Heywood/
Angrysoba, for the Occupy protests, check the Guardian. They report that numbers in London peaked at about 3000, and they have some photo’s of impressive crowds elsewhere; not bad for the start of a long-stay protest.
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The country I haven’t seen mentioned is Israel, where Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv has been occupied for weeks. Their slogan is a good one: “We Demand Social Justice!”
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CheebaCow: “Seriously, we should all understand that all the ‘big boys’ around the globe are fucking swine. Swine that like to fight each other, there are no goodies”. Exactly.
I remember when the press were like hungry jackals whenever there was a piece of scandal to be fought over.The Press should be outraged on our behalf and crying out for blood.But no… tame response to the treason I say.Our press is biased by what it often fails to report,as in the depair and destruction of civilians in Libya.They’re all waiting for Cameron to trumpet in Tripoli, “mission accomplished”.Meanwhile the situation for the civilians becomes worse.
Our glorious RAF , that fought the glorious Battle of Britain, have become nothing better than inglorious bastards.Tools of the Tyrant Rasmussen.
We pay taxes for our armed forces to defend Britain,not bomb defenceless countries and their civilians.
Angrysoba, for the Occupy protests, check the Guardian. They report that numbers in London peaked at about 3000, and they have some photo’s of impressive crowds elsewhere; not bad for the start of a long-stay protest.
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Sorry. You are right. In fact, the BBC reported that 500 people were staying into the night whereas there had been 2000-3000 people before.
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And yes, in Spain and many other places there were pretty large crowds. I suppose that with Spain the indignados have been out for some time. Its unemployment rate, especially among the young is huge. And yes, as you say the protests in Israel have been going on for months now. Apparently Italy is set to have a hundred thousand protesters out on the streets soon.
Clark,
You are wrong about Maziar Bahari who I believe was employed to obtain incriminating evidence of brutality on ‘demonstrators’ by the Iranian state during attempts by the West to incite rioting in Iran during the election period.
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The attempts failed and those same foreign agents went on to brutally murder an Iranian scientist in cold blood whiledriving to work and attempted to murder another university lecturer and scientist using a magnetic explosive device that could easily be attached to a moving vehicle.
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Iran has many failings including its treatment of gays; according to Iranians who escaped the brutal Shah – a Western puppet – and obtained political asylum in the UK, Iran is addressing human rights in every corner (iranianuk.com [Farsi translate]) is a nuclear non-proliferator and signatory.
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On October 20, after 118 days[21] in jail, Bahari was released on $300,000 bail, charged with 11 counts of espionage. He was allowed to leave the country and return to London days before the birth of his daughter in much the same way as British sailors were given new suits, cigarettes, treated humanely and allowed to leave with respect having been captured in Iranian waters during a time of a constant threat of aerial strikes, border invasion and tactical nuclear bombardment of Iran’s energy infrastructure and below ground medical/fuel uranium enrichment.
Angrysoba, some banking interests seem to be taking the Occupy protests seriously enough to attempt to discredit them in the media and seed them with agents provocateurs; various links from here:
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http://thinkprogress.org/special/2011/10/10/339862/paul-singer-vulture-capitalist-journalists/
Thanks for the link – Clark – I’ll repost if I may.
Mark Golding, I fully agree with you that Iran is overly demonised in the Western mainstream media; brutal regimes that cooperate with Western elite interests do not get criticised nearly so much. Of course the situation in Iran was severely set back by the Western-backed re-installation of the Shah, which set the scene for the Iranian revolution.
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I hope that you are right that the human rights situation in Iran is improving. In Iran’s favour, the move to the current political structure seems an improvement over the situations both under the Shah and following the revolution. On the other hand I can fully see why Iran’s leadership would be highly suspicious, and this would engender repression and human rights abuses; psychologically, aggression is a response to threat.
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So I wouldn’t be surprised if there really had been brutality against demonstrators. I would also be unsurprised if Western covert forces really had infiltrated and/or incited those protesters.
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Regarding Maziar Bahari, as I said, from the Wikipedia article about him he seems genuine. I doubt that any covert influence would be needed to induce him to report upon brutality against protesters. Such reporting would be entirely legitimate and does not amount to spying. Even if it did, using brutality to extract a false confession for TV would be entirely wrong.
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In our attempt to expose the wrongs performed by those in power, we walk a very difficult line. Consider: Iranians have a moral right to protest against their government. When pro-Western forces use such protests in an attempt to interfere with Iran’s internal politics, they provoke the Iranian power structure to use repression. When a reporter reports that repression, he gets labeled as a spy. Those of us observing are left with a mass of conflicting claims and counter-claims, each containing both truth and propaganda.
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Power corrupts communication, and corruption of communication is used as a tool by the powerful on all sides. We need to keep clear heads and avoid jumping to conclusions.
Mark, you are welcome to re-post, of course. I re-posted myself, from Richard Stallman’s polnotes page, which you may find useful:
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http://www.stallman.org/
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http://www.stallman.org/archives/polnotes.html
Here’s Maziar Bahari’s own story which he wrote in Newsweek:
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http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2009/11/21/118-days-12-hours-54-minutes.html
I wrote: “We need to keep clear heads…” This is what is so difficult, when all around there is war, injustice, atrocity and torture. It’s just too damn easy to react emotionally, take sides and start contributing to the general mayhem with our opinions.
Angrysoba, thanks.
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Why is your name always linked to YouTube music videos these days?
‘We need to keep clear heads and avoid jumping to conclusions.’ I agree Clark well said. As you know my great-grandfather and his sister Gertrude were both telegraphists who later became reporters in London. Granddad told me stories of how the International news from ‘the wire’ was coveted and reposted with either a different slant or heavily biased in favour of British rule. So much for corrupt communications – we invented it!.
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John Benjamin Waterman was eventually heavily censored for revealing raw data from the wire.