The GCHQ listening post on Mount Troodos in Cyprus is arguably the most valued asset which the UK contributes to UK/US intelligence cooperation. The communications intercept agencies, GCHQ in the UK and NSA in the US, share all their intelligence reports (as do the CIA and MI6). Troodos is valued enormously by the NSA. It monitors all radio, satellite and microwave traffic across the Middle East, ranging from Egypt and Eastern Libya right through to the Caucasus. Even almost all landline telephone communication in this region is routed through microwave links at some stage, picked up on Troodos.
Troodos is highly effective – the jewel in the crown of British intelligence. Its capacity and efficiency, as well as its reach, is staggering. The US do not have their own comparable facility for the Middle East. I should state that I have actually been inside all of this facility and been fully briefed on its operations and capabilities, while I was head of the FCO Cyprus Section in the early 1990s. This is fact, not speculation.
It is therefore very strange, to say the least, that John Kerry claims to have access to communications intercepts of Syrian military and officials organising chemical weapons attacks, which intercepts were not available to the British Joint Intelligence Committee.
On one level the explanation is simple. The intercept evidence was provided to the USA by Mossad, according to my own well placed source in the Washington intelligence community. Intelligence provided by a third party is not automatically shared with the UK, and indeed Israel specifies it should not be.
But the inescapable question is this. Mossad have nothing comparable to the Troodos operation. The reported content of the conversations fits exactly with key tasking for Troodos, and would have tripped all the triggers. How can Troodos have missed this if Mossad got it? The only remote possibility is that all the conversations went on a purely landline route, on which Mossad have a physical wire tap, but that is very unlikely in a number of ways – not least nowadays the purely landline route.
Israel has repeatedly been involved in the Syrian civil war, carrying out a number of illegal bombings and missile strikes over many months. This absolutely illegal activity by Israel- which has killed a great many civilians, including children – has brought no condemnation at all from the West. Israel has now provided “intelligence” to the United States designed to allow the United States to join in with Israel’s bombing and missile campaign.
The answer to the Troodos Conundrum is simple. Troodos did not pick up the intercepts because they do not exist. Mossad fabricated them. John Kerry’s “evidence” is the shabbiest of tricks. More children may now be blown to pieces by massive American missile blasts. It is nothing to do with humanitarian intervention. It is, yet again, the USA acting at the behest of Israel.
How Mossad got US to bomb Libya (1986) and Iraq.
http://mailstar.net/ostrovsky.html
” Why in the world would Israel want to spur Obama to bomb Syria?”
Let me see if I can explain simply in the hope you will see; Only Nixon could have gone to China.
I posted a comment here and it was taken down with no explanation.
I will not comment on any blog which suppresses individual expression if done reasonably and appropriately. Your policy of extraction is suppressive and I will wish your contributors good well but I shall not be commenting again.
Achieve better standards in future.
James Mason; could be software. It happens. Jon is usually pretty good about letting everyone know what he’s doing.
James, are you sure about that? Maybe there’s some error/misunderstanding? Jon would normally leave a Mod’s note or explanation if that happened. Lets all understand this together.
I appreciated the dialogue we had the other day.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium_fluoride
Was this stuff the source? Stored along with sodium fluoride (for good tooth enamel !)
Sold to Syria 10 months after rebellion began.
“Export licences for potassium fluoride and sodium fluoride were granted months after the bloody civil war in the Middle East began.”
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/britain-sold-nerve-gas-chemicals-2242520
Ben, Not had time today to digest the latest – we have a new family puppy in the house! Normal life goes on, I guess, even in the face of those who would destroy it and who twist the truth.
Gogu – your arguments fall to pieces when you remember that Israel itself has already bombed Syria.
I too had some posts deleted last night.
“A strange story emanating from Trrodos.”
Craig blogs about why British Intelligence could not verify the US claims using communication interceptions from the GCHQ listening post on Mount Troodos in Cyprus, lo & behold the very next day the Express prints an article claiming exactly that !
(I had trouble opening & read that Express link, kept hanging my browsr with please allow cookies messages; anybody else had trouble ?)
@James Mason, could be a simple technical explanation for your lost Post, either way it should be borne in mind that although we should be all thankful for the voluntary moderating that Jon undertakes here, however the moderating has been shambolically incompetent for rather a long time here, so you should not be surprised by anything, & therefore with this in mind, you can chose to not to post or to post knowing that the dice is loaded, because Jon just like all of us, is fallible, and subject to idiosyncrasies, personal bias & prejudices.
O/T so I’ll post in this old thread
http://www.spaceweather.com/
Shutdown had been announced for end September due to budget cuts. Just went offline one month early with no warning.
John Kerry’s repeated claims that sarin was used in the August 21st attack, making him sound as if he were really the President, solves nothing, as almost no one has contended that it was not a poison gas attack.
Of course, the real point is: whose sarin gas was it, and Washington does its case no good by claiming – reminiscent to what happened just before Saddam’s Iraq was bombed to oblivion – that it has messages from Assad’s people, ordering the Syrian attacks.
Mulsims, even Arab ones, are not totally ignorant about what has been going on in its most dangerous part of the world.
Washington would help its cause if it convincingly denied that it too has sarin, and planes to spray it with – what got John Wheeler murdered when he tried to tell Ali-Resa Pahlavi that Washington was planning to kill Iranian nuclear test site personnel with a similar phosgene attack.
Worthy of a Hitchcock movie, Trowbridge
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_Bluff_Arsenal
AA; So asteroids get the day off?
Happy paper-training, mike.
Thanks.
You get up the money and cast while I write the script.
Ben,
Or possibly just they don’t want the public to hear the echoes from the ICBMs going up!
I’m sure the US has other more sophisticated tracking capabilities but the one they have shut down anyone could setup receivers for.
Spaceweather.com have switched their meteor radio system to look for echoes from tv signals instead of the US space radar system.http://spaceweatherradio.com/index.php
Just watched this Youtube vid about the pipeline wars.
Put’s much of what has happened since 2000 into perspective.
It also explains why the US keeps up their bombing campaign in Pakistan and specifically Balochistan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNQM7I0rVfM
“Or possibly just they don’t want the public to hear the echoes from the ICBMs going up!”
As in the movie Armageddon, or the biblical location?
“You get up the money and cast while I write the script.”
Spike Lee has been funding through Kick-Starter; a sort of crowd-sourcing for movie-making.
One cardinal mistake. Telecommunication technology changed greatly since early 1990s, and microwave links have been replaced by E4 tier optic fibre cables. While USA has had no comparable microwave interception station, it has direct access to these underwater international cables off its bases in the Middle East.
Additionally, government telecommunication usually uses dedicated lines, often encrypted using own/non-standard technology (unsure whether Syria has implemented own technology – if it as the interception claims would be bogus). Only if the call was conducted using a mobile phone or a newer telephone line would intercept be possible.
Craig’s piece on “The Troodos Conundrum” is now linked to by other pages and news sites, some Russian.
It behooves all here to don their Sunday best, or at least clean underpants. Hide the deck of playing cards if you’re playing spades instead of paying attention. 🙂
The RAF is now saying Troodos intercepted the actual firing order for chem gas, threatening the battery commander with a firing squad when he objected.
The previous report that Israel intercepted, and passed to US, planning info on the alleged strike days in advance has outraged Syrian rebels who say they received no warning.
Have Israel and the US committed by omission a horrible, morally outrageous crime against humanity by failing to warn of an impending gas attack?
On what Troodos might intercept of microwave communication, while microwaves are line-of-sight, the transmitting beam is not as tightly focused as light, and half-way to the receiver and beyond is very wide, with fringes bouncing off trees, buildings, fog and rain, scattering so sensitive receivers could pick up the signal.
With all the talk of computer security and encryption, remember that unless we’re using specially shielded MilSpec computers, monitor and keyboards, they are emitting RF radiation available for intercept to anybody in the neighbourhood, prior to encryption and after decryption. Same for any consumer electronics, TVs, cameras, etc.
Pat Lang chimes in on the evidence.
http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2013/08/us-government-view-of-what-happened.html
Anyone seen this? I have no idea whether or not it’s true. Posting it because it’s relevant and potentially explosive (sorry, pun not intended, too serious for that):
http://www.hangthebankers.com/us-and-nato-backed-rebels-admit-responsibility-for-chemical-attack-in-syria/
Here is the original article:
http://www.mintpressnews.com/witnesses-of-gas-attack-say-saudis-supplied-rebels-with-chemical-weapons/168135/
It’s from Associated Press.
A rather jumbled thread about Pannell’s piece on the BBC but you see that many saw through the lies and the concoctions.
http://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/thread/1378056467.html
Pannell’s video is contained within this link. It features Hand in Hand’s Dr Rola.
Ian Pannell: The victims “arrived like the walking dead”.
Syria crisis: Incendiary bomb victims ‘like the walking dead’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-23892594
MintPress seems legit Suhayl
“Today, Muhawesh — a St. Cloud State journalism grad and former KARE11 intern — presides over a staff of seven (including six full-timers), with plans to hit 15 soon. (She was finalizing a deal with a New York/Washington correspondent when we talked.) Though the warren of offices contain some empty desks, there’s a pro-looking logo affixed the building’s front, matched above the receptionist’s station, and three flat-screen TVs, tuned to CNN, Fox and Al-Jazeera.”
http://www.minnpost.com/david-brauer-blog/2012/01/who-mintpress-and-why-are-they-doing-all-hiring
The Mint Press (via Associated Press) report ought to be on all the major news networks now – it relates to detailed and serious witness testimony from the Syrian rebels themselves. It needs further investigation and should (but won’t) give pause to those rushing on into war. It also fits in with the narrative about Prince Bandar.