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.
Villager; Well it was different in the UK in 2002-2003? I’m not talking about the people, I’m saying the case was flubbed….why? Incompetence, or?
NR 31 Aug, 2013 – 4:59 pm
NR, I largely agree with your comment which makes my position somewhat uncomfortable. For simplicity I will talk in terms of bbc vs jones.
My contradiction is that I am happy to quote the bbc when I believe it but I do not apply this standard to jones. My immediate reaction is this.
Craig linked to a infowars story with an incorrect assertion at it’s core that was going unchallenged presumably because the sentiment is acceptable to us. This is a rocky road to ruin. Fighting lies with lies makes as much sense as bombing for peace.
Craig links to the bbc with the huge caveat that we are all howling “propaganda”! We just need to make sure that a link to jones is equally qualified with scepticism.
What about an angry youth, no job, no prospects, starting to smell an establishment rat? He might click through from craigs comment. Hey if a former-ambassador, high-profile blogger rates infowars there must be something to it. Craig lends his credibility to infowars with that link and so the youth might start absorbing the enticing shit-up that is alex joneses paranoia.
Although I do not recant everything I have said today, far from it, I acknowledge the contradiction highlighted by nr. I clealry have a bee in my bonnet which is a sure sign it’s time to stop repeating myself and to pause for some thinking.
Ben, well, for one, Obama said wise words once, “You never step into the same river twice”. Also, I think Blair is/was plain evil.
So Obama asks Congress to make a decision.
That was unexpected.
Phil,
I am convinced the story is true about Kerry’s misrepresentation. As someone above surmised, I linked to the first source I could find to link to on this true story. I did not particularly take in that it is Alex Jones’ site.
I know you are not a troll; but you are doing something trolls do, which is conflate links to true stories with links to false stories on the same site, as endorsement,
CNN now reporting there will be no early recall of House of Representatives. So decision delayed until 9th September at earliest. Senate may come back early though.
“The BBC? Watch it from a Scots independence viewpoint. We are forced by penalty of jail to pay for daily British State propoganda.”
Bullshit, they don’t get a penny out of me.
“The upside is that Scots see the daily misinformation from the BBC for what it is, so now don’t believe their international news.”
Speaking for the entire population of Scotland now are you? Don’t remember seeing it on the news they’d elected you as their spokesman.
Would be extremely grateful Craig if you were able to outline or refer me to the agreement between the UK and the Cypriot Republic under which the GCHQ has installed and operated the Troodos Surveillance facilities.
Many thanks!
Unfortunately it is not on the youtube, but for the record it was during the build up to the Iraq war, and on a Sunday afternoon program on ITV. The Studio was packed with all manner of dignitaries and there she was the prime witness occupying the front row and; nodding off! (never heard her snore, but in all probability she would have snored judging by her bulk)
The fact that bLiar took the money and went to war has never been much explored either. Although on a poor prime ministers salary with umpteen kids he managed to buy John Gielgud mansion, and none ever asked him how come did he save up that much money?
The lying sacks of shit, have only the interests of their own pockets and those of their sponsors at heart, the rest is just padding and keeping up the façade of doing some thing for the people.
Also did you ever see Jessica Lynch landing in US? As it was broadcast on Fox? That was a howler, I was on the floor pissing myself laughing. The body guards equal numbers of men and women, both genders dressed up in black suits, blue shirts, and of course the customary shades about eight to ten of them facing out and shuffling along with the stretcher to the waiting school bus! Pure Hollywood!
Although I was saddened when I recollected the poor Iraqi Dr. who was trying frenetically to get in touch with the US forces to hand over Jessica Lynch because in his hospital he did not have the medicine or the equipment to look after her, and recanting the story to a camera that he had been rebuffed. Needless to point out that later the same hospital was blown to fuck in the way of rescuing Jessica and it was filmed and broadcast around the globe. Those poor fucking Iraqis were losing another asset for the sake of entertainment of the hamburger munchers back in the land of the fat and the fucking stupid.
A detailed riposte to the US’s allegations – this is the Syrian Arab Republic’s official news agency website. Many of these detailed points are seldom, if ever, discussed on most of our news channels.
http://sana.sy/eng/21/2013/08/30/500030.htm
fedup: The drive for war is so sudden and almost frenetic, that beggars the question; why? Whose time table is running this operation?”
That’s been the puzzle from the beginning. The famed military industrial complex doesn’t care if orders for replacement munitions roll in Tuesday or three months from now or next year.
With President Obama agreeing to consult Congress, the old media is beside itself. An ordinarily left-center radio feed (NPR) quickly interviewed a former Reagan official — didn’t catch name — who worries Obama may suffer the same fate as Cameron and the prestige and credibility of the US is on the line.
The dangers of democracy. 🙂
An advantage for Congress is this gives them an opportunity for the usual bribery in the form of “ear-marked” gifts for their district, perhaps billions for the last two or three holdout votes.
AlcAnon
31 Aug, 2013 – 7:32 pm
“CNN now reporting there will be no early recall of House of Representatives. So decision delayed until 9th September at earliest. Senate may come back early though.”
AA/Ben so what do you see as the implications, broadly?
Villager; I think the US is caught between Darfur and Iraq. They don’t want to seem insensitive to the Syrian people, but they know it’s a bouncing betty ready to blow their balls off. It is also so we can say ‘We did our best’ to Israel.
Interesting that Channel 4 give two hours of their Saturday night schedule to a showing of a film of the people’s terror on the streets of Manhattan almost 12 years ago.
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/102-minutes-that-changed-america
Similar being planned for the streets of Damascus.
We’re all in it together, broadly speaking that is.
David Cameron @David_Cameron 2h
I understand and support Barack Obama’s position on #Syria.
https://twitter.com/David_Cameron
” I did not particularly take in that it is Alex Jones’ site.” Uh, er, well…ok then.
An excellent e-mail to Jon Snow Ch 4 News on his latest Snowmail. A hypocrite and a warmonger. To think he used to be considered the champion of the left.
Snowmail: Putin and his “big dollop of custard”….short email to 6 Pilgers http://members5.boardhost.com/medialens/msg/1377973696.html
Snow is known as ‘6 Pilgers’ since Michael White of the Guardian said this of him in January 2012.
‘If Channel 4’s Jon Snow can’t be recognised for the national treasure he is – an unabashed leftie who has beaten the system (but also has to compromise, as we all do) – what hope is there? I’d say he does more good for progressive attitudes than half a dozen Pilgers, wouldn’t you?’ 🙂
In amongst the news reporting of various world incidents is a fundamental principle which does not always support or disagree with views expressed by individuals or groups or Governments. It is the business principle of selling information. What appears in portals, news sites or other information bombarding people is of lesser quality than human ability to filter sensibly what they receive or to simply decide own thought and prespective. You might not believe at first hand a second-hand car salesman. So scepticism is healthy but can also be bad for your health. Especially if the deal proved good but you turned it down.
I do not believe that Governments per se are intentionally malevolent. In that way I disagree with many views here that take their starting point as assuming that to be the case.
Craig 31 Aug, 2013 – 7:20 pm
“I know you are not a troll; but you are doing something trolls do, which is conflate links to true stories with links to false stories on the same site, as endorsement”
Troll is a derogative word that I have tried to stop using myself thanks to points you have made about ascribing motivation. Trolls do many things apart from conflate links as endorsement and non-trolls might question the assertion that a link is not an endorsement. So for you to accuse me of trolling behaviour, twice, is pointed. Would you call a dog that sips milk a cat?
Secondly, it is not so simple as dismissing out of hand the possibility that a link is an endorsement. Ask google who know a thing or two about the internet. Their business was built on the very fact that a link is exactly that. An endorsement. Not only might your link appear as an endorsement to a real person finding their framework of reference in the internet quagmire, your link to some degree contributes to boosting the alex jones web site in the search engines (and for the technically minded the nofollow tag does not rule this out).
Finally, you do not address that the article you link to contains an untrue assertion. Sure, you might argue that kerry was cleverly invoking the bbc photo, that’s a fine point, but jones says something different. Jones says kerry mentioned the bbc photo explicitly. Which is misleading and reduces the subtlety of elites propaganda to a falsehood.
Since I haven’t seen Jemand around here for awhile – what made me leave when he joked about deleting my posts – I think that something should be said about John Kerry.
He has always been willing to say whatever America’s covert government wants.
Just look at the Senate subcommittee investigating Iran-Contra he headed where it never looked into the arms dealing by Syrian dealer Manzer al-Kassar – who went on to bring down the Pan-Am Flight over Lockerbie when he was threatened with being a fall guy for the fiasco – failing to expose CIA assets in the scandal because of an arrangement he had agreed to with deep government’s Senator David Boren, never exploring the arrangements that Ollie North had made with former SAS Major David Walker’s firms to sock it to the Sandinistas and the Swedes, especially Statsminister Olof Palme, so the struggle with the Soviets would get back on the East-West track, avoided making any mention of Bill Clinton’s and Mena International Airport’s role in the exchange of drugs and money in exchange for arms, particularly from Al-Kassar, etc., ad nauseam.
Kerry has a most undeserved reputation of being candid and honest.
In this case, the four-hour lapse between the gas-ladened rockets hitting, and the first reports of victims is what bothers me most. A very long time in which almost anything could have happened, like US Air Force planes spraying the area with phosgene.
@Villager
““CNN now reporting there will be no early recall of House of Representatives. So decision delayed until 9th September at earliest. Senate may come back early though.”
AA/Ben so what do you see as the implications, broadly?”
____________________________
The implications are that nothing military is going to happen and there won’t be a war. Not now and not tomorrow. Not at all, in fact.
You may remember that I was saying this several days ago when Eminences and other commenters were going into a frenzy of speculation, denunciation, apocalyptic ‘statements’ (World War 3 !!)and conspiracy theories based on nothing but their own anti-western obsessions.
Lot of egg to be wiped off a lot of faces, I think. When will they ever learn?
@Phil It was a woman called Julie Wilson who wrote the article not Jones. The reference to the picture by Kerry does match the 2003 picture wrongly used by the BBC prior to his speech and later taken down by the BBC . The Telegraph covers it here too:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/9293620/BBC-News-uses-Iraq-photo-to-illustrate-Syrian-massacre.html
The old video you mention sounds like a video of the Bohemian Grove retreat for crazy western dictators who, it would be safe to assume, do far more sinister things than dress in funny costumes alone. I agree that healthy scepticism applies equally to any source of information but you haven’t been able to come up with anything solid to back up your specific allegations which then just look like lazy ‘conspiritorial paranoia’ labelling. If you checked all the stories on his or any other site and found that more than 50% are not solid, well sourced reports and are full of spin and misinformation then I would take your point but I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t be the case. I’m guessing this would be the kind of percentage when it comes to the BBC however..
I don’t think its about trust per se. To suggest that people can’t use their discernment to verify stories given out by the Alex Jones Show or anyone else by verifying through as many other sources as possible and making up their own mind is slightly ungenerous to people if i may suggest (I use the term zombies in figurative terms to describe a general mind set brought about by technology and information overload)
This could go round in circles I know – probably better to use energies on other things
” So scepticism is healthy but can also be bad for your health. Especially if the deal proved good but you turned it down.”
Not to dally around the edge of your point, but i find paranoia to be highly underestimated, and so I exercise it frequently.
I may regret a few transactions I passed on because of skepticism, but the losses would be far greater with one less cynical, even naive. Most people choose information and products based on their impression that everyone, whether in advertising or information sales in general, that they are being gipped; it’s a question of degree. When I see an ad for a juicy bacon burger that stands 6-8” tall, I know I’m not going to get the picture burger, so I am ready to accept less. The false advertising becomes so systemic that you quit objecting and adjust to reality.
Mr Mason
“I do not believe that Governments per se are intentionally malevolent. In that way I disagree with many views here that take their starting point as assuming that to be the case.”
It’s not so much a starting point. It’s much more a theory about the use of force.
Hasn’t been wrong yet, and the facts that fit it are piling up in this case too.
I think if you took yourself on a tour around all those for whom Intl Relations is their bread and butter, you’d find them using a similar theory, otherwise they’d all quickly run out of bread and butter, and that reall would be a humanitarian crisis.
Habby
You’re very keen to defend the BBC. Do you work for them or have some compact or contract with them?
If so, I think it’s only fair to declare an interest and absent yourself from any further discussion of them.
Howdy Trowbridge; You nailed Kerry the poseur.
“I do not believe that Governments per se are intentionally malevolent. In that way I disagree with many views here that take their starting point as assuming that to be the case.”
____________
Very well said.
Since coming onto this blog I’ve been continually surprised by the way in which most of the Eminences appear to believe that governments are actively (even sadistically) engaged in plotting to grind their peoples down into poverty, slavery and even death. And that all govt foreign policy is evil, rascist, only concerned about energy resources, et cetera. Naturally, all the foregoing applies only to western govts (Russia, China, and most of the rest of the world are good guys).
I hope you’re not expecting your excellent comments to start off a reasoned discussion, are you?
did he actually specificaly reference that pic? I qoute his speech http://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2013/08/213668.htm
And we know it was ordinary Syrian citizens who reported all of these horrors. And just as important, we know what the doctors and the nurses who treated them didn’t report – not a scratch, not a shrapnel wound, not a cut, not a gunshot wound. We saw rows of dead lined up in burial shrouds, the white linen unstained by a single drop of blood.
doesn’t seem so, unless they changed the speech
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGtWytda1Rk nope, at 6 mins
how can we trust your judgement craig
Chris Jones 31 Aug, 2013 – 9:36 pm
“This could go round in circles I know”
I don’t see a circle. I believe the point I am making is important.
“probably better to use energies on other thing”
Agreed. I’m going for a pint. I’ll pop back after chucking out in an alcohol fuelled rage.
they suggested he referenced that pic (which has been misused before) and then debunked themselves.
@ Herbie
“You’re very keen to defend the BBC. Do you work for them or have some compact or contract with them?
If so, I think it’s only fair to declare an interest and absent yourself from any further discussion of them.”
_____________________
Closer reading and more thought required, Herbie.
I’m very keen to point out that just as nobody on here appears to think that the BBC is anything other than a pro)-Israel and anti-Palestinian propaganda machine run by Zionists, so there are websites consisting entirely of articles and comments accusing the BBC of systematically treating Israel unfairly and in a biased manner, the BBC being run by left-wing pro-Palestinians.
So, having clarified that, Herbie (have you understood?) I think it’s only fair that I should not absent myself from further discussion of the BBC when necessary.