External articles > deceit

Syrian government forces seize massive quantity of weapons from Isis arms depot in Deir ez-Zor

Ananya Roy, International Business Times, 24 October 2017

First paragraph:

The Isis arsenal comprised the latest weapons made in Nato countries, including a UK-made 155 mm howitzer manufactured in 2011.

Full article on ibtimes.co.uk

Latest NATO Arms From US Found in Daesh Depot in Al Mayadin - Syrian General

Sputnik, 24 October 2017

First paragraph:

The largest Daesh storehouse captured by the Syrian armed forces in the city of Al Mayadin, in the east of Syria, contained the latest examples of NATO weapons from the United States, Belgium and the United Kingdom, Brigadier General of the Syrian Arab Army Hasan Suheil told reporters.

Full article on sputniknews.com

As ISIS Flees, Syrian Troops Find Arms Cache From US, NATO

teleSUR, 24 October 2017

First two paragraphs:

The Syrian Armed Forces have discovered a large cache of military arsenal from Western countries, particularly from the United States, left behind by the Islamic State group as its forces fled the city of al-Mayadin in the east of the country, according to Sputnik.

“We have encountered a huge arsenal of advanced U.S., British and Belgian weaponry,” said Hasan Suhel, the Syrian general who led the military operation to liberate al-Mayadin.

Full article on telesurtv.net

US Special Forces Collaborating with ISIS – Russia

Nytten, Eurasian Times, 24 September 2017

First paragraph:

The Ministry of Defense of Russia has published an aerial survey of the areas of deployment of terrorist group Daish (also called ISIS or Islamic State) in Syria, where we can see a large number of American armoured cars such as Hummer, which is in service with US special forces.

Full article on eurasiantimes.com

Distrustful U.S. allies force spy agency to back down in encryption fight

Joseph Menn, Reuters, 21 September 2017

First paragraph

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - An international group of cryptography experts has forced the U.S. National Security Agency to back down over two data encryption techniques it wanted set as global industry standards, reflecting deep mistrust among close U.S. allies.

paragraph 6:

The presence of the NSA officials and former NSA contractor Edward Snowden’s revelations about the agency’s penetration of global electronic systems have made a number of delegates suspicious of the U.S. delegation’s motives, according to interviews with a dozen current and former delegates.

Full article on reuters.com

GETTING JULIAN ASSANGE: THE UNTOLD STORY

John Pilger, johnpilger.com, 20 May 2017

First paragraph:

Julian Assange has been vindicated because the Swedish case against him was corrupt. The prosecutor, Marianne Ny, obstructed justice and should be prosecuted. Her obsession with Assange not only embarrassed her colleagues and the judiciary but exposed the Swedish state's collusion with the United States in its crimes of war and "rendition".

Full article on johnpilger.com

Australian anti-war activist 'among victims of alleged UK police hacking'

Joshua Robertson, Guardian, Monday 3 April 2017

First paragraph:

An Australian anti-war activist was among the victims of alleged illegal email hacking by UK police, according to whistleblower claims being investigated by the British police watchdog.

Full article on www.theguardian.com

How Video Finally Proved That Cops Lie

Albert Samaha, Buzzfeed, 17 January 2017

BuzzFeed News reviewed 62 incidents of video footage contradicting an officer's statement in a police report or testimony. From traffic stops to fatal force, these cases reveal how cops are incentivized to lie — and why they get away with it.

Full article on buzzfeed.com

Uncovering Britain's secret role in protecting Chile's 1973 coup

Grace Livingstone, Guardian, 11 September 2013

Forty years on, declassified documents reveal an outpouring of concern from the British public over Pinochet's coup – and the Foreign Office's attempt to undermine the solidarity campaign

Full article on theguardian.com

Widow begs: Don't bulldoze my home

Chris Havergal, Cambridge Evening News, 25 October 2012

Evictions and house demolitions in Water Lane is the topic of this report from The Cambridge News. The first paragraph is:

A WIDOW who is facing eviction under council plans to bulldoze and rebuild her home fears she won't survive the upheaval.

Full article

Confessions of a drug cartel hitman on the run

Charles Bowden and Molly Molloy, Independent, 10 July 2011

Third paragraph:

“ For six days, in room 164 of an anonymous motel, he told us of his life as a professional assassin for the Juárez drugs organisation, a cartel that controlled one of the main drug trafficking routes from Mexico across the border into the lucrative American market. ”

Full article on independent.co.uk

The sicario A Juárez hit man speaks

Charles Bowden, Harpers, May 2009

Journalist Charles Bowden interviews a former contract killer for the Mexican drug cartels who says he was trained in the USA and that he kidnapped, tortured and murdered while he was a commander in the Mexican police. This man subsequently was the subject of the film El Sicario, Room 164 by Gianfranco Rosi.

“In his many transports of human beings to bondage, torture, and death, he is never interfered with by the authorities. He is part of the government, the state policeman with eight men under his command. But his key employer is the organization, which he assumes is the Juárez cartel, but he never asks since questions can be fatal. They give him a salary, a house, a car. And standing. He estimates that 85 percent of the police worked for the organization.”

Full article on harpers.org

Guardian Editor Rusbridger, Tessa Jowell and Alan Mills in Private Eye

Private Eye, No. 1153, 13 March - 16 March 2006, page 5 Complete article

OPEC ON THE MARCH: Why Iraq Still Sells Its Oil à la Cartel

Greg Palast, Harper's, April 2005

The following paragraph is quoted from the website of Palast, not from Harper's magazine:

Within weeks of the first inaugural, prominent Iraqi expatriates - many with ties to U.S. industry - were invited to secret discussions directed by Pamela Quanrud, an NSC economics expert now employed at State. "It quickly became an oil group," one participant, Falah Aljibury, told me. Aljibury, an adviser to Amerada Hess's oil trading arm and to investment banking giant Goldman Sachs, who once served as a back channel between the United States and Iraq during

...

Full article on www.gregpalast.com

An updated version "By special arrangement with Harper's magazine": OPEC and The Economic Conquest of Iraq, Greg Palast, Monday, 24 October, 2005 (PDF) on gregpalast.com

Secret US plans for Iraq's oil

By Greg Palast Reporting for Newsnight, 17 March 2005

First paragraph:

The Bush administration made plans for war and for Iraq's oil before the 9/11 attacks, sparking a policy battle between neo-cons and Big Oil, BBC's Newsnight has revealed.

Article on news.bbc.co.uk

See also : Secret U.S. Plans For Iraq’s Oil, Thursday 17 March 2005, Greg Palast on www.gregpalast.com

Video, transcript and interview of reporter Greg Palast by Amy Goodman on democracynow.org

The world's first multinational

Nick Robins Monday 13th December 2004 New Statesman

This essay suggests that there are lessons relevant today in the history of the British East India Company. Robins quotes Jawaharlal Nehru in The Discovery of India, 1944 on the "The corruption, venality, nepotism, violence and greed of money of these early generations of British rule in India," and says that in Wealth of Nations, 1776, Adam Smith used the company as a case-study of the undermining of liberty and justice. Robins describes the looting of Bengal's gold and silver in 1757 after Robert Clive won the Battle of Palashi, opium trafficking, Edmund Burke's attempt to impeach Warren Hastings in 1788, and many more things besides. Finally Robins mentions one case where the company did not escape with legal impunity. In 1774 a group of merchants led by Gregore Cojamaul and Johannes Padre Rafael won a civil case against Harry Verelst, former governor-general of Bengal. He was found guilty of "oppression, false imprisonment and singular depredations" for what he had done in Bengal and had to pay 9,000 pounds damages and full costs.

Full article on http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/politics/2014/04/worlds-first-multinational

MI6 chief heads for Cambridge

Guardian, 12 November 2003

Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of MI6 who was embroiled in the controversy over the government's Iraqi weapons dossier, has been appointed head of a Cambridge University college, it was announced last night.

Full article:
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/studentpolitics/story/0,1556,1082907,00.html

Schwarzenegger Accused of Involvement in $9B California Swindle with Enron's Ken Lay

Greg Palast Democracy Now!, 6 October 2003

Investigative reporter Greg Palast reveals how Republican gubernatorial candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger is part of a larger scheme to help Enron and other power companies avoid paying back $9 billion in illicit profits by replacing Gov. Gray Davis. [Includes transcript]

Full article on www.democracynow.org

Arnold's Enron Secret

By Greg Palast, AlterNet October 4, 2003

Now, 34 pages of internal Enron memoranda have just come through this reporter's fax machine that tell all about the tryst between Maria's husband and the corporate con men. It turns out that Schwarzenegger knowingly joined the hush-hush encounter as part of a campaign to sabotage a Davis-Bustamante plan to make Enron and other power pirates then ravaging California pay back the $9 billion in illicit profits they carried off.

Full article on www.alternet.org

Schwarzenegger: Total Amnesia?

NEWS RELEASE, 3 October 2003, The foundation for taxpayer & consumer rights

Santa Monica, CA --Internal Enron e-mails confirm that Arnold Schwarzenegger was among a small group of executives who met with Lay at the posh Peninsula Beverly Hills hotel in May of 2001, in the midst of California's energy crisis. View the e-mails. The Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, which obtained the e-mails, is calling on Schwarzenegger to acknowledge the meetings and disclose the information that was presented and discussed. The meeting with Enron occurred ten days after rolling blackouts darkened California for two consecutive days; Schwarzenegger has previously said that he does not remember such a meeting.

By 2017 this has disappeared from http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/utilities/pr/pr003708.php3

Full article on archive.org

Street of Shame

Private Eye, 8-21 August 2003, page 4

Second paragraph:

But here's the difference: no heads rolled. And, it now transpires, the readers don't even get an apology. On 24 July the following brief announcement was buried in the Standard: "A number of readers have expressed concern that our front page picture on 9 April, showing Iraqis celebrating the liberation of Baghdad, had been enhanced to depict a larger crowd than actually existed. As it was taken from TV footage, extra people were added to the image to fill the space left by the removal of logos from the picture. In our opinion this did not alter the clarity or truth of the picture's message but we are happy to make this clear."

Full article

The Galloway saga has eerie echoes of the Scargill affair of 1990

Roy Greenslade, Guardian May 8, 2003

A former editor of Daily Mirror now admits that he printed false allegations against Arthur Scargill in 1990. While claiming that he himself was misled, he mentions a secret service plot and MI5 and points out similarities to the present campaign against George Galloway. (For more information about the deceitful campaign against Arthur Scargill, including more on the role of Roy Greenslade, see also "The Enemy Within MI5, Maxwell and the Scargill Affair", Seumas Milne, Verso 1994)

Full article:
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,9115,951457,00.html

Tracing the missile

Glen Rangwala CASI discussion list, 31 March 2003

It seems that the US and UK government are still claiming that the 28 March bombing of Shu'ala marketplace, which is being reported as having killed 62 peope, could have been the result of malfunctioning Iraqi air defence equipment.

Full article:
http://www.casi.org.uk/discuss/2003/msg01656.html

US CLAIMS OF VX NERVE AGENT FALL APART

16 March 2003 CONTACT: GLEN RANGWALA, gr10009@cam.ac.uk Lecturer in Politics, Newnham College, Cambridge (UK)

One of the central claims of the US administration about the threat of Iraq's weapons - that of 1.5 tonnes of VX nerve agent that are unaccounted for - has fallen apart over the past week.

Full article:
VX_rangwala_16mar2003.html

Appellate Court Rules Media Can Legally Lie

By Mike Gaddy, 28 February 2003, Sierra Times

On February 14, a Florida Appeals court ruled there is absolutely nothing illegal about lying, concealing or distorting information by a major press organization. The court reversed the $425,000 jury verdict in favor of journalist Jane Akre who charged she was pressured by Fox Television management and lawyers to air what she knew and documented to be false information. The ruling basically declares it is technically not against any law, rule, or regulation to deliberately lie or distort the news on a television broadcast.

Full article archived from www.sierratimes.com on archive.org

Academic humiliates copy-cat government

Reggie Vettasseri, Varsity, 14 February 2003, page 2

This week national governments were blushing and the headlines of the world's media were screaming after a Cambridge fellow revealed that the British Government's latest dossier on Iraq was little more than a poor copy of out of date and uncredited academic articles.

Full article: local_reports/deceitful_dossier_varsity_14feb2003.html

The dishonest case for war on Iraq

by Alan Simpson, MP - Chair of Labour Against the War and Dr Glen Rangwala - Lecturer in politics at Cambridge University, UK.

There is no case for a war on Iraq. It has not threatened to attack the US or Europe. It is not connected to al-Qa'ida. There is no evidence that it has new weapons of mass destruction, or that it possesses the means of delivering them.

Full article from srcf.ucam.org archived on archive.org

A Grad Student Mimicked Saddam Over the Airwaves

Broadcast Ruse

by Ian Urbina, Village Voice, November 13 - 19, 2002

Word got around the department that I was a good Arabic translator who did a great Saddam imitation," recalls the Harvard grad student. "Eventually, someone phoned me asking if I wanted to help change the course of Iraq policy." So twice a week, for $3000 a month, the Iraqi student tells the Voice on condition of anonymity, he took a taxi from his campus apartment to a Boston-area recording studio rented by the Rendon Group, a D.C.-based public relations firm with close ties to the U.S. government. His job: Translate and dub spoofed Saddam Hussein speeches and tongue-in-cheek newscasts for broadcast throughout Iraq.

Full article from www.villagevoice.com archived on archive.com

MI6 'halted bid to arrest bin Laden'

Martin Bright, home affairs editor Sunday November 10, 2002 The Observer

British intelligence paid large sums of money to an al-Qaeda cell in Libya in a doomed attempt to assassinate Colonel Gadaffi in 1996 and thwarted early attempts to bring Osama bin Laden to justice.

Full article http://www.observer.co.uk/politics/story/0,6903,837319,00.html

Into the Dark The Pentagon Plan to Provoke Terrorist Attacks

by CHRIS FLOYD, CounterPunch November 1, 2002

This astonishing admission was buried deep in a story which was itself submerged by mounds of gray newsprint and glossy underwear ads in last Sunday's Los Angeles Times. There--in an article by military analyst William Arkin, detailing the vast expansion of the secret armies being massed by the former Nixon bureaucrat now lording it over the Pentagon--came the revelation of Rumsfeld's plan to create "a super-Intelligence Support Activity" that will "bring together CIA and military covert action, information warfare, intelligence, and cover and deception."

Full article

(Between 2002 and now in 2017 this article moved from www.counterpunch.org/floyd1101.html without any redirect being left at the old location.)

Meet the new Zionists

Matthew Engel Monday October 28, 2002 The Guardian

You might think these Christian activists represent the furthest shores of American politico-religious wackiness. The politicians don't think so. This conference began with a videotaped benediction straight from the Oval office. Some of the most influential republicans in Congress addressed the gathering including - not once, but twice - Tom DeLay, who is hot favourite to take over as majority leader of the House of Representatives after the midterm elections on November 5, thus becoming arguably the most powerful man on Capitol Hill.

Full article http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,820528,00.html

Robert Fisk: What the US President wants us to forget

Robert Fisk, Independent, 9 October 2002

Secondly, because the envoy was sent to Iraq to arrange the re-opening of the US embassy - in order to secure better trade and economic relations with the Butcher of Baghdad. Thirdly, because the envoy was - wait for it - Donald Rumsfeld. Now you might think it strange that Mr Rumsfeld, in the course of one of his folksy press conferences, hasn't chatted to us about this interesting tit-bit. You might think he would have wished to enlighten us about the evil nature of the criminal with whom he so warmly shook hands. But no.

Full article from independent.co.uk archived on archive.org

President Bush wants war, not justice - and he'll soon find another excuse for it

Robert Fisk, Independent, 18 September 2002

Major Scott Ritter, Iraq's nemesis-turned-saviour, was indeed - as an inspector - regularly travelling to Tel Aviv to consult Israeli intelligence. Then Saddam accused the UN inspectors of working for the CIA. And he was right. The United States, it emerged, was using the UN's Baghdad offices to bug Iraq's government communications. And once the inspectors were withdrawn in 1998 and the US and Britain launched "Operation Desert Fox", it turned out that virtually every one of the bombing targets had been visited by UN inspectors over the previous six months. Far from being an inspectorate, the UN lads - though they didn't all know it - had been acting as forward air controllers, drawing up an American hit list rather than monitoring compliance with UN resolutions.

Full article from www.independent.co.uk archived on archive.com

In war, some facts less factual

Scott Peterson, Christian Science Monitor, 6 Sep 2002

Citing top-secret satellite images, Pentagon officials estimated in mid-September that up to 250,000 Iraqi troops and 1,500 tanks stood on the border, threatening the key US oil supplier.

But when the St. Petersburg Times in Florida acquired two commercial Soviet satellite images of the same area, taken at the same time, no Iraqi troops were visible near the Saudi border - just empty desert.

Full article http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0906/p01s02-wosc.html

ALTERNATIVE MEDIA CENSORSHIP: SPONSORED BY CIA's FORD FOUNDATION?

Bob Feldman [clarion: no further information available, not even a date]

The multi-billion dollar Ford Foundation's historic relationship to the Central Intelligence Agency [CIA] is rarely mentioned on Pacifica's DEMOCRACY NOW / Deep Dish TV show, on FAIR's COUNTERSPIN show, on the WORKING ASSETS RADIO show, on The Nation Institute's RADIO NATION show, on David Barsamian's ALTERNATIVE RADIO show or in the pages of PROGRESSIVE, MOTHER JONES and Z magazine. One reason may be because the Ford Foundation and other Establishment foundations subsidize the Establishment Left's alternative media gatekeepers / censors.

Page 1/10 or so of article from www.questionsquestions.net archived on archive.org

US thinktanks give lessons in foreign policy

Brian Whitaker, The Guardian, August 19, 2002

In real life too, Mr Perle is not fighting his battle single-handed. Around him there is a cosy and cleverly-constructed network of Middle East "experts" who share his neo-conservative outlook and who pop up as talking heads on US television, in newspapers, books, testimonies to congressional committees, and at lunchtime gatherings in Washington.

The network centres on research institutes - thinktanks that attempt to influence government policy and are funded by tax-deductible gifts from unidentified donors.

Full article http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,7792,777100,00.html

Anthrax killer 'is US defence insider'

BBC, Sunday, 18 August, 2002

"My two suspects both appear to have CIA connections. These two agencies, the CIA and the FBI, are sometimes seen as rivals.

"My anxiety is that the FBI agents assigned to this case are not getting full and complete co-operation from the US military, CIA and witnesses who might have information about this case."

Full article http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2196008.stm

Robert Fisk: Be very afraid - Bush Productions is preparing to go into action

They are setting up the Arab world. We are being prepared for an epic supported by Hollywood and a plot of lies

Robert Fisk, Independent, 17 August 2002

It's not difficult to see what's going on. It's not just al-Qa'ida who are the "enemy". It's Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Saudi Arabia. Bush Productions are setting up the Arab world. We are being prepared for a wide-screen epic, a spectacle supported by Hollywood fiction and a plot of lies.

Full article from www.independent.co.uk archived on archive.org

While media spotlights one anthrax suspect, another is too hot to touch

Delinda Curtiss Hanley, Arab News, 16 August 2002

Did the US media merely lose interest after the government failed to find an Iraqi or Al-Qaeda connection, and therefore could not link the postal terrorism to Sept. 11? Or was the press warned off the sensitive subject? After months of silence, in August the subject of the anthrax attacks once again hit the newspapers and network TV stations. The scientist in the spotlight, however, may be little more than a hapless "fall guy".

Full article from www.arabnews.com on archive.org

Selective Memri

Brian Whitaker investigates whether the 'independent' media institute that translates the Arabic newspapers is quite what it seems

Guardian, August 12, 2002

The reason for Memri's air of secrecy becomes clearer when we look at the people behind it. The co-founder and president of Memri, and the registered owner of its website, is an Israeli called Yigal Carmon.

Mr - or rather, Colonel - Carmon spent 22 years in Israeli military intelligence and later served as counter-terrorism adviser to two Israeli prime ministers, Yitzhak Shamir and Yitzhak Rabin.

Full article http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,7792,773258,00.html

A Coup in The Hague

Hannah M. Wallace 28 June 2002 Mother Jones July/August 2002

"I was being expected to take orders from the US delegation, and to customize the implementation of the convention to the US demands," says Bustani from his home in The Hague. "I was expected to consult Washington on every single issue, which I refused to do."

Full article on www.motherjones.com archived on archive.org

War on terror: FBI "guilty of cover-up" over anthrax suspect

Nick Peters in Washington, Scotland on Sunday, 16 June 2002

AMERICAN investigators know the identity of the killer who paralysed the US by sending anthrax in the post but will not arrest the culprit, according to leading US scientists.

Article from news.scotsman.com archived on archive.org

Official TWA 800 Findings Challenged

By Reed Irvine and Cliff Kincaid June 10, 2002 Accuracy in Media

The TWA Flight 800 Independent Researchers Organization, FIRO, has taken the unusual step of filing a petition with the National Transportation Safety Board, NTSB, asking for reconsideration of the findings on the probable cause of the crash of TWA Flight 800. Such petitions are entertained only if new evidence has been found or a showing that the NTSB findings were erroneous. FIRO claims that some evidence that the NTSB kept secret and which has now become available for public scrutiny is new evidence that shows that the official findings were erroneous.

Full article http://www.aim.org/publications/media_monitor/2002/06/10.html

Washington is pushing India and Pakistan to the brink of war

by Michel Chossudovsky Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG), globalresearch.ca , 23 May 2002

India and Pakistan are currently at the brink of war.

Presented by the media as a conflict regarding the status of Kashmir, the role of US foreign policy in feeding this conflict is invariably overlooked. Since the end of the Cold War, Washington has deliberately contributed --through covert intelligence operations-- to fuelling the Indo-Pakistan conflict. In the wake of September 11, amidst new terrorist attacks and ethnic riots in India, conditions have developed which favour the outbreak of war between the two countries.

Full article http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO205C.html

Riddle of the spores

Why has the FBI investigation into the anthrax attacks stalled? The evidence points one way

George Monbiot Guardian Tuesday May 21, 2002

Yet, while it trawled the empty waters, the bureau failed to cast its hook into the only ponds in which the perpetrator could have been lurking. In February, the Wall Street Journal revealed that the FBI had yet to subpoena the personnel records of the labs which had been working with the Ames strain. Four months after the investigation began, in other words, it had not bothered to find out who had been working in the places from which the anthrax must have come. It was not until March, after Barbara Hatch Rosenberg had released her findings, that the bureau started asking laboratories for samples of their anthrax and the records relating to them.

Full article http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4417654,00.html

Statement of Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney on Terrorist Warnings

May 16, 2002

Several weeks ago, I called for a congressional investigation into what warnings the Bush Administration received before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. I was derided by the White House, right wing talk radio, and spokespersons for the military-industrial complex as a conspiracy theorist. Even my patriotism was questioned because I dared to suggest that Congress should conduct a full and complete investigation into the most disastrous intelligence failure in American history. Georgia Senator Zell Miller even went so far as to characterize my call for hearings as "dangerous, loony and irresponsible."

Today's revelations that the administration, and President Bush, were given months of notice that a terrorist attack was a distinct possibility points out the critical need for a full and complete congressional investigation.

Full article from www.house.gov archived on archive.org

AT MIT, THEY CAN PUT WORDS IN OUR MOUTHS

Gareth Cook, The Boston Globe, 15 May 2002

CAMBRIDGE - Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have created the first realistic videos of people saying things they never said - a scientific leap that raises unsettling questions about falsifying the moving image.

In one demonstration, the researchers taped a woman speaking into a camera, and then reprocessed the footage into a new video that showed her speaking entirely new sentences, and even mouthing words to a song in Japanese, a language she does not speak. The Click for complete article (1089 words)

The above abstract was taken from the Boston Globe archive website in 2003, starting at http://www.boston.com and searching "video MIT mouths".

In 2017 a different, longer abstract is available starting the search from https://secure.pqarchiver.com/boston/advancedsearch.html

The Boston Globe will charge for the full article.

The full article says several additional interesting things which are summarised here. The head of the team at MIT is Tony F. Ezzat who is a graduate student. Also in the team is Tomaso Poggio, described as a "neuro scientist" at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research and the head of the lab where the work is being done. According to "the researchers" (presumably Ezzat and Poggio), volunteers in a laboratory test were unable to distinguish real and fake video clips. Currently the technique only works well on a video of someone facing the camera and not moving much, but according to Poggio it will not be difficult to make it work on a moving head at any angle. It is also not convincing for more than a few sentences because the speaker seems to lack emotion. Ezzat says he would like to work on adding emotion. In July 2002 they will present a paper on it at Siggraph, a computer graphics conference. According to Ezzat they are already testing it on videos of Ted Koppel, a television presenter on a US television station called "ABC", with the aim of making him appear to be talking Spanish.

The fake persuaders

George Monbiot Guardian Tuesday 14 May 2002

While, in the past, companies have created fake citizens' groups to campaign in favour of trashing forests or polluting rivers, now they create fake citizens. Messages purporting to come from disinterested punters are planted on listservers at critical moments, disseminating misleading information in the hope of recruiting real people to the cause. Detective work by the campaigner Jonathan Matthews and the freelance journalist Andy Rowell shows how a PR firm contracted to the biotech company Monsanto appears to have played a crucial but invisible role in shaping scientific discourse.

Full article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/internetnews/story/0,7369,715159,00.html

Anthrax attack bug "identical" to army strain

Debora MacKenzie, New Scientist Online News, 9 May 2002

The DNA sequence of the anthrax sent through the US mail in 2001 has been revealed and confirms suspicions that the bacteria originally came from a US military laboratory.

Full article on www.newscientist.com

UN Chemical Arms Chief Ousted in U.S.-Led Vote

Reuters, Wednesday 24 April 2002

THE HAGUE (Reuters) - The head of a global chemical weapons control body was ousted on Monday by a United States-sponsored vote provoked by a rift over his diplomatic overtures to secure Iraq's compliance on arms inspection.

This article was once at http://dailynews.netscape.com/mynsnews/story.tmpl?table=n&cat=50600&id=200204221746000279882&dpt=international

US ousts director of chemical arms body

Richard Norton-Taylor and agencies, Guardian, Tuesday 23 April 2002

The head of the world's chemical weapons regulatory body, Jose Bustani, was dismissed yesterday by a United States-led vote.

Full article on www.guardian.co.uk

America used Islamists to arm the Bosnian Muslims

The Srebrenica report reveals the Pentagon's role in a dirty war

Richard J Aldrich The Guardian, Monday April 22, 2002

His findings are set out in "Intelligence and the war in Bosnia, 1992-1995". It includes remarkable material on covert operations, signals interception, human agents and double-crossing by dozens of agencies in one of dirtiest wars of the new world disorder. Now we have the full story of the secret alliance between the Pentagon and radical Islamist groups from the Middle East designed to assist the Bosnian Muslims - some of the same groups that the Pentagon is now fighting in "the war against terrorism". Pentagon operations in Bosnia have delivered their own "blowback".

Full article http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,688310,00.html

Robert Fisk: Fear and learning in America

Independent 17 April 2002

And for the first time in more than a decade of lecturing in the United States, I was shocked. Not by the passivity of Americans - the all-accepting, patriotic notion that the President knows best - nor by the dangerous self-absorption of the United States since 11 September and the constant, all-consuming fear of criticising Israel. What shocked me was the extraordinary new American refusal to go along with the official line, the growing, angry awareness among Americans that they were being lied to and deceived.

Full article from www.independent.co.uk archived on archive.org

Thinking the Unthinkable

Wayne Madsen, Counterpunch, April 8, 2002

Now that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has officially put the anthrax investigation on a back burner, it is time for Americans to think the unthinkable: that the FBI has never been keen to identify the perpetrator because that perpetrator may, in fact, be the U.S. Government itself. Evidence is mounting that the source of the anthrax was a top secret U.S. Army laboratory in Maryland and that the perpetrators involve high-level officials in the U.S. military and intelligence infrastructure.

Full article from www.counterpunch.org archived on archive.org

Don't always trust what they tell you in the war on terror

Raymond Whitaker and James Palmer Independent 31 March 2002

Downing Street said al-Qa'ida was using chemical weapons: it was wrong. The Pentagon said Saddam Hussein was to blame for the anthrax attacks on the US: it was wrong.

Full article from news.independent.co.uk archived on archive.org

Fallout, Cancer and Politics

Matt Bivens 26 March 2002 the failsafe point, a new project funded by the Nation Institute

You've probably heard less about a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, completed in August 2001, but only published in dribs and drabs over the past few weeks. Mandated by Congress, the study is the first ever to estimate what effect radioactive fallout from nuclear testing has had on the lower forty-eight American states.

The CDC finds such fallout has likely killed 11,000 Americans since the 1950s. They died from all manner of cancers, from melanoma to breast cancer to leukemia. Fallout has also caused about 22,000 nonlethal cases of cancer. For those keeping score, that's 33,000 cases of cancer among Americans, courtesy of global nuclear testing.

Full article from www.thenation.com archived archive.org

Democracy for sale

Greg Palast, 23 March 2002

This page is an edited transcript of a talk given by Greg Palast at the Think Twice Conference in Cambridge, on 23 March 2002.

[Clarion: recommended reading. It includes information additional to that in his book of the same name. The topics are: The Florida list, Barrick and Bush, The Bin Laden connection, The Necessity Test, Argentina and The World Bank, The World Bank's biggest loan, Step 3½ the IMF riot]

Full article from www.think-twice.org.uk archived on archive.org

A spectacular miscarriage

Judit Neurink Al-Ahram Weekly Online 21 - 27 March 2002 Issue No.578

Arab legal experts in Camp Zeist were incensed by the verdict. Whilst Libyan lawyers spoke of a trial that is politically motivated, Saber Ammar of the Arab Lawyers' Union criticised "the influence of politicians and the press on the judges." Chairman Bechir Essid of the Tunisian Bar Association said he was disillusioned with the Western judicial system. "How can you sentence someone without any proof? This is abuse of justice.,' he said.'

The United Nations' observer, Hans Kchler, an Austrian professor of Jurisprudence, was alarmed by the decision. He described the appeal as "a rather spectacular miscarriage of justice." He was lost as to how a unanimous decision was reached "in the light of some of the analysis presented and questions asked by the judges."

Full article on weekly.ahram.org.eg

How one of the two brains behind the Iran-Contra scandal this week became one of America's most powerful men

John Sutherland, The Guardian, February 18, 2002

He and Oliver North were found to be up to their necks in the Iran-Contra (guns for hostages) scam, which blew up in 1986. Poindexter was charged and found guilty of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and the destruction of evidence in 1990; this was overturned on appeal the following year.

Full article on www.guardian.co.uk

Friends of terrorism

Duncan Campbell, Guardian, Friday February 8, 2002

Reich used this role to pursue his own agenda to such an extent that in 1987 the Comptroller-General of the US, a Republican appointee, found that some of the efforts of his office were "prohibited, covert propaganda activities ... beyond the range of acceptable agency public information activities". A letter of September 30 1987 concluded that Reich's office had violated "a restriction on the state department's annual appropriations prohibiting the use of federal funds for publicity or propaganda purposes not authorised by Congress".

Full article http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,646835,00.html

Contrary Mary

A.N. Wilson, London Evening Standard, 28 January 2002, page 15

An article about Mary Archer, wife of the convicted perjurer Jeffrey Archer.

Full article:
press_cuttings/archer_les_28jan2002.html

Letter from Israel

Private Eye, 30 November to 13 December 2001, page 15

Take the bombing of American targets. Our chaps bombed the US cultural centres in Cairo and Alexandria as early as 1954, planning to let Abdul Nasser's new Egyptian government take the blame. Unfortunately the scam went wrong and our defence minister Pinhas Lavon had to resign, though the director-general of his ministry, Shimon Peres, managed to hang on. Today he is Ariel Sharon's foreign minister.

Full article:
e/fake_attack_pe_30nov2001.html

Legacy of civilian casualties in ruins of shattered town

Justin Huggler, Independent, 27 November 2001

First paragraph

We were picking our way through the bombed-out ruins of Khanabad when we heard the explosion. When we got there, struggling through the collapsed remains of houses, an old man sat in his blood blinking and shaking his head in bewilderment. Beside him, a 15-year-old boy lay bleeding and unconscious.

Full article on archive.org

The disinformation campaign

Phillip Knightley, The Guardian, Thursday October 4, 2001

In the Senate debate whether to approve military action to force Saddam out of Kuwait, seven senators specifically mentioned the incubator babies atrocity and the final margin in favour of war was just five votes. John R Macarthur's study of propaganda in the war says that the babies atrocity was a definitive moment in the campaign to prepare the American public for the need to go to war.

It was not until nearly two years later that the truth emerged. The story was a fabrication and a myth, and Nayirah, the teenage Kuwaiti girl, coached and rehearsed by Hill & Knowlton for her appearance before the Congressional Committee, was in fact the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States. By the time Macarthur revealed this, the war was won and over and it did not matter any more.

Full article http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4270014,00.html

PUBLIC SERPENT

Iran-contra villain Elliot Abrams is back in action

Terry J. Allen, In These Times, 6 August 2001

Calling George W. Bush and Jesse Helms "public servants" is like calling Iran-contra criminal Elliott Abrams an "outstanding diplomat"--which is precisely what White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer did when he announced Abrams' appointment as senior director of the National Security Council's Office for Democracy, Human Rights and International Operations.

Full article http://www.inthesetimes.com/issue/25/18/allen2518.html

Bush's Contra Buddies

Peter Kornbluh, The Nation, 7 May 2001

John Negroponte's nomination to be US ambassador to the United Nations is a case in point. Bush has named him to represent the United States at an institution built on principles that include nonintervention, international law and human rights. Qualifications for the job: Negroponte was a central player in a bloody paramilitary war that flagrantly violated those principles and was repeatedly denounced by the institution in which he would now serve.

Full article http://thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010507&s=kornbluh

A letter from Alan Sked about UKIP published in The Daily Telegraph

Alan Sked, Daily Telegraph, 31 January 2001

A letter from Dr Alan Sked, who writes as "founder of the UKIP" (United Kingdom Independence Party), and concludes with: "Michael Ancram is wise to have nothing to do with the current leadership of the UKIP, and I sympathise with all those principled activists in it who will feel tarnished by their leadership's lack of honour."

Complete letter

NOBODY'S HERO

Joel Bleifuss, In These Times, 22 January 2001

When questioned by an investigator, Powell repeatedly pleaded faulty memory. At one point he replied: "To my recollection, I don't have a recollection." He testified that he only found out about the shipment of missiles to Iran on January 17, 1986, the day Reagan formally authorized the transfers. Circumstantial evidence refutes this claim. So does Oliver North, who testified that in his 1985 efforts to get U.S. missiles sent to Iran, "my original point of contact was General Colin Powell, who was going directly to his immediate superior, Secretary Weinberger."

Full article http://www.inthesetimes.com/issue/25/04/edit2504.html

Euro-federalists financed by US spy chiefs

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Daily Telegraph, 19 September 2000

First paragraph:

DECLASSIFIED American government documents show that the US intelligence community ran a campaign in the Fifties and Sixties to build momentum for a united Europe. It funded and directed the European federalist movement.

Full article on www.telegraph.co.uk

Cluster bombs: the hidden toll

Richard Norton-Taylor, Guardian, 8 August 2000

First paragraph

The number of civilians prey to unexploded cluster bombs is significantly higher than admitted by governments, including the British, which have consistently suppressed evidence about the weapon's military effectiveness, according to a devastating report published today.

Full article on theguardian.com

US 'supported anti-left terror in Italy'

Philip Willan, Guardian, 24 June 2000, page 19

First paragraph:

The United States was accused of playing a large part in the campaign of anti-communist terrorism in Italy during the cold war in a report released yesterday by the Left Democrat party.

Full article on www.theguardian.com

Wheeler tells how he fought the good fight

Michael Evans, The Times, 20 October 1997, page 8

As the headline implies - with its missing quotation marks around "good" - this interview with Charles Wheeler is a rather uncritical one. Wheeler gives his account of his relationship to IRD and related activities when he worked for the BBC in Berlin.

Full article

MI6 fed Cold War propaganda to BBC

Michael Evans, Times, 20 October 1997, page 8

As so often, the newspaper headline is misleading, not least because the article also describes information flowing from the BBC to MI6, including the betrayal of confidential letters written to BBC correspondents. The sinister IRD is also mentioned. The article consists of information regurgitated from a book War of the Black Heavens, Michael Nelson, which Evans says was to be published in November 1997 by Brassey's. (In a separate article on the same page of the Times, Evans interviews Charles Wheeler, who features prominently in this article.)

Full article

Dodi's girl-crazy double caused half the trouble

Maurice Chittenden, Sunday Times, 17 August 1997, pages 1, 3

First paragraph:

IF romancing Diana, Princess of Wales, and fending off his former girlfriend Kelly Fisher were not difficult enough, Dodi Fayed faces double trouble. An impostor has been seducing beautiful women and running up huge debts while pretending to be the Harrods heir.

article extracts

How MI6 pushed Britain to join Europe

Paul Lashmar and James Oliver, Sunday Telegraph, 27 April 1997, page 10

First sentence:

A secretly-funded Foreign Office unit used public money to mount a covert propaganda operation aimed at ensuring Britain joined the European Community.

Full article

Iraq 'used US biotoxins in Gulf war'

Simon Tisdall, Guardian, 11 February 1994, page 13

First paragraph:

The United States government licensed the export to Iraq of anthrax and other highly toxic biological agents which were subsequently used by President Saddam Hussein against allied servicemen during the Gulf war, according to a US senate investigation.

Full article

Journalists accuse BBC of censorship

Andrew Culf, Guardian, 9 February 1994, page 3

Second paragraph:

Staff said scripts had been censored and rewritten and they had been unable to refer to the circumstances in which Mr Milligan's body was discovered at his west London home.

Full article

US admits years of atomic radiation tests on people

Simon Tisdall, Guardian, 30 December 1993, page 11

The reported "tests" include injecting victims with plutonium, deliberately releasing radioactive materials in populated areas, feeding pregnant women radoiactive material and exploding nuclear bombs in the atmosphere over the USA. Full article

Britain secretly helped to arm Saddam Hussein's Iraq

Preface from "Betrayed The Real Story of the Matrix Churchill Trial", David Leigh with Richard Norton-Taylor, Bloomsbury 1993

There has never before been such authentic and detailed material available about the operations of the British secret services and their influence on Whitehall - right down to verbatim copies of their own agents' reports and their internal memoranda.

Full article:
books/preface_leigh_1993.html

UK trained secret Swiss force

Richard Norton-Taylor, Guardian, 20 September 1991, page 7

First paragraph:

British secret services collaborated closely with an armed, undercover Swiss organisation which formed part of a west European network of "resistance" groups, it was officially disclosed yesterday.

Complete article

Council poll is upheld despite bogus leaflets

Gareth Parry, Guardian, 22 December 1990, page 2

First paragraph:

AN ELECTION court yesterday rejected an attempt by the Labour Party to have Liberal Democrat councillors in Tower Hamlets, east London, disqualified, despite a deliberate attempt to deceive voters.

Full article

Secret agents, freemasons, fascists... and a top-level campaign of political ‘destabilisation’

Ed Vulliamy, Guardian, 5 December 1990, page 12

First paragraph:

'I CAN say that the head of the secret services has repeatedly and unequivocally excluded the existence of a hidden organisation of any type or size," the Italian Minister of Defence, Giulio Andreotti, told a judicial inquiry in 1974 into the alleged existence of a secret state army.

Full article

The Gladio File: did fear of communism throw West into the arms of terrorists?

Richard Norton-Taylor, Guardian, 5 December 1990, page 12

First paragraph:

A CHANCE discovery by an assiduous Italian magistrate investigating a neo-fascist terrorist attack has unearthed a secret paramilitary network run by units of the armed forces and intelligence services throughout western Europe.

Full article

How MI6 and SAS joined in

David Pallister, Guardian, 5 December 1990, page 12

"David Pallister on 'stay behind' strategy"

Full article

Secret Italian unit 'trained in Britain'

Richard Norton-Taylor/David Gow, Guardian, 17 November 1990, page 10

Third paragraph:

General Gerardo Serravalle, who said the Italians trained at a military base in Britain, was giving evidence yesterday in Rome to a parliamentary committee of inquiry into allegations that Gladio was linked to a series of rightwing terrorist attacks in Italy between 1969 and the early 1980s.

Full article

Nato's secret network 'also operated in France'

Guardian, 14 November 1990, page 6

First paragraph:

A BRANCH of the Nato-linked European anti-communist resistance network, which Italian investigators fear may have been involved in neo-fascist atrocities in Italy, also operated in France, the former defence minister, Jean-Pierre Chevènement, has disclosed.

Full article

Dead journalist sex smear 'foul'

Malcolm Coad and David Pallister, Guardian, 2 June 1990, page 3

First paragraph:

British officials in Chile are claiming that the dead defence journalist Jonathan Moyle was a sexual deviant who hanged himself while attempting to obtain pleasure. It is understood that members of MI5 have made the same assertion in London.

Full article

Security service 'blocked Kincora inquiry'

Richard Norton-Taylor, Guardian, 2 June 1990

First paragraph

A high level police inquiry into allegations of homosexual abuse at the Kincora boys' home in east Belfast was blocked by MI5, the security service, according to evidence disclosed last night.

Full article

Waldegrave makes tacit admission of SAS link to Khmer Rouge

Judy Jones, Independent, 14 November 1989, page 10

Second paragraph:

William Waldegrave, Minister of State at the Foreign Office, provoked uproar on the Labour benches when he sidestepped a direct Opposition challenge to say whether the SAS had been training troops in Cambodia. "You know I will give no answer," he told Gerald Kaufman, the Opposition's foreign affairs spokesman.

Full article

Liquidating Sukarno

The Times, 8 August 1986, page 12

Second sentence: "In a book to be published this autumn, The CIA A Forgotten History (Zed Books) the American author William Blum reproduces part of a sensational 1962 CIA report which suggests Supermac and JFK talked about "liquidating" the troublesome President Sukarno of Indonesia."

Full article

Revealed: How MI5 vets BBC staff

David Leigh and Paul Lashmar, The Observer, 18 August 1985, page 1

THE OBSERVER has obtained concrete evidence for the first time of the way the security service, MI5, secretly controls the hiring and firing of BBC staff.

Full article:
press_cuttings/mi5.bbc.staff_obs_18aug1985.html

THE BLACKLIST IN ROOM 105

David Leigh, Paul Lashmar, Observer, 18 August 1985, page 9

Expanding on the story from page 1, the Observer gives detailed specific examples of how MI5 has secretly interfered in the appointment and retention of BBC staff.

Full article: mi5.bbc.page9_obs_18aug1985.html

Another exposure -by Tass

Hella Pick, Guardian, 31 January 1978, page 5

Pick reports on a report from TASS about the IRD. Pick implies that the TASS report is a "selective summary" of the Guardian report of 27 January 1978. Her report does not refer to the work of Richard Fletcher, George Brock, Phil Kelly, Paul Lashmar, Tony Smart and Richard Oliver published two days before in the Observer.

Full article

How the FO waged secret propaganda war in Britain

Richard Fletcher, George Brock Phil Kelly, Observer, Sunday 29 January 1978, page 2

A SECRET Foreign Office department set up after World War Two to distribute anti-Communist propaganda abroad also covertly planted material in Britain.

Full article: press_cuttings/fo_deceit_unit_obs_29jan1978.html

David Leigh recounts the 30-year history of the Foreign Office's covert propaganda operation

David Leigh, Guardian Friday 27 January 1978, page 13

Other journalists were informally blacklisted as politically undesirable or had assistance withdrawn if they became politically embarrassing.

Full article:
e/fo_deceit_unit_graun_27jan1978.html

Speaking Out I'm glad the CIA is 'immoral'

Thomas W. Braden, The Saturday Evening Post, 20 May 1967, page 10 - 14

Braden says he was assistant to Allen W. Dulles in 1950. He mentions CIA interference in trade unions in West Germany, France, Italy, India, "Baltic ports", CIA payments for "strong-arm squads in Mediterranean ports", CIA financing of the magazine "Encounter" and a CIA agent as an editor, CIA involvement in an "organization of intellectuals called the Congress for Cultural Freedom".

Full article:
press_cuttings/braden_20may1967.html

A Short Account of International Student Politics & the Cold War with Particular Reference to the NSA,CIA,Etc.

Sol Stern, Ramparts, March 1967

This report exposed the CIA's “15-year infiltration of the NSA” - the NSA was the American National Students Association - and the related money-laundering by the CIA through tax-exempt foundations. The article was inserted into the USA Congressional Record (House) of 9 March 1967 by a Mr. Taylor, while introducing two bills, one to amend the Central Intelligence Agency Act of 1949 and one requiring tax-exempt organisations to publicly disclose their sources of income. A few months later the Saturday Evening Post published Speaking Out I'm glad the CIA is 'immoral' with the byline of Thomas Braden of the CIA.

Full article press_cuttings/ramparts_mar1967.html

Theobald's Pearl Harbor Challenge Called 'Service' by Fellow Admiral

W A Kitts, Union-Star?, 1954? But see notes

The book "The final secret of Pearl Harbor, The Washington contribution to the Japanese attack", Robert A Theobald, The Devin-Adair Company, New York, 1954, is reviewed by by VICE ADMIRAL W. A. KITTS 3rd, USN, Ret

Full article: press_cuttings/theobald_kitts_1954.html