Saturday, October 15, 2005

Rogue Nation (from ZMAG)

http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2001-12/21duboff.cfm

December 21, 2001

Rogue Nation

By Richard DuBoff

1. In December 2001, the United States officially withdrew from the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, gutting the landmark agreement-the first time in the nuclear era that the US renounced a major arms control accord.

2. 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention ratified by 144 nations including the United States. In July 2001 the US walked out of a London conference to discuss a 1994 protocol designed to strengthen the Convention by providing for on-site inspections. At Geneva in November 2001, US Undersecretary of State John Bolton stated that "the protocol is dead," at the same time accusing Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Libya, Sudan, and Syria of violating the Convention but offering no specific allegations or supporting evidence.

3. UN Agreement to Curb the International Flow of Illicit Small Arms, July 2001: the US was the only nation to oppose it.

4. April 2001, the US was not reelected to the UN Human Rights Commission, after years of withholding dues to the UN (including current dues of $244 million)-and after having forced the UN to lower its share of the UN budget from 25 to 22 percent. (In the Human Rights Commission, the US stood virtually alone in opposing resolutions supporting lower-cost access to HIV/AIDS drugs, acknowledging a basic human right to adequate food, and calling for a moratorium on the death penalty.)

5. International Criminal Court (ICC) Treaty, to be set up in The Hague to try political leaders and military personnel charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity. Signed in Rome in July 1998, the Treaty was approved by 120 countries, with 7 opposed (including the US).

In October 2001 Great Britain became the 42nd nation to sign. In December 2001 the US Senate again added an amendment to a military appropriations bill that would keep US military personnel from obeying the jurisdiction of the proposed ICC.

6. Land Mine Treaty, banning land mines; signed in Ottawa in December 1997 by 122 nations. The United States refused to sign, along with Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Vietnam, Egypt, and Turkey. President Clinton rejected the Treaty, claiming that mines were needed to protect South Korea against North Korea's "overwhelming military advantage." He stated that the US would "eventually" comply, in 2006; this was disavowed by President Bush in August 2001.

7. Kyoto Protocol of 1997, for controlling global warming: declared "dead" by President Bush in March 2001. In November 2001, the Bush administration shunned negotiations in Marrakech (Morocco) to revise the accord, mainly by watering it down in a vain attempt to gain US approval.

8. In May 2001, refused to meet with European Union nations to discuss, even at lower levels of government, economic espionage and electronic surveillance of phone calls, e-mail, and faxes (the US "Echelon" program),

9. Refused to participate in Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)-sponsored talks in Paris, May 2001, on ways to crack down on off-shore and other tax and money-laundering havens.

10. Refused to join 123 nations pledged to ban the use and production of anti-personnel bombs and mines, February 2001

11. September 2001: withdrew from International Conference on Racism, bringing together 163 countries in Durban, South Africa

12. International Plan for Cleaner Energy: G-8 group of industrial nations (US, Canada, Japan, Russia, Germany, France, Italy, UK), July 2001: the US was the only one to oppose it.

13. Enforcing an illegal boycott of Cuba, now being made tighter. In the UN in October 2001, the General Assembly passed a resolution, for the tenth consecutive year, calling for an end to the US embargo, by a vote of 167 to 3 (the US, Israel, and the Marshall Islands in opposition).

14. Comprehensive [Nuclear] Test Ban Treaty. Signed by 164 nations and ratified by 89 including France, Great Britain, and Russia; signed by President Clinton in 1996 but rejected by the Senate in 1999. The US is one of 13 nonratifiers among countries that have nuclear weapons or nuclear power programs. In November 2001, the US forced a vote in the UN Committee on Disarmament and Security to demonstrate its opposition to the Test Ban Treaty.

15. In 1986 the International Court of Justice (The Hague) ruled that the US was in violation of international law for "unlawful use of force" in Nicaragua, through its actions and those of its Contra proxy army. The US refused to recognize the Court's jurisdiction. A UN resolution calling for compliance with the Court's decision was approved 94-2 (US and Israel voting no).

16. In 1984 the US quit UNESCO (UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) and ceased its payments for UNESCO's budget, over the New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO) project designed to lessen world media dependence on the "big four" wire agencies (AP, UPI, Agence France-Presse, Reuters).

The US charged UNESCO with "curtailment of press freedom," as well as mismanagement and other faults, despite a 148-1 in vote in favor of NWICO in the UN. UNESCO terminated NWICO in 1989; the US nonetheless refused to rejoin. In 1995 the Clinton administration proposed rejoining; the move was blocked in Congress and Clinton did not press the issue. In February 2000 the US finally paid some of its arrears to the UN but excluded UNESCO, which the US has not rejoined.

17. Optional Protocol, 1989, to the UN's International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, aimed at abolition of the death penalty and containing a provision banning the execution of those under 18. The US has neither signed nor ratified and specifically exempts itself from the latter provision, making it one of five countries that still execute juveniles (with Saudi Arabia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Iran, Nigeria). China abolished the practice in 1997, Pakistan in 2000.

18. 1979 UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. The only countries that have signed but not ratified are the US, Afghanistan, Sao Tome and Principe.

19. The US has signed but not ratified the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which protects the economic and social rights of children. The only other country not to ratify is Somalia, which has no functioning government.

20. UN International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, 1966, covering a wide range of rights and monitored by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The US signed in 1977 but has not ratified.

21. UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 1948. The US finally ratified in 1988, adding several "reservations" to the effect that the US Constitution and the "advice and consent" of the Senate are required to judge whether any "acts in the course of armed conflict" constitute genocide. The reservations are rejected by Britain, Italy, Denmark, the Netherlands, Spain, Greece, Mexico, Estonia, and others.

22. Is the status of "we're number one!" Rogue overcome by generous foreign aid to given less fortunate countries? The three best aid providers, measured by the foreign aid percentage of their gross domestic products, are Denmark (1.01%), Norway (0.91%), and the Netherlands (0.79), The three worst: USA (0.10%), UK (0.23%), Australia, Portugal, and Austria (all 0.26).

http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2001-12/21duboff.cfm

Friday, April 22, 2005

Britain: opposition to Iraq war led to Labour vote-rigging in 2004 elections

Britain: opposition to Iraq war led to Labour vote-rigging in 2004 elections
By Robert Stevens
11 April 2005

On April 4, Richard Mawrey QC, acting as an election commissioner, issued a judgement in a civil hearing quashing the result of two local authority elections in Birmingham held June 10 last year.

Mawrey’s 192-page judgement stated that the polls in the Aston and Bordesley Green electoral wards were corrupted by “massive, systematic and organised” vote-rigging by Labour members, with the aim of offsetting a collapse in the party’s vote due to the Iraq war.

The case was the first of its kind to be held in Britain for more than a century. It arose after Election Petitions were brought under the Representation of the People Act 1983 and 2000, challenging the result of two elections in the June 2004 poll.

Mawrey’s decision was announced just one day before Prime Minister Tony Blair called a general election for May 5. On February 22, the QC had accused Labour of attempting to delay the vote-rigging hearings until after the general election by withdrawing their legal support from the accused party candidates.

The first Election Petition was brought by the People’s Justice Party (PJP) against three Labour Party representatives of the Bordesley Green ward, Shafaq Ahmed, Shah Jahan and Ayaz Khan. The second Petition was raised by Liberal Democrat supporters against three Labour Party representatives in the Aston ward—Mohammed Islam, Muhammed Afzal and Mohammed Kazi.

Mawrey ruled that no fewer than 1,500 votes, and possibly more than 2,000 votes, were cast fraudulently in the Bordesley Green ward of Birmingham. The six Labour councillors were found guilty of electoral fraud and illegal practices and were ordered to pay court costs of around £500,000. They are also banned from standing for election and from voting for the next five years.

Following the hearing, the councillors were suspended by the Labour Party, pending an investigation. All six deny vote rigging. The councillors may face criminal charges if police decide to investigate.

The system of postal voting in the UK, “is wide open to fraud and any would-be political fraudster knows that it’s wide open to fraud,” Mawrey stated.

During the course of the hearing, the QC heard evidence that the vote rigging was organised on a large scale and included the fraudulent use of postal ballots, death threats and other forms of intimidation.

In a submission to the court, one barrister identified 15 different types of fraud carried out in the elections in Aston and Bordesley Green.

The main type involved the theft of ballot papers and the act of personation, whereby a person takes names from the electoral roll and applies for voting papers to be sent to another address. These are then fraudulently completed and returned to the election office.

A few days before the poll was due to be held, police discovered six Labour Party activists, including two candidates, in a warehouse with 275 postal votes for the Aston ward laid out on a table. The Labour members claimed they were the votes of illiterate local voters. Mawrey described the warehouse as a “vote-rigging factory.”

The Liberal Democrats and People’s Justice Party also alleged the following:

* Labour supporters stood on main roads attempting to bribe local people into handing over their postal ballots.

* Children were sent to steal election papers from letter-boxes.

* A pillar box was set alight in the Washwood Heath ward, apparently to destroy postal votes.

* Householders were intimidated into handing over their election forms.

* A postman was offered £500 for a sack of ballot papers. He was then allegedly threatened with death if he refused.

* A Labour candidate, Shah Jahan, was reportedly seen collecting a black bag from a postman and on another occasion collecting a bundle of postal ballot papers from a postman.

* As part of the rigging operation, hundreds of voting forms were sent to a “safe house” to be filled in. Many of the original votes, later deemed valid, had been changed with correcting fluid.

Efforts to defraud the election continued until the votes were to be counted. On voting day, the council said that it ran out of ballot boxes. As a result, some votes were taken to the Aston count in plastic bags. Just prior to the count itself, a bag full of 300 postal ballot votes in envelopes was delivered to the counting station. After brief negotiations, these were accepted as valid votes.

The hearing was informed that this bag of ballot papers had all been folded in the same way, and all recorded votes for Labour candidates. The judge ruled that these votes “should have been rejected and were improperly admitted into the poll.”

In his executive summary to the court, Mawrey said that “by polling day, it was clear that there had been widespread ‘theft’ of postal votes. Large numbers of genuine voters turned up at polling stations to vote, only to learn to their surprise that they had been put on the postal voters’ list and sent a postal vote (which, of course they had never seen). These voters were disenfranchised.”

The judgment also criticised Birmingham’s returning officer and chief executive Lin Homer, and the police for their role during the elections. The judge said that Homer “threw the rule book out of the window” in dealing with the large numbers of postal vote application forms received. And despite West Midlands police receiving more than 50 complaints regarding possible fraud during the election, no charges were laid.

Mawrey said, “The police attitude was well summed up by the use of the code name for these complaints—Operation Gripe. In essence, the police did nothing to prevent the fraud.”

There have been numerous allegations of ballot rigging and fraud over a number of years in the Birmingham area. In 2002, the West Midlands fraud squad reported that in the city’s previous three national and local elections, there had been at least 100 cases of personation fraud reported by voters as well as instances of postal ballot fraud. Earlier that year, Birmingham City Council admitted that fraudulent postal voting probably took place during local elections held in May.

Investigations into election fraud are underway in other parts of the country. Criminal inquires are currently taking place in Reading, Cheshire, Derbyshire, Lancashire, Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire. These investigations centre on various allegations of theft of ballot papers, forged votes and personation.

The Iraq war and Labour’s disenfranchisement of voters

The most significant aspect of Mawrey’s judgement is his condemnation of the Birmingham Labour Party’s attempt to silence opposition to its support for the illegal and criminal war in Iraq through its subversion of the election.

The June 10, 2004, elections were held at a time of increasing public hostility to the occupation of Iraq. The web of lies used by Blair and President George W. Bush to justify the war, such as the fraudulent claim that Iraq threatened the world with “weapons of mass destruction,” had largely unravelled.

Opposition to the war was manifested in a national rout for the Labour Party in the local elections. The party lost more than 460 local councillors and control of seven councils, including Newcastle upon Tyne, Trafford, Doncaster and Leeds.

Labour’s share of the national vote was just 26 percent—behind both the opposition Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats. It was the first time that a ruling party had ever finished behind two other parties in the national share of the local election vote.

Labour lost many seats in its formerly safe industrial heartlands and in many areas with a large number of Muslim voters. Under these conditions, the fact that Labour was able to win seats in Birmingham, England’s second-largest city and one with many areas with a high preponderance of Muslims, was a striking anomaly. In the Aston and Bordesley Green wards, the Labour councillors “won” their seats by virtue of a massive swing to the party. In contrast to national trends, turnout in Bordesley Green had risen by more than 100 percent and in Aston by 350 percent.

Mawrey also found evidence of fraud in other marginal wards. In Washwood Heath, 329 postal vote applications had been recorded in 2002 and 478 in 2003. In 2004, 5,583 applications were made for postal voting—an increase of 1,068 percent.

Postal applications in Birmingham rose from 28,000 in 2003 to 70,000 one year later. The judge stated that between one third and half of all Labour votes in some areas may have been fraudulent.

Mawrey concluded, “The pattern certainly seems to be there. Marginal, particularly Asian, wards were the target of postal vote fraud. The conclusion appears inescapable that Bordesley Green and Aston were not isolated incidents but were part of a Birmingham-wide campaign by the Labour Party to try, by the use of bogus postal votes, to counter the adverse effect of the Iraq war on its electoral fortunes.”

Mawrey exonerated the national Labour Party from any wrongdoing and stated that he knew of no evidence showing they knew of or approved of such election fraud.

While this may be the case, the activities of Labour candidates and supporters in Birmingham, some with several decades of membership, reveal the increasingly anti-democratic nature of the party and the very narrow base of its support.

Unable to win any popular support for its programme of war abroad and attacks on the social conditions of workers and youth in Britain, Labour Party officials in Birmingham prevented thousands of people from voicing their opposition to such a perspective.

Democratic rights eroded by Labour

In 2000, the Labour government passed legislation changing the rules on voting by postal ballot. Previously, voters on the electoral register were required to provide a reason, such as illness or lack of mobility, to obtain the right to vote by post. The new legislation allows anybody the right to vote by post, without having to state a reason. Under the guise of allowing more people to vote and widening the franchise, the change has in fact led to widespread disenfranchisement such as that in the Birmingham local election.

On August 26, 2004, the Electoral Commission, a government advisory body, published a report calling for the system of all-postal voting to be ended. This recommendation has been rejected, and following negotiations, a code on postal voting was instead established in agreement with the parliamentary parties.

Under its provisions, parties are able to produce and distribute their own version of the postal ballot form to apply to vote by post. There is also no requirement for the completed form to go straight back to the electoral registration officer—it can instead be returned via an intermediate address. Party workers can also be present while the voter fills out the actual ballot paper. The party worker may then take the ballot paper away for delivery. It is clear that such a lax system leaves open many possibilities for fraud.

The media’s response to the latest vote rigging scandal has been low-key. There have, however, been a limited number of comments on the potentially explosive consequences of a disputed general election. Up to 7 million people have applied for a postal vote for the coming general election.

On April 5, the Times published an article, “This election could be stolen: prepare for voting fraud on a massive scale,” by columnist Camilla Cavendish. “If the general election were to be decided by a court rather than by the ballot box, that would be an astonishing indictment of British democracy, a hanging chad epic [referring to the 2000 US presidential election crisis in Florida],” she warned. “So it’s odd that ministers are still refusing to talk about it.”

The government has sought to play down the significance of the vote rigging in Birmingham. Blair has made a few perfunctory and blasé comments on the issue, defending the existing postal voting system.

Such contempt for basis democratic norms is indicative of his government. The government’s Department for Constitutional Affairs told the Times, “There are no proposals to change the rules governing election procedures for the next election, including those for postal voting. The systems already in place to deal with the allegations of electoral fraud are clearly working.”

Mawrey directly criticised this statement in his judgement. “Anybody who has sat through the case I have just tried and listened to evidence of electoral fraud that would disgrace a banana republic would find this statement surprising,” he declared.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/apr2005/labo-a11_prn.shtml

Britain: trial finds no evidence of “ricin plot”

Britain: trial finds no evidence of “ricin plot”
World Socialist
Date of Article: 2005-04-21

On April 12, the case collapsed against eight men accused of being part of an Al Qaeda plot to poison masses of people in the UK. Of the nine originally charged, just one, Kamel Bourgass, was sentenced to imprisonment—and that was for the killing of a police officer and wounding several others and “conspiracy to cause a public nuisance.”

The verdict was an extraordinary one, given that the so-called “ricin terror plot” the nine were accused of masterminding played a central role in the government’s efforts to justify the war against Iraq and its accompanying “war on terror” that has been used to overturn fundamental civil liberties. These claims were repeated in banner headlines throughout the British media, which uncritically reported that a major Al Qaeda cell had been uncovered without a shred of evidence being advanced as proof.

On January 5, 2003, police raided a flat in Wood Green, north London and seized what was described as a “poisons laboratory,” said to include recipes for the deadly poison ricin and toxic nicotine. Shortly afterwards, Britain’s leading anti-terrorist police officer, David Veness, and the government’s deputy chief medical officer, Dr. Pat Troop, issued a joint statement that “a small amount of the material” taken from the London flat had “tested positive for the presence of ricin poison.”

The raid was sparked by allegations made by one Mohmammad Meguerba to the authorities in Algeria that he was part of a group plotting ricin poison attacks in London. Meguerba gave the name Nadir Habra, believed to be Bourgass’s real name, as a key player, leading to the raid on the Wood Green flat.

Over the next days Prime Minister Tony Blair, government ministers and senior police officers lined up to proclaim that the poison find was proof that Islamic extremists were targeting Britain and that extraordinary measures were required to counter the threat.

On January 7, then Home Secretary David Blunkett and Health Secretary John Reid issued a joint statement that “traces of ricin” and castor beans capable of producing “one lethal dose” of the poison had been found to be present in the London flat. The same day, Blair told a meeting of British ambassadors that the raid underscored the dangers of “weapons of mass destruction”—a danger that “is present and real and with us now and its potential is huge.”

Newspapers speculated that the “poison” factory was being used to commit mass terror in the capital and elsewhere and even to target Blair for assassination.

On January 14, 2003, a raid by immigration police on a house in Manchester unexpectedly came across Bourgass. In a violent struggle, Bourgass stabbed police officer Stephen Oake to death and wounded three others as he tried to escape.

Consequently, a total of eight men in addition to Bourgass were detained at Belmarsh high security prison. The four Algerians that stood trial alongside Bourgass were Sidali Feddag, Mouloud Sihali, David Khalef and Mustapha Taleb. The prosecution charged that the five had conspired in two instances “in furtherance of their extremist Islamic cause” to commit murder between January 1, 2002 and January 23, 2003 in the UK, and to commit a public nuisance by the use of poisons and/or explosives to cause disruption, fear and injury. Three other Algerian men, Samir Asli, Mouloud Bouhrama, Kamel Merzourg, and one Libyan, Khalid Alwerfeli, were to face trial separately on the same charges.

Press reports claimed that the men were part of an Al Qaeda cell that was plotting to poison hundreds of people in the UK with ricin by contaminating food supplies or smearing the material on door handles across north London.

The importance of this propaganda offensive was underlined when then US Secretary of State Colin Powell drew attention to the arrests, as he pressed the case for war against Iraq in his speech to the United Nations Security Council on February 5, 2003. Claiming that “every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources,” he spoke of a “sinister nexus between Iraq and the Al Qaeda terrorist network” that was plotting to conduct “poison and explosive attacks” throughout Europe. This assessment had been confirmed by events in Britain, Powell continued, “When the British unearthed a cell there just last month, one British police officer was murdered during the disruption of the cell.”

No evidence was presented to link the supposed conspirators in London with Baghdad, but this counted for nothing as far as Powell was concerned. For no evidence was ever produced linking the Baathist regime in Iraq with the Islamic fundamentalists who carried out the 9/11 terror attacks. But this did not stop London and Washington from insisting that Iraq be bombed to prevent Saddam Hussein from arming Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups with chemical, biological and even nuclear weapons.

Last week’s trial at the Old Bailey confirmed that Powell’s “solid sources” on the alleged ricin plot were as flimsy as all the other evidence that was concocted—much of it in Britain—to justify war against Iraq.

During one of the longest trials in British legal history, a jury in the nation’s top criminal court heard that there never was any ricin. An initial laboratory test that suggested ricin was present at the Wood Green flat was faulty, the court heard. Just as importantly, this fact was already apparent two days after the raid when Martin Pearce, the leader of the Biological Weapon Identification Group at Porton Down laboratory, concluded that ricin was not present. This was at the same time that Blair, Blunkett and Reid were terrorising the public with their statements warning of plans for mass murder. Porton Down laboratory could not confirm in court when it had first informed the Home Office that the original test was wrong.

Nor were any other traces of poison, much less chemical or biological weapons, found during the raids. The “ricin factory” consisted of castor oil, cherry stones and apple seeds, and some handwritten recipes for ricin. Nevertheless, the prosecution claimed that these, as well as a “Manual of Afghan Jihad” seized in a separate raid in Manchester in 2000, were proof that the defendants were connected to Al Qaeda.

No such connection could be made. A report in the Guardian cites the powerful defence made in court by Bourgass’s barrister, Michel Massih. He derided the charges as “utter nonsense, complete and utter fantasy,” and queried why anyone would have to make a poison when it could be purchased relatively easily as weed killer or rat poison.

“What was really at the centre of the case, claimed Mr. Massih, was the build-up to the war in Iraq,” the newspaper reported. “The headline of the Mirror on January 8 2003, was ‘IT’S HERE’ and the accompanying story suggested that a ‘deadly terror plan [had been] found’ in Britain. ‘It is around the time of the build-up to the war in the Middle East’, said Mr Massih. ‘You have a scenario which is almost begging for there to be something.... Then on January 8 this rubbish comes out’.”

The idea that ricin could be used for mass murder was rejected in court by chemical experts. Professor Alistair Hay, one of the UK’s leading authorities on toxins, said that ricin had to be injected straight into a victim to be a reliable weapon and could not be effective by smearing it onto door handles as the prosecution charged that the plotters intended.

There was no ricin present in the flat and Hay said that any efforts by Bourgass to manufacture it were “incredibly amateurish and unlikely to succeed.”

Most of the allegations of Bourgass’s contacts with Al Qaeda came from Meguerba, who prosecuting QC Nigel Sweeny informed the trial judge—when the jury was absent—was unreliable and a liar.

Defence lawyer Gareth Peirce said that Meguerba “had clearly been tortured” in Algeria when he made his allegations, “and was actually trying to save his own neck by passing on whatever he thought might be of interest.” And when British investigators were able to question Meguerba in Algeria, he withdrew most of his allegations. The fact that the prosecution should try to build a case based on evidence extracted under torture was one of the most serious aspects of the trial, Peirce said.

Far from being an Al Qaeda mastermind, Bourgass was a disturbed loner and something of a fantasist—hence the decision not to convict him on the charge of conspiracy to murder. The jury also found that there was no evidence to link the other four defendants to any terror plot and they were acquitted. Mustapha Taleb was released immediately, but the other three pleaded guilty to having false immigration papers and face deportation. The collapse of the case meant that the trial pending against the four other North African men was abandoned, and they were officially cleared.

Speaking afterwards, Peirce demanded that the government justify the claims it had made against the men. “There was never any ricin, there were no poisons made. There seems to be a pathetic, clumsy, amateurish attempt to make some by a man who was conceded, I think by all, to be a difficult, anti-social loner,” she said.

“But I think one also has to consider how was it that all of us in this country were allowed to believe that there was ricin. That there was a substantial plot. That it wasn’t an individualist, tiny, failed attempt.”

The only conclusion that can be drawn from the flimsy evidence on which the men were brought to trial is that the decision to prosecute was taken for political purposes.

As was made clear by Powell’s speech at the UN, this was in the first instance in order to legitimise a criminal and predatory war against Iraq. It must be remembered that at the height of the war on March 31, 2003 allied propagandists returned once more to the “ricin plot” as alleged proof that Saddam Hussein had been secretly arming terrorist groups. US commanders in Iraq claimed to have destroyed a “poison factory,” although no chemicals or laboratories were found. General Richard Myers, US commander-in-chief, claimed, “It is from this site that people were trained and poisons were developed which migrated to Europe. We think that’s probably where the ricin found in London came from.”

The “ricin plot” was not an isolated concoction. In November 2002 there were allegations of a separate Al Qaeda cell threat to gas the London underground. Amidst claims that the “bombers” were to be charged, MI5 and police sources were cited as having successfully foiled a major terrorist attack. But once again no plot existed and the three people supposedly linked to the gas attack were only charged with having false passports.

Intimately related to the drive to war was the government’s second aim in exaggerating and even manufacturing a threat of terrorist attacks—that of justifying a major offensive against democratic rights in Britain.

Every manifestation of terrorism by Islamist groups and even individuals is routinely attributed to Al Qaeda as if it is an all-encompassing and integrated network, under centralised command. In the name of fighting this phantom, civil liberties have been abrogated by legislation that gives the government powers akin to a dictatorship.

Even the holding of the ricin trial became an occasion for the government to demonstrate its contempt for democratic rights. A media blackout was ordered to prevent reports prejudicing the trial that lasted until the acquittal, but in November 2004 then Home Secretary David Blunkett publicly declared that “Al Qaeda is seen to be, and will be demonstrated through the courts over months to come, to be actually on our doorstep and threatening our lives. I am talking about people who are and about to go through the court system.”

The trial judge complained about Blunkett’s remarks to Attorney General Lord Goldsmith, but no action was taken. Goldsmith merely issued a warning that the minister should refrain from making prejudicial comments.

Blunkett’s intervention came as the government was preparing major new anti-terror legislation to be unveiled in the Queen’s speech later that month. This included the announcement of a Counter Terrorism Bill that included powers to implement trials without jury, civil orders for people suspected of planning “terrorist” attacks, as well as draft legislation for the introduction of identity cards.

Since then the government has introduced “control orders.” Rushed through Parliament last month, anyone suspected of involvement in terrorism can now be held under house arrest—incommunicado and for an indefinite period—on the say-so of the home secretary or a judge.

Once again the “ricin plot” played a key role in justifying such measures. Following the trial’s collapse, the Home Office was forced to send a letter of apology to 10 men it had placed under control orders after it linked them to the supposed plot. The letter claims that the Home Office made a “clerical error” when it said the grounds for the orders imposed on them was that they “belonged to and have provided support for a network of north African extremists directly involved in terrorist planning in the UK, including the use of toxic chemicals.”

It is a testament to the jury that they refused to be part of the attempt to railroad innocent men to jail. It is little wonder that getting rid of the right to trial by jury is one of the government’s major aims.

In contrast, the gross perversion of democratic norms that constituted the ricin trial has attracted barely any comment by the official parties and by most of the media. All of them are complicit both in sanctioning an illegal war against Iraq and the ongoing assault on democratic rights in Britain. Indeed both issues are virtually off-limits in the ongoing general election campaign.

No section of the establishment will let truth stand in the way of developing the authoritarian forms of rule necessary in order to pursue Britain’s colonialist ambitions abroad and to smash up workers’ living standards at home. Rather, the response to the failure of the ricin trial will be to call for the further undermining of legal safeguards.

The Mirror editorialised that police had “not only put away a horribly dangerous man, but have disrupted a European terrorist network.” The Times warned: “this case is the most telling evidence yet that Britain has been the target of extremist terrorism and that official warnings should not be regarded as a political plot,” whilst the Daily Star declared ominously, “Hang this nut.” (There is no death penalty in Britain and right-wing elements have been clamouring for it to be reinstated.)

For the government, Home Secretary Charles Clarke said that the trial was “an illustration of the fact that terrorist organisations exist and are seeking to damage our lives.” Speaking as if the defendants had been freed on a technicality, he added, “We will obviously keep a very close eye on the eight men being freed today, and consider exactly what to do in the light of this decision.”

Conservative leader Michael Howard used the case to reinforce his charge that the main crime of the government was that it was too soft on asylum seekers. Bourgass’s claims for asylum had been rejected but he had avoided deportation by using a series of false identities. “The tragedy of what happened is that Kamel Bourgass, an Al Qaeda operative, should not have been in Britain at all,” he said, arguing that the government had “lost control” of the country’s borders.

Determined not to be outflanked on the right by the Tories, Labour spokesmen insisted that the ability of Bourgass to evade detention proved the need to introduce identity cards. This was backed by Britain’s most senior police chief, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair, who said that legislation around “acts preparatory to terrorism” was needed, as Al Qaeda operates using “very loose-knit conspiracies.”

http://www.stoppoliticalterror.com/articlesingle.php?article=1244

Tuesday, April 12, 2005

Role of Modern Compulsory Schooling in Modern Society

F.R. Scott, Social Democrat, and constitution lawyer, early pioneers of social justice in Canada.

POEM - “The Examiner”

The routine trickery of the examination
Baffles these dis heart and discouraged youths
Driven by they know not what external pressure
They pour their hated self analysis
Through the nib of confession
Onto the accusatory page

I who have plotted their immediate downfall
I am entrusted with the divine categories
A, B, C, D and the hell of F
The parade of Prize and the backdoor of pass

In the tight silence
Standing by a green grass window
Watching the fertile earth graduate its sons
With more compassion — not commanding the shape
Of stem and stamen, bringing the trees to pass
By shift of sunlight and increase of rain,
For each seed the whole soil, for the inner life
The environment receptive and contributory—
I shudder at the narrow frames of our text-book schools
In which we plant our so various seedlings.

Each brick walled Barracks
Cut into numbered rooms
Black boarded
Ties the venturing shoot
To the master's stick
To screwed desks rows of lads and girls
Subdued in the shade of an adult
Their assets subsoil
Shape the new to the old
IN the Ashen Garden

Shall we Open the Whole Skylight of Thought
TO these tip toe minds
Bring them our frontier worlds
And the boundless uplands of art for their field of growth
Or shall we pass them the chosen poems with the footnotes
Ring the bell on their thoughts
Period their play
Make laws for averages
and plans for means
Print one history book
For a whole province
And let 90,000 read page ten by Tuesday

As I gather the inadequate paper evidence
I hear across the neat campus lawn
The professional mowers drone
Clipping the inch high grass




John Taylor Gato


New York State Teacher of the Year. Investigating purpose and history of education.

Forced Schooling (compulsory).
James Brian Cohen.

Boredom. Its your responsibility, shouldn't be left to someone else to entertain you. Its part of personal development to learn how to keep yourself from being bored. Taken out, to extend childishness, to sell the ENTERTAINMENT to adults and children alike.

Teachers and Students BORED. Neither is interested in teaching what is being taught, and not interested in learning what is to be learnt. WHO MAKES this NATIONAL CIRICULUM?

Childish people need to be attended by adults.

Youthful – positive window, means adventurous, energetic,curious, surprising, open to new experience. WHAT Schools and modern education systems ENCOURAGE or FIT these universal qualities?
So if modern forced education is not here to suit this YOUTHFULNESS, what purpose are they for?

Rational and reasonable, are different.
Unreasonable, in discouraging youthfulness, but doesn't mean they are not rational.
Before WW2, High Schools and Secondary Schools were small and not so important.
In Switzerland, richest nation in world per capita. Less than 1 in 4 goes past elementary school.

People at age 13, were not traditionally seen as children.


Prussia, 1820. Where it began.
1st Purpose – Religious
2nd Purpose – Good citizens, to shoulder responsibility of society
3rd Purpose – to enhance God given individual gifts

4th – Obedience – TO POLITICAL PARTY, to STATE, etc.

Habit Training - Making children reflect positively to propaganda.
Prussian Habit Controlling Schools – conditioned children to any sort of authoritarian appeals, including soft.. PR & Advertising.

Public Opinion can be made manageable.

Marketing means overcoming sales resistance.


They can peddle any SUPPLY by psychological means.

Founders of Forced Schooling, were to collectivising and socialising the ordinary population to the habbits of dependancy
- ie, extending childishness, by removing children from the world, from parents, and into a world of strangers, hidden from public view. Protection from World Outside, make them dependent upon the system.

TRACK FOUR

James B. Conant
born March 26, 1893, Dorchester, Mass., U.S.
died Feb. 11, 1978, Hanover, N.H. – President of Harvard Univ for 30 yrs.
Member of Inner Circle of Atomic Bomb Committee.
High Commissioner of American Zone in American controller Germany in WW2.

Made books about Schools and society.

Principle legitimizer gargantuante High School planning.

“The Child, The Parent and the State” - JBC.

Mentions a Coup had given Modern Schooling, in book.

“Principles of Secondary Education” - 1918. Find details of this 'COUP'

No library had this book. So JTG looked for Author, the Principle of Harvard University.
Mr English was decedent of prominent american family sympathetic to British Side, in US revolution.

Another English wrote a refutation of Common Sense. Anglican Bishop wanted State Religion.

Honor Lecture at Harvard University, its called the “English Lecture”.


Track 5, 6 purposes of Modern Education.
Surgical Incision, into Class Base, to interdict liberty tradition.
Infiltrate Minds of Children, out of sight of Parents.
Keep Children kept childish beyond age. By removing insights of History, philosophy and religion, and removing reflections upon Death.

1- Childish Adults, easier to control than independent free thinking individuals.

1- “Fixed Habits of Reactions to Authority”
requiring obedience to Stupid Orders useful.

2 – Diagnostic Function.
So much testing and so forth. Determine proper social role and fix you into that role.

3 – Sorting Function
Training individuals only as far as their likely destination in Social Role, not any further.

4 – Com formative
Make them all alike, whatever background they are from, not for egalitarianism, but to Make future behaviour mathematically predictable in survice to market and government research.

5 – Hygienic Function.
Not to do with Individual Health, but Health of RACE. To Accelerate Natural Selection, by tagging the UNFIT clearly, to drop them from the reproduction sweep stakes. Make those that are FIT, promiscuous. Humiliation through Sports and so forth; contests. Popularity things.

6 – ProPiDoTic
Small Fraction of Lucky Kids are properly taught to take over this management of society, in future. In order to make government and management economically manageable.

“1984” - George Orwell. Necessary to compel him to love Big Brother, then kill him. If you had to be forced to kill him, you wouldn't know how many others like him out there.

Infantalisation, gradual dumbing down and demoralisation, and critical responsibility of families and communities to the State & its institutions.


TRACK SIX

Radical extension of Childhood principly through schooling first, but in time through every institution, including and especially through popular entertainment (including Mass Media), controlled by a small elite.

Popular Entertainment, prevents need to entertain oneself.


Childish Adults cant effectively be a threat to Management. They don't know how the system works, so eventually give up making “noise” & trying to rebel. They lack “inner” resources to be self sustained; dependent upon system & institutions.

2nd Half of 19th Century. North German States, Prussia, Saxony and Hanover. Science of Making young people childish, grew up. Study by certain prominent Americans, Harris Man, William Tory Harris, the P-body family, J.P Morgan and Canada by Edgerton Ryson, and by others who envied the control it offered to management and wanted that control for themselves.

With the rise of Centralised Economy, after Civil War. Another over riding reason to place population under tight management.

At same time this project was going on, other than businessman and politicians were interested in such studies. Such as Utopian socialists like Robert Owen and John Ruskin, thought that through an endless childhood an agrarian utopian could be achieved. The evolution crowd like Darwin, Spencer, etc, we are Biologically retarted, so we couldnt grow up, so we needed guidance and authority.
Scientific historians, Hegel, Herder, like Marx, thought by keeping people dumb and incomplete, history itself could be controlled by small elites and guided to a conclusion.

Many potent interests around, but none had resources of Corporations to sustain such a long term campaign in such a direction. Only needed a little corporation behind the scenes, to allow an army of innocent academics and philosophical “screw-balls” to do the corporate-government bidding unknowingly, thinking they were riding their own hobby horses.

L Wood Cuberly, friend of Cohen at Harvard, and partner of Alexander English's at Huffton Mifton, Publisher. Where he edited the elimentary series of Textbooks, whilst English did Secondary textbooks. They had a monopoly on institutional schooling (huffton mifton).

Cuberly was Dean of education at Stanford University. Were he became head of a EDUCATION TRUST, a shadowy cabal of Academics Nationwide, who controlled every administative post in USA, by 1918. SOURCE is from TEXTBOOK “Managers of Virtue” - by David Tiack.

All administrative jobs held by EDUCATION TRUST, until Newspapers got wind of it, and it changed its name. In 1906, Cuberly, in his PHD thesis, wrote that “children are to be shaped and fashioned like nails. And the specifications will come from business and government, in that order”...
Specifications – outcomes desired.
Outcomes to be reached are decided by academics and bureaucrats, who worked for policy people. BUSINESS STRATEGY known as management by OBJECTIVEs.

Few years later, 1919, same Cuberly, wrote “childhood deliberately extended by four years, because a combination of powerful interests had demanded this. The trick was pulled off by denying children association with the adult world and with real responsibility, through comprehensive confinement schooling, which created a world of children separate from the real world. There the little human resources could be held, until summoned or not summoned.”
The interests are about delaying personal sovereignty, the managerial outlook. Total management and human independence are mutually contradictory terms. Once professionalized, management finds it irresistible to argue, that neither children nor their parents can be trusted. That the only sensible way of handling growing up, is through expert goal settings and professional interventions at public expense.
Once institutional infrastructure is established, no body needs to know what its about. They have to know that they don't get their pay check unless they keep the system in a steady state. So that eventually all the architects who know whats going on die off and the thing becomes a piece of autonomous social technology.

TRACK SEVEN

Expert management is never well served by allowing children to grow up, or grow up. Its tutelage is only justified intellectually, by academic disciplines of Psychology, sociology, evolutionary biology, anthrapology, even military, conclude that growing is impossible for most of us.
All of these made by government under-writings. All paid for by corporations or government.
Philosophical momentum of mangerialism in west, was only bought by theology of Christian, which expressly forbids the faithful to duck personal responsibility, and establishes the road to salvation as a lonely personal road. You can get some assistance from congregation, but when face to face with God, there are no excuses, you are fully responsible. Thus western religious thinking was a prime target of schooling, so it had to be systematically destroyed.
Higher Academic voices in US, set up a litany that communicated, that however elliptical, we would always need supervision, guidance and authority.

Vice President Gore's Wife, held Press Conference. Said 55% of US people are mentally disturbed and in need of therapy. One of a host of commentators that urged we need to be kept under closer and closer surveillance for our own good.

General irresponsibility – see how useful it is when Classrooms are workshops of rudeness, rowdiness and danger. Far from avoiding this, its ideal to make them untrusting of each other, and instruct parents to not get in the way of official administration, “cause look how dangerous they are[children]”.

At the end of 20th century, approximately 100,000 US school children were being bar coded, in an experiment to track their passages, and see to it that each child is always were someone believes they should belong. Every thing in its place, a place for everything.

Transformation not by popular demand, or prominent socialists like John Doey, who are usually blamed. made by industrial titans like, Andrew Carnegie, J.P. Morgan, Vincent Aster, Commodore Vanderbilt, John Lee Rockefeller, Henry Ford, and a few others.
SOURCE - Two American Congressional Investigations, of whats behind schooling. One made in 1915 “Walsh Committee Report”, 1953 by Senator from Tennessee. Both came to same conclusion, that schooling was under direction of private corporate foundations of this handful of managers, measured, and long after their death, that oversight continues.
Carnegie Endowments, Ford and Rockefeller Endowments, mentioned in Schools, how “generous” of them.

TRACK EIGHT

unlimited energy in Coal and Oil, with Mass Production Industry, suggested that Industrial Utopia was actually in reach. But only if society could be made susceptible to a degree of management beyond any historical precedent. Personal liberty and conventional morality would have to be surrendered if this promise was to be realised (industrial utopia).
Visionary Industrialists; Struggling to socialise the majority into dependence on central management. Crude examples, raising your hand to go to the toilet.
The authority of the political state had to replace the authority of family, tradition and religion. A huge task with no where else to start but with the Children.
Drawing on method of Prussia, the quick arrival of young americans of responsible maturity had to be ended. Financial capital demanded this. Why make huge investments in machinery that was certain to obsolete itself soon, unless the markets could be guranteed. Unless this could be done, capital would not be forthcoming, and we would have a differnet economy than what we have.
Assuring markets is an old game, Britain has been doing it for many years. Competition can be muted in a lot of ways, through Trust Formations, Government regulations, Government Subsidies that stack the market deck and in many ways unknown to the butcher the baker the candle stick maker. But not so easy in convincing our uniquely productive population to give up its traditional yearning for independent livelihood. The majority had to be retrained into thinking of themselves as employees and consumers, rather than producers. A Job is what someone gives you.
Otherwise the perils of over production would frighten away the investment that centralised industrial growth depends upon. So mass schooling of compulsory nature was given its teeth in 1905 and 1915. A lil bit earlier than that in Canada, it was testing ground for this ideas, Bruce Coopers “Making of Educational State” - the early Canadian experience of this, and how Army was brought in to shove it down communities throats.

Not about fashioning good ppl or good citizens, but like in Prussia, incoccasions of habbits, fears, apetities and attitudes useful to management. Thats all you need to know about standardised testing, and whats it about. Measures nothing else, but those things.

This scheme was never intended to be destructive, but the reverse. By converting Americans into specialised economic and social functions, into incompletely human beings. This nation US and Canada, created the most reliable domestic market in the world. The human mutilations of schooling are a trade off for this prosperity. Comfort and security are achieved at the price of personal sovereignty. Thats what extended childhood is a paridy. Give it up and a society would enter a great turbulance, a resolution which no body can predict.

Well schooled people are trained to reflexively obey strangers commands and to attenualy seek the judgment of strangers, thats how As are distributed. Later on after the school game is over, advertising and advocacy journalism (paid for by advertisers), slips easily into role of School Teachers. Well schooled people have lower threshold of boredom, they need constant novelty to feel alive, with only the flimisiest innner lives, they must stay in touch with official voices, through TV, Radio, Music, Films, internet, Mass Media, shallow Friendships exchanged on a regular basis.

Track Nine

How to avoid marrying a Turkey. Find out their friends, if all their friends are new, and they are 25 Years old, wonder how they past through teens and early adulthood, without carrying any with them. Changes classes at sort intervals, is a drill to prepare kids to changing associates, domiciles, mates and possessions, in dizzying and eternal perfusion. A climate of low level disatisfaction is the very air that a mass production economy MUST Breed.

Your meant to be BORED instantly with what you buy or eventually. Your terrified that that PC you set up at home, you got to hurry and work more to buy upgrades and keep up to speed.

Well Schooled people must be poorly trained in history, philosophy, economics, literature, poetry, music, art and theology, anything known in History to develop a personal inner life. Well School people need life long tutelage, cradle to grave schooling, to make any sense of their days. Mass entertainment and mass journalism provide that tutelage long after school is done.

Over a century ago, great industrials with the help of academics and politicians, set out to rewrite laws of supply and demand. They knew that if centralised producers learned to create demand, for whatever could be produced most efficiently. The moral world could be turned upside down and those dogs at the top could bark there for ever. The problem of succession that doomed Rome and every other empire today, would finally have found its solution.

Thus school rooms became labratories of experimentation on young minds, research centres of scientific management. To be acquited of this, WE NEED TO WAKE UP to what our Schools have become and are becoming. First need to repudiate that fatal belief of giving government or free entreprises more freedom and control, things would eventually evolve and sort themselves out.

NADER was RIGHT, both Political parties work to exactly same ends, no change in leap frogging parties. Neither republic or democratic, its an industrial Empire. Recognise the paradox of Extended Childhood, blessing Management and economy at expense of your children. Schooling is a forgery, see it as that.

http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/