Showing posts with label britain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label britain. Show all posts

Monday, November 21, 2005

7/7 London Bombings Final Word: Her Majesty's Terrorist Network

British intelligence agencies masterminded the London bombings. The stories you have been taught about back-pack bombs, carried by Al Qaeda suicide-bomber terrorists, are also BS lies. Bombs were actually planted underneath the floors of the train, under the carriages, indicating an inside-job.

In a nutshell, this is another attempt by evil neo-con war-mongers and plutocrats to scare everybody into submission and gain more support for the FAKE WAR ON TERROR, or manufactured terrorism, planned by government leaders, to justify police-state laws and continued illegal military invasions and occupations of harmless oil-rich Arab countries... (just like the fake September 11 terror attacks) 7/7 Bombings Final Word: Her Majesty's Terrorist Network.

The wealth of evidence that has emerged in the month following the 7/7 London bombings only leads us to one clear conclusion, that the attacks had to have been orchestrated by or with help from the very highest levels of British intelligence.

The latest piece of evidence to suggest that the official story is a fraud focuses again on the contention that the bombs were placed under the trains and were not detonated by suicide bombers wearing backpacks.

The first eyewitness to report this was Bruce Lait, a victim of the Aldgate Station bombing.

He told the Cambridge Evening News,"The policeman said 'mind that hole, that's where the bomb was'. The metal was pushed upwards as if the bomb was underneath the train. They seem to think the bomb was left in a bag, but I don't remember anybody being where the bomb was, or any bag."

Now another credible source, Guardian journalist Mark Honigsbaum, talked to eyewitnesses at the Edgware Road bombing, who essentially described the same thing.

Eyewitnesses told Honigsbaum that "tiles, the covers on the floor of the train, suddenly flew up, raised up."

How could the floor of the train raise up from a bomb supposedly in the backpack of an individual seated in the carriage, above the floor?

The victims then heard "an almighty crash" as a train traveling in the opposite direction collided, clearly indicating that the train had derailed due to the bomb being placed under the carriage.

For individuals to plant bombs underneath trains and secure them in place without being caught, they would need to secure access to the trains. In this scenario, London Underground could have been told that a dummy device was to be placed underneath the train as part of an exercise to test security an alertness. When the real attacks happened some LU officials would have been alarmed but their suspicions would have dampened when it was revealed that the bombs were carried in backpacks, meaning that the drill was just a strange 'coincidence'.

The fact that the bombs were actually planted underneath the trains could have easily been buried in an avalanche of official announcements to the contrary.

On the other hand the backpack bombs could have just been the diversionary blasts to enable patsies to be framed, just like the planes flying into the towers acted as the diversionary cover for the explosives planted inside the World Trade Center.

The fact that the ID's of all the so-called suicide bombers were found in pristine condition right next to where the bombs went off strongly suggests the planting of evidence to frame patsies. The ID's would have had a very good chance of surviving if the bomb was not in the backpack with them, but underneath the train.

The drill scenario would have provided culpability cover if investigators started asking questions about objects underneath the carriage.

As we have exhaustively documented, such a drill did take place on the morning of 7/7.

A consultancy agency with government and police connections was running an exercise for an unnamed company that revolved around the London Underground being bombed at the exact same times and locations as happened in real life on the morning of July 7th.

On a BBC Radio 5 interview that aired on the evening of the 7th, the host interviewed Peter Power, Managing Director of Visor Consultants, which bills itself as a 'crisis management' advice company, better known to you and I as a PR firm.

Peter Power was a former Scotland Yard official, working at one time with the Anti Terrorist Branch.

Power told the host that at the exact same time that the London bombings were taking place, his company was running a 1,000 person strong exercise which drilled the London Underground being bombed at the exact same locations, at the exact same times, as happened in real life.

How can anyone credibly claim that this was sheer coincidence when pieced together with the rest of the evidence?

Our original article on this matter is the top link on Google when you type in 'London bombing' - above BBC, CNN and ABC News, proof of how much attention this article received.

Our suspicions were aroused just hours after the bombing when it was reported by Associated Press that Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had received a warning from the Israeli Embassy not to leave his hotel for a speech he was to give that morning. The location of the speech was right next to the site of one of the bombings.

Despite debunking attempts from much of the establishment press, Associated Press never retracted the story and later Mossad admitted that it was true.

The so-called claim of responsibility for the attack was made by a group that is known to not physically exist and which at best is one guy sitting at a computer posting messages on a forum.

And yet the establishment media still report Al-Qaeda responsibility for the attack as if it were the gospel truth.

Exactly what evidence have we seen to even agree with the contention that four men with rucksack bombs carried out this attack? Four grainy CCTV pictures of dark skinned men with rucksacks? Should we not question this evidence especially when verified witnesses on two of the three trains that were bombed said that the bombs were underneath the train and that they saw no men with rucksacks even in the area?

Questions about the attacks are never ending.

Why was it reported that the explosives used were military in origin but then the story changed to say they were homemade? Can explosive experts not tell the difference or was the story changed for a reason?

Why would a man with an 8-month old baby, another who was only interested in sports, and another who taught disabled children, want to kill themselves, other innocent people and cause so much carnage in the process?

Even the establishment media started speculating that the bombers were duped into killing themselves by someone else.

Why did the cameras on the targeted bus malfunction that day? Why was the bus diverted from its usual route? We personally visited the site of the bus bombing at Tavistock Place and verified that no number 30 bus travels down that road.

What are we to make of claims by Stagecoach bus employees who say that a different group of contractors inspected the CCTV cameras in the days before the bombings and that they took two entire days to carry out tasks which normally take just hours to complete.

What is the reason behind Alan Greenspan's decision to flush nearly $40 billion in liquidity into financial markets two days before the attack? Was this an attempt to preemptively head off a run on the markets? If Greenspan had information about a terror attack then why didn't the people on the trains and buses get the same warning?

Who were the individuals that profited from short-selling the British Pound in the ten days before the attack? The pound fell 6% for no particular reason. Fortunes were made after the pound dropped even further in the aftermath of the attacks. This directly mirrors short selling of United and American Airline stocks in the days before 9/11. These suspicious transactions led directly to the CIA.

Why was an innocent man, Jean Charles de Menezes, shot in the head eight times at Stockwell tube station? Why did the police change their story, from saying Menezes was wearing a heavy jacket to admitting it was a lightweight denim jacket? Why did the media initially report that Menezes was shot in the stomach but then change the story when it was pointed out that it would be stupid to shoot suspected suicide bombers in the very place that the bomb would be.

Was Menezes shot because he knew something about the drills? Menezes was an electrician by trade. Did he have damaging knowledge of why the bombings were reported as an electrical surge for over an hour?

Why did Tony Blair immediately reject a public inquiry into how and why the bombings took place? In Britain, there is a public inquiry for every event, no matter how insignificant, and yet after Britain's biggest tragedy since the blitz, Blair shuts the door. What is he frightened of?

The final nail in the coffin regarding inside involvement emerged when it was admitted that the so-called mastermind of both the 7/7 and 7/21 attacks, Haroon Rashid Aswat, is a British Intelligence Asset.

Terror expert John Loftus told Fox News, "Back in 1999 he came to America. The Justice Department wanted to indict him in Seattle because him and his buddy were trying to set up a terrorist training school in Oregon... we've just learned that the headquarters of the US Justice Department ordered the Seattle prosecutors not to touch Aswat... , apparently Aswat was working for British intelligence."

The mastermind of the London bombings was under the direction and protection of MI6. How much more obvious does it need to be that criminal elements of the intelligence agencies were involved in this attack.

END OF STORY


For more information on the manufactured terrorism going on around the world, visit:

Infowars.com
Prisonplanet.com
911review.com
Serendipity.li

The fake terrorist attacks we see almost every day on the news, including all the daily bombings in Iraq (by supposed "insurgents" who happened to have huge stockpiles of explosives for the past 2 years straight), including the Bali bombings and the London bombings, are all lame efforts to scare everyone into submission into supporting the fake "War on Terror" (used to disguise and justify seizing and controlling oil-rich middle-eastern land and to develop hatred against Muslims and Arab-looking people so that people will be more willing to join the army and kill such innocent people).

By Paul Joseph & Alex Jones 21 November05

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Bali bomber? Azahari dead?
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Police 'had role in' Bali blasts
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Embrace nuclear weapons: The Un-Australian?
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INDONESIA: US to resume military ties
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CIA informer tells court of Bashir's visits?
The key witness in the trial of Indonesian teacher and cleric Abu Bakar Bashir has told a Jakarta court that Bashir once inspected graduating troops at a terrorist training camp?

Sept 11 US false flag operation poses $130,000 challenge
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100's of thousands of Aussies cancel holidays in Indonesia?
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Fool me twice 1-20 -Official release (BALI BOMBINGS/ETimor) Exposing the Australian government's lies about the East Timor massacres, the cover-up of the Bali bombings (including '93 WTC attack) and subsequent anti-terror legislation forced through parliament.

The Truth About Bali Bombings Part 1 REMIX Part One + Two: Que Bono. Who Benefited? The Bali Bombings were a direct US-Israeli response to the growing Peace marches and Anti War Movement in Australia that was ballooning at an alarming rate after 9-11 and after Bush announced he was waging illegal invasions. It also very quickly secured Indonesia's and Australia's subservience to the US and cemented involvement in the US led War on Terror, and subsequent illegal invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Part TWO: Who really Benefited from the Bali Bombings?

PART THREE: The Investigation(s) Or lack thereof The Primary man at the centre of the Bali investigations got warned off the scent by US Ambassador to Indonesia..

Part 4: The Truth About Bali Bombings Eye witness Testimony and memorial dedication..

Indonesian police set-up Jakarta man?
"Who would blow themselves up when there is no war? Who would give up their life for no struggle? The CIA would! Why? Because the CIA are at war with the world, and they aim to cause terror and slam the Iron fist of fear into the community in the Asian pacific region."

See Links History From 2002:

AFP: The unlikely CRIMINAL
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SMS was Keelty's first choice: Alleged bomber
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Community backs candidate wife's Bali claims
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Howard and Downer to blame for Jakarta bombing: JI?
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US Deputy Sheriff dismisses Indonesian comment that US king of terrorists
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Keep the bastards honest: Publicity keeps an eye on ethics?
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GI divided: Australian experts
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Monday, November 14, 2005

Revealed: UK wartime torture camp

UK: The British government operated a secret torture centre during the second world war to extract information and confessions from German prisoners, according to official papers which have been unearthed by the Guardian.

More than 3,000 prisoners passed through the centre, where many were systematically beaten, deprived of sleep, forced to stand still for more than 24 hours at a time and threatened with execution or unnecessary surgery.

Some are also alleged to have been starved and subjected to extremes of temperature in specially built showers, while others later complained that they had been threatened with electric shock torture or menaced by interrogators brandishing red-hot pokers.

The centre, which was housed in a row of mansions in one of London's most affluent neighbourhoods, was carefully concealed from the Red Cross, the papers show. It continued to operate for three years after the war, during which time a number of German civilians were also tortured.

A subsequent assessment by MI5, the Security Service, concluded that the commanding officer had been guilty of "clear breaches" of the Geneva convention and that some interrogation methods "completely contradicted" international law.

On at least one occasion, an MI5 officer noted in a newly declassified report, a German prisoner was convicted of war crimes and hanged on the basis of a confession which he had signed after he was, at the very least, "worked on psychologically". A number of people who appeared as prosecution witnesses at war crimes trials are also alleged to have been tortured.

The official papers, discovered in the National Archives, depict the centre as a dark, brutal place which caused great unease among senior British officers. They appear to have turned a blind eye partly because of the usefulness of the information extracted, and partly because the detainees were thought to deserve ill treatment.

Not all the torture centre's secrets have yet emerged, however: the Ministry of Defence is continuing to withhold some of the papers almost 60 years after it was closed down.

By Ian Cobain posted 14 November 05

Bizarro Basra

Two special-ops Brits in wigs, 'traditional Arab dress' – and a car full of explosives?

UK report shows Iraq war illegal: former defence chief

Ruling Class Lord Goldsmith said a final UN resolution may be needed, that hard evidence of Iraqi non-compliance may have been required, and the UK could face sanction by international courts.

The real reason behind the push for a "Police State"

So that is what is happening. The US and UK are becoming the new Nazi empire, and the majority of people who believe the lies coming out of their TV sets are supporting this crazy Anglo-American invasion of Arab countries, all based on lies invented by the war profiteers...

Related:

The Secret Rulers of the World - New Link

The Secret Rulers of the World Links

Monday, October 31, 2005

A long stretch

UK: As head of prisons for England and Wales, Martin Narey tried to improve life for people on the inside. One of those inmates was Erwin James, then serving a life sentence. Now, as Narey leaves his job after a career spanning three decades, the two men meet and discuss the many problems still facing Britain's jails.

'Can I get you something to drink? Tea? Coffee?" I'm sitting at a small conference table at the back of Martin Narey's bright and spacious office in the heart of the new Home Office in London. Narey, wearing a smart striped shirt and matching tie, is friendly and courteous, almost disconcertingly so.

"Er, coffee please," I say.

Though this is the first time we have met, Martin Narey and I go back a long way. He joined the prison service as a fast-track prison governor in 1982. Two years later, I was sentenced to life. It would have been impossible to believe then that one day I would make this visit as a journalist or that the man with overall responsibility for all the prisons in England and Wales, second only to the home secretary, would be making me a cup of coffee.

As he makes my drink, I glance around at the pictures on his walls. Most are photographs, taken during his career, but pride of place goes to a huge painting on canvas. "That won first prize at the Koestlers," he explains as he hands me my mug of coffee. The Koestler Awards is a national arts competition held annually for prisoners and patients of special hospitals. The picture is of a group of prisoners and visitors facing each other across a row of tables. I would guess it acts as a reminder of the essential meaning of prison to all who enter the room. "Judge Stephen Tumin bought it and presented it to me as a gift," says Narey. "It will be going with me when I leave."

After a career in the prison service that has spanned three decades, Narey will soon be hanging his painting in a different office. Appointed as chief executive of the children's charity Barnardo's, his new post will be added to a heady list of career achievements - director general of the prison service, honorary doctorate from Sheffield Hallam University, gold medal from the Chartered Management Institute, permanent secretary and first ever chief executive of the merged probation and prison service (the National Offender Management Service , or Noms). Narey has been responsible for a budget of several billion pounds, a staff of around 50,000 and the lives of more than 77,500 prisoners. Not bad for a boy who was one of nine children born to working-class parents and who describes himself as having been a "waster" at the Middlesbrough comprehensive where he got "absolutely crap" A-levels.

That Narey should come across as a decent bloke is appropriate, given he is the man who introduced the "decency agenda" into prisons. I remember well his speech to a prison service conference in 2001 when he threatened to resign as director general because he was "not prepared to continue to apologise for failing prison after failing prison". It was the first time during my 20 years inside that I had heard someone at the top acknowledge that the prison experience could be deeply harmful to prisoners. From the distance of a prison landing it was hard to tell how sincere he was, but it sounded good and generated new hope for a lot of people inside.

Ever since the Conservative government largely ignored the recommendations of the Woolf report into the Strangeways riot in 1990, it seemed to those inside that prisons had been neglected by those in power. Over the years, I saw how overuse and limited investment kept the prison system from ever achieving any significant positive impact on the lives of most of those in its custody. Here, it appeared, was someone who wanted to change things. He was motivated by what he saw when he first joined the prison service and had to work on the landings of Lincoln prison as a uniformed officer.

"Lincoln stank," he says. "It was filthy, overcrowded, three to a cell slopping out. I saw prisoners in the segregation unit routinely slapped, it was constant low-level abuse. It was a horrible, horrible place. If you wanted to do any good you had to do it by stealth. The POA [Prison Officers' Association] ran the place. Assistant governors were derided. I can remember getting a real load of abuse for being seen carrying a Guardian."

Beyond having the wrong type of newspaper under his arm, Narey has rarely been seen to make mistakes. But the latest figures again show prisons holding record numbers and the system stretching to bursting. How does he feel about that? "If I've got one regret as I leave this job after seven years, it's that this morning 16,000 men woke up in prison conditions which are simply gross. Overcrowding just saps away any good we might be able to do. My personal view is that we do not need to lock up 77,000 people." He looks at the tape recorder and says emphatically: "Although I possibly did everything I could to make prisons better places, the fundamental problem is that we lock up too many. We have to reduce the prison population."

This is not what Charles Clarke is saying. While, as home secretary, David Blunkett had planned to cap prison numbers at 80,000, his successor has said there is no need. Narey announced his resignation as Noms chief last July - is a lack of warmth between him and Clarke the reason he is leaving? "Not at all," he says, "Charles and I had a glass of wine just the other night."

With so much going against it, then, is he of the view that prison doesn't work? "Well, it's unfashionable to say it, but I still think that in the right circumstances, it can work. It can be a refuge from drug abuse. It can give people a chance to get their lives in order. If someone has to go to prison, if we can take them in, give them some education, demonstrate to them that they are not stupid, make them employable. And then if we can perhaps find them a job and a home, I think that could change some lives for the better."

What about children in prison? "I think we lock up ludicrous numbers of children in this country, nearly 3,000. If we could conceive of children's prisons, not as prisons but as secure colleges, and see them as a residential experience where we could concentrate on the individual and try to sort their lives out, then they might go out with a chance."

Narey's tenure as head of prisons has not been without controversy. In 2002 he was accused of treating Jeffrey Archer unfairly when he ordered him back to a closed prison after the former peer had attended a dinner party while on a community visit. "Archer behaved appallingly," he says when I remind him. "I defended the fact that we let him go to his mother's funeral un-cuffed and again later when we let him work at the Theatre Royal from his open prison."

His attitude changed when Archer was photographed in an Italian restaurant having lunch with a prison officer and a police officer. The next day the prison officer resigned, after 30 years of service. "I believe Jeffrey Archer invited that photographer to get a story to help publicise his book," he says, "and in doing so wasted the career of a good officer."

I ask about the special powers invoked to prevent Maxine Carr, the former girlfriend of the Soham killer, Ian Huntley, from being released on an electronic tag. Was that fair? "Carr was treated appallingly in relation to anyone else who might have committed the same crime," he says. "But if we had let her out using home- detention curfew, there was a danger that it would gravely have undermined public confidence in it. We let out over 100,000 people on HDC and we've got to have the public's backing. I spent a lot of time worrying about the press reaction to her release. Her own release plan was breathtakingly naive. She was planning to go and live with a relative. By the time she was released we had managed to find her a safer place."

Preventing prison suicides has been one of Martin Narey's preoccupations over the last few years. He thought in-cell television would reduce the number of self-inflicted deaths in prison but sadly that has not been the case. The rate of such deaths remains at an average of around two per week. Last year's total equalled the previous record of 95.

I ask him how he felt about David Blunkett's comment that he was going to "crack open a bottle of champagne" when Harold Shipman was found hanged in his cell in 2004. "I was distressed and terribly disappointed. I don't think he honestly meant it, but it was a shocking, dreadful thing to say."

Will he feel liberated when he leaves this office for the last time? "At the moment I'm feeling a little sad. Every day brings messages from people wishing me well, including from ex-prisoners," he says, nodding at the cards littering his desk. "Look," he says, "I've been doing this for 23 years. It's seven years since I became DG; no one has done the job for that long. I start at 6am and I'm rarely home before 8.30pm to 9pm. Despite my haggard appearance, I'm only 50. I can't do this for another 10 years so I'm going to do something very different."

So that's a yes, then? "Yes, it will free me up a little. You can't be in this job and not support the home secretary. You work for politicians. That's the deal. We have a civil service that has to serve the government of the day. And yes, that means that I have to argue and justify things with which I haven't always agreed, and I don't have to do that anymore.

By Erwin James posted 31 October 05

Related:

Prison officers responsible for smuggling into jails
Fresh Home Office research also confirmed the extent of abuse in prisons yesterday, and suggested that prison staff were one route for drugs to get in. The study found that smuggling by uniformed or civilian staff was thought to be "substantially increasing" the availability of heroin and cannabis behind bars.

Plea to release Biggs rejected by ruling-class
UK: Home Secretary Charles Clarke has rejected a plea by Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs to be released from prison on compassionate grounds.

Prisons chief hits at 'gross' overcrowding
Martin Narey, a civil servant who has served every Home Secretary since 1989, highlights statistics showing that thousands of mentally ill inmates and a record number of children now constitute a significant part of the prison population.

Clarke faces a fight over probation overhaul
UK: The home secretary, Charles Clarke, yesterday confirmed his plans to abolish 42 local probation boards and instead create "a vibrant mixed economy" in the management of 200,000 offenders in the community.

The devilish advocate
UK: The devilish advocate John Hirst taught himself law in jail, and has never lost a case against the prison service. Erwin James meets up again with the former 'lifer' who won inmates the right to vote.

Racism still rife in jails, five years after the murder of Zahid Mubarek UK: The prison service will be strongly criticised for continued racial discrimination against ethnic minority inmates by the official report from the Zahid Mubarek inquiry.

UK prisoners should get vote, European court rules
UK: Laws setting out who can and cannot take part in elections are to be rewritten after the European court of human rights today ruled in favour of giving British prisoners the right to vote.

Prison plan 'will cut reoffending'
UK: A network of community prisons to help cut the number of criminals who re-offend has been outlined by Home Secretary Charles Clarke.

Clarke to scrap plan to peg prison numbers
UK: The home secretary, Charles Clarke, has said he is to abandon his predecessor's aspiration of pegging the prison population in England and Wales at 80,000. He will also drop plans to put a legal obligation on the judges' sentencing guidelines council to take the size of the prison population - currently 77,000 and rising - into account when laying down the "going rate" for major crimes.

Crowded jails 'boosting suicides'
UK: The chief inspector of prisons warned that an overcrowding crisis in Britain's jails was leading to an increase in prisoner suicides.

Chief justice calls for new approach to law and order
UK: The retiring [ruling class] lord chief justice, Lord Woolf, made a passionate plea for a new approach to law and order which would see a major shift away from punishment towards the solution of problems which generate crime.

Britain's only prison ship ends up on the beach
UK: The last inmates have departed and a skeleton staff is left guarding Britain's only prison ship - in case anyone is minded to break in rather than out.

Throw away the key
The one profession to get results on recidivism has been sacrificed to Labour's desire to lock up criminals in private prisons.

Judges' misdeeds will remain secret
UK: Judges who are disciplined for bad behaviour will not have the findings against them made public under a complaints regime to be launched next year.

Prisoner total rises 15% in six years
England and Wales are continuing to jail offenders at a higher rate than any other major country in western Europe, it emerged today. New research indicates that the government's use of prison as its main tool of penal policy has increased by 15% since 1999.

CPS drops prosecution over death in custody
UK: The family of Roger Sylvester, who died after being restrained by police officers, yesterday expressed their disappointment at a decision by the Crown Prosecution Service not to prosecute any of the officers involved.

Prisoner's cell death
UK: A prisoner was found hanged in his cell last week, the Home Office said, fuelling criticism over the soaring number of suicides in custody.

Plans for five new 'superprisons'
Recent figures show a total of 75,550 prisoners were held in 139 jails in England and Wales, nudging up the previous record of April 2004 by just six inmates.

Prison has lost its way - report
UK: Bristol prison is suffering wide-ranging problems because of inconsistent management, the Chief Inspector of Prisons has said.

Row over acupuncture for prisoners
UK: The Home Office has responded to criticism over prison inmates who are being offered acupuncture on the NHS in order to relieve stress.

Number of prisoners sent back to jail trebles
UK: The number of prisoners being sent back to jail after release has nearly trebled in the past five years, according to a report published today.

Top judge says crowded prisons cannot break cycle of crime
UK: Reoffending rates after a prison sentence are at an "unacceptably high level" and the failure of the criminal justice system to stop prisoners reoffending should shock the public, England's top judge, [Ruling Class] Lord Woolf, said last week.

All the World's a Prison: History
No doubt many of my readers, even those who are well-educated or widely read, think that the prison -- the place where dark deeds are darkly answered[2] -- is an ancient institution, a barbaric hold-over from barbaric times. In fact, the prison is of relatively recent origin, and this tells us a great deal about the pretentions and realities of modern times, and the wisdom and high degree of development of the ancients.

Decade after inspector left in disgust, report tells of filth
UK: Dirty, mice-infested cells, high levels of self-harm, and widespread bullying over drugs and medications were just some of the damning findings of a report into conditions at Holloway, Britain's largest women's prison.

Most women 'should not be jailed'
Women make up 6% of the prison population in England and Wales. Imprisonment of women should be "virtually abolished", a prison reform group has said.

Youth 'murdered for officers' pleasure'
UK: An Asian teenager was murdered by a white racist after they were placed in the same cell as part of a game to fulfil the "perverted pleasure" of prison officers, a public inquiry heard on Friday.

Deaths in isolation as prison segregation increases
The use of segregation [solitary confinement] of prisoners as punishment has been increasing recently in Australia, the US, and the UK. Segregation can be used for protection or punishment, but in both cases it results in extreme psychological stress. An indication that segregation is being over-used is the appearance of deaths in custody from suicide of those placed in segregation.

Inquest blames jail for overdose death
UK: An inquest jury returned a verdict itemising a catalogue of faults at Styal prison in Cheshire, concluding that the prison's "failure of duty of care" contributed to the death of Sarah Campbell, 18, who took an overdose of tablets on the first day of her three-year sentence.

Put in the way of self-harm in a place intended to protect others
UK: Sarah Campbell, 18, spent the last hours of her life in the segregation unit of Styal prison, Cheshire. "The seg", as those places are referred to, used to be known as "the block", short for punishment block. [ Seg is a bullshit word for Punishment, Solitary Confinement, Torture, Mental Illness, Self-Harm, Human Rights Abuse and that is State Terror.]

Britain 'sliding into police state'
The home secretary, Charles Clarke, is transforming Britain into a police state, one of the country's former leading anti-terrorist police chiefs [false flag police chiefs] said yesterday.

UK solitary confinement
UK: Segregation units are prisons within prisons - the places where the most unchecked brutality is meted out to prisoners. In recent years conditions in high security segregation units have deteriorated, and the use of long-term segregation as a control mechanism has increased.

Inquiry must root out prison racists
UK: It is difficult to imagine a more brutal murder than that of Zahid Mubarek. The 19-year-old was clubbed to death by his cellmate at Feltham Young Offender Institution in the early hours of 21 March 2000. He was due to be released just a few hours later.

Prison suicides soar as jails hire 'babysitters'
UK: Prison officers are being taken off suicide watch and replaced by unqualified 'babysitters' because the system is overwhelmed by an epidemic of self-harm.

Plan to sell off juvenile jails as job lot
UK: The government is to put out to tender all its dedicated juvenile jails that hold children under 18 in a departure in Whitehall's privatisation programme.

Failure to sack 'racist' prison staff condemned
UK: Two prison officers suspended for racism are still on full pay three years after a stash of Nazi memorabilia, neo-fascist literature and Ku Klux Klan-inspired 'nigger-hunting licences' was found in a police raid on their home.

Report slams 'unjust' jailing of women on remand
UK: Six out of 10 women sent to jail while they await trial are acquitted or given a non-custodial sentence, a report published today reveals. Introducing the report, Lady Kennedy QC calls for a complete review of the use of remand and bail for women saying it is "inhumane and unjust".

Concern as UK prison suicides hit record level
UK: More prisoners took their own lives in English jails in August than in any other month since records began, prison reformers said today.

End of years of despair as Holloway closes its doors
But now Holloway prison in north London - where Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be executed in Britain, was hanged in 1955 - has been earmarked for closure, along with several other women's prisons, which have been hit by a spate of suicides.

How detox and self-help brought suicide jail back from the brink
UK: Six suicides in 12 months made Styal jail notorious and the Prisons Ombudsman criticised the prison and its staff for serious failures. But things are changing.

Belmarsh detainees consider suicide, says freed man
UK: The first of the Muslim detainees released from Belmarsh high security prison after being held on suspicion of terrorism has told the Guardian his fellow prisoners are suffering such severe mental problems that they constantly consider suicide.

Suicides and unrest have soared, admits Home Office
UK:The already overcrowded prison population is set to go on rising and will top 80,000 within the next three years, a senior Home Office civil servant warned yesterday.

England tops the EU in imprisonment
England and Wales jail more offenders per capita than any other European, Union country, according to new figures.

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

Australia, the International Image and disintegration of human-rights

The continued disintegration of human rights in Australia will leave no one immune.

The international image of Australia is, by now, surely under question, if not from the governments of the international community, then from the organisations such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the United Nations. And not least from the citizens of the world who watch the news, seeing Australia but thinking South Africa, or Communist Russia.

I was pondering developments over the last ten years in Australian politics this morning, thinking; where did this degradation of our rights as citizens begin? To answer that question fully (and truthfully), we must look back to the beginning (for white 'settlement' in the country); but in terms of recent history, I believe it had to do with jobs.

There is, of course, that seedier beginning which needs mentioning; the indigenous Australia has long suffered at the hands of the government and 'white' Australia, and we (apart from the indigenous people, of course), have thought little of it, collectively at least. But, to quote Winston Churchill, we could sum up, quite succinctly, the huge setbacks the aboriginal population has suffered since the beginning, since Churchill's viewpoint played such an important role in the world's views, and confirmed Australia's view at the time:

"I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place."

Now, in Australia to a greater degree, but to the US, the UK and other countries to a lesser (or less obvious) degree, the same dog status is being reapplied to the lower class citizens (and strengthened against the indigenous everywhere), those with heritage in the mid-east, and Asia, and Africa, those with poor backgrounds, and to an even greater degree, the original owners of this country.

A quick look at the recent past will show us many occasions where the Australian government has shunned or rejected the covenants of the United Nations, from maritime law regarding the Tampa crisis to the indefinite imprisonments of refugees and their children, to mandatory sentencing for aboriginal children in the northern territory and western Australia - where a teenager can be locked up for years just for stealing a chocolate bar from a shop.

Add to these publicly accepted methods of infringement and disregard for human rights the lesser known and complete media blank on such stories as the genocide of Aborigines through forced birth control, the arrests and harassments and murder of children in the Block - Sydney by armed police and the refusal of pay from the government to Aboriginal workers of the 50s,60s and 70s (effectively turning what was tacitly regarded as slave labour to an actuality).

These are just off the top of my head. To think of injustices committed in the name of Australia, and more specifically, the Australian government, requires no leaps of faith, no taking one's mind back and sorting through the politics to perhaps find a silent injustice - the reality and regularity of such events are such that the average Australian forgets them almost as soon as they occur - for the little they are explored in the media. We need only to be told the police were 'just doing their jobs' to accept the situation and go back to our lives.

It is less like a broad representation of the novel '1984' (as in other countries such as the UK and the US), and more like a directly quoted passage of the script. We don't know our enemy; the irony is we rely on our enemy to tell us that important information.

Now with the new legislation - generously provided by one dissident minister, against the wishes (read 'demands') of the prime minister, set to become a reality in the very near future, Australia faces a further risk - and a further and even more serious deterioration of human-rights - because this time it will affect all citizens (though in reality, it will affect only all citizens unconnected or directly disconnected to the present government).

This is (so far) the point to which freedom has regressed in Australia, during the term of the Howard government. But I want to take it back a little here - to see how it began, because one thing people are not discussing in or about Australia at the moment that I can see as relevant is this; the laws may be changing to disregard the powers and rights and freedom of the people, but
Mr Howard is not the one who will be responsible for enforcing these laws. That is in the hands of people - state and federal police, ASIO officers, the military. Like all areas of industry in a free country, they could rebel, with a strike. They could stand up and say, 'enough is enough. We will not do it.'

Maybe they will.


Chances are though, they will do their jobs, as John Howard envisages it. Indeed, it seems they have already started along these lines with the recent deportation of Scott Parkins. People often ask of military regimes, such as those in Chile or Iraq, 'Why do the soldiers do it? If afterwards they tell us they were just doing their jobs, and they feared for their own lives, if they are all the same in their thoughts, surely they could have rebelled?'

The thing is, people could rebel, they could en-masse say 'No', but one major things stops them - money (translated as hunger). If not for themselves, for their families. In the past 10 years, John Howard has taken a functioning and purposeful health and social welfare system and turned it on its head. He has brought the working community to his side, telling them that welfare is a drain on their taxes, and that there is work, if people would do it.

He has made the welfare recipient a dirty dole bludger rather than an unfortunately unemployed citizen, and, on the opposite side of that coin, he has made the lowest socio-economic demographic feel dirty and worthless, and turned them against the employed 'elite', abandoning Centrelink for abject poverty.

This has served 2 purposes; the first to ensure that people want work, whatever the cost, whatever the work. The second has been to bring down official unemployment figures (measured by the number claiming unemployment benefits) to an all time low, at the same time as sending the unofficial unemployment figures up perhaps even higher than they were under the previous Labour government. In addition, it has put a further economic strain on the employed who have unemployed family or friends which are no longer claiming unemployment benefits (and yet, ironically, the employed are still paying taxes - higher than ever).

When people are desperate, they will do desperate work, and incidentally, government work is the most lucrative for the uneducated and educated alike, out of any industry in the country. He has also systematically brought down the once many safeguards in the commercial labour market put there initially to protect the worker. There are many examples, but a recent one is the removal of the laws surrounding unfair dismissal. It puts greater power in the hands of the employer, less in the hands of the worker. A person can be fired without reason, which provides a more transient job market and more desperate part-timers, looking for enough for next month's rent.

How attractive then, would the prospect of working for the government be in these terms, where the pay is high and guaranteed, as long as you can put your moral standards aside for long enough to feed your family? Its not yet reached the Pinochet or Saddam Hussein level of government, but some would argue it is well within the boundaries of the current Russian government already (barring size and colonies); nevertheless it is fast approaching such dictatorial leadership.

These were the first steps in a tyrannical government, set in place almost 10 years ago. The effective dictator thinks forward, and plans well ahead. That is the man that John Howard is; the early attempts to dismiss him as a fool were as foolish as those same sentiments directed at George W Bush. The only difference is that the US president pays men like Cheney and Rumsfeld to think for him - Howard does it by himself.

Australia is a much smaller country globally, and plays a lot less influence over its neighbours than does the US or even the UK, (though what influence it does have it uses to bully and intimidate - see East Timor), but what this means to Australians is a dictator's penchant for control and power is directed inwards, towards those within the country.

Australians need to join together, united against their government, if there is to be any hope, not divided against one another, as it has happened, (beginning officially with our treatment of Indigenous Australia, and reaching now to the poor and the foreign-born.) Unofficially, it has also been those things, but smaller differences have played a part in the rifts between us too, from the differences between the Labour and Liberal voters (or democrat, greens etc), between the logger and the environmentalist, between the city and the country. These divisions are there because your government made it so. Its time to put aside those differences (for a while) and put your voices forward, because soon, if you are not for the government, it will consider you 'seditiously' against it.

By Derek Lane Wednesday October 19, 2005 at 11:53 PM

The Secret Rulers of the World - New Link
Related:

Bush, God and Transnationals
The tragedy (for the entire world) is not that Bush is delusional, mentally unstable and intellectually challenged - that is well known. Rather, it is that he remains as commander in chief of the USA - placed in that position by commercial and other financial interests.

Stanhope flags doubts on 'hasty' terrorism bill
ACT Chief Minister Jon Stanhope says he may refuse to sign off on parts of the Federal Government's hasty terrorism bill.

Unfair Industrial Laws: It's up to you!
When the WorkChoices legislation was before Parliament, GetUp members sent emails to Senators Barnaby Joyce and Steven Fielding asking them to stay strong and independent. This was followed up with a national telephone campaign.

Our human rights are poor: judge
Australia's reputation as a human rights champion [?] had been so tarnished in recent years that it could be called a wolf in sheep's clothing, the retiring High Court justice Michael McHugh said yesterday.

Question Everything: Worry, be alert and alarmed!
BELIEF in the future is perhaps the most important value for a free society. It is what makes so many interested in getting an education, or investing in a project, or being nice to their neighbours. If we think nothing can improve or that the world is coming to an end, we don't work hard for a better and more civilised future. And we will all be miserable.

It's not the terrorists' it's us
While we watch the latest round of appalling violence and mayhem spilling across our screens it is worth considering its cause.

Spots and Stripes
It is well known that John Howard, infamous lackey and liar, is devoid of anything that could be remotely regarded as masculine or manly; the draconian measures he has implemented to 'secure' Australia against the terrorist bogeyman are astounding.

ABC: Inside the Insiders
These shows demonstrate how even our best mainstream news/current affair shows are effectively another corrupt decoy for career politicians (and the rich they serve) to legislate their way to further wealth... via media cronyism.

Australia: Cop Watch - drugs in the force
Taking the illegal drugs leads to the officers associating with drug suppliers, stealing drugs, stealing money and supplying friends, and providing confidential information to the drug suppliers.

Exporting the death penalty - Bali 9
Did the AFP believe the Bali 9 would get an 'on the spot' fine or something? ...and had observers present during one of the drug raids by Indonesian police claim they have - "ended co-operation with Indonesian police investigating the Bali Nine because they could face the firing squad if convicted."

News on David Hicks:
Hicks is being used as a 'pawn' for prime Meanster john hoWARD's war crimes against humanity. HoWARd has also been linked to his co-offenders, tony bliar, and george w bushit's, US Military Industrial regime.

Victorian cops the most corrupt in Australia
A weekly round up of news on the cops. Former Australian Crime Commission Chair says Victorian cops are the most corrupt in Australia -- so they are given extra powers -- and so Melburnians can be patrolled by the army -- and have business deals with McDonalds. Top cops in NSW cleared after investigation -- but another one charged with child slavery. Western Australian police officer leaves the force under secrecy -- and Canberra hospital nurse tells the Federal Police to bugger off.

What is Happening to Australian Democracy
"Australia nominally has all the right democratic institutions--regular elections, parliamentary sovereignty, ministerial responsibility, an independent judiciary, federalism, a non-partisan and expert public service and a free press.

Hundreds attempt self-harm in detention
Nearly 900 immigration detainees have tried to harm themselves in the past three years, Immigration Department figures reveal.

The clock is ticking: Aboriginal Leaders
Aboriginal leaders say only immediate action will remedy the appalling state of remote communities in the Northern Territory, writes.

Association for the Prevention of Torture
The Optional Protocol requires 20 ratifications to enter into force. All States Parties to the UN Convention against Torture should seriously consider ratifying the OPCAT as soon as possible. National Institutions and others promoting the human rights of people deprived of their liberty need to be informed of their potential role as national preventive mechanisms under the OPCAT.

Monday, September 12, 2005

A life again

UK: Last week, I met the man dubbed "America's toughest sheriff". Joe Arpaio, sheriff of Maricopa county, Arizona, was in Britain for a week to see if he had anything to learn from a criminal justice system that he regards as scarcely less luxurious than the Hilton hotel.

The sheriff is famous in the US for his uncompromising attitude to those who break the law. His "tent city" prison in the Arizona desert - a permanent, high-fenced canvas compound - holds 2,000 prisoners in 130-degree heat without air conditioning.

He puts men, women and children in chain gangs and uses them to clean the streets. His prison meals, he boasts, cost no more than the equivalent of 10p a head, and - a particular favourite punishment of the sheriff - he makes all his prisoners wear pink underwear. After all I had read and heard about him, I was, to be honest, a little apprehensive about our meeting, which took place at a programme for young offenders in east London. I expected an abrasive, unapproachable man who would have no time for the likes of me. Instead I found a charming character with a solid handshake and a ready smile.

Arpaio is not about to apologise for his methods. What did he think his chain gangs achieved, I asked him. "When good folks drive by, I want mothers to be able to say to their kids: 'Look at those bad people, honey. Behave or you'll end up just like them.'" Yet he admitted that arrests in Maricopa county remained steady at what to me sounds an alarming 300 a day, and that he had no evidence that his policies, many of which have been condemned by Amnesty International, had any reductive effect on reoffending rates.

As far as I could tell, his only justification for the systematic humiliation and maltreatment of prisoners was the fact that he was responding to public will. "The public is my boss," he said. "I serve the public." On that ticket, he has been re-elected three times and served for 13 years.

I'm not convinced of the merits of Sheriff Arpaio's way. Last year, after serving 20 years of a life sentence in prison, I was released on parole. After a passage of two full decades, which took me from a standpoint of self-loathing and worthlessness to a position where I can look myself in the mirror and feel a measure of self-respect, I know that he is wrong.

Of course, many victims of crime would be only too glad for their tormentors to get a taste of Arpaio justice - and if no prisoners were ever released, it might not be such a cause for concern. But since all but two or three dozen will one day be somebody's neighbour somewhere, it seems sensible to me to ensure that all prisoners are treated in a way that tries to ensure they are better equipped and motivated to lead responsible, law-abiding lives once they are back on the streets. Considering where I'd come from, to end up having this conversation with the sheriff was almost unbelievable. I'm sure he would have struggled to grasp the magnitude of the journey that had taken me from condemned man to writer for a national newspaper.

What many people fail to understand is that convincing prisoners of their own worthlessness, which the Arpaio method is designed to do, is rarely necessary. When I walked through the prison gates at the beginning of my sentence, I knew I was the proverbial scum of the earth. At my trial I had experienced the full force of public condemnation and disgrace for my crimes.

I was a guilty man, sentenced to mandatory life. The journey back to achieving a worthwhile life on the other side of the prison wall was going to be a long and difficult one. Further castigation and degradation were unnecessary. Not that the first prison officers I met as a freshly sentenced convict saw it that way.

I remember the encounter well. It was early evening in the reception area of one of the biggest prisons in London. I was locked in a small cubicle waiting to be "processed" when the shout rang out. "Next!" I had no idea it was aimed at me. There was more shouting and swearing, but I didn't know who it was directed at. All I knew was it was making me nervous.

Suddenly there was a tremendous rapping on the cubicle door. "Are you still fucking in there or what?" With my heart racing, I said yes, I was. The door opened and a laughing officer directed me to the front of a large counter with the baton he had obviously used to bang on the door.

"Right, strip," said one of his colleagues. All three wore their caps with peaks slashed. When I was naked, an officer called for someone to bring me some kit, at which another prisoner appeared and handed me a too-small striped shirt, oversized denims, ill-fitting shoes, a pair of socks and some huge white underpants before retreating back to his room. Self-consciously, I dressed as fast as I could, then was ordered back into the cubicle to wait to be escorted to the wing.

The whole procedure had taken no more than a couple of hours, but the way I was treated in that short time determined my attitude towards prison officers for years to come. They made it clear that the prison was their domain and that I was going to be tolerated at best. No doubt Sheriff Arpaio would have approved. But I felt like one of the captured humans in Planet of the Apes, fearful and wary of my captors, who thought of me as another species entirely.

My first year in prison was spent in 23-hour-a-day solitary bangup. As well as having to face up to the wrong I had done, my lack of education, social skills and work skills meant that I had massive failings to overcome. I wanted to make progress, but I did not know where to start. To counter my feelings of helplessness and reduce my vulnerability, I exercised rigorously in my cell. Intimidation and violence between prisoners, during the brief periods in which we were unlocked, were widespread, while the culture of the prison officers was resolutely hard-line. As prisoners we held our defences high and trusted nobody. I was in no doubt that survival was my main concern. It was no place to inspire a man to better himself.

As the years passed, however, I learned that prisons were full of conflicting forces. A prison governor I met at my second jail, for example, told me: "My job is to get you back out there and functioning properly. That's what prison is for." These were powerful words for me to hear, and even now they ring clear in my memory. Though most of his officers would have disagreed, there were always a few who understood that prisoners were still human, and that all it took was a little respect and consideration to get the best out of us (they would invariably find themselves nicknamed "Care Bear" or "Mother Teresa" by their colleagues).

And gradually, as time passed, I came to believe that it was possible to become a better man than I had been. A couple of years into my sentence, a well-meaning professional persuaded me that I was capable of being educated; seven years later, with the support of various prison education departments, I had a degree. The instinctive rivalry among captives, endemic hard drug-related activity and the constant negotiating around the self-appointed punishers in the prison staff meant that there was no let-up in the general hostility of the environment for almost all of the 18 years I spent in closed prisons. I think this gave me a good taste of the mental equivalents of Sheriff Arpaio's chain gangs and desert heat, and it convinced me that if we kick people when they are down, we should expect little of value in return.

In 1999, after a series of coincidences and lucky breaks, the chance arose for me to write a column for the Guardian, a weekly account of the reality of prison life, to be called A Life Inside. At this stage I was a life prisoner with at least five years still to serve. I was weary of prison life, but my activities during earlier years had left me well prepared to take advantage of the opportunity.

The reaction of some members of the prison service to this opportunity highlighted the vagaries and absurdities of prison life. Even though, years earlier, when I had expressed an interest in journalism, the Prison Service had supported my application for funding for a course, the authorities in the prison I was in at the time were adamant that it wasn't going to happen. It wasn't until the prisons minister and the head of the prison service gave their personal approval that I was able to proceed.

On one occasion, shortly after I started the column, the governor was showing a visitor round. Stopping at my cell, he introduced the visitor and announced, apparently with some pride, "This is Erwin James. He writes for the Guardian." This emboldened me to ask a question I had been longing to ask of the "number one". I had been saving my prison wages, I told him, and wondered if I might be permitted to buy a word processor. "Oh no, no, no," he said. "The public wouldn't like that." Thankfully, one of his officers went out of his way to make sure I always had a plentiful supply of extra paper.

Six years later, I am a free man on life parole. And this is the last column I will write for G2, though I will continue to write for the paper in other guises. My life is no longer governed by cell walls and bars; now I look out each day on a big sky. With the encouragement of people who were prepared to help rather than hinder, I was able to turn my life around, and I'm grateful to the "do-gooders" whose kindness cancelled out those who, like Arpaio, believe there is merit in "getting tough". As far as I am concerned, I succeeded in making my prison time work in spite of most of what I encountered and not because of it.

Sheriff Arpaio and I parted on good terms with a warm handshake - and an invitation to tour his jails the next time I'm in Maricopa County. I felt, in spite of the chasm between us, that we had forged a mutual respect. But my experience has taught me that a society that offers hope of betterment and genuine rehabilitation to its prisoners is healthier than one that offers no hope at all.

* The Home Stretch and A Life Inside, Erwin James's collections of Guardian columns, are published by Guardian Books

Sheriff Joe Arpaio (in Arizona) is doing it RIGHT!!:

* He has jail meals down to 40 cents a serving and charges the inmates for them.
* He stopped smoking and porno magazines in the jails.
* Took away their weights.
* Cut off all but "G" movies.
* He started chain gangs so the inmates could do free work on county and city projects. Then he started chain gangs for women so he wouldn't get sued for discrimination.
* He took away cable TV until he found out there was a federal court order that required cable TV for jails. So he hooked up the cable TV again but only let in the Disney channel and the weather channel. When asked why the weather channel he replied, so they will know how hot it's gonna be while they are working on my chain gangs.
* He cut off coffee since it has zero nutritional value.
* When the inmates complained, he told them.....this is a good one......"This isn't the Ritz/Carlton. If you don't like it, don't come back."
* He bought Newt Gingrich's lecture series on videotape that he pipes into the jails. When asked by a reporter if he had any lecture series by a Democrat, he replied that a democratic lecture series might explain why a lot of the inmates were in his jails in the first place.

By The Guardian posted 12 September 05

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