BRITAIN & US HIJACK TERROR
1 of IMC UK | 10.09.2002 22:33
The day of September 11, 2001, in London was also a day of peaceful protest against the unethical UK arms industry but will only be remembered for a plane hitting two twin towers taking 2,950 lives in New York.
Few or none of the media will mark the day of the peace protest against the continued support for the weapons industry organised by Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT). Private company DSEI was invited by the government to distance itself from selling arms to Algeria, China, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Kenya and Uganda.
In Algeria, since the 1988 massacres, the brutal attacks on civilians and clashes between governments claim 200 lives a month. (
http://www.hrw.org/report2001/algeria/). Thousands of people have disappeared after arrest by paramilitaries or security forces.
The death of 2,950 people on September 11 in New York was a two-fold catastrophe because the loss of civilian lives and the subsequent revenge attacks used in a propaganda war. The Taleban and Saddam Hussein regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq respectively are creations of the US but is now using those very despotic regimes to subject the poor suffering people to justify yet another unjustifiable attack.
But the war-ravaged people of Afghanistan have lost thousands more people in the continuing war against terrorism since September 11. The phrase coined by the US military, “Collateral damage”, has become commonplace during attempts to capture the elusive leader of the 911 attack Osama Bin Laden or his network. A further twenty-five people reported to have been killed and 80 injured on August 9, 2002 with further car bomb attacks happening summarily over September.
Democracy has been suspended while the war against terrorism allows a bloodthirsty US and the UK ally to bay for yet more Middle Eastern blood in Iraq. This time, there is no UN mandate and the Middle East has condemned it as an act that would open the “gates of hell”.
Even former US president Jimmy Carter says: “There’s no current danger to the US from Baghdad..these unilateral acts and assertions isolate from the very nations needed to join in combating terrorism”. Former UN arms inspector Scott Ridder who has openly condemned the US shares this view.
Real democracy is not an expedient measure introduced when a country has no dissent but the success of a so-called democracy should be judged by its respect of human rights and the rule of law.
Lawyers in the UK have resorted to setting up a special Legal Inquiry Steering Group (LISG) to consider the lawfulness of UK military action in Iraq and the government’s continued disregard of public and international opinions. This court will be formal with a QC publishing an opinion in September for an inquiry due to take place on October 11 at Gray’s Inn Road in London.
Western democracy in the shape of the US power is proving to be disproportionate and contemptible of its own nuclear and biological responsibilities. This extends to the opposition of the International Criminal Court, the Kytoto protocol with the largest environmental abuser being the US, the forceful privatisation of essential utilities made unaffordable along with the inequitable trade and economic tariffs against poor and developing countries held to ransom by the IMF.
Propaganda and the distortion of news particularly relating to war is a disturbing features of a mainstream corporate media promoting the views of a powerful elite at the expense of a powerless many. The same paper that labelled September 11 “the day the world stopped” later revealed that 28,000 people also died of poverty on September 11.
All life is sacred and yet western news media under the influence of corporate giants and governments have clearly defined a lesser value to civilian lives lost through injustice in the east in comparison with the west. US support for Israel and its failure to establish a Palestinian state and the illegal occupation of the territories and the failure to protect the people in Jenin and elsewhere defines US foreign policy.
The media machine also helped the war-ready US President George W Bush and British prime minister Blair to create a climate of panic and revenge by exaggerated claims of 5,000 lives being lost. US newspapers New York Times and US Today subsequently downgraded the figure to 2,950 and the hundreds claimed by Blair was revised to 100.
The oil-rich areas of Iraq and strategically placed Afghanistan have led to the people become the unwitting victims of American imperialism and the US will use any reason to oppose the US in any shape or form to label them as part of the “axis of evil”. But the world, Iraqi civilians and the strong Iraqi Kurdish population abandoned during the Gulf war may not be willing to welcome collaboration with the CIA in a Latin American style Operation Condor in the Middle East. Thousands of people were killed and tortured throughout Latin America.
The now discredited and tyrannical Taleban was a creation of the US CIA and Pakistan’s security services. The same policies are being used to remove democracy and impose neo-liberalism in bankrupt Argentina.
The flouting of international law has also extended to US abusing human rights abuses on its own soil. It was recently forced to reveal the names of thousands of detainees held secretly taken after a challenge brought by civil rights campaigners across the Atlantic. The US has opposed a UN protocol against torture and is currently holding 600 detainees, some British, in US military base Guantanamo Bay where conditions openly breach the Geneva Convention.
The main casualties of September 11 across the world have been immigrants, asylum seekers, anyone engaged in political dissent including those attempting to overthrow despotic governments so would now have led to Nelson Mandela being defined as a terrorist. Non-US friendly governments labelled in the “axis of evil” are targets unless they have established nuclear capability like India and military government of Pakistan.
State terror is not new and dates back to the French Revolution in western democracies. Like Bush who declared "Every nation must know that they are either with us or they are with the terrorists. No nation can pick and choose its terrorist friends,"– one founder of the French Revolution Robespierre suggested revolutionaries took the path of virtue or terror and claimed only the latter would provide true democratic dispositions.
In the UK, state terror is targeting the weak and minorities are being sacrificed to the new altar of revised western democracy. A trial challenging the internment of 11 Middle Eastern men being held under the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 in the UK began at a Special Immigration Appeals Commission on July 17where the non-open court was forced to declare that Britain’s attempts to intern non-British citizens was unlawful on Tuesday July 30. see www.cacc.org.uk for more information.
Civil rights groups including Amnesty, Campaign Against Criminalising Communities, Statewatch, Liberty, concerned people and ordinary campaigners across the UK and abroad welcomed the ruling. Lawyers have now successfully initiated a process to protect asylum seekers and others involved in political dissent from the UK’s unacceptable and disproportionate anti-terrorism measures.
Historically the UK was one of the first countries to ratify the European Court of Human Rights in 1951 after World War II but has only recently adopted the Human Rights Act into English law in 2000.
Derogation from the Human Rights Act was only possible after the UK declared a “public state of emergency that affected the life of the whole nation”. The Special Appeals Commission accepted this statement even though the British government has produced no evidence to justify the unprecedented move following September 11.
Economic interests continue to be the vanguard of US politics and UK politics particularly foreign policy. The US is currently attempting to block a human rights appeal in Indonesia against oil-giant Exxon Mobil Corp for human rights abuses because it could risk jeopardising co-operation on counter-terrorism measures.
Europe wants evidence before it is willing to support any attack in Iraq and the Middle East is opposed. Russia and China are unlikely to support the fanaticism being paraded by the US and UK. The increasing isolation of these two countries, the largest arms exporters in the world, may well lead to their own citizens asking who does control the world’s nuclear and biological arsenal?
Iraq war gas attacks by Iraq did not stop us during Iran-Iraq war
http://uk.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=38816&group=webcast
Human rights abuses since September 11
http://uk.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=38802&group=webcast
Robert Fisk Bush plans FBI arrests of dissidents in Pakistan
http://uk.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=38778&group=webcast
US paramilitary and rights removal in Colombia by President Uribe
http://uk.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=38761&group=webcast
Iran and Bahrain oppose US war plans against Iraq
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2201390.stm
Huge trade deal draws Iraq to Russia deal worth £60bn
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2200041.stm
In Algeria, since the 1988 massacres, the brutal attacks on civilians and clashes between governments claim 200 lives a month. (
http://www.hrw.org/report2001/algeria/). Thousands of people have disappeared after arrest by paramilitaries or security forces. The death of 2,950 people on September 11 in New York was a two-fold catastrophe because the loss of civilian lives and the subsequent revenge attacks used in a propaganda war. The Taleban and Saddam Hussein regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq respectively are creations of the US but is now using those very despotic regimes to subject the poor suffering people to justify yet another unjustifiable attack.
But the war-ravaged people of Afghanistan have lost thousands more people in the continuing war against terrorism since September 11. The phrase coined by the US military, “Collateral damage”, has become commonplace during attempts to capture the elusive leader of the 911 attack Osama Bin Laden or his network. A further twenty-five people reported to have been killed and 80 injured on August 9, 2002 with further car bomb attacks happening summarily over September.
Democracy has been suspended while the war against terrorism allows a bloodthirsty US and the UK ally to bay for yet more Middle Eastern blood in Iraq. This time, there is no UN mandate and the Middle East has condemned it as an act that would open the “gates of hell”.
Even former US president Jimmy Carter says: “There’s no current danger to the US from Baghdad..these unilateral acts and assertions isolate from the very nations needed to join in combating terrorism”. Former UN arms inspector Scott Ridder who has openly condemned the US shares this view.
Real democracy is not an expedient measure introduced when a country has no dissent but the success of a so-called democracy should be judged by its respect of human rights and the rule of law.
Lawyers in the UK have resorted to setting up a special Legal Inquiry Steering Group (LISG) to consider the lawfulness of UK military action in Iraq and the government’s continued disregard of public and international opinions. This court will be formal with a QC publishing an opinion in September for an inquiry due to take place on October 11 at Gray’s Inn Road in London.
Western democracy in the shape of the US power is proving to be disproportionate and contemptible of its own nuclear and biological responsibilities. This extends to the opposition of the International Criminal Court, the Kytoto protocol with the largest environmental abuser being the US, the forceful privatisation of essential utilities made unaffordable along with the inequitable trade and economic tariffs against poor and developing countries held to ransom by the IMF.
Propaganda and the distortion of news particularly relating to war is a disturbing features of a mainstream corporate media promoting the views of a powerful elite at the expense of a powerless many. The same paper that labelled September 11 “the day the world stopped” later revealed that 28,000 people also died of poverty on September 11.
All life is sacred and yet western news media under the influence of corporate giants and governments have clearly defined a lesser value to civilian lives lost through injustice in the east in comparison with the west. US support for Israel and its failure to establish a Palestinian state and the illegal occupation of the territories and the failure to protect the people in Jenin and elsewhere defines US foreign policy.
The media machine also helped the war-ready US President George W Bush and British prime minister Blair to create a climate of panic and revenge by exaggerated claims of 5,000 lives being lost. US newspapers New York Times and US Today subsequently downgraded the figure to 2,950 and the hundreds claimed by Blair was revised to 100.
The oil-rich areas of Iraq and strategically placed Afghanistan have led to the people become the unwitting victims of American imperialism and the US will use any reason to oppose the US in any shape or form to label them as part of the “axis of evil”. But the world, Iraqi civilians and the strong Iraqi Kurdish population abandoned during the Gulf war may not be willing to welcome collaboration with the CIA in a Latin American style Operation Condor in the Middle East. Thousands of people were killed and tortured throughout Latin America.
The now discredited and tyrannical Taleban was a creation of the US CIA and Pakistan’s security services. The same policies are being used to remove democracy and impose neo-liberalism in bankrupt Argentina.
The flouting of international law has also extended to US abusing human rights abuses on its own soil. It was recently forced to reveal the names of thousands of detainees held secretly taken after a challenge brought by civil rights campaigners across the Atlantic. The US has opposed a UN protocol against torture and is currently holding 600 detainees, some British, in US military base Guantanamo Bay where conditions openly breach the Geneva Convention.
The main casualties of September 11 across the world have been immigrants, asylum seekers, anyone engaged in political dissent including those attempting to overthrow despotic governments so would now have led to Nelson Mandela being defined as a terrorist. Non-US friendly governments labelled in the “axis of evil” are targets unless they have established nuclear capability like India and military government of Pakistan.
State terror is not new and dates back to the French Revolution in western democracies. Like Bush who declared "Every nation must know that they are either with us or they are with the terrorists. No nation can pick and choose its terrorist friends,"– one founder of the French Revolution Robespierre suggested revolutionaries took the path of virtue or terror and claimed only the latter would provide true democratic dispositions.
In the UK, state terror is targeting the weak and minorities are being sacrificed to the new altar of revised western democracy. A trial challenging the internment of 11 Middle Eastern men being held under the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 in the UK began at a Special Immigration Appeals Commission on July 17where the non-open court was forced to declare that Britain’s attempts to intern non-British citizens was unlawful on Tuesday July 30. see www.cacc.org.uk for more information.
Civil rights groups including Amnesty, Campaign Against Criminalising Communities, Statewatch, Liberty, concerned people and ordinary campaigners across the UK and abroad welcomed the ruling. Lawyers have now successfully initiated a process to protect asylum seekers and others involved in political dissent from the UK’s unacceptable and disproportionate anti-terrorism measures.
Historically the UK was one of the first countries to ratify the European Court of Human Rights in 1951 after World War II but has only recently adopted the Human Rights Act into English law in 2000.
Derogation from the Human Rights Act was only possible after the UK declared a “public state of emergency that affected the life of the whole nation”. The Special Appeals Commission accepted this statement even though the British government has produced no evidence to justify the unprecedented move following September 11.
Economic interests continue to be the vanguard of US politics and UK politics particularly foreign policy. The US is currently attempting to block a human rights appeal in Indonesia against oil-giant Exxon Mobil Corp for human rights abuses because it could risk jeopardising co-operation on counter-terrorism measures.
Europe wants evidence before it is willing to support any attack in Iraq and the Middle East is opposed. Russia and China are unlikely to support the fanaticism being paraded by the US and UK. The increasing isolation of these two countries, the largest arms exporters in the world, may well lead to their own citizens asking who does control the world’s nuclear and biological arsenal?
Iraq war gas attacks by Iraq did not stop us during Iran-Iraq war
http://uk.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=38816&group=webcast Human rights abuses since September 11
http://uk.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=38802&group=webcast Robert Fisk Bush plans FBI arrests of dissidents in Pakistan
http://uk.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=38778&group=webcast US paramilitary and rights removal in Colombia by President Uribe
http://uk.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=38761&group=webcast Iran and Bahrain oppose US war plans against Iraq
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2201390.stm Huge trade deal draws Iraq to Russia deal worth £60bn
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2200041.stm
1 of IMC UK
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