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UG#715 - Pulling Dragon's Teeth(Blowing The Whistle on Whistleblower Protection)

Robin Upton | 06.09.2015 05:42 | Analysis | Social Struggles | Terror War | Sheffield | World

This week we emphasize the structural roots of the current spate of False Flag terrorism - the unaccountable power of the supranational Deep State. Public 'checks and balances' to stop 'bad apples' will never tackle the problem of a barrel that is itself rotten; laws passed by states seek to hide, not to expose the hidden and therefore unaccountable nexus of self-interest that is the deep state. In our first hour, a debunking of "whistleblower protection". In our second, we continue reading Brian Bogart's, Sins of Statecraft: The War on Terror Exposed. A 20 minute time out to hear from J. Michael Springmann, formerly head of the visa issuing section in the US consulate in Jeddah, who was unceremoniously dismissed after attempting to blow the whistle on the irregular visa issuing practices.

ug715-hour1mix.mp3 - mp3 27M

ug715-hour2mix.mp3 - mp3 27M


Unwelcome Guests often includes speakers who name names and point clearly to behaviour which is at best extremely dubious. Last episode, for example, we noted that the ideology of the "War On Terror" continues to serve the selfish interests of many of the attendees of the 1979 Jerusalem Conference on International Terrorism where it was launched. While continuing to name names, this week we nevertheless emphasize the structural forces which act on and help to form such individuals, groups and even ideologies. We begin with a quote from Nafeez Ahmed on False Flag Terror, that "The root of this problem clearly lies in the structure of Western power itself, which - although conventionally believed to be the epitome of democracy - is in reality conjoined to a sprawling network of overarching criminal and financial interests that tends to drive US/Western foreign policies and which in the post-Cold War period has driven the West and international terrorism into an increasingly dynamic (and unstable) interconnected continuum of power."

After an introduction few minutes of Jeff Schmidt's Disciplined Minds underlines the level of indoctrination to be expected amongst modern professionals, we read Whistleblowers - Risks and skills, by Australian professor, Brian Martin, which is full of practical advice for anyone considering whistleblowing. He emphasizes that people should not blow the whistle without careful preparation, and should not expect much help from whistleblower protection schemes, which are often "trojan horses".

In our second hour, we continue reading the 2006 essay by Brian Bogart we started in episode 714, Sins of Statecraft: The War on Terror Exposed. As a footnote to Bogart's single sentence about the CIA facilitating visa fraud to admit entry into US for terrorist training, we take a 20 minutes of an interview with J. Michael Springmann - former head of the visa section in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Springmann charges that the CIA, not the US State Department, was in effective control of visa issuance, and that shady reasons of "national security" were responsible for some of the visas issued. His own frustration at repeated lack of adherence to standard operating procedure lead to his efforts to blow the whistle. These lead - not unexpectedly (in the light of Brian Martin's essay from our first hour) - not to his vindication, but instead to his summary dismissal. The reasons for his firing? He filed FOIL requests to establish on what grounds he was dismissed, only to be foiled again by the claim that this was a reason of "national security".

This episode rebroadcasts content from episode 175. The last show we had on whistleblowers was the very popular episode 645.

Robin Upton
- e-mail: unwelcome [At] unwelcome Guests [d0t] net
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