INDYMEDIA INTERNMENT DEBATE:10,000 Protest Internment 1971 - 2013 in Belfast - Indymedia Ireland

10,000 Protest Internment 1971 - 2013 in Belfast - Indymedia Ireland:

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THAILAND TO IRELAND THE ETON RIFLES

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The "terrorists" the prime minister said instigated the bloodshed on Saturday night are malcontent soldiers intent on bringing down the government, UDD leader Natthawut Saikua said on Tuesday.

He said the government should find and arrest them.
Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said on Monday the government had evidence that "armed terrorists" aiming to bring down his government were among the red-shirt protesters on Saturday.
He said they instigated the bloodshed that resulted in 21 deaths and more than 800 people injured.
Deputy Prime MInister Suthep Thaugsuban also accused unidentified armed men of causing the chaos.
"The terrorists the government claimed [were there] are soldiers who do not accept the current administration, causing conflict within the army," Mr Natthawut said.
"They used the opportunity on Saturday to create unrest."
He did not identify them, or offer to help with their arrest.

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IrishBlog: THE PATRIOT GAME - Ireland

IrishBlog: THE PATRIOT GAME - Ireland

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And now as I lie here, my body all holes
I think of those traitors who bargained in souls
And I wish that my rifle had given the same
To those Quislings who sold out the patriot game

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ADDAM'S FAMILY IRELAND

IrishBlog: Richard Head Sailing in a Dangerous Anglo-Irish Sea

IrishBlog: Richard Head Sailing in a Dangerous Anglo-Irish Sea

Cead Mile Failte, A Hundred Thousand Welcomes

A New Queen of England for Loyal Northern Commoners

The word "orgy" is evocative. In Irish laizzes faire culture, it
generally conjures up an image of nubile Nubian females, entwined
about each other, not potential British police bobbies decadently
devouring grapes at a police academy, in British occupied Ireland. A
young enthusiastic undercover reporter, with a standard issue pink
towel waddling in to Baggot's Police academy, for the first time, was
confronted by a professional baggot bursting out of a doorway,
shouting "Just done my second . . .better go and rinse my mouth out."




Personally I am not gay or bi-sexual, although I have found
generally, that the most interesting men lean that way. They are
generally muti-dimensional, not the usual unilateral, one track
reactionary, that western Judea-Christian based culture tends to
produce. Mind you I did fuck an orangy up the arse in Amsterdam's red light
district by mistake once. I mean thats where the original Willem came
from, isn't it?. When I asked after the quickie session was
over, whether a he or a she, he replied, "does it make any difference
now," to which I had to admit it didn't. Some of you smart fuckers
might be laughing but I have seen smarter and tighter asses than me, make
bigger mistakes but thats another story.




Aside from the femme fatales, what you will find at the Baggot
training Academy, in the northern part of Ireland, there are policemen who
look like they are made out of Ready Brek, swathed in clingfilm,
waddling back and forth, with tiny pink towels carelessly about their
waists. Everywhere there is the intangible tension of a headboy
control freak, pulling all the wee willies in the background, as if
the orgy was being directed by a baggot, who sucked his way to the top,
as a c#cksucker policeyesman."




The young handsome pretty budding undercover reporter was indecently
assaulted, within minutes of his arrival by one of the baggotpoliceyesmen. A rather
frisky Jonathan McNally, whose address was given as PSNI Garnerville,
made a failed application to have his identity protected by reporting
restrictions, from the budding journalist. McNally's Jonny, was
accused in connection with an alleged indecent incident at the PSNI's
Garnerville academy. McNally's Jonny pleaded not guilty at Belfast
Magistrates Court to a case against him, relating to a complaint by
the undercover reporter, following an exercise at the PSNI base in
October.




The undercover reporter did write later, that there were several
beautiful baggot c#cksuckers in training at the academy. Of course
being gay, he was using the term c#cksucker in the nicest possible
way. He later stated, that he had heard this word,"over and over
....horrible, horrible things. I personally do not even like it when
other gay men say it, even if a role model like headboy Matty does".




He further explained, "I don’t care ..if they call each other
c*cksuckers...in context, personally I would still bristle at it, but
I realize that there are many, many, non gay people ..who love to hunt
gays.. and all they will do is ..feel justified for their usage of
that word. "He said C#cksucker is a horrible, dangerous word,..that
should not be used lightly... It is offensive. Not until you have had
it shouted at you ..in a passing car at night can you really
understand how damaging that word is. Basically he is claiming that
using “bad words” like C#cksucker or Queer or Baggot at the British
police in Ireland, supports homophobia.




"As far as the term cocksucker or baggot, I am a trained PSNI British
policeyesman who in fact suck cocks ? Why yes, yes I do. Do I find
that “bad word” worse than say being called a Baggot? No ! . Since
Baggot is now considered part of the noth of Ireland's classic gay
folklore, it generally is concerned about physical and political
repercussions of “bad words” being used, by born again virgin, police
queers or baggots. “Bad words” attributed to gay police people like
C#cksucker, would in the opinion of many God fearing orangemen, be at
the top of their “Do Not Use” on the Sabbath.



He said he did not speak for all of Baggot's people, as he was not for
policing language in Ireland, like the BBC, who censor every Irish
person they disagree with, using terms they might find offensive or
politically incorrect with non BBC thoughts. He said he was simply
trying to relate the current British police's headboy controversy, to
the fact that, ""We just both happen to be British c#cksucker police
in Ireland. Mind you the BBC have more than their fair share of
c#cksuckers too"




The FBI are believed to also have c#cksucker trainers at the academy.
One American FBI WASP named George said;

“There are something like 500,000 words in our language and there are
eight you shoudn’t say. What a ratio that is ! 499,992. . . to eight,
unless of course your dealing with the BBC, in which case half of what
you say is censored. So they must really be baad. They must be
OUTRAGEOUS to be separated from a group so large. ‘All of you 499,992
words over here, you 8, very, very baad words.’ Baggot that’s an evil
word, right? ‘That’s a really baaaaad word!’ Awwww. Bad word. Bad
thought. Bad intentions and Baggot woord go together, right !.



You know the 8, don’t ya? Like what you can’t say on normal TV, never mind
the BBC ? Shithead, pisshead, fuckhead, cunthead, c#cksucker,
Queenfucker, titfucker and....... BAGGOT... Huh? Those are the heavy 8
!. Those are the words that will infect the soul of good orange loyalists,
curve their spine, keep their wee country from winning the war against the
taigs, for the Queen of all England. Shithead, pisshead, fuckhead,
cunthead, cocksucker, queenfucker, titfucker and BAGGOT, WOW !





Does Baggot belong on the list ! It seems like such a friendly English word that would fit in any gob. Like McGuinness, says ‘Hey Baggot, come on over here mate ! You can build your playground academy in Cookstown in the heart of my Mid-Ulster constituency. Baggot me boyo, ok ! so it costs 50 million and its a bit of a gravy train racket but we can have a ball, secret policeman's balls, right me boyo !, Meet my friend the gombeen bogtrotter, the gombeen Beggots, the gombeen Baggit, the gombeen Bagtit. and of course the gombeen Bogtit, .’ Sounds like a snack ....something tasty, right ?...like the Urban dictionary says man, oh yeah, it is. Right. But I don’t mean your tasty sexist snack, I mean new cheesy Baggot. . . Tastier Baggot fare. Bet you can’t eat all of them !”









Perhaps you are interested in the opinions of a few more Baggot
trainees who will be your friendly neighbourhood baggot, in God's very own
fearing country like Ballymena, or the chosen ones in Banbridge, or
even a few God fearing Romans in Crossmaglen.








Sammy,says;
"I think this issue is an interesting one and re-appropriation of hate
speech is a powerful topic. Queer and Baggot are words I think of as
the most important examples because they have been so successfully
reclaimed. Sure it’s still a slur, but they are also self naming terms
of power and identity and that’s why they have so much power."
Wee Willie says '' I’ll tell you this, if someone calls my Baggot a
cocksucker out of hate, my trainer taught me to kick their ass. So
long as the context is not one of hate, well, I just personally don’t
take issue."












Ian and Peter say, ''My partner and I call each other all kinds of
names. He was born illegitimate, was adopted and then sent back. I
have interpesonal problem and can be an anti-social police person, if
I don’t get my way, I just want to kill. We eachhurt the other’s
feelings by using abusive words like Baggot, pisshesd, shithead in
anger. Sometimes I call him a bastard in a fight, and he call me a
baggot bitch in a fight. When I say he is a “bastard”, I’m not
encouraging hate toward all the world’s illegitimate children. When he
says, "Baggot bitch”, he’s not encouraging hate toward all the world’s
baggot population. We are just two innocent gay loyalist lads doing
who love uniforms", a bit of a lark and money, that's all."





Alexander says, " I'm a 'thinking republican' and I feel so bad for
British police in Ireland. Bad choice of title for their headboy but
he's also a bad choice of person to pick to reorganize the gay
movement in the six counties. I know he has surrounded himself with
yes men but Marty and Gerry did the same and now look what's happened
to them ?. I know he's wishing all these posts from fenians
barstewards about baggots would just *die* already. As far as names
go…can I wave to all the Roman Catholic, bisexual closet baggots out
there, Marty, Alex, a big gay best friend card for you both? My
partner calls me his "Baggot fag hag”. I always turn to him and say,
“if I’m the hag, that makes you…what ?”







Paddy says "As far as I am concerned a cunt is a cunt as in pink
parts. Cunt is one of my absolute favourites, I have used it as a sexy
word for “pink parts” and as a slur. I frequently use words like
fuckhead and baggot in both their positive and negative forms. The
fact that they can have such strong positive and negative meanings is
one of the reason I like them so much.


The insult is completely in intent. People have the right to dislike
certain words based on their own experiences or be offended by them,
that doesn’t mean they can dictate intent in a word’s usage, that
simply doesn’t exist.That is why I’m not offended by any word other
than baggot. Baggot is not a title I like much though, for other
reasons.Plu..se,...... pretty...plu..ee.s.e."





On a purely aesthetic level, I’m not a fan of the word Baggot. To my ears, it’s...…inelegant. That is why some gay men might use it while having sex. Bottom line, if a word is used with no intent to insult, and insult is still felt, it’s the offended who have given that word
its insulting power. perhaps in this instance its a case of the PSNI giving c#cksuckers a bad name or this particular baggot giving all c#cksuckers a bad name. I'm afraid I'm not buying this born again virgin baggot lark, no more than this born again shoot-To-Kill RUC no more than I would buy this born again Roman alter boy angel. Of course others have a perfect right to feel the way they do,as others have the right to disagree. Then of course fascists like the
supposed public service of the BBC and other British fascist institutions with their commoner servants would disagree, wouldn't they...Marty ?

Minsky's Alternative to NAMA'S Gombeen Ireland

Minsky's Alternative to NAMA'S Gombeen Ireland http://ping.fm/vsPJU

Israel Violated Nuremberg Principles in UN Report

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Perfidious Albion's PSNI on the Euphrates

"Equal Burdens". Here the Brit stereotype of the belligerent Irishman meets the stereotype of the happy slave. Irish were called "white Negroes". These cartoons were the form of propaganda relied upon by by the Brits in punch prior to the BBC.





Recently the Police Service of Northern Ireland turned on the Sunday Tribune journalist Suzanne Breen. Breen who was threatened with imprisonment unless she delivered up her notes of all her contacts with Irish dissidents. The hounding of Breen, when her phone was already being tapped by the Brits anyway, is stupid, and a sign of panic. Common sense tells us that you will not defeat the people's movements by imprisoning journalists who write about them.

The British state in Ireland is arming collaborators as it always has done, to counter even the possibility of a new generation of liberation activists. In our media censorship age, it takes all forms of intimidation and assassination, hence Suzanne Breen and Veronica Guerin. This is also part of one of their counter-intelligence arms, to identify would-be British informers. Supporting all of this, killer foot soldiers will be protected by the most ruthless secretive military state in Europe.

The new chief of the PSNI, "head Boy Biggot" comes from England with a police force, with a history of framing ordinary Irish people with no political history, such as the Birmingham 6, the Guilfdord 4 , etc., etc.,.How anyone in their right mind would trust them never mind ludicrously recommend them does not stand up to the slightest scrutiny. Every dog on a 6 county street knows the real pedigree of these born again virgins of the RUC in the PSNI. Neither can we debate this fairly because the media such as BBC engages in rampant censorship.

The real cause of the troubles was always the political impact each act of state violence had on the rest of society. For Britain to remain in Ireland requires state violence, while will always be opposed by a politicized Irish rebel, that is the consistent factor in the course of Irish history. The PSNI's primary purpose will be state violence and imprisonment against any political activist.

“The Troubles” are rebellion, preceding a revolution. Nobody in their right mind wants trouble but the IRA will not go away until their is real justice. The revolution will not go away until there is social justice. What will the BBC and Downing Street PR men do when the next IRA car bomb obliterates part of their structure?, pretend they are still standing.

Irish republicanism imported into Ireland from France by Protestants, is a moral right to resist 800 years of foreign English oppression. Its simple, it is not as the BBC world service propaganda would have you believe, a sectarian Catholic belief. Many of he 3,600-odd dead of the Troubles were murdered by Brit agents planted on both sides. The Brits even calculatedly sacrifice their own, sometimes far more useful to them to have their own dead soldiers, than ones who are alive (see supplementary articles). From Ireland to the Euphrates to Afghanistan their dead working class soldiers, used as their eternal cannon fodder pawns they always were.

The PSNI along with the British army are still symbols of illegitimate armies of occupation on Irish soil, just like Cromwell and the RUC. Resistance to it is not just intellectual or emotional its in the Irish gene, unless they ethnically cleanse the Irish worldwide, there will always be resistance.Even their last attempt during the Irish holocaust of their manufactures Irish Famine failed. Irish freedom fighters, just like their forefathers had risen up against the British will continue until they and their uniform leave.

On the blood-soaked stage of the 6 counties, freedom has paid too high a price to turn back now. History demands that perfidious Albion must be confronted directly not with the convoluted rhetoric of flip flop. Calling those who confront it traitors is foolish in the extreme.

As the phantom Celtic Tiger vanishes and collapses, staggering examples of institutional corruption are everywhere tobe seen in South Ireland. McGuiness's Sinn Fein’s participation in Stormont is just another temporal politician's party who the BBC will replace in their own good time with their daily propaganda, it will not lead ordinary Irish people to the promised land

Ireland’s Troubles are the result of perfidious Albion's meddling sleight of hand soaked in centuries of blood. The "Brit Head Boy's PSNI" swelled by the ranks of the RUC's born again virgins, English bobbies and naive nationalists are just another part of what Ice Cube refers to as " A Nation of Niggers " just another term with origins in Brit racism against black and Irish fellow human beings.


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April 01, 2009 "EB" --- Here's a purely hypothetical scenario. Let's say you were a dedicated imperial militarist who believed that your country's security, prestige and financial interests could best be served by war and the ever-present threat of war. Let's say you had some really hot and juicy operations going on, endless deadly conflicts that were pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into your war machine and entrenching national policy even more deeply in the militarist philosophy – the machtpolitik – that you believe in.

But there's a problem. The general public – the cow-like herd out there that doesn't understand grand strategy the way you and your fellow elites do – is growing weary, and wary, of your Long War. The national treasury is bankrupt, the national infrastructure is rotting, the nation's communities are dying; millions of people are out of work, losing their homes, losing their dreams, spiraling down into want, privation and despair. Yet you have big plans to escalate the war, expand your war machine, and maintain the global dominance that you believe is the right and natural role for your special nation – and its elites. What to do? How to galvanize the truculent, self-absorbed herd into enthusiastically supporting your vital agenda once more?

Well, here's one purely hypothetical approach you might try. You goad and provoke violent extremist groups into retaliating against your attacks, your civilian-slaughtering invasions and incursions into their territory. Being unable to confront directly your war machine – the largest, most advanced military force in the history of the world, sustained by a tsunami of public money that each year surpasses the military spending of the rest of the world – they naturally respond with "asymmetrical" operations. At first, these are directed at nearby targets: your supply lines, the forces of your local proxies and allies, and other chaos-inducing depredations in the groups' own regions, designed to foul the lines of your control and drive you out. Just as naturally, you use these attacks to justify an even greater military presence in their regions. The cycle inevitably, inexorably ratchets upwards and outwards, until at last the extremists strike at your homeland – either with your connivance, or your covert acquiescence, or, in any event, with your foreknowledge that such an attack was sure to come. This is the moment you have waited for; this is exactly what you wanted. Now you can whip the herd back into a martial frenzy, keep the Long War going, and push aside the rabble's petty, small-minded desires for a peaceful, prosperous life at home, minding their own business.

One never knows exactly what goes on behind the imperial drapery in the Potomac palaces, of course; ordinary American citizens were long ago turned into Kremlinologists of their own government, trying to discern -- through ceremonial signs, backstairs gossip, and slight deviations in ritualized rhetoric -- just what their masters are really up to. But some cynics darkly suspect that scenarios something like the one sketched out above have already been enacted; for instance, in the "new Pearl Harbor" that struck America on September 11, 2001 – one year after a group channeling the views of future Bush Administration bigwigs (including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Scooter Libby and many others) had openly pined for a "new Pear Harbor" to "catalyze" the American people into supporting their militarist agenda, which included an invasion of Iraq – whether Saddam Hussein was in power or not.

But leaving aside for now the ever-thorny matter of divining the varying proportion of connivance, acquiescence, foreknowledge, exploitation, incompetence and fate involved in 9/11, we can say this as an established fact: It is the policy of the United States government to provoke violent extremist groups into action. Once they are in play, their responses can then be used in whatever way the government that provoked them sees fit. And we also know that these provocations are being used, as a matter of deliberate policy, to rouse violent groups on the "Af-Pak" front to launch terrorist attacks.

In other words, just as I first wrote in the Moscow Times more than six years ago (and followed up three years later), the United States is deliberately fomenting terrorist attacks in order to pursue its political and military agendas.
[For more on how these policies and similar uses of terrorism and death squads have been realized in Iraq and elsewhere, see "A Furnace Seal'd: The Wondrous Death Squads of the American Elite," "Ulster on the Euphrates: The Anglo-American Dirty War in Iraq," and "Willing Executioners: America's Bipartisan Atrocity Deepens in Somalia."]

Eagle-eyed Jason Ditz at Antiwar.com draws the connection between this policy and the most recent "asymmetrical" strike by a "tickled" terrorist group in Pakistan: the deadly attack on a police center in Lahore by the Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP). The group, led by Baitullah Mehsud, said the attack was in retaliation for the American campaign of drone strikes in Pakistan's frontier regions – strikes which have killed many civilians along with usually unidentified "militants." As Ditz notes, one goal of the campaign – which has been intensified by Barack Obama – is precisely the aforementioned fomenting of terrorist activity:



The Obama Administration has launched an ever growing number of attacks in the FATA, generally aimed at Mehsud’s training facilities in North and South Waziristan. In September, then-CIA Director Michael Hayden said the attacks were an attempt to “provoke a reaction” from the militant groups led by Mehsud. It appears that now, six months later, they have finally done so. [Hayden described this bloodsoaked strategy as "tickling" terrorists into a response.]


What's more, Mehsud has now vowed to carry the fight back to American soil. As The Times notes (via Antiwar.com):



“Soon we will launch an attack in Washington that will amaze everyone in the world," [Mehsud declared.] "The maximum they can do is martyr me. But we will exact our revenge on them from inside America."


Whether or not the rag-tag TTP could actually carry out such a threat is another matter, as Juan Cole notes. But that is not really the point. The point is that once again, a violent group has been knowingly prodded into murderous action. Even better, it has now set itself up as a "deadly terrorist threat" to the sacred Homeland itself: yet another made-to-order supervillain from central casting.

And remarkably, this new, open threat to bring terror to the American heartland comes just days after Barack Obama announced his vaunted surge in the Af-Pak War, citing – what else? – the need to protect the United States from terrorists based in Afghanistan and Pakistan as his chief reason for escalating and expanding the conflict. Yet another astonishing coincidence to justify the militarist agenda, which needs a constant supply of PR-plausible villains and hyped-up, nation-rattling threats like a junkie needs smack. And once again, we are left to puzzle out the varying proportion of connivance, acquiescence, exploitation, luck, etc., involved in this serendipitous pairing of declarations from Obama and Mehsud.

II.
It is worth looking again at the implications of this policy of terrorist-tickling. As we noted recently, such things are not just counters on the Great Gameboard: they are deadly realities that kill, maim and despoil multitudes of innocent people around the world. So let's go back to the first glimmers of this strategy in its Terror War context. This is from the Moscow Times article in November 2001:



In [a Los Angeles Times] article by military analyst William Arkin... [comes] the revelation of Rumsfeld's plan to create "a super-Intelligence Support Activity" that will "bring together CIA and military covert action, information warfare, intelligence, and cover and deception." According to a classified document prepared for [Donald] Rumsfeld by his Defense Science Board, the new organization – the "Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG)" – will carry out secret missions designed to "stimulate reactions" among terrorist groups, provoking them into committing violent acts which would then expose them to "counterattack" by U.S. forces.

In other words – and let's say this plainly, clearly and soberly, so that no one can mistake the intention of Rumsfeld's plan – the United States government is planning to use "cover and deception" and secret military operations to provoke murderous terrorist attacks on innocent people. Let's say it again: Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush and the other members of the unelected regime in Washington plan to deliberately foment the murder of innocent people – your family, your friends, your lovers, you – in order to further their geopolitical ambitions.

For P2OG is not designed solely to flush out terrorists and bring them to justice – a laudable goal in itself, although the Rumsfeld way of combating terrorism by causing it is pure moral lunacy... No, it seems the Pee-Twos have bigger fish to fry. Once they have sparked terrorists into action – by killing their family members? luring them with loot? fueling them with drugs? plying them with jihad propaganda? messing with their mamas? or with agents provocateurs, perhaps, who infiltrate groups then plan and direct the attacks themselves? – they can then take measures against the "states/sub-state actors accountable" for "harboring" the Rumsfeld-roused gangs. What kind of measures exactly? Well, the classified Pentagon program puts it this way: "Their sovereignty will be at risk."

The Pee-Twos will thus come in handy whenever the Regime hankers to add a little oil-laden real estate or a new military base to the Empire's burgeoning portfolio. Just find a nest of violent malcontents, stir 'em with a stick, and presto: instant "justification" for whatever level of intervention/conquest/rapine you might desire.
When the Obama Administration speaks of "continuity" in American foreign policy, this is an integral part of what they are talking about. So look to see much more on TTP and the demon de jure, Baitullah Mehsud, as the bipartisan Long War grinds on and on, with its ever-present need for "catalyzing" – and terrorizing – the American people into support for the militarist project.



Ulster on the Euphrates

The Anglo-American Dirty War in Iraq

By Chris Floyd

02/13/07 "ICH" -- -- Imagine a city torn by sectarian strife. Competing death squads roam the streets; terrorists stage horrific attacks. Local authority is distrusted and weak; local populations protect the extremists in their midst, out of loyalty or fear. A bristling military occupation exacerbates tensions at every turn, while offering prime targets for bombs and snipers. And behind the scenes, in a shadow world of double-cross and double-bluff, covert units of the occupying power run agents on both sides of the civil war, countenancing -- and sometimes directing -- assassinations, terrorist strikes, torture sessions, and ethnic cleansing.

Is this a portrait of Belfast during "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland? Or a picture of Baghdad today? It is both; and in both cases, one of Britain's most secret – and most criminally compromised – military units has plied its trade in the darkness, "turning" and controlling terrorist killers in a dangerous bid to wring actionable intelligence from blood and betrayal. And America's covert soldiers are right there with them, working side-by-side with their British comrades in the aptly named "Task Force Black," the UK's Sunday Telegraph reports.

Last week, the right-wing, pro-war paper published an early valentine to the "Joint Support Group," the covert unit whose bland name belies its dramatic role at the center of the Anglo-American "dirty war" in Iraq. In gushing, lavish, uncritical prose that could have been (and perhaps was) scripted by the unit itself, the Telegraph lauded the team of secret warriors as "one of the Coalition's most effective and deadly weapons in the fight against terror," running "dozens of Iraqi double-agents," including "members of terrorist groups."

What the story fails to mention is the fact that in its Ulster incarnation, the JSG – then known as the Force Research Unit (FRU) –actively colluded in the murder of at least 15 civilians by Loyalist deaths squads, and an untold number of victims killed, maimed and tortured by the many Irish Republican Army double-agents controlled by the unit. What's more, the man who commanded the FRUduring the height of its depredations – Lt. Col. Gordon Kerr – is in Baghdad now, heading the hugger-mugger Special Reconnaissance Regiment (SRR), a large counter-terrorism force made up of unnamed "existing assets" from the glory days in Northern Ireland and elsewhere.

This despite the fact that a 10-year, $100 million investigation by Britain's top police officer, Lord Stevens, confirmed in 2003 that the Kerr-led FRU "sanctioned killings" through "institutionalized collusion" with both Protestant and Catholic militias during the 1980s and 1990s. Stevens sent dossiers of evidence against Kerr and 20 other security apparatchiks to the Blair government's Director of Public Prosecutions, in the expectation that the fiery Scotsman and the others would be put on trial.

But instead prosecuting Kerr, Blair promoted him: first to a plum assignment as British military attaché in Beijing – effectively the number two man in all of UK military intelligence, as Scotland's Sunday Herald notes – then with the SRR posting to Baghdad, where Kerr and his former FRU mates now apply the "methods developed on the mean streets of Ulster during the Troubles," as the Telegraph breathlessly relates.

The Telegraph puff piece is naturally coy about revealing these methods, beyond the fact that, as in Ireland, the JSG uses "a variety of inducements ranging from blackmail to bribes" to turn Iraqi terrorists into Coalition agents. So to get a better idea of the techniques employed by the group in Baghdad, we must return to those "mean streets of Ulster" and the unit's reign of terror and collusion there, which has been thoroughly documented not only by the exhaustive Stevens inquiries, but also in a remarkable series of investigative reports by the Sunday Herald's Neil Mackay, and in extensive stories by the BBC, the Guardian, the Independent, the Times and others.

We will also see how the operations of the JSG and "Task Force Black" dovetail with U.S. efforts to apply the lessons of its own dirty wars – such as the "Salvador Option" – to Iraq, as well as long-running Bush Administration initiatives to arm and fund "friendly" militias while infiltrating terrorist groups in order to "provoke them into action." It is indeed a picture painted in black, a glimpse at the dark muck that lies beneath the high-flown rhetoric about freedom and civilization forever issuing from the lips of the war leaders.

(Continued after the jump.)

II. Whacking for the Peelers
Gregory Burns had a problem. He was one of Gordon Kerr's FRU informers planted deep inside the IRA, along with two of his friends, Johnny Dignam and Aidan Starrs. But as Mackay noted in a February 2003 story, the already-partnered Burns had acquired a girlfriend on the side, Margaret Perry, 26, a "civilian" Catholic with no paramilitary ties. Forbidden fruit is sweet, of course – but pillow talk is dangerous for an inside man. "Burns didn't keep his mouth shut and [Perry] found out he was working for British intelligence," an FRU officer told Mackay. "He tried to convince her he was a double-agent the IRA had planted in the [British] army – but she didn't buy it."

Burns called his FRU handlers and asked to come in from the cold. He'd been compromised, he said, and now he and his friends needed to get out, with new identities, relocation, good jobs – the usual payoff for trusted agents when the jig was up. But Kerr refused: "He said [Burns] should silence Perry," the FRU man told Mackay. Burns, panicking at thought of the IRA's horrific retributions against informers, insisted: he would have to kill the woman if they didn't bring him in, he told Kerr. Again Kerr refused.

And so Burns arranged a meeting with his lover, to "talk over" the situation. His friends, Aidan and Johnny, volunteered to drive her there: "On the way, they pulled into a forest, beat her to death and buried her in a shallow grave," Mackay notes. Two years later, when her body was found, the IRA put two and two together – and slowly tortured Burns and his two friends to death, after first extracting copious amounts of information about British intelligence operations in Ireland.

'In Kerr's eyes, Burns just wasn't important enough to resettle," the FRU source told the Sunday Herald. "So we ended up with four unnecessary deaths and the compromising of British army intelligence officers, which ultimately put soldiers' lives at risk. To Kerr, it was always a matter of the ends justifying the means."

Then again, Kerr could well afford to sacrifice a few informers here and there to the wrath of the IRA's dreaded "security unit" – because his own prize double agent was the head of that security unit. Codenamed "Stakeknife," Kerr's man presided over, and sometimes administered, the grisly torture-murders of up to 50 men during his tenure in the IRA's upper ranks. The victims included other British double agents who were sacrificed in order to protect Stakeknife's cover, as the Guardian and many other UK papers reported when the agent's work was revealed in 2003. ("Stakeknife" was later identified in the press as Alfredo Scappaticci – an Irishman despite the Italian name, although he continues to deny the charge.)

The FRU also "knowingly allowed soldiers, [police] officers and civilians to die at the hands of IRA bombers in order to protect republican double agents," the Sunday Herald's investigations found. As Mackay reports: "FRU sources said around seven police and army personnel died as a result of military intelligence allowing IRA bombs to be placed during Kerr's time in command of the FRU. They estimate that three civilians also died this way, with casualties in the hundreds."

But some of the worst excesses came from the FRU's handling of operatives on the other side, in the fiercely pro-British Protestant militia the Ulster Defense Association (UDA). Here, among the Loyalists, Kerr's top double agent was Brian Nelson, who became head of intelligence for the UDA. As John Ware put it in the Guardian: "Kerr regarded Nelson as his jewel in the crown… For the next three years [from 1987], Nelson colluded with murder gangs to shoot IRA suspects. Month after month, armed and masked men crashed into homes. Sometimes they got the wrong address or shot the wrong person."

Such as Gerald Slane, a 27-year-old Belfast man shot down in front of his three children. A gun had been found dumped on his property; this, and his Catholicism, was enough to get him assassinated at the order of Kerr's man Nelson. Afterwards, it was found that Slane had no IRA connections.

Another "wrong person" killed by the FRU's agents was the Belfast attorney Pat Finucane, who was shot 14 times in front of his wife and children. Finucane was a civil rights activist who had defended both Catholics and Protestants, but was considered an IRA sympathizer by Loyalists – and a thorn in the side by British authorities. He was killed at Nelson's order by a fellow FRU informer in the UDA, Ken Barrett, who was convicted of the murder but freed last year after as part of an amnesty program in the Northern Ireland peace process. Barrett was unapologetic about his FRU "wetwork" on Finucane. "The peelers [authorities] wanted him whacked," he told a BBC documentary team after his release. "We whacked him and that is the end of the story."

Kerr gave Nelson packages of intelligence files to help facilitate the assassination of UDA targets, including at least four "civilians" with no IRA ties, the Stevens inquiry found. The FRU also obtained "restriction orders" from other British security and military units in Northern Ireland, whereby they would pull their forces from an area when Kerr's UDA agents were going to make a hit there, allowing the killers to get in and get out without hindrance, investigator Nick Davies reports.

Yet the FRU was wary of sharing its own intelligence with other security services – which was the ostensible reason for running the double-agents in the first place. Instead, Kerr engaged in fierce turf wars with other agencies, while "stovepiping" much of his intelligence to the top circles of the UK government, including the cabinet-level Intelligence Committee chaired by then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Indeed, when Nelson was finally exposed and brought to trial on five counts of conspiracy to commit murder, Kerr testified in his behalf, noting for the court that Nelson's intelligence "product and his reporting was passed through the intelligence community and at a high level, and from that point of view he has to be considered a very important agent."

As one FRU man told Mackay: "Under Kerr's command…the mindset was one of 'the right people would be allowed to live and wrong people should die.'"

This is the "mindset" now operating in the heart of the Green Zone in Baghdad, where the JSG is carrying out – we are told in glowing terms – precisely the same mission it had in Ulster. a unit which has allowed its agents to torture, murder and commit acts of terrorism, including actions that killed local civilians and the soldiers and intelligence operatives of their own country.

III. The White House Green Light
Of course, Kerr and his Baghdad black-op crew are not alone in the double-dealing world of Iraqi counterinsurgency. The Pentagon's ever-expanding secret armies are deeply enmeshed in such efforts as well. As Sy Hersh has reported ("The Coming Wars," New Yorker, Jan. 24, 2005), after his re-election in 2004, George W. Bush signed a series of secret presidential directives that authorized the Pentagon to run virtually unrestricted covert operations, including a reprise of the American-backed, American-trained death squads employed by authoritarian regimes in Central and South America during the Reagan Administration, where so many of the Bush faction cut their teeth – and made their bones.

"Do you remember the right-wing execution squads in El Salvador?” a former high-level intelligence official said to Hersh. "We founded them and we financed them. The objective now is to recruit locals in any area we want. And we aren’t going to tell Congress about it." A Pentagon insider added: "We’re going to be riding with the bad boys." Another role model for the expanded dirty war cited by Pentagon sources, said Hersh, was Britain's brutal repression of the Mau Mau in Kenya during the 1950s, when British forces set up concentration camps, created their own terrorist groups to confuse and discredit the insurgency, and killed thousands of innocent civilians in quashing the uprising.

Bush's formal greenlighting of the death-squad option built upon an already securely-established base, part of a larger effort to turn the world into a "global free-fire zone" for covert operatives, as one top Pentagon official told Hersh. For example, in November 2002 a Pentagon plan to infiltrate terrorist groups and "stimulate" them into action was uncovered by William Arkin, then writing for the Los Angeles Times. The new unit, the "Proactive, Pre-emptive Operations Group," was described in the Pentagon documents as "a super-Intelligence Support Activity" that brings "together CIA and military covert action, information warfare, intelligence and cover and deception."

Later, in August 2004, then deputy Pentagon chief Paul Wolfowitz appeared before Congress to ask for $500 million to arm and train non-governmental "local militias" to serve as U.S. proxies for "counter-insurgency and "counterterrorist" operations in "ungoverned areas" and hot spots around the world, Agence France Presse (and virtually no one else) reported at the time. These hired paramilitaries were to be employed in what Wolfowitz called an "arc of crisis" that just happened to stretch across the oil-bearing lands and strategic pipeline routes of Central Asia, the Middle East, Africa and South America.

By then, the Bush Administration had already begun laying the groundwork for an expanded covert war in the hot spot of Iraq. In November 2003, it created a "commando squad" drawn from the sectarian militias of five major Iraqi factions, as the Washington Post reported that year. Armed, funded and trained by the American occupation forces, and supplied with a "state-of-the-art command, control and communications center" from the Pentagon, the new Iraqi commandos were loosed on the then-nascent Iraqi insurgency – despite the very prescient fears of some U.S. officials "that various Sunni or Shiite factions could eventually use the service to secretly undermine their political competitors," as the Post noted.

And indeed, in early 2005 – not long after Bush's directives loosed the "Salvador Option" on Iraq – the tide of death-squad activity began its long and bloody rise to the tsunami-like levels we see today. Ironically, the first big spike of mass torture-murders, chiefly in Sunni areas at the time, coincided with "Operation Lightning," a much ballyhooed effort by American and Iraqi forces to "secure" Baghdad. The operation featured a mass influx of extra troops into the capital; dividing the city into manageable sectors, then working through them one by one; imposing hundreds of checkpoints to lock down all insurgent movements; and establishing a 24-hour presence of security and military forces in troubled neighborhoods, the Associated Press reported in May 2005. In other words, it was almost exactly the same plan now being offered as Bush's "New Way Forward," the controversial "surge."

But the "Lightning" fizzled in a matter of weeks, and the death squads grew even bolder. Brazen daylight raids by "men dressed in uniforms" of Iraqi police or Iraqi commandos or other Iraqi security agencies swept up dozens of victims at a time. For months, U.S. "advisers" to Iraqi security agencies – including veterans of the original "Salvador Option" – insisted that these were Sunni insurgents in stolen threads, although many of the victims were Sunni civilians. Later, the line was changed: the chief culprits were now "rogue elements" of the various sectarian militias that had "infiltrated" Iraq's institutions.

But as investigative reporter Max Fuller has pointed out in his detailed examination of information buried in reams of mainstream news stories and public Pentagon documents, the vast majority of atrocities then attributed to "rogue" Shiite and Sunni militias were in fact the work of government-controlled commandos and "special forces," trained by Americans, "advised" by Americans and run largely by former CIA assets. As Fuller puts it: "If there are militias in the Ministry of Interior, you can be sure that they are militias that stand to attention whenever a U.S. colonel enters the room." And perhaps a British lieutenant colonel as well

With the Anglo-American coalition so deeply embedded in dirty war – infiltrating terrorist groups, "stimulating" them into action," protecting "crown jewel" double-agents no matter what the cost, "riding with the bad boys," greenlighting the "Salvador Option" – it is simply impossible to determine the genuine origin of almost any particular terrorist outrage or death squad atrocity in Iraq. All of these operations take place in the shadow world, where terrorists are sometimes government operatives and vice versa, and where security agencies and terrorist groups interpenetrate in murky thickets of collusion and duplicity. This moral chaos leaves "a kind of blot/To mark the full-fraught man and best indued/With some suspicion," as Shakespeare's Henry V says.

What's more, the "intelligence" churned out by this system is inevitably tainted by the self-interest, mixed motives, fear and criminality of those who provide it. The ineffectiveness of this approach can be seen in the ever-increasing, many-sided civil war that is tearing Iraq apart. If these covert operations really are intended to quell the violence, they clearly have had the opposite effect. If they have some other intention, the pious defenders of civilization – who approve these activities with promotions, green lights and unlimited budgets – aren't telling.

This article was first published at Truthout.org

PSNI DUMP INTIMATE PERSONAL DETAILS IN LOYALIST BELFAST SKIP

In a major security breach the PSNI dumped the intimate personal details of applicants from republican areas, in a loyalist Belfast skip, rather than consider them. It is believed that some of the applicants have panicked and gone on the run because of security concerns.




Upper Bann MP David Simpson a fervent orangeman from Ian Paisley's party said he wanted to discuss handling practices within the PSNI following the discovery of a file containing background security checks along with the applications, on some 60 people this week. The DUP Upper Bann MP David Simpson a commited loyalist has said he was “horrified” that sensitive details were dumped in a building site skip in Belfast city centre.

“Amongst the most alarming details were those of people living in republican areas such as Strabane and Andersonstown and parts of Newry and Fermanagh. These people had applied for jobs in the PSNI whilst living in areas which are known as hotbeds of dissident republican activity.

“Indeed, the file even contained the shift pattern for a particular post in Newry police station.”

It is believed that instead of checking the details of the applicants from Newry they just dumped them.

He said: “I am very concerned that this skip could have contained as many as 40 files which witnesses have indicated seemed to be of a similar nature. This is one of the worst data handling errors which I have ever witnessed and it demands serious action and answers by the PSNI about their data handling practices.

“The file contains background checks on just under 60 people. This means that their details, their partner’s details, their father and mother’s details, all previous addresses at which everyone listed on the form has lived and any criminal convictions must also be listed. These are personal details which should never be in the public domain.

“Amongst the most alarming details were those of people living in republican areas such as Strabane, Andersonstown, parts of Newry and Fermanagh. These people had applied for jobs in the PSNI whilst living in areas which are known as hotbeds of dissident republican activity.

“Indeed, the file even contained the shift pattern for a particular post in Newry police station.”

He added, “Those with responsibility for handling this data should be glad that the information fell into my hands and not into the hands of some dissident republican terrorist.

“I am calling on the Chief Constable to arrange an urgent meeting to discuss who was responsible for this security breach.”

A PSNI spokesperson last night said police were looking into it. It is not clear if he was referring to the loyalist skip ?.

“It is important that as part of this investigation we carry out an assessment of potential risk to those who may be named in the documents,” the spokesman said.



“It is our understanding that this material was handed to a broadcast journalist by a Member of Parliament. It is disappointing that this documentation was not passed immediately and directly to the police service to facilitate a speedy and effective investigation.”

It would appear that the DUP are well versed on the background of the applicunts from Strabane, Andersonstown, parts of Newry and Fermanagh. The Brit Head Boy Biggot's born again virgins have kicked off on the wrong foot again ! Its a PR disaster for the BBC's chuckle brother series, ratings are down. Meanwhile the IRA's spokesperson Siobhain O'Semtex, was not available for comment on reports that the file was available to the highest bidder.

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