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burning the evidence

Submitted by antarchi on April 29, 2012 - 01:01

...many of the most sensitive papers from Britain's late colonial era were not hidden away, but simply destroyed. These papers give the instructions for systematic destruction issued in 1961 after Iain Macleod, secretary of state for the colonies, directed that post-independence governments should not get any material that "might embarrass Her Majesty's government", that could "embarrass members of the police, military forces, public servants or others eg police informers", that might compromise intelligence sources, or that might "be used unethically by ministers in the successor government".

...documents show that colonial officials were instructed to separate those papers to be left in place after independence – usually known as "Legacy files" – from those that were to be selected for destruction or removal to the UK. In many colonies, these were described as watch files, and stamped with a red letter W.

...Painstaking measures were taken to prevent post-independence governments from learning that the watch files had ever existed. One instruction states: "The legacy files must leave no reference to watch material. Indeed, the very existence of the watch series, though it may be guessed at, should never be revealed."

...Many of the watch files ended up at Hanslope Park. They came from 37 different former colonies, and filled 200 metres of shelving. But it is becoming clear that much of the most damning material was probably destroyed. Officials in some colonies, such as Kenya, were told that there should be a presumption in favour of disposal of documents rather than removal to the UK – "emphasis is placed upon destruction" – and that no trace of either the documents or their incineration should remain. When documents were burned, "the waste should be reduced to ash and the ashes broken up".

— Ian Cobain

Britain destroyed records of colonial crimes

we must sin quietly

Submitted by antarchi on April 29, 2012 - 00:50

In June 1957, Eric Griffiths-Jones, the attorney general of the British administration in Kenya, wrote to the governor, Sir Evelyn Baring, detailing the way the regime of abuse at the colony's detention camps was being subtly altered.

From now on, Griffiths-Jones wrote, for the abuse to remain legal, Mau Mau suspects must be beaten mainly on their upper body, "vulnerable parts of the body should not be struck, particularly the spleen, liver or kidneys", and it was important that "those who administer violence … should remain collected, balanced and dispassionate".

Almost as an after-thought, the attorney general reminded the governor of the need for complete secrecy. "If we are going to sin," he wrote, "we must sin quietly."

— Ian Cobain

Sins of colonialists lay concealed for decades in secret archive

bombing iran is the stupidest idea you've ever heard

Submitted by antarchi on March 18, 2012 - 16:33

Interview with Meir Dagan, former chief of the Mossad

Lesley Stahl: You have said publicly that bombing Iran now is the stupidest idea you’ve ever heard. That’s a direct quote.

Dagan: An attack on Iran before you are exploring all other approaches is not the right way how to do it... The regime in Iran is a very rational regime.

Stahl: Do you think Ahmadinejad is rational?

Dagan: The answer is yes. Not exactly our rationale, but I think that he is rational.

Stahl: Do you think they’re rational enough that they are capable of backing down from this?

Dagan: No doubt that the Iranian regime is maybe not exactly rational based on what I call Western-thinking, but no doubt they are considering all the implications of their actions.

Dagan says the best solution is to push the mullahs out by supporting Iranian students and minorities. According to a leaked State Department cable, he told his American counterparts as early as 2007, more should be done to foment regime change.

Dagan: It’s our duty to help anyone who likes to present an open opposition against their regime in Iran.

Stahl: Has Israel done anything to encourage, help, support the youth opposition groups that have been marching against the regime?

Dagan: Let’s ignore the question.

Dagan: We are going to ignite, at least from my point of view, a regional war. And wars, you know how they start. You never know how you are ending it.

— CBS 60 Minutes

The Spymaster Speaks

no tax on private healthcare

Submitted by antarchi on March 18, 2012 - 16:22

- Spire Healthcare, the UK's second largest private healthcare company, is channelling £65m a year through a Luxembourg subsidiary of Cinven, its private equity owner, almost wiping out its taxable UK earnings.

- Care UK, which operates NHS treatment centres, walk-in centres and mental health services across England, is reducing its tax liability by routing £8m a year in interest payments on loan notes issued in the Channel Islands.

- Circle Health, the self-styled “social enterprise” that became the first private company to take over the management of an NHS hospital, is owned by companies and investment funds registered in the British Virgin Islands, Jersey and the Cayman Islands.

- Ramsay Health Care, the company with the greatest number of healthcare provision contracts in the NHS, has used a subsidiary in the Cayman Islands to finance the purchase of a French health company for its Australian parent company.

- General Healthcare Group, the biggest private hospital group in the UK, has registered the ownership of its hospitals through subsidiaries in the British Virgin Islands, potentially avoiding stamp duty when its owners come to sell. Its corporate structure may also mean its owners will not pay UK capital gains tax.

— Corporate Watch

An unhealthy business

winners take all

Submitted by antarchi on March 11, 2012 - 11:13

3 decades of the super-rich's gains (US)

— Dave Gilson and Carolyn Perot

It's the inequality, stupid

wall street and the people

Submitted by antarchi on March 11, 2012 - 11:19

Gains and losses 2007 - 2009 (US)

— Dave Gilson and Carolyn Perot

It's the inequality, stupid

subsidies for the rich

Submitted by antarchi on March 11, 2012 - 11:23



— Dave Gilson and Carolyn Perot

It's the inequality, stupid

regime change in syria (1957)

Submitted by antarchi on February 18, 2012 - 01:47

Nearly 50 years before the war in Iraq, Britain and America sought a secretive "regime change" in another Arab country they accused of spreading terror and threatening the west's oil supplies, by planning the invasion of Syria and the assassination of leading figures.
Newly discovered documents show how in 1957 Harold Macmillan and President Dwight Eisenhower approved a CIA-MI6 plan to stage fake border incidents as an excuse for an invasion by Syria's pro-western neighbours, and then to "eliminate" the most influential triumvirate in Damascus.

The plans, frighteningly frank in their discussion, were discovered in the private papers of Duncan Sandys, Mr Macmillan's defence secretary, by Matthew Jones, a reader in international history at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Although historians know that intelligence services had sought to topple the Syrian regime in the autumn of 1957, this is the first time any document has been found showing that the assassination of three leading figures was at the heart of the scheme. In the document drawn up by a top secret and high-level working group that met in Washington in September 1957, Mr Macmillan and President Eisenhower were left in no doubt about the need to assassinate the top men in Damascus.'

— Ben Fenton

Macmillan backed Syria assassination plot

iran and the bomb

Submitted by antarchi on February 18, 2012 - 00:16

2007, in a closed discussion: Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said that in her opinion "Iranian nuclear weapons do not pose an existential threat to Israel." She "also criticized the exaggerated use that [Israeli] Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is making of the issue of the Iranian bomb, claiming that he is attempting to rally the public around him by playing on its most basic fears.1"

2009: "A senior Israeli official in Washington" asserted that "Iran would be unlikely to use its missiles in an attack [against Israel] because of the certainty of retaliation.2"

In 2010 the Sunday Times of London (January 10) reported that Brigadier-General Uzi Eilam, war hero, pillar of the Israeli defense establishment, and former director-general of Israel's Atomic Energy Commission, "believes it will probably take Iran seven years to make nuclear weapons."

Early last month, US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta told a television audience: "Are they [Iran] trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No, but we know that they're trying to develop a nuclear capability.3"

A week later we could read in the New York Times (January 15) that "three leading Israeli security experts — the Mossad chief, Tamir Pardo, a former Mossad chief, Efraim Halevy, and a former military chief of staff, Dan Halutz — all recently declared that a nuclear Iran would not pose an existential threat to Israel."

Then, a few days afterward, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, in an interview with Israeli Army Radio (January 18), had this exchange:

Question: Is it Israel's judgment that Iran has not yet decided to turn its nuclear potential into weapons of mass destruction?

  • 1. Haaretz.com (Israel), October 25, 2007; print edition October 26
  • 2. Washington Post, March 5, 2009
  • 3. "Face the Nation", CBS, January 8, 2012
— Bill Blum

The Anti-Empire Report, February 3rd, 2012

how and why we back the arab revolutions

Submitted by antarchi on February 18, 2012 - 00:25

David Cameron's instinctive response to the Arab revolutions was to jump on a plane and tour the palaces of the region's dictators selling them the most hi-tech weapons of repression available. Nicolas Sarkozy's instinctive response to the Arab revolutions was to offer urgent aid to the Tunisian tyrant in crushing his people. Barack Obama's instinctive response to the Arab revolutions was to refuse to trim the billions in aid going to Hosni Mubarak and his murderous secret police, and for his Vice-President to declare: "I would not refer to him as a dictator."

Bill Richardson, the former US energy secretary who served as US ambassador to the UN, is probably right when he says: "There's another interest, and that's energy... Libya is among the 10 top oil producers in the world. You can almost say that the gas prices in the US going up have probably happened because of a stoppage of Libyan oil production... So this is not an insignificant country, and I think our involvement is justified."

— Johann Hari

We're not being told the truth on Libya

the 99%

Submitted by antarchi on February 18, 2012 - 00:42

The Congressional Budget Office confirms that the top 1% has tripled its income since 1979, while the upper middle class has increased its wealth much more modestly, and the rest of the country has seen only a small gain.

— Juan Cole

If American Land were Distributed the way American Wealth Is

united bases of america

Submitted by antarchi on February 18, 2012 - 00:59

Click on image for full size

— Richard Johnson

Mapping a superpower-sized military

world's top seven military budgets

Submitted by antarchi on December 19, 2011 - 21:21

Between 2001 and 2011 the [US] Department of Defense’s base budget, which excludes war and nuclear weapons funding, grew from $390 billion to $540 billion, an increase of 38 percent.

— SIPRI

Military Expenditure Database 2010

I'm a machine

Submitted by antarchi on December 19, 2011 - 21:30

Sometimes they showed you the ugly face: torturing, torturing without asking questions. Sometimes I said, ‘Yes, whatever you ask, I’ll say yes,’ because I just wanted torture to stop. But the next day, I said: ‘No, I said yes yesterday because of torture.’ My first or second interrogator said to me: ‘Mohammed, I know you’re innocent but I’m doing my job. I have children to feed. I don’t want to lose my job.’

‘This is no job,’ I said, ‘this is criminal. Sooner or later you’re going to pay for this. Even in afterlife.’

‘I’m a machine – I ask you the questions they told me to ask, I bring them your answers. Whatever they are, I don’t care.’

— Mohammed el Gorani

Interview with Jerome Tubiana

the richest country in the world

Submitted by antarchi on December 18, 2011 - 03:09

A few of the 50 Economic Numbers From 2011 That Are Almost Too Crazy To Believe References available at original article.

1. 48 percent of all Americans are either considered to be "low income" or are living in poverty.

2. Approximately 57 percent of all children in the United States are living in homes that are either considered to be "low income" or impoverished.

7. Since December 2007, median household income in the United States has declined by a total of 6.8% once you account for inflation.

10. According to author Paul Osterman, about 20 percent of all U.S. adults are currently working jobs that pay poverty-level wages.

12. Back in 1969, 95 percent of all men between the ages of 25 and 54 had a job. In July, only 81.2 percent of men in that age group had a job.

13. One recent survey found that one out of every three Americans would not be able to make a mortgage or rent payment next month if they suddenly lost their current job.

21. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 18 percent of all homes in the state of Florida are sitting vacant. That figure is 63 percent larger than it was just ten years ago.

31. Today, one out of every six elderly Americans lives below the federal poverty line.

32. According to a study that was just released, CEO pay at America's biggest companies rose by 36.5% in just one recent 12 month period.

33. Today, the "too big to fail" banks are larger than ever. The total assets of the six largest U.S. banks increased by 39 percent between September 30, 2006 and September 30, 2011.

34. The six heirs of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton have a net worth that is roughly equal to the bottom 30 percent of all Americans combined.

37. A higher percentage of Americans is living in extreme poverty (6.7%) than has ever been measured before.

— The Economic Collapse

50 Economic Numbers From 2011 That Are Almost Too Crazy To Believe