If you suspect it, report it

The "It" referred to in the title of this post is, of course, bullsh-it.

Recent political power surges have ensured the appointment of Josef Goebbels as minister for news and propaganda from beyond the grave. Residents of prison ship Britain wake to find themselves living simultaneously in the maelstroms of the occupied territories of Iraq, the occupied territories of Afghanistan and the occupied territories of Palestine, all without the hassle of having to sell their homes in challenging economic times.

Government warns of nuclear terror threat - Telegraph.co.uk

New anti-terror strategy warns of chemical attack threat - guardian.co.uk

Fanatics 'could use roadside bombs to kill VIPs in Britain' - Daily Mail

Terror attack on UK highly likely, says Home Office - Scotsman

UK citizens encouraged to confront terror threat - The Herald

'Workers army' trained for counter-terror force - Times Online

All this marks the launch of the long time in the making Contest 2 'anti-terror' strategy of the government, as widely publicised by the housing benefit thief Home Secretary, J'Accuse Smith (no relation to housing benefit thief Employment Minister Tony McNulty).

The publication of the report coincides with a new police campaign to urge Londoners (and nobody else?) to report 'suspicious activity'. Gordon BrNWO was banging on about it in last week's Sunday Observer. For his efforts, as if he wrote the article in question, BrNWO received a good and entirely justified verbal kicking right until the bitter end.

Goebbels' new campaign to reinstate blockleiters comes with a few simple posters issued by the simple police as the cross media marketers are only too aware that people busy losing their homes, savings, pensions, cars and just about everything else they've ever worked for, with no end in sight, probably don't have the time to read lengthy government reports designed to distract from the misery of the material reality of their existences.

One of the posters looks a little something like this, only slightly different (click for larger image):


What the government hasn't [sic] failed to notice in its haste to train 60,000 people to recognise what the ruling classes like to think of as terrorists -- through the use of posters featuring Aryan folk in the foreground, complete with Aryan babies, while a couple of lesser, darker-skinned human beings mill about in the background because, despite everything, they must appear to matter too -- is that the 60 million residents of the UK already learned to recognise terrorists and terrorist activity when they see them.

Handy clues like the mass-murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent people is simultaneously a bit of a giveaway and a clincher and it will stand up in an International Criminal Court of law a bit better than black pepper, hair dye and chemical impossibilities, so pretending that hairdressers and chefs and "hardcore antagonists" are terrorists just isn't going to wash any more.

Bullshit - If you suspect it, report it.

Met chief faces quiz over 'SAS involvement' in Menezes death

Of course, the title of this post, taken from a Daily Mail headline of yesteryear, is an impossibility. There is no full-time Met chief to face a quiz over SAS involvement in the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes any more. This is because one of the queen's most crafty relatives, bendy-bastard Boarish Johnson, decreed it must be. Johnson did so dictatorially, after first seizing control of the Metropolitan Police Authority, to, as he claimed, resolve a "democratic deficit" in the way in which Met chiefs are appointed. Dictatorship is certainly one way of resolving a "democratic deficit", if only through its complete removal of any process that is remotely democratic.

Moving forward, looking back. Stories from the past, where are they now? History rewritten in the blink of an eye.

The headline "Met chief faces quiz over 'SAS involvement' in Menezes death" could, however, have been true at the time of its publication. And indeed it was. On 9th September 2007 a most off-message news alert appeared featuring the very same headline:

Met chief faces quiz over 'SAS involvement' in Menezes death
Daily Mail - UK

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair is facing questions today over whether the SAS was involved in the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes. ...

Naturally, that's the sort of bombastic announcement that demands immediate attention. Except, in the brief period of time between the story being published, the email alert being received and visiting the page containing the story, the historical revisionists had struck in a bid to suppress another piece of history's jigsaw.

Sir Ian Blair's future in doubt as political critics renew attack
Daily Mail - UK

Sir Ian Blair faced growing questions about his future today as London politicians expressed new concerns about the way he runs the Met.

A somewhat tamer headline and no mention at all of any SAS involvement in the events of July 2005. The Times though was less repentant when it posed the question shortly after what Oxford Professor of Jurisprudence, John Gardner, called "the police’s Mossad-style execution of a ’suspect’ (who turned out to be a completely innocent passer-by) on Friday 22 July"

July 31, 2005
Could Stockwell 'police officer' be a soldier?
BRITISH special forces soldiers took part in the operation that led to the shoot-to-kill death of an innocent Brazilian electrician with no connection to the London bombings, defence sources said last week. Jean Charles de Menezes was tailed by a surveillance team on July 22 as he caught a bus to Stockwell Underground station in south London. He was shot eight times when he fled from his pursuers at the Tube station.

The Ministry of Defence admitted last week that the army provided “technical assistance” to the surveillance operation but insisted the soldiers concerned were “not directly involved” in the shooting.

The Guardian was also happy to confirm the use of a "New special forces unit" that apparently tailed de Menezes, highlighting the involvement of the unit descended from Northern Ireland's notorious 14 Int, the Special Reconnaissance Regiment. Would 14 Int send out surveillance teams without armed backup in their day? What about its "new normal" equivalent, the SRR, when dealing with the potential threat of alleged "suicide bombers"? It was even reported by the Sunday Herald that, "SRR personnel are also believed to have been on the tube train when he was shot".

The army was "not directly involved" in the execution of de Menezes, said the MoD. But then, it has long been established that MoD policy dictates that "it would never confirm SAS involvement in any operation." Further lack of detail from the MoD was elicited by Tom Griffin in September 2006.

Back to standing on the square whose number is one.

Meanwhile, the inquest into the execution of Jean Charles de Menezes by unknown, unnamed and guaranteed anonymous killers continues at the Oval cricket ground. Daily transcripts of the inquest proceedings are published on the inquest web site which was established to the same template as that of the Diana Inquest. Submitted evidence exhibits are also available here.

Marvel as the legendary Michael Mansfield QC, acting on behalf of the de Menezes family, repeatedly falls short of pursuing potentially interesting and revealing lines of questioning. Then wonder why.

Additional information and commentary is available at the Justice4Jean web site and the J4J Inquest blog. There is also extensive coverage of the proceedings over at the J7 Jean Charles de Menezes forum and the dedicated J7 Jean Charles de Menezes Inquest forum.

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Edit: So far, there's no mention of Anthony Larkin and his infamous "bomb belt with wires" quote, nor Mark Whitby and the "padded jacket", nor has there been any mention of another apparent eye-witness, Sue Thomason, an early source for the idea that 11 shots had been fired.

6w:42d:1008h:60480m:3628800s

"I find it strange that people in the UK are arguing today whether it is humane to detain someone without charge beyond 28 days, e.g. up to 42 days, when I have already been detained without charge for nearly four years.

Such debates are smokescreens to hide the real injustices that are happening in Britain today."

-- Babar Ahmad,
Britain’s longest detained-without-charge detainee

David 'Double-tap' Davis caused something of a stir when he resigned his position as MP following the House of Common Criminals' vote on Secret Inquests, Inquiries and secret jury-less trials. In the cloud-cuckoo land of political, temporal and spiritual mythology, Davis is now Bailiff of Her Majesty's Three Chiltern Hundreds of Stoke, Desborough and Burnham.

In the customary method of political theatrics the Commons Criminals' Counter Terrorism Bill 2008 vote was dressed up as a vote on the benefits, to the State people, of locking people up for 42 days without charge. (Actually, that's slightly incorrect. The State has no plans to lock "people" up, only "terrorists". "Terrorists" aren't "people". Don't ever forget that.) "Terrorists" against whom, the imposition of 42 days detention without charge would suggest, there is no evidence sufficient for the State to bring a successful prosecution, even under the ever more inclusive "anti-terror" laws and increasingly lax evidential demands. Ergo, the requirement to detain people "terrorists" without charge for six weeks. The irony is lost on no one that the "anti-terror" laws are passed by those who preside over all the nuclear technologies, explosives, bombs, machine guns, pistols, chemicals, black pepper, armies, navies, air forces, police, incarceration centres, and so on. Never mind the instruments of imperial global fascism, beware brown-skinned people with CDs they've never looked at, containing information published by the U.S. government.

The practice of locking people up without charge was once known as internment.

"It is no exaggeration to say that at the time of the arrest there was not one shred of admissible evidence against Barot. The arrest was perfectly lawful - there were more than sufficient grounds, but in terms of evidence to put before a court, there was nothing. There then began the race against time to retrieve evidence from the mass of computers and other IT equipment that we seized. It was only at the very end of the permitted period of detention that sufficient evidence was found to justify charges. I know that some in the media were sharpening their pencils, and that if we had been unable to bring charges in that case, there would have been a wave of criticism about the arrests. Barot himself of course eventually pleaded guilty last year and received a 40-year sentence."

– DAC Peter Clarke

Historically, the need for internment has been justified as a means by which the State can pretend to protect its citizens from whichever human or sub-human threats it tells everyone it faces. In recent times internment in its many guises has saved us all from Communists, Anarchists, Jews, Nazis, Italians, blacks and the Irish. More recently, now that its forerunners have served their propagandistic purpose been neutralised, we need internment detention without charge to save us from the impending Muslim caliphate. History contains numerous examples demonstrating the liberal use of internment by States fearing for their legitimacy, credibility, authority, and ultimately their survival. However it is dressed internment is the ideal solution for the purposes of suppressing dissent and grass-roots political opposition organised against ruling class barbarism. Of the first world war Historian Margery West noted about Britain's policy of internment that by 1916, 'the Isle of Man' had become one huge enemy prison camp' and internment arguably seems to the method of choice by which States protect themselves from the consequences of their own actions, with large numbers of people 'disappeared' from circulation in the servitude of ruling class political interests.

During the 'great war' little attempt was made to distinguish civilian from military prisoners. In the great 'war on terror' -- ironically the single biggest coordinated and ongoing series of acts of mass terror ever witnessed, whose self-justifying proof of 'success' is a death toll fast approaching that achieved by the Nazis, there is no distinction between civilian and military prisoners. In the 'war on terror' all captives are military prisoners and Guantanamo has set the Mengeleian standard, a standard that has yet to be destroyed like the cancer that it is.

David Davis, raised by a single-mother on a council estate, as legend has it, may well have been sincere about his stance on 42 days, but it didn't stop him voting for 28 days detention without charge. Nor did it inspire him to do much about the steady creep of fascism during his tenure, except riding the tired old terror ticket gravy train along with just about everyone else. In fact, scratch the newly revealed 'liberal' 'libertarian' David Davis and, lo and behold, you find a traditional Conservative authoritarian fatherless paternalist who would happily lock up your children. For their own good, you understand.

Davis' stunt has resulted in follow your establishment-leader demagogue turning into a follow your establishment-dissenter demagogue, whether it be David Davis, Home Office lawyer Director of Liberty Shami Chakrabarti or any other figure that jumps on the Fast Moving Consumer Good that is the David Davis for Freedom cross-media marketing PR bandwagon.

Of course, everyone would rather have a small part of them which believes that there is a degree of humanity entrenched somewhere in a system that seeks to preserve itself above all else. While the notion of a benevolent 'Nanny State' might save everyone having to think about organising any alternatives for themselves and everyone else, considerable evidence consistently indicates that the contrary is nearer the truth.

If Davis' dissent is fickle fakery - which it is, little more than an apolitical, single issue, populist stunt in which Davis spat the proverbial dummy - then the follow up is precisely what has been delivered: A cross-party coalition of apolitical nothings who think the 'ex' SAS serviceman Basher is a rather nice, freedom-loving chap. Nothing changes but everyone gets a glimmer of the light at the end of the tunnel. Unfortunately, the glimmer being seen is from a light that was turned off a long time ago, owing to financial considerations. Illuminations never come from the crowned.

"All the world is a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and entrances; each man in his time plays many parts."

Shakespeare hit the nail firmly on the head and nowhere is it more applicable than the bread and circuses of the political theatre.

If you ignore the socio-political class roots of the origins of the apparent dissent, then Davis has struck a blow for freedom. Which he hasn't.

If there were to be a serious political backlash, it would have to come from the organised masses of the general public in the form of mass-strikes, civil disobedience and inventive ways of surviving despite the best efforts of the State to suppress the backlash. However, if there were to be a serious political backlash from the general public, well, the "anti-terror laws" are all in place to deal with that "grave exceptional terrorist threat" and precedents have been set that allow the State to extra-judicially execute everyone from foreign nationals to nice middle-class legal types. That's what you call "covering all the bases".

So, Davis / Chakrabarti / hysterical world-and-his-hysterical-wife / fight for freedom theatrics aside, the alleged 42-day detention vote has left us with:

• Secret inquests
• Secret inquiries
• Secret jury-less trials
• Lest we forget - 42 days detention without trial, even though Babar Ahmad has been locked up for four years without charge and Harry Roberts is now in his twelfth year of detention without charge, despite having already served a 30-year life-sentence for his crime.

Quoting from the brief Antagonista Manifesto at the top left of this blog:

"When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty."

For anyone to expect that duty of resistance to be presented in any legitimate way from within the system is, at best, naive.

A Libyan human being known only as Detainee DD

You can lock people up, you can take away their freedom, you can take away their names, their identity and their nationality. You can even remove the most basic vestiges of subsistence existence, but the human spirit is a wonderful thing. The human spirit abides even the most heinous travesties of justice.

I’m not allowed to disclose my name or any information that could lead to my personal identification. I am not allowed to disclose this information to anyone no matter who he may be, even a police officer.

Artwork by a Libyan human being known only as Detainee DD.


Words, addressed to us all, by a Libyan human being known only as Detainee DD:

If you stand back and do nothing then your silence in such difficult times will be recorded in history. So once again I appeal to all you listeners to break the silence, be it with an influential letter, article, protest, or through condemning and denouncing the government’s policies. Do anything you can to help those who are held indefinitely without charge. Indefinite detention without charge is found only in dictator countries like Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt etc.

If this country is to maintain democracy we must put a stop to indefinite detention without charge. The government should not be allowed to use 07.07 as a pretext to justify indefinite detention or to buy our silence. Only because the real culprits of 07.07 have not been found the government is using us as scapegoats so that the people can extinguish their anger on us.

Unfair Dealing - State Sponsored Terror, Canadian RCMP Style

Operation Crevice style fertiliser Ammonium Nitrate plots aren't just the exclusive domain of the UK intelligence services, Canada apparently has them too. Legend has it that Canadian Royal Mounted Police, the Mounties, always get their man. When this is how they play the game, that hardly comes as a surprise.

Unfair Dealing: The Toronto Homegrown Terror Threat

Summer 2006 - Canadian law enforcement round up 18 young Muslims, and arrest them on terrorism charges...

Were they a legitimate threat? Or were the Canadian people fooled?

Questions and comments can be directed to the team that created Unfair Dealing, at Unfair.Dealing@Gmail.com

Unfair Dealing: The Toronto Homegrown Terror Threat 1/6


Unfair Dealing: The Toronto Homegrown Terror Threat 2/6


Unfair Dealing: The Toronto Homegrown Terror Threat 3/6


Unfair Dealing: The Toronto Homegrown Terror Threat 4/6


Unfair Dealing: The Toronto Homegrown Terror Threat 5/6


Unfair Dealing: The Toronto Homegrown Terror Threat 6/6

For more information, see Captive in Canada - Website dedicated to Shareef Abdel Haleem & Toronto 18. A full length Windows Media version of the film can be downloaded here. Kudos to David Weingarten.

J7 Exclusive: Peter Power's CV Fakery

According to recent figures, approximately half of jobseekers tell lies on their CVs and the figure is up 10% on the results of a similar survey last year. So prevalent is the problem of CV lies that, in January, Channel 4 dumped their TV nanny, Claire Verity - previously accused by viewers of child cruelty, after she failed to prove that she hadn't faked her qualifications.

Following the events in New York on 11th September 2001, one woman, Tania Head, emerged from the debris with a distinctive tale of woe. Ms Head claimed to be on the 96th floor of the south tower when the first 'plane' struck. Her husband, Dave, was apparently on the 100th floor of the north tower. Head claims that the impact of the second 'plane' rendered her unconscious and badly burnt. Her account made her one of only 19 survivors who had been at or above the point of impact when the planes hit. In time, Head became no less than President of the World Trade Centre Survivors' Network.

Shortly after the 6th anniversary of the day that has come to be known as 9/11, the Telegraph announced that Tania Head, like half of all jobseekers, had lied on her CV:

"[For] it emerged yesterday that the big, bubbly lady with the brave smile and the most heart-rending of tales may have invented the entire story. Consciously or unconsciously, disaster victims will sometimes confuse a few details but the enormous question mark hanging over Head is whether she was ever in the Twin Towers at all when the planes struck.

Multiple inconsistencies in her story emerged after the New York Times said it tried to interview her in recent weeks about her experiences to coincide with the sixth anniversary of the attack."

When pressed, a lawyer hired by Ms Head said, "With regard to the veracity of my client's story, neither my client, nor I, have any comment", and the Telegraph article further noted:

"What became clear yesterday was that no one has ever bothered to verify the key details of Head's remarkable WTC story or asked her to elaborate on others...."

When an event of such significance occurs, the verification of key details is of the utmost importance. Yet, as the case of Tania Head amply demonstrates, this verification is not something that mainstream news and media organisations can be trusted to perform, not even with an event often billed as 'the day the world changed'. Consequently, a liar can become the president of a prominent survivors group, despite their story never having been verified by anyone, and with no questions being asked for a good number of years.

On 7th July 2005, London's transport network was rocked by what were reported to be a series of up to seven explosions staggered over the space of an hour. In time the number of explosions was reduced to four, three Underground (as opposed to six) and one on a bus (as opposed to the reports of three exploded buses) and the staggered Underground blast timings became, "almost simultaneous". It was a full two days before the story of staggered blast timings on the Underground morphed into "almost simultaneous" blasts.

Oddly, on the day of 7/7, two men were to introduce bouts of jarring cognitive dissonance into the proceedings.

One of these men was the ex-Chief of Mossad, Efraim Halevi, who published an article on 7th July 2005 in the Jerusalem Post which spoke of, "the multiple, simultaneous explosions that took place today on the London transportation system" with "near pefect execution". How Halevi knew of "multiple, simultaneous explosions" two days before the Metropolitan Police and the companies charged with running London's transportation network is still a mystery. Quite how he knew of the "near perfect execution" is also a mystery.

Another bout of cognitive dissonance came when another man announced on BBC Radio Five Live (MP3) that, at the time of the explosions, he was, "running an exercise" for "a company of over a thousand people in London based on simultaneous bombs going off precisely at the railway stations where it happened this morning". He later confirmed somewhat dismissively of his exercise, "it was based on bombs going off, to the time, the locations, all this sort of stuff." The source of these quotes was Peter Power, the Managing Director of a private 'crisis management' firm, Visor Consultants, and a former Metropolitan policeman for 19 years.

It now transpires that Mr Power has, like half of job applicants and the president of a prominent terrorist attack survivor group, been a little creative with the facts that constitute the truth of the matter. In the public domain there exists an overview of Mr Power's working history which goes a little like the one promulgated by the BBC as part of their London Under Attack Panorama programme:

PETER POWER
Crisis management specialist & government adviser
Visor consulting 1995- present
Director BET Group Security 1992-1994
Senior Officer Metropolitan Police 1971-1992

However, the sterling cooperative research efforts of the July 7th Truth Campaign have uncovered quite an anomaly in what would otherwise be a fairly standard CV for a senior Metropolitan Policeman.

The problem with the version of Mr Power's history is that between 1990 and 1993 Peter Power was working neither for the Metropolitan Police, nor for BET, but instead for the Dorset Police.

Ignoring for a moment the apparent sideways and backwards step to a rural police force from a prominent role with the Metropolitan Police, but pausing for a moment to reflect on why such a step may have occurred, one can only wonder why someone with a bent for shameless self-promotion might be so reticent about the three years of his career with the Dorset Police.

Perhaps it has something to do with the circumstances in which he left Dorset Police? After all, if your career history included you being suspended from your job as a policeman, for a period of six months, before you retired on the grounds and pension of "ill health" after a file about you, compiled during an 'internal investigation', had been sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions, maybe you wouldn't want to make a song and dance about it either.

J7: The July 7th Truth Campaign have the full details of Peter Power's CV Fakery here and here.

Additional commentary here and here.

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Update: Some post-Valentine's Day love regarding the Peter Power Wikipedia WikiWar™ here. Watch real live Internet sock puppets, as opposed to the tired, old and worn very thin sock puppets in the press and on TV, on Peter Power's Wikipedia page.

Note: The New York Times says:

This digital-age deception has a name, “sock-puppeting,” and a precise definition — the act of creating a fake online identity to praise, defend or create the illusion of support for one’s self, allies or company.

Funny that. Fake history, fake survivors and fake online identities, all in one story, all at the same time.

Blairwatch: The Blair Years and the war crimes tribunal - UPDATED

At the Nuremburg trials they swung for:

• Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of crime against peace
• War crimes
• Crimes against humanity
• Planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression and other crimes against peace

Throw waging an 'illegal war' since 2003 into the mix and this has been a long time coming:

Press Conference, Room C, 1 Parliament St.
(just off Parliament Sq.)
Tuesday 15th January 2008 3pm

John McDonnell MP and members of the Campaign to Make War History will brief MPs and the media on allegations of war crimes committed against the people of Iraq by Britain's former Prime Minister and former Attorney General.

Officers from Scotland Yard have commenced a criminal investigation into the deaths of Iraqi citizens killed during the armed invasion and occupation of Iraq. The Metropolitan Police are acting in response to crimes reported by peace activists from We Are Change UK and The Campaign to Make War History. In an unprecedented step, the case was handed to the War Crimes division of the Counter Terrorism branch who are now investigating allegations of 14 criminal offences committed by Tony Blair, Lord Goldsmith and others. The offences are under the International Criminal Court Act 2001, which came into effect under English common law, just two days before 9/11.

Two Members of We Are Change UK and a representative from the Campaign to Make War History were interviewed for six hours at Belgravia Police station on the 20th December 2007. Evidence was provided to the police relating to the crimes of:-

• genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and conduct ancillary to these crimes under Sections 51 and 52 of The International Criminal Court Act 2001.
• a crime against peace and complicity in a crime against peace under Articles 6 and 7 of The Nuremburg Principles.
• murder, incitement to murder and conspiracy to murder under the Offences Against the Person Act 1861.
• conspiracy to commit genocide, a crime against humanity and war crimes under the Criminal Law Act 1977.

Details of the alleged breaches of international treaties and violations of the laws of war will be provided at the meeting.

Contacts:-
Chris Coverdale (The Campaign to Make War History): 020 8540 2865;
John McDonnell MP: 020 7219 6908;
Simon Moore 0208 560 1319, Rob Little 07915 063322 (We Are Change UK)

83, Priory Gardens, London N6 5QU Tel: 020 8540 2865

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Update: The press conference can now be viewed on YouTube, featuring 'ex' MI5ist, 9/11 Truthling and ex-partner of David Shayler (another 'ex' MI5ist cum New Messiah), Annie Machon.

'Blair Government police investigation for war crimes' Part 1



'Blair Government police investigation for war crimes' Part 2



'Blair Government police investigation for war crimes' Part 3



'Blair Government police investigation for war crimes' Part 4

Update 2: For anyone that's interested in the specifics of bringing the UK's terrrorists and war criminals to justice, below is a copy of the War Law and War Crimes handout that was distributed at the John McDonnell MP / Campaign to Make War History press conference. Thanks to lwtc247 for obtaining this.

NB: The document states, "At least 80,000 Iraqis including 30,000 children have been violently killed since the war with Iraq began." More recent estimates of the number of Iraqi civilians murdered by the coalition of the killing put this figure between 655,000 as of October 2006 and 1.2 million as of September 2007. Quite why the document hasn't been upated to reflect these figures is unknown.

War Law and War Crimes

The armed invasion and occupation of Iraq is illegal in international and domestic law, violates treaties and renders those involved criminally liable for war crimes.

When Tony Blair and the Attorney General claimed that the war with Iraq was legal and authorised by the Security Council they lied. The use by Britain’s armed forces of cruise missiles, rockets, cluster bombs and depleted uranium artillery shells to attack villages, towns and cities in Iraq killing Iraqi citizens violates the International Treaty for the Renunciation of War, the UN Charter and the Rome Statute and constitutes a crime against peace under Article VI of the Nuremburg Principles as well as genocide and a crime against humanity under the International Criminal Court Act 2001.

All war is illegal.

War was outlawed in 1928 by the International Treaty for the Renunciation of War [the Kellogg-Briand Pact]. Sixty three nations including Britain, America, France, Germany and Japan ratified the Pact condemning recourse to war and agreeing to settle disputes peacefully. This treaty is still in force.

ARTICLE I The High Contracting Parties solemnly declare in the names of their respective peoples that they condemn recourse to war for the solution of international controversies, and renounce it, as an instrument of national policy in their relations with one another.

ARTICLE II The High Contracting Parties agree that the settlement or solution of all disputes or conflicts of whatever nature or of whatever origin they may be, which may arise among them, shall never be sought except by pacific means.

The Kellogg-Briand Pact formed the legal basis for the Nuremburg War Crimes Trials. The attack on Iraq renders Britain’s political, civil and military leaders liable for the same crime of waging aggressive war for which Germany’s leaders were convicted and hanged in 1946. The judgement concluded:

“After the signing of the Pact, any nation resorting to war as an instrument of national policy breaks the Pact. In the opinion of the Tribunal, the solemn renunciation of war as an instrument of national policy necessarily involves the proposition that such war is illegal in international law; and that those who plan and wage such a war with its inevitable and terrible consequences are committing a crime in so doing.”

“The charges in the indictment that the defendants planned and waged aggressive wars are charges of the utmost gravity. War is essentially an evil thing. Its consequences are not confined to the belligerent states alone, but affect the whole world. To initiate a war of aggression therefore, is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”

The Nuremberg Principles

These seven international war laws derived from the Nuremburg and Tokyo War Crimes Tribunals were adopted as universal statute war law by the United Nations General Assembly in 1950.

I. Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefor and liable to punishment.

II. The fact that internal law does not impose a penalty for an act which constitutes a crime under international law does not relieve the person who committed the act from responsibility.

III. The fact that a person who committed an act which constitutes a crime under international law acted as Head of State or responsible Government official does not relieve him from responsibility.

IV. The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.

V. Any person charged with a crime under international law has the right to a fair trial on the facts and law.

VI. The crimes hereinafter set out are punishable as crimes under international law:

(a) Crimes against peace: (i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances; (ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i).
(b) War crimes: Violations of the laws or customs of war which include, but are not limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave-labor or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory, murder or ill treatment of prisoners of war, of persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.
(c) Crimes against humanity: Murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhuman acts done against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds, when such acts are done or such persecutions are carried on in execution of or in connection with any crime against peace or any war crime.

VII. Complicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity as set forth in Principle VI is a crime under international law.

Armed attacks on another State are illegal

When Britain signed and ratified the UN Charter we made a binding agreement with every Member State never to threaten or attack them and to settle all disputes peacefully.

2.3 All members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace, security and justice are not endangered.

2.4 All members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.

Pre-emptive attacks are illegal. The only legitimate use of armed force is self defence. If an attack occurs a nation may legitimately use proportionate force to defend itself, but it may do so only until the UN Security Council implements measures to resolve the conflict.

The UN Security Council cannot authorise the use of armed force.

The claim that the invasion and occupation of Iraq was authorised by Security Council resolutions 678, 687 and 1441 was a lie. The Security Council is a peacekeeping body and may not use armed force.

41. The Security Council may decide what measures not involving the use of armed force are to be employed to give effect to its decisions, and it may call upon its members to apply such measures…

Intentionally killing a person is a crime

At least 80,000 Iraqis including 30,000 children have been violently killed since the war with Iraq began. Wilful killing is a crime and is never condoned or ‘right’ in law. The Human Rights Act 1998 specifies:

“Everyone’s right to life shall be protected by law. No-one shall be deprived of his life intentionally save in the execution of a sentence of a court following his conviction of a crime for which this penalty is provided in law.”

Deliberately killing a person because of their nationality is a crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. It is never legal for a serviceman to wilfully kill an enemy. Just as it is a crime to explode a bomb in a pub or to fly a plane into the World Trade Centre so it is a crime to deliberately cause the death of another human being. When the first Iraqi citizen died as a result of the actions of Coalition forces those responsible for giving, transmitting, executing or condoning the orders to wage war committed a crime and became criminally liable for every violent death.

Killing Iraqi citizens constitutes genocide.

It is an offence against the law of England and Wales for a person to commit genocide, a crime against humanity or a war crime, or to engage in conduct ancillary to such an act. This applies to acts committed in England or Wales or outside the United Kingdom by a UK national, resident or person subject to UK service jurisdiction.

For the purpose of this Statute “genocide” means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such (a) killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

When Coalition armed forces attacked Iraq causing the deaths of thousands of Iraqis every resident of Britain involved in aiding, abetting or executing the decision to wage war became criminally liable for the crimes of ‘genocide’ or ‘conduct ancillary to genocide’ and subject to the sanctions of domestic and international law. If a person did anything to aid, abet or assist the commission of the crime, even such things as paying tax, speaking in favour of executing Saddam Hussein or congratulating returning troops for a job well done they committed a crime of conduct ancillary to genocide. You may argue that you did not intend to destroy a national group, but as the legal meaning of intent is defined in the legislation you will find it hard to argue that you were not aware that anyone would be killed.

A person has intent in relation to ‘conduct’ where he means to engage in the conduct, and in relation to a consequence, where he means to cause the consequence or is aware that it will occur in the ordinary course of events.

Every resident of Britain who condoned, supported or took part in the invasion or occupation of Iraq is bound by the Rome Statute and criminally liable for genocide and conduct ancillary to genocide.

This Statute shall apply equally to all persons without any distinction based on official capacity. In particular, official capacity as Head of State or Government, a member of a Government or Parliament, an elected representative or a government official shall in no case exempt a person from criminal responsibility under this Statute, nor shall it in and of itself, constitute a ground for reduction of sentence. Immunities or special procedural rules which may attach to the official capacity of a person, whether under national or international law, shall not bar the Court from exercising its jurisdiction over such a person.

Everyone has a duty to disobey illegal orders

24. If a person who is bound to obey a duly constituted superior receives from the superior an order to do some act or make some omission which is manifestly illegal, he is under a legal duty to refuse to carry out the order and if he does carry it out he will be criminally responsible for what he does in doing so.”

This article from Chapter VI of the Manual of Military Law applies to every British citizen and taxpayer as well as to servicemen and women. It was derived from the Nuremburg War Crimes Trials when Germany’s leaders claimed that they were not responsible for the crimes of the German Government as they were following Hitler’s superior orders. The judgement rejected their claim.

“It was submitted [by the defendants] that international law is concerned with the action of sovereign states, and provides no punishment for individuals; and further, that where the act in question is an act of state, those who carry it out are not personally responsible, but are protected by the doctrine of the sovereignty of the State. In the opinion of the Tribunal, both these submissions must be rejected. That international law imposes duties and liabilities upon individuals as well as upon States has long been recognised…

The very essence of the Charter is that individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience imposed by the individual State. He who violates the laws of war cannot obtain immunity while acting in pursuance of the authority of the State, if the State in authorising action moves outside its competence under international law…

Leaders are responsible for the war crimes of their subordinates.

The International Criminal Court Act makes it clear that no matter who launches the rockets, fires the cruise missiles, drops cluster bombs or deploys depleted uranium shells, responsibility for the resulting deaths, injuries and destruction lies with those who ordered the attack to take place.

65. A military commander, or a person effectively acting as a military commander, is responsible for offences committed by forces under his effective command and control or his effective authority and control… A person responsible under this section for an offence is regarded as aiding, abetting, counselling or procuring the commission of the offence.

78. This Act binds the Crown and applies to persons in the public service of the Crown.

Although it is impossible to arrest and try everyone in Britain responsible for war crimes many of Britain’s political, civil and military leaders may eventually be arrested, tried and punished as war criminals.

We all have a responsibility to act

All British residents must abide by their obligations and duties in law and confine their activities to the legitimate path outlined by the UN Charter and the laws of war. To do this you must disassociate yourself from any action that can be construed as aiding, abetting or assisting the British Government’s use of armed force. Members of the Armed Forces and Civil Service must refuse all superior orders contributing to the wars with Iraq and Afghanistan. MPs and Peers must force the Government to end the use of armed force or resign from their seats in Parliament. Taxpayers [Individuals and employers] must withhold taxes from the Inland Revenue until the crimes have ceased and others should report war crimes to the police. The wars with Iraq and Afghanistan in which thousands of innocent men, women and children have been killed constitute the worst atrocity ever committed by a British Government and they must be stopped. They continue today because too many of us condone or support the Government’s illegal actions and fail to take active practical steps to end the killings.

© Chris Coverdale The Campaign to Make War History January 2008