27.1.2003

CRISIS NEWSLETTER
>From Ian Henshall, publisher of 911dossier.co.uk
(Ian Henshall is chair of INK the Alternative Publishers umbrella group in
the UK, opinion is in a personal capacity)

Media Note: Look out for separate press release on BBC False News story.

CONTENTS

OVERVIEW: THE WEEK THE WORLD SAID NO
But US/UK governments and media are in denial

MORE PROBLEMS FOR THE BUSH JUNTA
The dollar, stock markets and Bush's popularity all on the slide

WHY IS WEASEL BLAIR BACKING THE BUSH JUNTA?
After the Bernie Ecclestone cash for influence affair, is he being
blackmailed by the Bush/Enron Crime family?

ACTION
New Press ad planned. Contact inkchair NOW if you can help.

911 INVESTIGATION
Was US journalist Daniel Pearl murdered in Pakistan to cover up the USD
100,000 payment to Mohammed Atta, ordered from Washington by top Pakistani
General Mahmoud

OVERVIEW: THE WEEK THE WORLD SAID NO

If there was any possibility that the world outside the Blair/Bush laager
would approve an attack on Iraq this side of the autumn it was dispelled
last week.

In a historic scene, the world's tv showed the French and German Parliaments
gave a unanamous standing ovation to Chirac's view that war is the worst
outcome. Schroeder repeated himself to make the point. NO WAR. Even
Murdoch's Fox tv broadcast the message loud and clear to middle America.

As usual Bush/Blair, echoed by the UK Nationals, whispered that the `allies`
weren't to be believed, they didn't really mean it. But the proof that they
did mean it was so unprecedented, so explosive that editors did what they
usually do with such news. They buried it.

The news, as first floated in the summer by William Pfaff in the IHT and
reported here in Crisis Newsletter as no more than a hopeful possibility:
NATO has `failed to agree` to allow the use of its facilities for the
attacks. This means the Bush Junta has been denied NATO facilities.

Bush/Blair have no chance of commanding a majority on the Security Council
(Chair: Germany). If any country exercises a veto it will be US/UK against
the rest of the world - condemnation that will turn the attack legally into
something dangerously close to genocide as tens of thousands of Iraqis die
on the orders of Bush/Blair (assuming the military carry out what might be
manifestly illegal orders).

With today's news that in fact the military deployments have not even begun,
it looks as if war cannot happen this side of March, the game once again is
bluff and bluster from the warmongers, hoping to persuade the UN to move the
goalposts once again against Iraq, so that in the end a fatigued peace camp
gives up and sanctions the oil grab.

Further grist for the warmongers came from the pathetic performance of
Liberal Denocrat leader Charles Kennedy on the BBC this morning. Kennedy,
who has been reluctantly propelled to the forefront of the anti-war movement
by public outrage at Weasel Blair is now agreeing that Blair/Bush could
ignore the UN under some circumstances.

However the politicians and media whores of the Westminster Village have
forgotten that Blair's influence outside US/UK is close to zero nowadays.
The global isolation of Blair, Bush, Sharon, and the handful of the other
usual suspects (not even Canada) is complete. Turkey and Saudi Arabia have
for the umpteenth time denied that they will co-operate with the attack,
which means that 250,000 US/UK soldiers may shortly be holed up in Kuwait,
nearest friendly governments Tel Aviv and Kabul.

Blair hid from the public for most of last week sending allies Peter
Mandelson and Richard Perle to make the case for war. More scare stories
appeared in the media, but opinion hardened against the war. Blair faces his
worst ever crisis, and with public opinion spectacularly against him. He's
hoping that neither the Cabinet nor the Labour Party will have the guts to
do the right thing and depose him within 24 hours of the attack starting.
This would be virtually automatic if a majority of the Cabinet or
Parliamentry Party publicly denounces the attack.

If Weasel Blair stays with the Bush Junta in defiance of the UN, everyone
co-operating in the UK, particularly MP's, the military and the media, will
be exposed to the risk of war crimes charges when they travel abroad. CND
are making very strong statements on this issue to the top leaders, but it
is the lower down figures, particularly in the Labour Party and the media,
who can bring down the whole criminal project.

Individual citizens should seek out and tell such people that they will
question their actions through the courts for the rest of their lives if
they co-operate with what appear to be illegal and murderous war plans. 

The Pentagon has stated (Independent on Sunday page 2) that they will as
usual work to a heavy bombing strategy, not invading until the Iraqi army is
`destroyed`. This means very large numbers of civilian victims, and
ridicules the possibility that Iraq would welcome a US occupation.

With troops on the spot the Junta will be more tempted to engineer a pretext
knowing they can get an attack started before the pretext collapses.
Alternatively there could be grab of the first 50-100 oil rich miles of
Iraq, perhaps portrayed as a buffer zone to protect the troops from attack.

But if Osama Bin Laden or anyone else has even one nuclear bomb, Kuwait 2003
is offering the most obvious target since the World Trade Centre and the
Pentagon, the attacks Weasel Blair declared unthinkable (although MI6 warned
the Junta and leaks later have Blair discussing possible Al Qaida attacks
the day before).

Given the strength and unanimity of public opinion, the anger against Blair
for using the Royal Prerogative to place British Forces open to attack and
to war crimes charges at the same time and effectively under the command of
the Bush Junta, could lead to virtually anything, not least a cabinet coup.

MORE PROBLEMS FOR THE JUNTA

Meanwhile time is not on the side of the Junta. The stock markets are at
seven year lows and falling, the nearer war looks the faster they fall. The
second attempted coup in Venezuela (described by the Washington media whores
as a strike) has failed to dislodge Chavez, ensuring that oil supplies are
still a wild card as the Iraq crisis develops. Oil is over USD 30 and
rising. The dollar is GBP 1.63 and falling, down from 1.42.

With estimated occupation costs around USD 25B pa, added to war costs up to
USD 100B, Rumsfeld's claim that the military budget is `a good investment`
does not stack up with people who can count.

Worse still there are indications that suspicion of Bush complicity in the
911 attacks is spreading out from Green, activist Democrat, populist, right
wing conservative and conspiracy circles, where it widely accepted. There
are reports of serious discontent at Fort Hood, a major US Army base, with
refusal of orders on compulsory smallpox jabs, and some soldiers accusing
Bush of treachery over 911 complicity.

Whatever the reason, Bush's ratings like Blair's are plummeting. A full page
anti-war ad appeared on January 13th in the Wall Street Journal from
Republicans expressing disbelief that the next leader of Iraq might be a US
General, stating that this was not a just war, and calling for a
transformation in US foreign policy: `We want our country back`, it said.

WHY IS WEASEL BLAIR IN ON IT?

It's clear why the Bush Junta wants war, to distract attention as its ugly
venal reality becomes apparent to Republican voters. The question everyone
is asking is, why Blair.

There is always the chance Blair will pull the plug at the eleventh hour,
but the troop deployments, the mendacious scare stories, and the US/UK's
shifting of the Iraqi goalposts seem to confirm that he means war.

Shrewd Tory big hitter Kenneth Clarke probably put his finger on the simple
answer: Blair and Bush did a deal last autumn and now Blair has to keep to
it. Blair might have believed Iraq would resist the weapons inspectors, or
been duped by incompetents/warmongers in MI6 into thinking that a smoking
gun would be found, or calculated optimistically that Bush would come to his
senses in time.

The political editors whose speculations lead the day's agenda in the
corporate media will be the last to know. Crisis Newsletter fears the worst:
that Blair, whose rise to power in New Labour was heavily backed by
Washington and financed by Enron, is deeply involved with what has since
become known as the Bush-Enron crime family, and could even be trapped by
blackmail should he ever think of defecting from the Junta's agenda.

ACTION

I am planning to do a newspaper ad prior to the February 15th demo similar
to the Independent Ad in September. If your organisation or business would
like to get involved or if you can afford it as an individual and would
consider giving £100 or more, please contact inkchair@pro-net.co.uk

Like the Edinburgh Festival, the FEBRUARY 15 DON'T ATTACK IRAQ MARCH  is
creating fringe events on the evenings before and after. Check
stopwar.org.uk for details.

911 UPDATE

Chinks are appearing, notably November's four page essay by Gore Vidal in
The Observer. But the corporate media are still largely sticking to the
demonstrably false Official Story of 911 - that Al Qaida did it all alone
even though they have never managed anything better than a truck bomb before
or since. So research into the events tends to be by alternative sources.

Dissidents believe that the blocking of FBI agents who could have stopped
the 911 plot was deliberate act of complicity by the Bush Junta whose
popularity and pre-existing invasion goals were given an enormous boost by
success of the attacks.

Virtually every aspect of the Official Story has been discredited or come
under attack, from Bush's inexplicable behaviour in the Texas schoolroom to
the implausible find of Atta's smouldering passport in the ruins of the Twin
Towers, to the immediate assertion from Bush/Blair that such attacks were
unthinkable, now belied by numerous reports of explicit warnings.

Now the Natural Law Party has produced a superb piece of research into the
British connection Al Qaida. In contrast to the image projected by the
corporate media, The Natural Law Party adheres to reason and science in its
arguments, rejecting Bush/Blair's system of by spin, greed and religious
fundamentalism.

Despite the brutal efforts of Weasel Blair to silence him, ex-MI5 employee
David Shayler has demonstrated that MI6 was plotting with elements linked to
Al Qaida to assassinate Ghadaffi as late as the mid nineties. The then
Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind has denied authorising the plot which is
therefore in law a simple conspiracy to murder, a conspiracy which Blair is
keen to cover up.

These are not the only links between Al Qaida and Bush/Blair. Now the NLP
has investigated the murder of New York Times journalist Daniel Pearl and
highlights an astonishing fact:

The Pakistani sentenced to death for the murder of Pearl, Omar Sheikh, is
the same Al Qaida contact who wired USD 100,000 to Mohammed Atta shortly
before 911 on the instructions of the head of Pakistani Intelligence General
Mahmoud who quietly resigned soon after. 

Astonishingly, Mahmoud on the days around the 911 attacks was in a series of
secret top level meetings in the White House and with hawkish senators on
Capitol Hill. The payment to Atta was traced by Indian intelligence, where
sources say they have much more information on the links between Bush people
and the hijackers.

The New York Times, believe it or not, is hated by the Bush warmongers, not
because they don't support the war in general but because they are still
prepared to ask sensitive questions, a crime in the Junta's America. The New
York Times has researched the anthrax attacks and believes they were carried
out not by a lone right wing nut in the Administration but by a well
organised group, a big step towards exposing the wider 911 plot.

The NLP suspects that Pearl was murdered because he was investigating the
smoking gun USD 100,000 transaction and that Sheikh was framed for the
murder to stop him talking. Sheikh as it happens is a UK citizen and Labour
MP Harry Cohen has put down a question on the matter to the Foreign Office,
which they have refused to answer.

With the murder of Pearl and the bile directed towards the New York Times,
and after what many in US politics privately believe was the flagrant murder
of Senator Paul Wellstone by the Junta, it is not surprising that so few in
the US corporate media are prepared to investigate the truth of the 911 attacks.

The NLP research is to be found at
www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/WATomarsheikhgate.htm













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>From Ian Henshall, chair of INK and proprietor of The Tea and Coffee Plant.
INK is the umbrella trade organisation for the UK alternative press. Comment
is written in a strictly personal capacity. To get future Crisis Newsletters
or be removed, email to inkchair@pro-net.co.uk. For an archive go to
911dossier.co.uk. For INK administration contact steve@inkadmin.fsnet.co.uk.
-----------------------------
SOURCES ON THE CRISIS

FREE NEWSLETTERS

globalvisionary@cybernaute.com. Several different threads including
spiritual/light, alternative/green, radical/antiwar, very professional,
great integrity from Editor Jean Hudon.

For a daily digest of US and global news with hilarious references to
`Dictator Bush` et al parenthesised by Editor Lori Price. send an email to
clg_newsletter-subscribe@mlm.legitgov.org or visit
http://legitgov.org/index.html#breaking_news

The Konformist. They relay stuff from a very wide variety of off-beat
sources and topics, from 911 to whales. konformist-owner@yahoogroups.com

Mario Profaco. Mostly mainstream press reports on global issues. Send a
blank email to spynews-digest@yahoogroups.com

GENERAL NEWS WEBSITES

onlinejournal.com
www.alternet.org
Alternet runs high quality articles on green and justice issues. But editor
David Corn is a CIA-linked Washington journalist unable to contemplate the
true horror of the Bush Junta.
So for the the great American tradition of well-written, fully referenced
damning investigation of the Bush Junta the must visit site is onlinejournal.

Truthout.com. A general news site from mainstream Democrat activists. A few
key articles go up each day. Look out for Bernard Weiner.

World Socialist Web Site. Global news from a socialist perspective. Unlike
the mainstream Left in the UK, they are accusing Bush of criminal complicity
in 911. https://wsws.org/

www.spin-on-this.com Hilarious black humour at the expense of Bush/Blair and
others

http://www.mediawhoresonline.com/. Sparkling, gossipy but ruthlessly
forensic revelations of Washington's finest fifth estate operators as they
cope with the pressures from the Junta

http://www.counterpunch.org/ Alexander Cockburn and many others. Fine
polemics and radical writing.

http://www.stopwar.org.uk/ UK anti-war coalition for latest action updates.

INVESTIGATIVE SITES

911dossier.co.uk. Archive of these newsletters. Overview of all aspects of
the 911 events with selection of key dissident articles.

http://www.unansweredquestions.org/top_11.html

http://www.fromthewilderness.com or http://www.copvcia.com Legendary cop
turned reporter Mike Ruppert on governemnt crime from Iran/contra to 911

The Emperor has no Clothes. Detailed examination of 911's failed air
defences, Bush's Texan schoolroom behaviour and much more.
http://www.tenc.net/ or email Emperors1000@aol.com

This is a California-based network pioneering non-hierarchical research into
911: http://www.cooperativeresearch.org

http://globalresearch.ca/. Fully refereenced academic site with connections
between CIA and Bin Laden, the oil connection in Afghanistan, Atta-ISI links

http://www.thememoryhole.com. An archive of the seminal mainstream stories
that have run once and once only.

http://www.infowars.com/resources.html#hegel archive of reports indicating
Bush's prior knowledge of 911

whatreallyhappened.com a sort of anti-Mossad Drudge Report with stacks of
allegations of Mossad involvement in the 911 attacks. Hugely visited.

www.9-11.co.uk. a broad listing of 911 topics.

http://www.apfn.org/apfn/WTC.htm This populist site will astonish those who
think America is a simple right/left spectrum. A must visit on 911.

Dick Eastman. US populist, often first with the news. Email
eastman@bentonrea.com to receive a startling barrage of emails. You don't
get more radical than this.

http://uk.indymedia.org/ A global network

PEACE SITES AND OTHERS

www.stopwar.org.uk the key UK peace site run by the stop the war co-alition

To be informed of all UK actions against the war including local meetings
(of which there are many) you can email to
Aftermath-11-September-2001-announce-owner@yahoogroups.co.uk.

MISCELLANEOUS
www.narconews.com
MichaelMoore.com
http://www.takebackthemedia.com/index.shtml
makethemaccountable.com/whatwhen/ 
www.guerrillanews.com
http://www.antiwar.com
http://www.toostupidtobepresident.com/
www.SilentMajority.co.UK
http://www.koolpages.com/killtown/flight77.html
&127http://www.YellowTimes.org
http://www.conspiracyplanet.com
http://www.whatmatters.nu
marknemeth.com
rhr.israel.net
www.rense.com
www.drugwar.com