According to Libyan Government spokesperson Moussa Ibrahim, speaking at a press conference in Tripoli on 21st Ausgust, Tripoli experienced a bloodbath over the previous 24 hours.

He reported some 1,200 people had been killed; several thousands injured. Many no doubt were combatants, but it’s worth remembering they are people too – on both sides. This is carnage!

It’s not over, either. In fact, the bloodbath in Tripoli may just be beginning.

Horrifying Casualties

I had to switch my TV off a while yesterday in sheer disgust. I’d been listening to CNN, Al Jazeera, Fox, Sky.. for hours on end . Not ONCE did I notice a single commentator or talking head mention casualties.

Yet the courageous independent journalist Theirry Meyssan told us a day ago the hospitals are saturated. Today come’s gruesome footage, courtesy of Alex Crawford at Sky News. Has there been a squeak of angst out of ‘human rights groups’ such as Amnesty or Human Rights Watch – when ONE DAY yields casualty figures almost as bad as a MONTH of Israel’s savagery in Gaza, January 2009? If there has, I haven’t noticed.

Preventing large numbers of casualties, lest we forget, was the purported reason for NATO intervention in the first place. What a travesty! The liars at the UN who pulled off this stunt must never again be trusted. The responsible people in the USA, Britain and France are war criminals, thieves and maniacs. If anyone on the planet belongs behind bars, they do.

To imagine the terror people in Tripoli – and elsewhere in Libya – must be experiencing is as saddening as the lack of mobilization of the international peace movement, which barely seems to exist in any coherent form.

“Tripoli is 95% in rebel hands” Fox News reported at one point in what was a long night of viewing a day ago. Yet oddly, that 95% didn’t seem to include the Rixos Hotel, where foreign journalists have been based. It still doesn’t. A curious omission, especially as by all reports beleaguered hacks inside have been doing it tough. In fact, in recent days, life at the Rixos has been very tough – especially for genuine independent journalists to whom the world owes a debt of gratitude.

Sky News showed a crowd celebrating in Green Square, Tripoli on the 21st (Libya time). Yet a few hours later, a tweeter who claims to be in Tripoli stated all was quiet in the vicinity of the square. There has been some speculation Sky’s footage was faked completely (for days rumours have been circulating about a stage set replica of Green Square, built somewhere in Qatar). Or it may have been a temporary feat. Reports on TV yesterday suggest the ‘rebels’ have now retreated from Green Square.

Saif al Ghadafi: alive, well & free in Tripoli, AFTER the idiotic ICC said he was "in custody"

There have been reports of the capture of Ghadafi’s sons, of Ghadafi himself and of his death (complete with gruesome photo), reports of many Government and army defectors, tales of public celebrations once the rebels arrived… and on and on. None of these have been fully authenticated. Some have already been disproved. Believe the mainstream media and you have no doubt: the war is over, Ghadafi has lost. Game over! The political talking heads express no doubt. They’re committed to their necks: Obama, Cameron – even Julia Gillard chimed to welcome Ghadafi’s demise.

None of them mentioned the humanitarian crisis, as far as I’m aware. Nor are they exactly pursued with questions about that by ‘journalists’.

Tripoli’s nightmare has been packaged as Tripoli’s liberation by the media; politicians play their roles with quotable, optimistic cliches.

An Alternative Narrative

In addition to the largely overlooked humanitarian disaster, there is also a persistent, quite different narrative coming from non-standard sources. As best I can, I’ll piece together what I think may be a plausible alternative explanation of what’s happening in Libya at the moment. Since I began writing this, I’ve seen one attempt already to do something similar: I recommend Libya: Swimming against the Tide of NATO’s Media Propaganda by Joost van den Heuvel.

I’ll make a basic cases around three propositions:

Second, the ‘rebels’, backed by NATO air-power, training and provisions, can and have made advances into territory, including many areas where they lack support and which they cannot hold long-term. Typically, over the last few months, they’ve retreat after some time and Government forces regain control, as long as NATO bombing subsides. Then the cycle starts again. That type of see-sawing has been going in in many parts of Libya since mid-March.

Third, until two days ago, Tripoli had been safe from ground attacks (it had, of course, been hammered with NATO bombing for months on end). Now that’s changed…

Instead of blasting their way into Tripoli in one big push along main roads, NATO assisted the ‘rebels’ in at least two ways:

(a) it’s reported they gave bombing signals to trigger simultaneous attacks by sleeper insurgents within Tripoli and

(b) it’s confirmed they assisted insurgents land from the sea. They arrived once the Government armed forces were distracted by snipers and other rogue elements in the city.  Taking advantage of the general confusion, there was also an influx of insurgents from the west. The handful of frontline but “embedded” journalists on the rebel side presumably came with them and were able to report, however briefly, that the centre of Tripoli was in ‘rebel’ hands.

This alternative explanation of events suggests the Government is still supported by the mass of Tripoli’s citizens (and the majority of Libyans as a whole). The Government forces, supported by tens of thousands of volunteers, are therefore likely to retake control of Tripoli and flush out rebel insurgents There are reports they have already succeeded to a significant extent in doing so. Although the mass media today is saying 80% of Tripoli in in rebel control, that’s trom the same “reliable sources” that reported on the capture of Saif Ghadafi when he was, in reality, not captured at all.

Of course, if more insurgents arrive – whether by land or in more NATO-asssisted stunts by sea or air – there will be more resistance, more killing. The thousands of dead could multiply. A few thousand wounded could become tens of thousands.

Mossa Ibrahim's statement 23rd August 2011

If this narrative is correct, the mass media has been engaged in selling a spectacular lie – no less of an orchestrated psy-op than 9-11.

That may seem hard to credit – yet so much of the media’s narrative that changes almost by the hour, and there’s so much that really doesn’t make sense. We saw the remarkable size of pro-Ghadafi rallies in Tripoli a few weeks ago. Why would all those supporters suddenly change their minds, as the media suggests, and welcome insurgents into their city?

The truth, I suspect, is that most of them haven’t. In that case, given many civilians are armed, they will take their city back, if they haven’t already done so.

If this western-promoted assault on Tripoli persists, carnage on an unthinkable scale is possible. Dr Ibrahim warned us eleoquently at his press conference on the 21st. The world community must heed that warning. NATO’s criminal actions – aided and abetted by the mass media – is destroying what was before the most prosperous nation in Africa.  Now blood is flowing fast.

The unstoppable force of NATO is pushing its way, albeit shackled a tiny bit by a pesky UN resolution it goes out of its ways to misinterpret anyway. But it’s meeting an immovable rock – the resilient determination of most Libyans to remain independent.

So far, little more than a day after insurgents first appeared in Tripoli, it looks like the attempt to shift the immovable object will founder – unless the carnage is so great that life simply falls apart for residents of Tripoli. That might require thousands, even tens of thousands more casualties. Is this not a case for real “humanitarian intervention”?

For God’s sake, let’s get real! We need a general ceasefire NOW, including a complete stop to bombing!

This is NOT a game! The ‘pieces’ are real human beings.

Wargames

The war was originally billed as a quick knock out; its proved to be a gruelling 15-round slug-out.

“Humanitarian intervention” has morphed into what may become one of the great humanitarian tragedies of our era.

Someone has been – someone is – playing war games. They seem to see this as a game. Maybe a little ‘game theory’ is of use to those of us who are repelled by their murderous schemes and want to resist them.

Gaddafi plays chess, rather well

Ghadafi, by all accounts, is no mean chess player. He has indeed proved a cunning, tenacious adversary and a tower of strength for his people, along with his colleagues. I know only a few of them via the media:  I’m impressed by the very decent sounding PM (at a glance, I’d trust him more than my own Prime Minister) and the valiant Moussa Ibrahim, a truly superb spokesman for his country.

But this war is not really like chess. A game of chess presupposes two equal sides and pieces of comparable power. That’s not the case in this utterly one-sided contest, in which, for instance, the only British soldier killed so far was victim of a car crash while driving through Italy.

Yes, there have been moments that brought chess to mind. I’ve thought sometimes Ghadafi conceded pawns to get bigger gains. Here’s an example. When Ghadafi first began speaking about Al Qaeda, back in February, I couldn’t understand why. Asked about Al Queda last year, Ghadafi laughed off the subject and said it was essentially a western propaganda invention. Yet in February, with his Government under attack, he began using the expression. Why?

The reason,I think, is he understood the usefulness of what the advertising industry calls branding. The “Al Qaida” connections of some of the rebels goes down well in western mainstream society. That meme gets a run.

Unfortunately, by using the term ‘Al Qaida’ we’re also allowing the psy-ops orchestrators to successfully get away with creating universal acceptance of a ‘brand’ which they invented and control. They issue its press releases and release its videos. Hello 1984?

I’m sure Ghadafi would have been aware of that – but in chess the loss of minor pieces is often a strategic necessity. Ghadafi and his colleagues have had more pressing concerns at the time and since, not least of which has been survival.

When the war began, it seemed to me more like judo than anything else. The weight of the loser (most people around the world) was used against us. “Public opinion” flung itself into supporting the ‘UN intervention’ and the “NATO mission”, all for what seemed at the time like the best of reasons such as saving lives. We now now (or should do) just how bogus those reasons were. But back then, Arab Spring euphoria was intense. So it was that many decent people flung Libya over the cliff and into war, war which has proven far more protracted and bloody than was ever suggested at the time of the cunningly hustled UN resolutions.

Even if NATO’s flag flies over Green Square tomorrow, this cannot be proclaimed in any sense a success. The west has shown its fangs. We are now widely recognized as a monster. That’s not good for peace and harmony on this planet. Libya’s destruction is no “success”.

But wait a moment… the war is still happening.

The game isn’t over!

As of now, there’s no comfirmation Ghafdafi has been killed or captured. Nor is there decisive refutation of the proposition that the Government still controls most of Tripoli. A coupe of hours ago, Saif Al-Islam, whose capture was announced in the early hours of the assault on tripoli, turned up at the Rixos and chatted with journalists. He told them the government is winning and the rebels will be defeated. He says the rebels who’ve entered the city have fallen into a trap.

As long as a game of chess is still going, stalemate is still a possible outcome. That could happen – if casultaties create an international surge of protest. And that’s why, I suspect, minimising the casualties is currently so important. The last thing the NATO thugs want is the UN breathing down their necks.

I noticed media war shills are already starting to put about the talking point that blames the Libya Government for any humanitarian disaster and suggests any further loss of life would be sufficient pretext for invasion by western “peace-keepers”.

There’s another very fine board game called Go. It’s a Japanese game, which I think is comparable to chess in the way animals are comparable with plants. Both are living organisms – but whereas animals move, plants move out, spread, entangle and occasionally extinguish each other. In Go, pieces are put down, one by one, by each of the two players, onto a square lattice. They don;t move – but they form patterns. The object is to capture opponents’ pieces by surrounding them. Sometimes small areas can be captured – but are themselves surrounded later. Towards the end of the game, remarkable apparent reverses of fortune are possible.

Go: whose tipping point?

Go seems to me a more apt metaphor for the current events in Libya. According to the mainstream media narrative, the game of Go in Libya in at its last stage. The winner – NATO – is about to win, if it hasn’t actually won already.

But in Go, the reverse scan happen too. And there’s another thing. Go games can be played on larger and larger matrices. Small games can become part of bigger games (anyone remember August 1914?) For that reason, suddenly help can come from unexpected quarters.

The decision by Tunisia, two days ago, to recognize the TNC as Libya’s sole legitimate Government was doubtless made under extreme duress. One can rail against the duplicity of Tunisia, but winners are grinners, as the saying goes. That seems to seal independent Libya’s fate long-term.

On the other hand, the importance of overwhelming tribal support for the Ghadafi Government, as affirmed several months ago, cannot be underestimated. The tribal character of Libyan society is an element lacking in the west and western commentators refer to it only as a dark force. From their perspective, undoubtedly it is. As well as the political council style of mass participation in Ghadafi’s Libya, the tribes and their militias may pull surprises.

How to flip over the advantage from outside the Libyan board? Where’s the global tipping point?

Hugo Chavez pointed to one very fruitful possibility. He’s pulling Veneuela’s funds out of the west, including all its gold. It’ll be interesting to see whether he gets it, or if this is also viewed as a casus belli by Washington’s maniacs. But what do they do if Russia and China follow suit and start to use their reserves aggressively? World stock-markets were already plummeting last week. Western leaders are not unconstrained. They have a day job, as well as moonlighting as war mongers.

Russia, China, India, South Africa – and the all the nations on earth outside the west need to understand something. It’s appreciated you don’t want to start a world war or anything suicidal like that – and that you have to share the planet at present with a hyper-militarised USA and its poodle States. That can’t be easy. They bully, you respond with smiles and polite coughs. They demand Libya as “theirs”. You grumble but reluctantly move aside and let them throttle the small kid.

I can understand that other inducements (trade, oil prices) may also have helped bribe China and Russia into not vetoing UNSCR 1970 or 1973. I have heard about ‘real politik’.

However, if by now you don’t realise that you are dealing with maniacs, you surely never will. Broad solidarity is the way to resist Empire. The more territory Empire captures, the more people whose political and social cohesion it destroys, the more it thrives and the more dangerous it becomes to its remaining adversaries.

Black and white

In this great global game of Go, in which the Libyan ‘theatre’ is just one part of a much larger board, ultimately all pieces in combat are either white or black. Neutrality is possible – but grey piece are not immune from being swallowed up too.

In the real great game, what does “black v white” really signify?

Some people might see it as a contest between “The West” and “the Rest”, or “Black v White”, “North v South”, “Christianity v Islam”, “Capitalism v Socialism”, “Corporations v the people”.

There’s doubtless case to be made for all, but none of these divisions in humanity seem to me to be genuine, catastrophic fissure lines that are inexorably pushing us to war. None of them explain what’s driving the Libya War – and all the rest of the devastating, invasive, illegal wars of our time.

What is ultimately driving this ‘war game’?

Even more than the gigantic, bloated vested interest of the military and security state itself (especially in the USA), what’s driving the active, military push to radically realign certain pieces on the board (nations) is Zionism.

In the case of Libya, there’s no evidence western military forces or even weapons manufacturers actively pushed for the war. Oil and resource companies were likely to have preferred stable commercial relationships – not the chaos to come, if royalties do end up being somewhat lower. It’s true jackals like Haliburton will probably profit out of this war as they’ve done from others. But those vested interests, powerful as they are, aren’t big enough to push Obama, Cameron and Sarkozy into war. I doubt even the “intelligence agencies” could do that, although they’ve doubtless played a key role.

Public opinion in the west has always been very luke-warm about this war. Most Christians and Muslims don’t support NATO bombing (though some do!)  The people who support NATO intervention, overwhelmingly, do so because they’ve been grossly misinformed by the mass media. There has been no authentic “push” from below in the electorates of the warrior nations.

No, Obama, Cameron and Sarkozy started this war and hustled to get it approved by the UNSC because their Zionist controllers told them to do it. That’s where the push came from. That’s how they KNEW the media would help, not hinder.

"End of Zionism equals peace" - wot 'he said!

Whether Obama and Sarkozy have “intelligence” connections in their backgrounds, they operate now as agents of a foreign power. So does Cameron. Do does Julia Gillard in Australia, for that matter. That power is Zion: the alpha and omega of the drumbeat for war. If Zionists’s didn’t want a war in which the west is involved, it wouldn’t happen.

At the moment, there’s still lots of the global board that’s anti-Zionist territory to a greater or lesser degree. Those nations are all potential targets.

Game theory suggests that unless the Chinese, Indians, Brazilians, Africans – and indeed most people on earth – want to join the west and middle east in becoming either vassals or victims of Zionism, they must start showing SOLIDARITY with opponents of the most dangerous ideology the world has ever known.

We should hang together, lest we hang separately. United we’re strong. Divided we can be picked off, easily, one by one – especially if we allow our own divisions to be exploited.

Plain-dwelling herbivores learnt these basic truths long ago.

When will humanity catch up?

__________________

Mahdi Nazemroaya from Tripoli, early 22nd August

Some more recent reports from Tripoli by independent media:

• Rebels rename Green Square into Martyrs’ Square - Thierry Meyssan in Tripoli interviewed by Russia Today 22nd August
• Journalists trapped in looted hotel, bombing heard - Mahdi Nazemroaya in Tripoli interviewed by Russia Today 22nd August
• NATO not winning’: Gunfire heard during Tripoli live report- Mahdi Nazemroaya in Tripoli interviewed by Russia Today 22nd August
• Rebels enter Tripoli as Gaddafi urges Libyans to take up arms – Lizzie Phelan in Tripoli interviewed by Russia Today 21st August

One of the many terms that’s found its way into the lexicon of Zionism is “self-hating Jew”.

It the expression these folk use when they’d really like to call someone an “‘anti-Semite” – but they can’t get away with that because the target of their wrath happens to be Jewish.

For Zionists, “anti-Semitism” is probably the worst thought-crime imaginable . Ivory Towers throughout the western world, along with the US State Department itself in all its imperial splendour, have assembled large teams of grown men and women whose working lives are dedicated to combatting this terrible menace. They labour lest once again half a dozen million innocent lives are sacrificed in a frenzy of irrational, inexplicable, incomprehensible hatred.

I digress, but it’s struck me, ever since I took the trouble to become more familiar with the fables of World War Two, how debilitating the diseased emotion of “anti-Semitic hate” must be.

Northern Germany during World War Two. Having developed a far more substantial capacity for saturation bombing than Germany, the British leadership used it ruthlessly

Take Elie Wiesel, for example, grand-daddy of the surviving Holocaust survivors, a man widely admired as a Semite who, against all odds, survived the most anti- of anti-Semites at extremely close quarters and lived to tell the tale. As Mr Wiesel was, according to his own account, a resident of Auschwitz towards the end of the war, I wonder why didn’t his anti-Semitic German guards simply throttle him when they had the chance? They must have been too consumed by hatred to squeeze a trigger, or even use a karate chop. Hate like that must positively hurt!

More curious still, why did Mr Wiesel, again by his own account, choose to march out of Auschwitz with his Nazi guards – rather that linger a few days for the Red Army liberators to arrive? At any moment, one might have thought, a veangeful anti-Semite could have come out of his stupor of hate sufficiently to at least stick a pin in Eli or his dad. But no -  the lamb chose to troop off with the lion, rather than await the liberating gazelles. A strange decision, strangley vindicated by history. Here’s what he writes is his famous book Nuit (Night):

“The choice was in our hands. For once we could decide our fate for ourselves. We could both stay in the hospital, where I could, thanks to my doctor, get him (his father) entered as a patient or nurse. Or else we could follow the others. “Well, what shall we do, father?” He was silent. ‘Let’s be evacuated with the others,’ I told him.

It also occurs to me that if the warriors who accompanied Elie Wiesel and his sickly father on their march westwards were so consumed by hate that they were unable to actually do anything about it, perhaps that’s why Germany lost the war?

The British are a different breed.  Unlike Germans, Britons specialise in fighting just wars. Once at war, the Brits don’t mess around with half measures in a stupor of hate. They fight like hell – in a happy fusion of righteous might and mighty righteousness!

On paper, the British have started an awful lot of wars. But what’s truly awesome is that all these wars have actually been designed to keep the peace. The British often round up some of the losers they’ve attacked and put them on trial as “war criminals”. It’s a sport that was launched, in its modern form, at Nuremberg. Like many modern phenomena, it came about as a cultural compromise. Churchill apparently expressed a desire to “shoot the lot” of the Nazi leadership, but a well-known, rather shocked civil libertarian called Joseph Stalin insisted on the due process of a trial. And so it was.

There’s a direct line of historical and ‘moral’ continuity from Nuremberg to the attempt, currently underway, to arraign Muhammar Ghadafi before the International Criminal Court for his alleged “crimes against humanity”.

Once again, the British have started a war against another nation that was actively trying to be friends at the time. Once again, it is bombing the target nation in a one-sided delivery of massive carnage and destruction. Once again, it brushes aside all peace proposals and insists on its ‘right’ to keep fighting  Once again, it intends to put the leadership of the resisting nation on trial for “war crimes”.

There is, quite possibly, a special place in hell reserved for the British.

Hitler, Stalin and Churchill have all passed on to the after-life and we mortals can only speculate on their ultimate fate. But as a “self-hating Anglo”, I have my own theory.

Dick Cheney at the Pearly Gates

I believe that in 1945, when Adolf Hitler arrived at the Pearly Gates, a stern looking St Peter inquired why he should even consider letting Adolf inside. He’d already heard that the applicant was the worst “anti-Semite” in history, a man who’d murdered six million Jews, then cunningly arranged for the evidence to be destroyed. “I was kind to animals” Hitler said in mitigation, but was forced to admit he’d suicided with his girlfirend “although we did get married first.”

St Peter shook his head. He feared there was no place in Heaven for the likes of Hitler… but after consulting with the All-Seeing Almighty, the former dictator was permitted to enter Heaven after all, where he remains to this day. Hitler’s main chore, assigned after taking his history into account, is restoration of the heavenly archives. As a treat, he’s allowed to paint heavenscapes on Saturdays and Eva visits often for conjugal reunions.

In 1953, another departed soul arrived at the entrance to Heaven. His name was Jo Stalin. He looked uncomfortable at the Pearly Gates, like a man who’s showed up at the wrong party. He explained to St Peter that, a confirmed atheist throughout his adult life, he’d clambered to the top of his God-hating party by being even more of a vicious murderer than his peers – and that he’d played chess with the lives of millions to satisfy his increasingly cynical geopolitical amibitions and lust for absolute power. He was a bit embarrassed about the show trials too. Stalin explained that if he’d known at the time that God was always watching, he’d have taken more care forging the evidence.

St Peter was very doubtful that Heaven was the place for the Soviet dictator, but did agree to consult God before an eternal decision was taken. After an instant’s thought, the All-Merciful took pity on Stalin, forgave his lack of faith, irrepressible deviousness and horrific misdeeds and allowed Jo into heaven, where he now passes endless time polishing the wings of angels in a state of astonished, blissed-out adoration. For intellectual stimulation, he also pusues a long-standing interest in theoretical linguistics.

Several more years passed. Finally, in 1965, Sir Winston Churchill arrived at the entrance to Heaven. He exuded confidence, but also seemed rattled. Winston had left his cigars behind. He was incovenienced by the absence of servants.

And screw you too, sir!

“I’ll have a double whiskey for now, there’s a good chap” he said breezily to St Peter, snapping his fingers in  impatience. “I expect you have quite a mansion waiting for me in there”.

St Peter was unfazed. “Who are you?” he asked. “Why do you think you should get into Heaven?”

Unaccustomed to obscurity, the astonished hero explained that he was the Greatest Englishman of all time, the Man of the Century, an audatious leader of the British Empire in several just wars and the champion of the entire Free World in the greatest conflict the world had ever known. As well as saving civilization, Winston concluded,  I’ve been an first-class artist, an accomplished orator, a brilliant writer, a great wit, historian, commentator – and a famous humanitarian!

At that moment God made one of His historically rare  appearances at the Gateway to Heaven. (In fact, the only other occasion was when He’d personally booted out The Devil himself, shortly after the Big Bang.)

“One question!” boomed the Lord of Lords.

“Are you a Christian?”

Puffing out his chest and pulling on his waitcoat tails, Sir Winston Chuchill explained that he was, indeed, a Christian. He was about to say more when a trapdoor opened and Winston Churchill fell shrieking into a pit, deep inside the bowels of Hell, filled with boiling meths in a choking, detestable atmosphere of stale cigar smoke.

The adoring Gatekeeper looked on the face of the Almighty in search of Enlightenment

“Are you not All-Loving?” St Peter inquired of His God.

“As It Happens, I do forgive most things” replied the Almighty.

He paused for dramatic effect.

“But that guy… is a fucking hypocrite!”

The art of the magician is largely based on mastery of surprise and the ability to destract an audience’s attention at crucial moments.

So called ‘false-flag’ operations, which can be considered malevolent magic tricks on a grand scale, work on similar principles. But because they are malevolent and political in objective, there are other aspects to false flag operations. The audience doesn’t even know it’s being subjected to a trick – nor does it know when the magic tricks have concluded. The ultimate goals of conspirators who perpetrate false flag operations are not declared or explicit; in the absence of credible confessions, they must be inferred or remain unknown

Anders Behring Breivik - a real 'lone nut' for once?

One characteristic of false flag ops is that perpetrators typically convince not only ideological friends – but enemies also – that the events are authentic. At least, they can do this for a while. Over time, as the ultimate agenda becomes more apparent, more people do get suspicious. But by then it’s usually too late. The perpetrators’ agenda has already been rolled out. They are onto their next crime…

Many people now accept that the 9-11 attacks on America were, in essence, a Zionist false flag operation, so I’ll use the 9-11 case as an initial example. In the immediate aftermath of that horrific and mind-numbing event, most Muslims accepted the guilt of the famous 19 (alleged) hijackers and their even more infamous cave-based commander in Afghanistan. Those Muslims who didn’t accept the mainstream 9-11 story were conveniently labelled ‘radical Islamists’, treated as suspicious and marginalized by the mass media.

The perpetrators of 9-11 planned carefully for this. They prepared not one, but TWO narratives. Both were promulgated from Day One – and of course, many more subtle variations on these basic themes evolved over time.

The first and most dominant mainstream narrative was that evil Muslim terrorists had attacked America – and revenge was essential.

The ‘alternative’ narrative was that America had suffered ‘blow-back’ because of its imperialist policies and pro-Israel bias. According to this analysis,  more understanding of Arab/Muslim grievances was needed. This less vengeful analysis appealed to many (but not all) liberals and to many Muslims. But, of course, in retrospect, both narratives were like two sides of a fake coin. Reality lay elsewhere…

A case less well-known around the world was the terrible mass murder in Tasmania that took place in April 1996, commonly known as the Port Arthur massacre. It’s also less common to suggest the Port Arthur massacre was a ‘false flag’ operation. Most Australians, to this day, believe the sole perpetrator was Martin Bryant, the man arrested on the scene and subsequently jailed for life.

I don’t believe that – and I’ve explained why previously. At the very least, I maintain that the case for a comprehensive public re-examination of the case is extremely strong. The lack of official enthusiasm for such an inquiry itself speaks volumes.

One of my reasons for disbelieving the offiical narrative of the Port Arthur massacre is the quite remarkable lack of due process that followed Australia’s largest ever mass murder. An inquest was never completed. The case came to trial, but by that time the plaintiff had switched his initial plea to guilty, so the prosecution’s case was never tested in court. Nor was there any public inquiry after that. Repeated pleas by many victims’ relatives for a public inquiry and/or resumption of the inquest were barely reported by Australia’s mass media. This is highly ironic, as respect for the pain felt by victims’ families and a desire not to cause them further grief was the pretext used at the time to rationalise not holding a completed inquest or public inquiry.

In short, the most lethal mass homicide in Australian history received less legal scrutiny than the most commonplace of murders.

The media has never interviewed Martin Bryant since his arrest. For many months in the lead up to his trial, his own mother was denied access to him on the grounds that was his wish. Bryant, as is well known, has a low IQ and is probably quite manipulable. It would seem likely that’s what happened; after several months in isolation and after a somewhat mysterious change of barrister, Bryant entered a guilty plea at trial. He’s been incarcerated ever since.

As far as I’m aware, no politicians have ever raised the alarm about this appallling lack of due process. The closest was Pauline Hanson, the maverick right-wing politician from Queensland. Unfortunately, her comments on the Port Arthur case lacked focus and probably helped solidify the conviction of most Australians that only cranks doubt the official Port Arthur narrative.

Which brings me to the present – and the latest horrifying slaughter of innocents to blight the annals of western civilisation. I’m not, for once, referring to the west’s military crimes in Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen etc – but to the tragic mass murder in Norway last Friday.

In the very first hours of the atrocity blame was widely attributed – without evidence – to Muslim extremists. After that it was announced that a suspect had been arrested who is likely to have committed the atrocity alone. His politics, we’re told, are on the far right. Almost everyone has accepted that he is, indeed, the killer. We have a face, we have the report of his lawyer, some information about his appearance in court and the rather gruesome legacy he left in the form of a manifesto, a video and twitter and facebook entries. Now the global chatter machine is off. Having accepted these basic ‘facts’ of the case, it’s chattering away about the implications following entirely predictable lines of disputation.

Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Store is greeted by BDS protestors on Utoya, the day before the massacre. This widely circulated photo fueled initial speculation about a Zionist connection

Initial notions that this might be a Zionist false-flag operation were inevitable, given the long history of such activities. They were voiced on the margins of mainstream debate from soon after the attack. But as it’s emerged the alleged perpetrator has strong Zionist sympathies, these claims look less believable than in the immediate aftermath. If this really was a Zionist false-flag op, why create a patsy with Zionist sympathies? It doesn’t make sense…

But of course, false flag operations are typically designed to make no sense at the time – or rather, designed so that the only conceivable sense seems to be the official narrative or narratives.

At the time of writing, I must say it is entirely possible the ‘mainstream narrative’ about the Oslo murders is correct. Perhaps this unspeakable horror was indeed the result of one, lone nutcase. Perhaps there really is nothing more to see in this case…

Yet given the long history of false flag operations, it behoves us to be very careful. Above all, we must avoid allowing due process to be disregarded at crucial times. Due process is protection against rorts. If due process had been observed in the case of Martin Bryant, it’s likely that lingering doubts about the case would have been resolved long ago, one way or another.

Anders Behring Breivik appeared in court yesterday. However, his appearance in court was not public. A plausible explanation was given for this: the desire to avoid giving a public platform to an extremist which he could use to inflame hatred (or even, it was argued, to deliver coded messages to possible supporters!)

We’re told Mr Breivik will now be incarcerated in solitary confinement for a month. His family have not seen him and apparently don’t intend to visit.

These abnormalities may be explicable, but they should be of concern to the Norwegian public and to people everywhere who care about the truth. There are very good reasons for the long-established principle of open court hearings. Open justice is not only for the benefit of the accused. It’s also in the general public interest. We – the public – need to have rational, properly documented grounds for accepting the integrity of the judicial process. This helps protect us, not only against rogue criminals within society as a whole, but also against criminals who may have embedded themselves in the State’s intelligence agencies and judicial system.

The Sun, 23rd July 2011 stated 'Al Qaeda' was to blame on page one. Murdoch's newspapers have never been famous for 'keeping an open mind'

After all, if the official versions of 9-11 and Port Arthur were bogus – as I believe to be the case – it follows that those running investigations at the time were corrupted and/or negligent. It would be extreme folly to ignore that possibility in this latest case in Norway.

The Norwegian authorities should not be permitted to monopolize the public’s flow in information about the suspect. The public should resist the temptation to encourage this. We need justice, not revenge. We’ve seen already what happens when revenge preceeds justice. Think Jack Ruby. Think Afghanistan.

If the atrocity in Norway IS a Zionist false-flag op, why on earth would the Zionists use ‘one of their own’ as patsy?

I can think of at least one reason, although of course this is speculation, not more.

If this was another ‘false-flag’ op, the key to understanding it, I suspect, is to look at this horror not on its own but as part of a larger historical process.

For over a decade, there has been an orchestrated and remorseless attempt by the Zionist movement to demonize Muslims and the Islamic faith and to make the Muslim populations of Europe and North America psychologically insecure and politically weak. At this stage, the horror in Norway would seem to run counter to that push and to weaken its momentum – but maybe not. After all, we don’t know what’s coming next…

If, over the next few weeks, one or more comparable atrocities were to be (apparently) perpetrated by Muslims against innocent Europeans, an intensified ‘clash of civilizations’ between Christians and Muslims could take off like a bonfire on a dry woodpile. Breivik’s stated motives for the Oslo crime would be quickly sidelined; what would be remembered is the notion that there are irreconcilable differences between Muslims and Christians.

I repeat – the bomb-blast in central Oslo and the subsequent slaughter on Utoya Island may be a ‘genuine’ atrocity perpetrated by the man who the authorites say is likely to have been solely responsible – but if so, that’s actually quite unusual in historical perspective.

Alternatively, something quite different and even more vile may be in progress.

We should reserve judgment while insisting on due process, keeping our eyes open and retaining our own archive copies of the news as it comes in. If it IS a false flag operation, interesting anomalies in the earliest reports are likely – and these are likely to dispappear over time. There are indications of this already – such as reports of multiple shooters on Utoya.

Media reports that compare the Oslo/Utoya massacres to the Oklahoma bombing of 1995 do not inspire confidence. There was much more to the Oklahoma bombing than the US authorities have ever admitted. Let’s wait and see if the same applies in this case.

From Athens to Madrid, Dublin to Tbilisi, Wisconsin to Cairo, people are restive and revolt is in the air.

They each have local issues of course, but there are common threads. There’s a widespread feeling of being fleeced by an economic system corrupted to protect a greedy elite. There a loss of confidence that life will get better. There’s a sense of desperation about even hanging onto existing rights and benefits, let alone gaining improvements.

There’s also a view that democracy – not the ideal, but as it really exists in our world – isn’t the panacea for all ills as sometimes suggested. If it was, there would no general feeling of dis-empowerment and widespread loss of faith that ‘the system’ will deliver, in countries that supposedly have been ‘democratic’ for a long while.

Madrid, May 2011 Europe and North America awash with angry people wanting change they CAN believe in

Although the masses have stirred, their efforts on the streets don’t seem to have achieved much to date.

One reason may be a lack of focus. Clear demands are needed. National leadership change is no substitute for policy deliverables; faces at the top can change while little else does. Protesters need to be specific about what they want – and they should base their demands on clear, well-considered policy objectives.

It would be powerful to identify common demands around which protesters everywhere can unite.

Many possible goals spring to mind, from renewable energy to human rights, free speech to universal health care, affordable education to full employment.

Yet one demand seems to me to cry out for united global action: the demand to end wars. We can all benefit from achieving peace. We all stand to lose while the dogs of wars are on the rampage.

Peace is not the same thing as the absence of war, of course. It is more. But the absence of war is crucial – and in theory, easily achieved. After all, it should be possible for the people-loving populations of the western world to force our governments to adopt peaceful policies and end the wars our own governments have initiated. We do live in democracies, don’t we?

Yet the military industrial complex, in cahoots with a supportive mass media and corrupted political elite, has got used to running rings around the peace movement. The prospect of a peaceful world has actually receded over the last quarter century; at the same time, military, security and ‘intelligence’ budgets have sky-rocketed. No sooner was a ‘peace dividend’ promised at the end of the Cold War than the promise was lost in a spate of new aggressive wars led by an increasingly domineering USA. The US, in turn, appears to have its imperial agenda set by the Zionist Lobby.

More and more people around the world are aware of this nightmarish situation. It’s a common problem – a common crisis – and we all have a shared responsibility to solve it.

Demands to end the attacks on Libya – and the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq – should be central in the coming days, weeks and months. The people of of the western world must take on our war machine and defeat it. If we can’t achieve that this year, we should keep going until it’s done.

Mass Protest against the Iraq War 2003: why didn't demonstrations keep going until we won peace?

It really is time to give peace a chance.

This northern summer, we need demonstrations as big as the demos against invading Iraq in 2003.

But this time, they need to persist and grow until we achieve the goals of stopping these appalling wars. People might consider maintaining protests in London. Paris and Washington until the war machine backs down.

Anyone who thinks we can build a sustainable, prosperous future as long as there’s such high focus and expenditure on warfare lives in fantasy land. Peace is not an option. It’s a prerequisite for a future worth having.

The military industrial complex and Zionist war-mongers are the greatest of all threats to humanity’s future.

We the people need to take back our power and exercise proper control over these malevolent forces which seek to keep us divided, weak and exploited.