ce399 | research archive

Veronica Lake Tortures Adolf Hitler with Flesh Eating Maggots!

Sin Espíritu, Corazón y Mente Invertida (ce399 artwork)

Sin Espíritu, Corazón y Mente Inversa_ce399. 2009

No offense to horned creatures.

Diálogos con la Dictadura Nicaragua 1979

US Marines dislaying first Sandino flag, Nicaragua 1932.

..there can be no dialogue with Somoza...because he is the principal obstacle to all rational understanding...through the long dark history of Somocismo, dialogues with the dictatorship have only served to strengthen it... Los Doce 1979

State of the Union..Automatisms of the Debrained

Forel: Automatisms of the Debrained. The rapport of machinery to types of dementia praecox appears to pose itself as ineluctable. Avital Ronell.

...in progress...

Iraq Invasion "Would Amount to the Crime of Aggression" - Sir Michael Wood,UK Foriegn Office Chief Legal Adviser

Straw rejected Iraq legal advice

Jack Straw rejected advice in the run up to war that invading Iraq without UN backing would break international law, the Iraq inquiry heard.

Mr Straw's chief legal adviser at the time, Sir Michael Wood, told the then foreign secretary it would "amount to the crime of aggression".

But Mr Straw told him he was being "dogmatic" and that "international law was pretty vague", Sir Michael said.

Ministers used the attorney general's advice on the war's legality instead.

Lord Goldsmith, who is due to appear before the inquiry on Wednesday, advised the government that force could be used legally without a second UN resolution.

'Not authorised'

But the Iraq inquiry heard there were serious concerns about the way in which the decision was reached among the Foreign Office's senior legal advisers.

Elizabeth Wilmshurst, who resigned in protest days before the invasion of Iraq, described the process as "lamentable" and lacking in transparency.

She said it was "extraordinary" that Attorney General Lord Goldsmith had only been asked for his opinion about the war just days before British troops went into action.

Sir Michael - chief legal adviser to the Foreign Office between 2001 and 2006 - said he believed the invasion did not have a legal basis as the UN Security Council neither met to agree Iraq was in "material breach" of existing disarmament resolutions nor explicitly approved the use of force.

"I considered that the use of force against Iraq in March 2003 was contrary to international law," he said

Newly declassified letters published by the inquiry show Sir Michael raised his concerns directly with the foreign secretary.

On 24 January 2003, Sir Michael wrote to Mr Straw telling him the "UK cannot lawfully use force in Iraq in ensuring compliance" on the basis of existing UN resolutions, including resolution 1441 which gave Saddam a "final opportunity" to comply in November 2002.

"To use force without Security Council authority would amount to the crime of aggression," he wrote.

In his reply, also published by the inquiry on Tuesday, Mr Straw said he "noted" Sir Michael's advice but did "not accept it".

Assessing what would constitute a legal basis for war, he said: "I am as committed as anyone to international law and its obligations but it is an uncertain field. In this case, the issue is an arguable one, capable of honestly and reasonably held differences of view."

Mr Straw said he hoped to secure a further UN resolution "for political reasons" but there was a "strong case" that existing resolutions and subsequent Iraqi non-compliance "provide a sufficient basis in international law to justify military action".

Asked about Mr Straw's reaction to his letter voicing concerns, Sir Michael said the foreign secretary had told him he was being "dogmatic and international law was pretty vague".

INQUIRY TIMETABLE

Tuesday: Ex-Foreign Office legal advisers Sir Michael Wood and Elizabeth Wilmshurst will appear, as will former Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett

Wednesday: Former Attorney General Lord Goldsmith, who advised ministers the invasion was lawful, will give evidence

Friday: Former Prime Minister Tony Blair will make his long-awaited appearance

He said Mr Straw also told him at their meeting that he had "often been advised things were unlawful and gone ahead anyway and won in the courts" when he was home secretary.

Asked by the inquiry about Mr Straw's analysis of the legal position regarding the invasion of Iraq, Sir Michael told the inquiry: "Obviously there are some areas of international law that can be quite uncertain. This, however, turned exclusively on the interpretation of a specific text and it is one on which I think that international law was pretty clear."

He told the inquiry his advice had never been rejected by a minister before or since.

Mr Straw told the inquiry last week that his decision to back the war was the "most difficult" of his career, describing it as a "profoundly difficult political and moral dilemma".

The Lib Dems said Tony Blair and Gordon Brown must be asked whether they were aware of the advice on the war's legality when they appear before the inquiry.

"Michael Wood's statement is the final nail in the coffin of the case for a legal war," said the party's foreign affairs spokesman Ed Davey.

"We need to know just who saw this advice. Did it reach Tony Blair and Gordon Brown? And if not, why not?"

Attorney's advice

But Sir Michael said he had always made it clear that it was ultimately up to Lord Goldsmith to advise ministers on whether war was lawful.

Just before the conflict began, Lord Goldsmith said in a statement that authority to use force came from the combined effect of existing UN resolutions dating back to the ceasefire after the Gulf War.

Yet 10 days earlier he had told the prime minister "the safest legal course" would be the adoption of a new UN resolution.

Sir Michael said there was a reluctance among ministers to seek legal advice early on as the Iraq crisis escalated and that Lord Goldsmith's ultimate conclusion "came in very late in the day as I see it".

"It was unfortunate advice was not given at an earlier stage."

But former Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett defended Lord Goldsmith's role, telling the inquiry she believed he had properly weighed up all the legal arguments before coming to a final decision.

"I can't image any pressure he could be subject to that could make him give advice that was anything other than what he thought," she said.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/politics/8479996.stm

Related Archive:

Principles of the Nuremberg Tribunal, 1950

Hugo Chávez: Videogames are "Poison" (Guardian UK 19/1/10) (Video)

Some interesting quotes from Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez on news wire AFP today. Speaking out on his weekly radio show as part of his continued drive against the perceived westernisation of his country, Chávez has pinpointed videogames as one of the main corrupting capitalist influences on young people today (though strangely omitting Microsoft and Nintendo from his ire).

"Those games they call 'PlayStation' are poison. Some games teach you to kill. They once put my face on a game; 'you've got to find Chávez to kill him.'"

Chávez was referring to Mercenaries 2: World in Flames, a game featuring a villainous Venezuelan tyrant that bore more than a few similarities to the outspoken leader. It no doubt angered him further when the game turned out to not be very good.

He went on to say in his broadcast that any games that "bomb cities or just throw bombs," are sold by capitalist countries to sow violence so they can "later sell weapons."

They "promote the need for cigarettes, drugs and alcohol so they can sell them. That's capitalism, the road to hell," he added. Something the thousands of us that became addicted to Buff Out after playing Fallout 3 can probably sympathise with.

Venezuela, Chávez said, should be making "educational games," and also suggested designing "little indigenous dolls" to sell in place of dolls "like Barbie, that have nothing to do with our culture."

Venezuelan lawmakers in October passed a law outlawing the sale of "bellicose" videogames that can be punished with up to five years' imprisonment.

Bad news for any Venezualan Modern Warfare clans, and especially bad news for PlayStation owning Barbie collectors. Saying gaming makes us violent is something we've all heard before - but making us capitalist drones? Has Chávez taken it too far?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2010/jan/19/hugo-chavez-games-poison

Michael Parenti Shreds JFK Assassination Conspiracy Debunkers (mp3 file)

Michael Parenti: The JFK Assassination and the Gangster Nature of the State
When Oliver Stone’s movie JFK opened in December 1991 a huge PR campaign was mobilized against the film. Even progressives spoke out. Noam Chomsky wrote in support of the Warren Commission's findings – in contrast Michael Parenti gave one of his highly acclaimed talks criticizing the lone assassin theory. The bitter questions that haunted defenders and critics alike was whether government agencies of a democratic country would do such a thing as assassinate an elected President.

In this talk Michael Parenti turns to that question first – he examines, in part one, what he calls “the gangster nature of the state.” In part two he goes over details of the assassination and critiques The Nation, The Progressive, Chomsky and Cockburn. He spoke in Berkeley, CA, on the 30th anniversary of the JFK assassination.

This is one of many "standing ovations" talks by Parenti. The master for this program was lost and this appears to be the only copy of the original recording.
TUC Radio

In 1966 LBJ Ordered FBI to Target Warren Commission Researchers

See Mae Brussell's Dialogue Conspiracy 243 for more information. Memo from LBJ ordering FBI to "get the Warren Commission researchers." Researchers became FBI COINTELPRO intelligence targets if they disagreed with Warren Commission findings. 

Related Archives: 

COINTELPRO

Homeland Security Includes "Alternative Media" in "Domestic Extremism Lexicon" (pdf file)

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Obama Information Czar Outlined Plan for Government to Infiltrate Conspiracy Groups

Obama Staffer Wants Cognitive Infiltration of 911 Conspiracy Groups

Viruses Use "Hive Intelligence" to Focus Their Attack (New Scientist 1/10)

A tactic familiar from insect behaviour seems to give viruses the edge in the eternal battle between them and their host – and the remarkable proof can be seen in a video.

The video catches viruses only a few hundred nanometres in size in the act of hopping over cells that are already infected. This allows them to concentrate their energies on previously uninfected cells, accelerating the spread of infection fivefold.

Geoffrey Smith and his team of virologists at Imperial College London were curious about the vaccinia virus, and set up a video microscope to watch how the virus spreads through cells.

Vaccinia was used in the vaccine that rid the world of smallpox some 35 years ago. It doesn't cause disease in humans or any other animal, and its origin is unknown.

The traditional idea of how viruses spread goes like this. A virus first enters a cell and hijacks its machinery to make its own viral proteins and replicate. Thousands of replicated viruses then spread to neighbouring cells to wreak havoc.

When Smith watched the vaccinia virus infecting monkey liver cells, he thought that it was spreading far too quickly. "It takes 5 to 6 hours for the virus to replicate, but it was spreading from cell to cell within 1 or 2 hours," he says.

Vaccinia is known to spread from cell to cell in a characteristic way. After attaching to the cell membrane of its target, it releases a protein that enters the cell, where it communicates with actin – a protein that helps maintain the cell's structure. The actin responds by growing longer, and then attaches itself to the virus, still sitting on the surface of the cell, as a so-called "actin tail". This tail helps the virus take off from the cell and find the next victim.

Smith's team labelled the virus with green fluorescent protein, and labelled some – but not all – cells with a red marker that tagged the actin. They found, to their amazement, that a virus leaving a cell would travel to another cell and merely bounce off it if it already contained the virus.

The researchers could tell that a single virus had travelled over more than one cell because some viruses which left a cell with an uncoloured actin tail picked up a red actin tail from another cell. "This means that the viruses can change their actin tails as they bounce along the surfaces of cells," says Smith. "This allows the virus to reach distant cells really quickly."

Smith reckons that two viral proteins which are presented on the surface of the infected cell effectively tell the virus not to bother reinfecting that cell. When he looked at virus strains lacking each of these proteins, the virus spread at the slower rate that would expected without the "bouncing infection" mechanism. "It's as if the proteins are telling the virus: 'Hey guys, there's no point in coming in here'," says Smith. "If you think about it, it makes sense – it's very Darwinian."

This finding is "pretty cool", says Erik Barton, a virologist at Purdue University, Indiana. "What I find most fascinating is that it suggests that viruses can function with a sort of primitive 'hive mentality' to ensure efficient use of host cell resources, akin to the way worker bees tell others where to locate the best food sources."

Finding ways to block the cell surface proteins might provide new antiviral drugs, Barton adds.

Tim Harrison, a molecular virologist at University College London, agrees that the idea is an interesting one, but he points out that the theory might not apply to all viruses. "I'm not sure how important this will turn out to be. It depends on how widespread the phenomenon is among viruses and whether it hold true in the body as it does in cell culture."

Journal reference: Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1183173

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18423-viruses-use-hive-intelligence-to-focus-their-attack.html

Yahoo! Blocks Email to Hugo Chávez Then Responds with Virulently Racist Failure Notice

"MAILER-DAEMON@n11.bullet.mail.mud.yahoo.com"

Bathory: Satan My Master (for Bush, Clinton and Obama)