Dirty Wars

Over the coming week, Exaro News are hosting panel discussions after screenings of the film ‘Dirty Wars’.

Investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill stumbles upon a US night raid gone badly wrong in a remote corner of Afghanistan, where a witness swears to having seen American soldiers digging bullets out of the bodies of pregnant dead women. Intent on exposing the truth, Scahill is drawn into a dark and disquieting world of covert operations underpinning the ‘War on Terror’—unknown to the public, and carried out across the globe by men who do not exist on paper and may never be held to account.

An explosive and daring piece of filmmaking, Scahill and director Rowley throw open a Pandora’s box of black ops, kill lists, drone strikes, and clandestine wings of the US military, for whom the war-torn Middle East has become a lawless Wild West. In an era in which the ethics of state security grow thornier by the day, DIRTY WARS is essential viewing.

Picturehouses

There are three events:

Sunday 1st December 2013, 3pm screening at the Greenwich Picture House with host Mark Watts.

Friday 6th December 2013, 6pm screening at the Oxford Picture House with host Nick Fielding.

Saturday 7th December 2013, 6.30pm screening at the Hackney Picture house with host John Davidson.

You can book online on the Picturehouses website or call the Box Office on 0871 902 5734 (10p a minute from a landline)

Army Dreamers

The Friday Night Song

Stuart Hall Faces 15 Charges Of Rape

We’ll have to wait and see if this has further consequences. Is he alleged to have acted alone ?

It looks like my own speculation about a possible plea bargain earlier in the year is miles off the mark.

Ex-BBC broadcaster Stuart Hall has appeared in court facing 15 charges of rape and one count of indecent assault involving two girls.

The allegations relate to girls aged 16 or under and are said to have taken place in Greater Manchester and Cheshire between 1976 and 1981.

He sat in the dock at Preston Crown Court as future hearing dates were set.

The next appearance at court will be on 28 February, when he is expected to enter a plea.

BBC News

Cat Amongst The Pigeons.

Well, that last article about Carole Kasir certainly stirred things up.

I can understand why.

For most, the ‘Mary Moss Documents’ are the primary source of information on Elm Guest House and by challenging the credibility of Carole Kasir, whose testimony appears at first glance to be central to those documents, it might appear that I’m discrediting the documents in toto and by doing that suggesting that child abuse did not take place at Elm Guest House. Certainly, some have chosen to interpret my post that way. In fact the majority of documents are not connected to Carole Kasir’s testimony.

This is all very disappointing for me for a number of reasons. Firstly, no one appears to have paid attention to the three points that I made at the end. So, for the record; I have no doubt whatsoever that child abuse took place at Elm Guest House. Let me repeat that: ‘no doubt whatsoever’. I can not say at this stage the extent of it or exactly how organised it was but that adults sexually abused children at Elm Guest House is not in question in my own mind.

Secondly, I’m extremely disappointed by the reaction to that post by some people. They appear unable to realise that by clinging to every aspect of the popular version of events, regardless of whether they can be clearly shown to be untrue,  they risk distracting attention from credible evidence of child abuse. How does that help victims ?

The Needle has always sought to be informative and we’re going to continue to publish as much information as is possible within the constraints of the law and while respecting undertakings of confidentiality.

For me this is not about hits on a blog or popularity on Twitter, for me this is about establishing the truth and putting it in the public domain and that is what we’re going to do.

Operation Fernbridge: Carole Kasir, A Liar ?

Vindictive Liar ?

Over the last year I’ve had contact  with a number of confidential sources who have helped me to form a better understanding of the kind of person Carole Kasir was.

My view, at this time, is that she was a selfish, vindictive, manipulative liar, and an alcoholic.

If Chris Fay and I disagree it is not that she lied to him, which he accepts, but how much she lied to him.

Following the raid on the Elm Guest House in June 1982, Carole’s son was taken into care and placed in Grafton Close children’s home and the evidence appears to show that eight years later Carole Kasir approached NAYPIC with a view to maligning those people responsible for taking her son into care.

I know of two clear examples where she did this. Examples where two men Carole Kasir accused of child abuse at Elm Guest House couldn’t have plausibly done so, two men who were involved in the care of her son. Both of these men have been described to me by those that have met them as decent, honourable, child welfare professionals, both now retired, who had spent their working life protecting children from abuse and who were certainly not responsible for it.

Given these clear examples where Carole Kasir has been shown to have lied, is it reasonable, in the absence of any corroborating evidence, to assume that in every other case she told the truth ?

I’m not suggesting that everyone she named is innocent, only that Carole Kasir is not a credible source and that without corroborative evidence it would be extremely foolish to suggest that all men that she named were child abusers.

That does not mean that the ‘Mary Moss Documents’ do not contain interesting evidence and information which raises important questions.

1) Why do Elm Guest House room-bookings refer to ‘children’ ?

2) What was the exact nature of the involvement of Spartacus at Elm Guest House ?

3) What was the exact reason for the raid on Elm Guest House ?

These questions stand outside of Carole Kasir’s testimony and are still valid in my view.

Note 1: This post does not allude to any person who is currently awaiting trial.

Note 2: The view that is expressed here has been formed as a direct result of six different, independent confidential sources all with very different perspectives on this subject.

Note 3:  Some posts were removed from this blog because I felt that they either may prejudice a future trial or because I felt that they might mislead readers.

Note 4: I have never been pressured by anyone to remove any post.

Note 5: This is the limit of what I wish to publish on this subject at this stage.

If you have information connected to Operations Fairbank or Fernbridge you can call them direct on 0207 161 0500.

Or you can contact NAPAC on 0800 085 3330 free from landlines, 3, EE, Vodafone and Virgin mobile phones or 0808 801 0331 free from O2, EE and Vodafone mobile phones.

Stuck In The Middle With You

Ian Watkins Pleads Guilty

Ian Watkins the former lead singer of Lostprophets, has pleaded guilty to two counts of attempting to rape a baby.

I don’t normally swear but ‘what a sick f#@&!’

This afternoon Watkins, 36, lead singer with the Lostprophets, is facing jail after dramatically changing his plea at the start of trial on a string of sex charges.

The singer – a former boyfriend of BBC radio and television presenter Fearne Cotton – pleaded guilty to sex offences involving the babies of two women fans.

He pleaded guilty to attempting to rape the 11-month-old baby of a fan ‘Woman A’ and conspiring to rape the baby daughter of another fan ‘Woman B’.

The two fans, both in their twenties and from different parts of England, are also facing jail after admitting their role in the sex offences on their own children.

Paedophile: Cardiff Crown Court heard Watkins was videoed committing the depraved acts and was ‘clearly identifiable’ because of his many tattoos and his voice

Cardiff Crown Court heard Watkins was videoed committing the depraved acts and was ‘clearly identifiable’ because of his many tattoos and his voice.

But Watkins claimed not to remember doing it because he was a ‘heavy user’ of class A drugs including Crystal Meth at the time.

Watkins spoke only to enter his pleas as he admitted attempting to rape the baby.

The singer, dressed in a three-piece dark blue suit, also admitted sexually assaulting the baby by touching him.

He was filmed committing the sex acts on the baby the day after Lostprophets final album Weapons was released.

Daily Mail

WhiffAway

The Rev Paul Flowers

The Rev Paul Flowers had close political links to Sir Cyril Smith, the late Liberal Democrat MP accused of several child abuse offences, it was disclosed on Thursday.

The disgraced Methodist minister, who was chairman of the Co-op bank for three years, was a member of Rochdale council at the same time as Smith, who died in 2010 aged 82.

Mr Flowers also helped oversee Rochdale social services at the time of an alleged Satanic abuse scandal, the council confirmed.

It was alleged that Smith raped boys at Knowl View special school and abused boys at Cambridge House Children’s Home, a privately-run care home in the Lancashire town which closed in 1965.

Smith was never prosecuted for any crime, although the Crown Prosecution Service last year admitted that he should have been prosecuted for abusing boys in the 1960s.

The Telegraph

Marvin Gaye

Abraham, Martin & John (& Bobby)

Possibly the only choice for today…

Lambeth Part 2 – Loose Ends in Lambeth on Child Sexual Abuse

cathy fox blog on child abuse

The CHILE 4th Report (CHildren In Lambeth Enquiry) was slick and seemed to give the impression that any problem with sexual abuse in Lambeth was investigated, sorted and finished [2]. That is, even 20 years later, far from the case.

What appeared to be missing was any heart, any compassion, any caring for young lives ruined by child sexual abuse – the report was a public relations exercise, and reeked of legal, financial and political risk minimisation for the council and its higher profile politicians and civil servants. This is not what the public want from their public servants. The public tend to want truth and transparency and indeed the Nolan principles of public life [30]. Why is some information even being deleted?

Please note that victims of abuse may be triggered by reading this report. The Sanctuary for the Abused [A] has advice on how to prevent triggers.  National…

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Dealey Plaza, 22nd November 1963

Today is the 50th anniversary of the assassination of the American President, John F Kennedy.

Of all the questions around Kennedy, perhaps one of the most interesting is this – what kind of President would he have been, had he lived?

Kennedy was part of the powerful elite in America.  His wealthy Catholic family had, since the days of Joseph Kennedy, been closely associated with the mob.  JFK was only narrowly elected to office in 1960 and that took the help of both the Mafia (particularly Sam Giancana) and Lyndon Baines Johnson’s ‘disqualified’ Texas votes.  Clearly he seemed to be a man ready to do the bidding of the powerful and corrupt in America.

But that all changed when he took office.

• He immediately backed away from a full scale invasion of Cuba, resulting in the Bay of Pigs fiasco, upsetting the Mafia, the CIA and the military.
• He positioned himself as a President for Peace and proposed reducing US involvement in Vietnam, upsetting the arms industry.
• The Kennedy brothers took direct control of the Cuban Missile Crisis, upsetting his Military Chiefs.
• He and his brother Robert clamped down on organised crime & the unions, upsetting the Mafia.
• He planned to introduce taxes on foreign flag shipping, upsetting Onassis and big shipping magnates.
• He planned to retake control of US currency, upsetting international bankers and the federal reserve.
• He refused to agree to an Israeli nuclear program.

Kennedy rapidly made many powerful enemies.

One of his most famous speeches is referred to as the ‘Secret Societies Speech’ which is an extract from the ‘The President and the Press’, a very insightful speech given to the American Newspaper Publishers Association on April 27, 1961.
This is the full 19 minute audio with text.

He might just as easily be speaking of our world and its challenges, today:

The very word “secrecy” is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings.

We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it.

Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions.

Even today, there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it.

And there is a very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment.

Full Text

Unfortunately, subsequent American presidents and world leaders chose to ignore his words.  I wonder how different America, with its public surveillance programs, with its support for Big Corporations, and with its overseas wars and interventionist policy, might have been had they been heeded?

Maybe the ‘fork in the road’ that occurred near the end of the 20th Century, that led the world into unending wars for profits, could have been avoided.

These are the last words from the speech that JFK was to deliver in Dallas, Texas on 22nd November 1963;

‘…Almost everywhere we look, the story is the same. In Latin America, in Africa, in Asia, in the councils of the world and in the jungles of far-off nations, there is now renewed confidence in our country and our convictions.

For this country is moving and it must not stop.  It cannot stop.  For this is a time for courage and a time for challenge. Neither conformity nor complacency will do.  Neither the fanatics nor the faint-hearted are needed.  And our duty as a party is not to our party alone, but to the Nation, and, indeed, to all mankind. Our duty is not merely the preservation of political power but the preservation of peace and freedom.

So let us not be petty when our cause is so great.  Let us not quarrel amongst ourselves when our Nation’s future is at stake. Let us stand together with renewed confidence in our cause–united in our heritage of the past and our hopes for the future–and determined that this land we love shall lead all mankind into new frontiers of peace and abundance.

Link to Text and JFK Library

Who knows what might have happened had he lived long enough to be able to ‘Walk the Talk’?

I’m inclined to think that his loss was also our loss.

Tim Berners-Lee: ‘Surveillance Threatens Web’

“One of the most encouraging findings of this year’s web index is how the web and social media are increasingly spurring people to organise, take action and try to expose wrongdoing in every region of the world,” – Tim Berners-Lee

Web creator Sir Tim Berners-Lee has warned that the democratic nature of the net is threatened by a “growing tide of surveillance and censorship”.

The warning came as he launched his World Wide Web Foundation’s annual web index report, tracking global censorship.

It suggests that 94% of the countries in the index do not adequately monitor government internet interception.

Thirty per cent of countries block or filter political content, it indicates.

The report concludes that the current legal framework on government snooping needs urgent review.

BBC News

Did Government Fund The Paedophile Information Exchange ?

Taxpayer funded ?

Did previous Tory and Labour governments fund the infamous Paedophile Information Exchange?

That’s the remarkable claim made to me by a former Home Office insider this week.

PIE was established in 1974 to campaign for the age of consent to be lowered to four years old.

Many former members have been imprisoned for child abuse crimes…

…The retired insider told me that he recalled raising his concern that the Volunteer Services Unit of the Home Office was directly funding the work of PIE.

His recollection was that he raised his fears with superiors but was left in no doubt that he should drop the matter.

I’ve written to the Home Secretary asking her to initiate an inquiry.

It’s not the first time Theresa has had to investigate her own department.

Tom Watson in The Mirror

Lambeth Part 1- Release of Final Lambeth Report of Operation Middleton

cathy fox blog on child abuse

Lambeth Council have released the 4th and Final Report 13th October 2003 of Lambeth Council element of the Middleton operation,[1]  known as CHILE –
CHildren In Lambeth Enquiry,  in response to a Freedom of Information Request, [2].

The following is the the Executive Summary

“The Operation has run successfully since November 1998 and following a full risk
assessment a joint decision [between Lambeth and the Met Police ] was taken to begin
to cease the operation from 31.3.03. The Operation was finally ended on 31st July 2003.
The operation has been a good example of joint working between Lambeth Council and
the Met Police. There have been a number of successful trials and prosecutions and a
large number of victims of child abuse have been supported through difficult times by
the operation. Arrangements are now being put in place to ensure any future allegations
of abuse can be…

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Jack Dromey’s Travel Confusion.

Yesterday, Guido Fawkes revealed that the excuse Jack Dromey gave to Inside Housing when they confronted him about ‘favoriting’ gay porn in September was that he was searching for ‘Paris’ as he was planning a trip with Harriet.

Today, The Needle can exclusively reveal that this is not the first time that this has happened.

At one time Jack Dromey was planning a trip to Florida.

Jack Dromey MP.

National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL) 1975–1989

Near the end of 1974, Patricia Hewitt, later Labour Party Health Secretary, was appointed as General Secretary. A number of other future high profile Labour politicians worked at the organisation at this time, such as Harriet Harman, who worked as the legal officer from 1978–82, and Jack Dromey, later her husband.

Paedophilia

In 1976, the NCCL in a submission to the Criminal Law Revision Committee of the British Parliament argued that “Childhood sexual experiences, willingly engaged in, with an adult result in no identifiable damage… The real need is a change in the attitude which assumes that all cases of paedophilia result in lasting damage”. Organisations such as Paedophile Information Exchange (P.I.E.), a pro-paedophile activist group, and Paedophile Action for Liberation became affiliated to the pressure group. These groups were later excluded from the organisation

Wikipedia

‘To favourite one tweet about “big black cock” porn could be considered misfortune, to do it twice looks like he has something to tell Harriet.’ – Guido Fawkes

This is Santiago Rodriguez  preforming a sex act on porn star Daemon Sadi. On the 14 November @blackgaycocks tweeted a link to their “pumped raw and creamed” photoshoot on specialist publication website BigBlackGayCocks.net. Intriguingly this tweet was ‘favourited’ by the Shadow Minister of State for Policing, Labour MP Jack Dromey who is better known as Mr Harriet Harman.

Rather suspicious, but perhaps a one off accident. Or is it?

More at order-order.com

Police Officers Are Recording Rapes As ‘No Crime’

Police officers are failing to record rapes and child sex abuse offences in an attempt to improve performance figures, MPs have been told.

Click to watch the HOC Administrative Committee on Parliament TV
Transcript of the Parliament session here

Officers use techniques such as “cuffing”, “nodding”, “skewing” and “stitching” to make figures look better, the House of Commons Public Administration Committee has heard.

One serving officer told MPs rapes and child sex abuse offences were being recorded as “crime-related incidents” or “no crimes”.
He said he estimated rapes and serious sexual offences were being under-recorded by around 25% because of the manipulation of figures.

Metropolitan Police constable James Patrick – who is currently awaiting disciplinary proceedings – said he became concerned after joining the force in 2009 and finding robberies being logged as “theft snatch” in order to get them “off the books”.
He said: “The extent of this in the borough I was initially in was large. They were showing in some reports… a 400% increase in street robberies. If you looked at the same reports a couple of days later, robberies would be static, but theft snatch would have increased by a large amount.”

Sky News

~

Committee chairman Mr Jenkin said he was “shocked that apparently such manipulation of police statistics could possibly happen on such a wide scale and become so institutionally prevalent”.
Mr Jenkin said: “I think what we have heard is basically how there is a system of incentives in the police that has become inherently corrupting and I think that is a very shocking thing to hear.”
He added: “This is a really savage thing to say, that we can’t trust the leadership of our constabularies to measure their own performance. This is what we pay our chief constables to do.”

BBC News

~

Peter Barron, a former Met detective chief superintendent, said: “Performance culture takes its toll and some boroughs have their performance capped.
“They can only afford to have X number of burglaries per day and X number of robberies per week.
“At the daily meeting, they will discuss individual crimes with a view to see what opportunities there are to count them as something other than a priority crime.”

He suggested some chief police officers were guilty of “fraud” for making sure their force met performance targets.
Daily Telegraph

Karin Ward To Freddie Starr: ‘Sue Me!’

Karin Ward

 

A woman who faces being taken to court by Freddie Starr over her claim that  he groped her said yesterday: ‘Sue me – I haven’t  got any money.’

Karin Ward, whose testimony was pivotal in exposing Jimmy Savile, is facing a High Court defamation claim for £300,000 because she also accused comedian Starr of groping her.

The 55-year-old – who has been recovering from cancer – says Starr molested her when she was a schoolgirl in Jimmy Savile’s dressing room in 1974.

Yesterday a furious Miss Ward said she would repeat her claims on oath – and that even if he won, she had nothing worth taking.

Daily Mail

Former Stoke Mandeville doctor charged by Operation Yewtree cops with rape and indecent assault of hospital patients

He was arrested as part of the Metropolitan Police Service’s Operation Yewtree which was set up following the Jimmy Savile allegations

A 78-year-old doctor was today charged over historic allegations of rape and indecent assault at hospitals including Stoke Mandeville.

Retired consultant Dr Michael Salmon was arrested as part of the Metropolitan Police Service’s Operation Yewtree which was set up following the Jimmy Savile allegations.

He was arrested today and later charged with one count of rape and four counts of indecent assault by Thames Valley Police following advice from Thames and Chiltern Crown Prosecution Service.

A Thames Valley Police spokesman said: “The charges relate to incidents involving four victims from 1972 to 1985 at various hospitals in the Aylesbury area, including Stoke Mandeville Hospital.

“The charges stem from the Metropolitan Police Service’s Operation Yewtree.”

Salmon, from Wood Green, Hampshire, has been bailed to appear at Aylesbury Magistrates’ Court on December 17.

The Mirror 20/11/13