16-02-2013, 08:30 PM
The term "conspiracy theory" is itself a psyop, designed to delegitimize and marginalise genuine investigative research into the deep politics of historical and current events.
When a politician calls an interpretation of events a "conspiracy theory", 99 times out of 100 it is a signal for MSM henceforth to report that interpretation as "ridiculous", "nonsensical" or even "dangerous".
A classic example is Prime Minister Tony Blair declaring, prior to the second invasion of Iraq, that anyone who believed the imminent war was about "oil interests" was peddling a "conspiracy theory". This completely shut down debate of this interpretation in British MSM. Meanwhile, Blair's ridiculous claim that Saddam had WMD which could strike the West was communicated in hushed and reverent tones.
Of course, if any "conspiracy theory" was dangerous nonsense, it was Blair's WMD claim.
However, every now and then a politician in trouble declares an event to be an "international criminal conspiracy" and expects MSM to take him seriously. Of course such a "conspiracy" must have its bogeymen and be inherently evil.
In Britain, we currently have a meat scandal, where burgers and mince based ready meals, labelled as containing pure beef, have been found on occasion to contain pure horse.
So, with huge commercial interests at risk of consumer indignation and horror, a few days ago our Environment Secretary declared that the Brtish public were victims of an "international criminal conspiracy".
It was obvious he would need EVIL BOGEYMEN to pull this off.
Initially, Romania was blamed. This charge had grave racist undertones, as Romanians are about to have freedom of movement across the European Union, and have effectively been described as dirty thieves and criminals by politicians of the right. The fact that many Roma (Travellers, Gypsies) live in Romania and have a cultural associations with horses, was part of the cheap slur.
Unfortunately for the politicians, this claim of an international Roma conspiracy failed when the police raided British meat packaging plants on suspicion of involvement in the horse for beef scandal.
A new BOGEYMAN was needed.
And has now been identified.
The evil slav arms dealer, VIKTOR BOUT. And, hey presto, the "international criminal conspiracy" now involves an evil foreign criminal empire and Romania.....
Of course we at DPF know that Viktor Bout is not a freelancer.
Rather, as our dedicated Bout thread demonstrates, he is owned by intelligence agencies.
Indeed, in the Mechanic - Facilitator - Sponsor model, it is very hard to know quite who has sponsored decades of deals from the so-called Lord of War.
When a politician calls an interpretation of events a "conspiracy theory", 99 times out of 100 it is a signal for MSM henceforth to report that interpretation as "ridiculous", "nonsensical" or even "dangerous".
A classic example is Prime Minister Tony Blair declaring, prior to the second invasion of Iraq, that anyone who believed the imminent war was about "oil interests" was peddling a "conspiracy theory". This completely shut down debate of this interpretation in British MSM. Meanwhile, Blair's ridiculous claim that Saddam had WMD which could strike the West was communicated in hushed and reverent tones.
Of course, if any "conspiracy theory" was dangerous nonsense, it was Blair's WMD claim.
However, every now and then a politician in trouble declares an event to be an "international criminal conspiracy" and expects MSM to take him seriously. Of course such a "conspiracy" must have its bogeymen and be inherently evil.
In Britain, we currently have a meat scandal, where burgers and mince based ready meals, labelled as containing pure beef, have been found on occasion to contain pure horse.
So, with huge commercial interests at risk of consumer indignation and horror, a few days ago our Environment Secretary declared that the Brtish public were victims of an "international criminal conspiracy".
Quote:09 February 2013
The Environment Secretary warned of an "international criminal conspiracy" today as food bosses met in central London to discuss the escalating horse meat crisis.
Owen Paterson said that there would be investigations to establish whether "either gross incompetence or criminal acts" were at fault.
He was speaking as leading food producers, supermarkets and health officials met at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs headquarters in central London for talks on the crisis.
It was obvious he would need EVIL BOGEYMEN to pull this off.
Initially, Romania was blamed. This charge had grave racist undertones, as Romanians are about to have freedom of movement across the European Union, and have effectively been described as dirty thieves and criminals by politicians of the right. The fact that many Roma (Travellers, Gypsies) live in Romania and have a cultural associations with horses, was part of the cheap slur.
Unfortunately for the politicians, this claim of an international Roma conspiracy failed when the police raided British meat packaging plants on suspicion of involvement in the horse for beef scandal.
A new BOGEYMAN was needed.
And has now been identified.
The evil slav arms dealer, VIKTOR BOUT. And, hey presto, the "international criminal conspiracy" now involves an evil foreign criminal empire and Romania.....
Of course we at DPF know that Viktor Bout is not a freelancer.
Rather, as our dedicated Bout thread demonstrates, he is owned by intelligence agencies.
Indeed, in the Mechanic - Facilitator - Sponsor model, it is very hard to know quite who has sponsored decades of deals from the so-called Lord of War.
Quote:Horsemeat scandal linked to secret network of firms
Intermediaries in horsemeat supply chain seem to be using similar companies to arms dealer Viktor Bout
Jamie Doward
The Observer, Saturday 16 February 2013 17.58 GMT
Romania Launches Inquiry Into Horsemeat Scandal
Technicians working on a production line at Spanghero Castelnaudary in France. Photograph: Abaca/Barcroft Media
Europe's unfolding horsemeat scandal took a new twist on Saturday when it emerged that key intermediaries involved in the trade appeared to be using a similar secretive network of companies to the convicted arms trafficker Viktor Bout.
The Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) identified an intermediary firm, Draap Trading, based in Limassol, Cyprus, as playing a pivotal role in shipping horsemeat across Europe.
Draap has confirmed that it bought horsemeat from two Romanian abattoirs. The company sold the meat to French food processors including Spanghero, which supplied another French company, Comigel, that turned it into frozen meals for the likes of food firm Findus, some of which had a meat content that was almost 100% horse.
Draap, which is owned by a trust in the British Virgin Islands tax haven, insists the meat it sold into France was labelled as horse. Spanghero says the meat arrived labelled "beef". Jan Fasen, who runs Draap and has denied any wrongdoing, was convicted last year of selling South American horsemeat as German and Dutch beef.
In a development that sheds light on the mysterious networks operating in the European food chain, it has emerged that Draap's sole director is an anonymous corporate services company called Guardstand, set up in 1996 and based in Limassol.
A 2011 joint report by the International Peace Information Service and TransArms, an organisation which researches arms shipments, produced evidence that Guardstand also owned a share in a business called Ilex Ventures, a connection that links the company to the global arms trade and Viktor Bout.
Documents filed in a New York court by US prosecutors allege that in 2007 Bout and an associate transferred almost $750,000 (£483,000) to Ilex for the purchase of aircraft to fly arms and ammunition around Africa's trouble spots in breach of embargos.
The prosecutors said Ilex was owned and controlled by Bout, an international weapons dealer known as the "merchant of death", who last April was sentenced to 25 years in jail for arms smuggling.
But who owns Guardstand and why Draap employs it as a director is a mystery that is likely to be studied closely by fraud investigators. Guardstand's sole shareholder is Trident Trust, a business based in Cyprus that specialises in establishing companies in tax havens chiefly for Russian and Ukrainian clients and which helped set up Ilex.
Petros Livanios, who runs Trident and was once a director of Ilex, declined the Observer's requests for an interview.
While there is no suggestion anyone at Trident was aware Guardstand may have been exploited by criminal networks, the opaque nature of its ownership will be a concern for investigators trying to unpick the web of interests that facilitate Europe's meat trade.
"This illustrates why hidden company ownership is such a problem," said Rosie Sharpe, of the campaign group Global Witness. "It could be all too easy for crooks passing horsemeat off as beef, arms dealers fuelling wars or corrupt dictators nicking their country's wealth to set up a company if they so wished. The ownership or control of European companies can be hidden perfectly legally by using nominees or companies incorporated in secrecy jurisdictions."
Cyprus has been a favourite place through which former Soviet bloc oligarchs and military chiefs have laundered cash plundered from the privatisation programme of state assets that followed the end of the cold war. The island is seeking an EU bailout, but Germany is known to be balking at the prospect unless it reforms its offshore services industry.
"Cypriot companies frequently turn up in criminal investigations," Sharpe said. "They have been used by the Iranian government to evade sanctions, by Slobodan Milosevic to provide arms for the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo, and by Russian officials who used them to steal hundreds of millions of pounds." Last week the French authorities claimed the scandal had spread to 13 countries and 28 companies. Sorin Minea, head of Romalimenta, the Romanian food industry federation, blamed the crisis on "an international mafia ring".
Christos Christou, Cyprus's public health services deputy director, said investigators had seized a "variety of documents" from Draap's Limassol office which it would share with the European commission.
The scandal, which started in January when authorities in the UK and Ireland found traces of equine DNA in supermarket burgers, has raised concerns that criminal networks may be playing a role in the food chain. What seemed a UK and Ireland problem is becoming a major concern for many EU member states as they conduct tests to establish the security of their food chains.
Several slaughtermen in the UK have been arrested in connection with the UK arm of the scandal. On Thursday the Food Standards Agency raided three more meat processing plants and removed samples for testing, computers and documents.
The FSA said it had passed on evidence to Europol, the European Union's law enforcement agency, as well as authorities in dozens of countries, suggesting at least part of the fraud has an international dimension.
As the scandal spread to school dinners and some of the UK's largest catering firms and restaurants, Catherine Brown, chief executive of the FSA, said it was unlikely that the exact number of people in the UK who had unwittingly eaten horsemeat would ever be known.
Her comments came as the FSA released test results for possible horsemeat contamination.
The watchdog said 2,501 tests were conducted on beef products, with 29 results positive for undeclared horsemeat at or above 1%. The results related to seven different products, which have been withdrawn from sale. The products linked to the positive results were confirmed as Aldi's special frozen beef lasagne and special frozen spaghetti bolognese, the Co-op's frozen quarter-pounder burgers, Findus beef lasagne, Rangeland's catering burger products, and Tesco value frozen burgers and value spaghetti bolognese.
Pub and hotel group Whitbread said its meat lasagnes and beefburgers had been affected. The firm, which owns Premier Inn, Beefeater Grill and Brewers Fayre, said the products had been removed from menus and would not be replaced until after further testing.
Tesco chief executive Philip Clarke yesterday emailed customers to tell them the supermarket was introducing "a new benchmark for the testing of products, to give you confidence that if it isn't on the label, it isn't in the product."Figures released today by market analysts, Nielsen, show retail sales of frozen burgers are down 40% year-on-year in the wake of the horsemeat revelations.
OFF THE SHELF
Meat products withdrawn so far in Britain
Tesco
Tesco Everyday Value frozen burgers
Tesco quarter-pounders
Tesco Everyday Value bolognese
Findus lasagne
Sainsbury's
Own-brand frozen burgers
Asda
Freeza frozen beefburgers
Asda bolognese sauce, 500g
Waitrose
Dalepak frozen burgers
Own-brand 16 frozen British beef meatballs
The Co-operative
Four beef quarter-pounders
Eight frozen beefburgers with onion
Lidl
Moordale frozen beef quarter-pounders
Iceland
Four-pack of quarter-pounders
Four-pack 100% beef quarter-pounders
Aldi
Frozen Oakhurst 100% beef quarter-pounders
Frozen specially selected Aberdeen Angus quarter-pounders
Frozen Oakhurst beefburgers
Today's special frozen beef lasagne and spaghetti bolognese
Morrisons
Ross four beef quarter-pounders
Dalepak four beef quarter-pounders
Adams beefburger eights
Findus lasagne
