'Will you open fire on UK citizens' Army personnel being asked

[Magda Hassan]

This article below comes from the on line journal of Ian Parker-Joseph who is associated with the Libertarian Party of the UK. I'd be interested to hear the thoughts of UK members on what he is discussing.

'Will you open fire on UK citizens' Army personnel being asked
by IanPJ on Mon 02 Mar 2009 13:52 GMT | Permanent Link | Cosmos
In a stunning conversation with a friend, who is a serving member of the Armed Forces, over the weekend, it was revealed that transfers to regiments and other units in the UK on home duties are being undertaken by the MOD based upon whether an individual was prepared to 'open fire' on UK citizens during civil disturbances.

I found this long and extracted conversation to be both bizarre and frightening. I will state at this point that he is someone that I have known for years, and trust implicitly. The fact that service personnel are actually being asked in special briefing sessions whether they would fire on their own nationals indicates that the rumours about the Army being put on standby are indeed very true.

As if to add weight to this, it was reported yesterday as a tag on a posting about UKIP by Richard North on EUReferendum that plans for Army involvement were well advanced:

Recently, from a confidential source, I received information that the MoD was buying up unusually large quantities of tear gas and other riot equipment. Clearly, it has no intention of being caught out, as it was at the beginning of the Troubles, having to ration tear gas and riot shields. Maybe they might even find a use for all those Snatch Land Rovers, when they are returned from Iraq.

The implications of putting the Army on the streets, though, are horrendous. Currently, the Army is riding on the crest of a wave of public approval but, as it did in Northern Ireland, sentiment can very quickly turn. The ramifications for the campaign in Afghanistan might be significant. An Army which is sent out against its own people is not likely to attract much support for its other activities.

But there is not much prospect of the Army disobeying orders. As we saw in the 2001 Foot and Mouth epidemic, it went to work with a will, engaging in illegal activities, intimidating ordinary people and conspiring with the civil authorities to enforce false arrest. It will do so again if ordered, with the back-up this time of the Civil Contingencies Act which makes legal much of what was illegal back in 2001.


It goes a long way to explain why our servicemen and women are not getting the equipment they need in the war zones, lack of transport, lack of helicopters, lack of personal protection equipment. We know for instance that there are several hundred Italian made soft personnel vehicles in storage in the UK for use here, bought by the MoD to replace the snatch Land Rovers, but never sent to Iraq or Afghanistan, and the fleet of 8 Chinooks that was due to be dispatched this month are now to be kept in the UK.

We believe that this Government is looking for that confrontation with the people in order to invoke the Civil Contingencies Act and make use of the plethora of authoritarian laws it has prepared over the 12 years in control.

It continues to introduce new rules, rulings and guidelines on a daily basis designed specifically to inflame the anger in the population, hoping that they will eventually snap and take to the streets.

Armed with this latest knowledge, I would advise extreme caution and suggest that we heed the words of warning from Leg-Iron.

If we don't riot, Labour are likely to be obliterated in a general election.
If we do riot, there won't be one.



This Government is looking for a fight. Don't give it to them.

This trend needs to be discussed at the highest levels, the very idea that the Government is plotting against its own people is repugnant in the extreme, and I would like to call for confirmation that this disgusting process of briefings is indeed being undertaken.


UPDATE:
The Daily Express is reporting.
TOP secret contingency plans have been drawn up to counter the threat posed by a “summer of discontent” in Britain.

The “double-whammy” of the worst economic crisis in living memory and a motley crew of political extremists determined to stir up civil disorder has led to the *extraordinary step of the Army being put on *standby.



The Questions that really needs to be asked here is this.

Is the Army legally entitled to support a Government no longer wanted by the people?.
Would the Army comply with such orders on the British Mainland?

I want to know exactly what this Government has planned for Military deployments in the UK, and whether they would be deployed against their own citizens.

It is known that many of the senior personnel in the MoD have received Common Purpose training. The content and purpose of that secret training now needs explaining.
http://thejournal.parker-joseph.co.uk/bl...09792.html

[Myra Bronstein]

Chilling. And shocking. But hardly surprising given the context. The fact is, I believe, that World Bank/IFM style Shock Therapy has come to the US. For those want to understand what's going on, read Naomi Klein's essential book--"The Shock Doctrine." This, in conjunction, makes it crystal clear:

http://www.gregpalast.com/the-globalizer...-the-cold/

The Globalizer Who Came In From the Cold

JOE STIGLITZ: TODAY'S WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN ECONOMICS
by Greg Palast

The World Bank's former Chief Economist's accusations are eye-popping - including how the IMF and US Treasury fixed the Russian elections

"It has condemned people to death," the former apparatchik told me. This was like a scene out of Le Carre. The brilliant old agent comes in from the cold, crosses to our side, and in hours of debriefing, empties his memory of horrors committed in the name of a political ideology he now realizes has gone rotten.

And here before me was a far bigger catch than some used Cold War spy. Joseph Stiglitz was Chief Economist of the World Bank. To a great extent, the new world economic order was his theory come to life.

I "debriefed" Stigltiz over several days, at Cambridge University, in a London hotel and finally in Washington in April 2001 during the big confab of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. But instead of chairing the meetings of ministers and central bankers, Stiglitz was kept exiled safely behind the blue police cordons, the same as the nuns carrying a large wooden cross, the Bolivian union leaders, the parents of AIDS victims and the other 'anti-globalization' protesters. The ultimate insider was now on the outside.

In 1999 the World Bank fired Stiglitz. He was not allowed quiet retirement; US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, I'm told, demanded a public excommunication for Stiglitz' having expressed his first mild dissent from globalization World Bank style.

Here in Washington we completed the last of several hours of exclusive interviews for The Observer and BBC TV's Newsnight about the real, often hidden, workings of the IMF, World Bank, and the bank's 51% owner, the US Treasury.

And here, from sources unnamable (not Stiglitz), we obtained a cache of documents marked, "confidential," "restricted," and "not otherwise (to be) disclosed without World Bank authorization."

Stiglitz helped translate one from bureaucratise, a "Country Assistance Strategy." There's an Assistance Strategy for every poorer nation, designed, says the World Bank, after careful in-country investigation. But according to insider Stiglitz, the Bank's staff 'investigation' consists of close inspection of a nation's 5-star hotels. It concludes with the Bank staff meeting some begging, busted finance minister who is handed a 'restructuring agreement' pre-drafted for his 'voluntary' signature (I have a selection of these).

Each nation's economy is individually analyzed, then, says Stiglitz, the Bank hands every minister the same exact four-step program.

Step One is Privatization - which Stiglitz said could more accurately be called, 'Briberization.' Rather than object to the sell-offs of state industries, he said national leaders - using the World Bank's demands to silence local critics - happily flogged their electricity and water companies. "You could see their eyes widen" at the prospect of 10% commissions paid to Swiss bank accounts for simply shaving a few billion off the sale price of national assets.

And the US government knew it, charges Stiglitz, at least in the case of the biggest 'briberization' of all, the 1995 Russian sell-off. "The US Treasury view was this was great as we wanted Yeltsin re-elected. We don't care if it's a corrupt election. We want the money to go to Yeltzin" via kick-backs for his campaign.

Stiglitz is no conspiracy nutter ranting about Black Helicopters. The man was inside the game, a member of Bill Clinton's cabinet as Chairman of the President's council of economic advisors.

Most ill-making for Stiglitz is that the US-backed oligarchs stripped Russia's industrial assets, with the effect that the corruption scheme cut national output nearly in half causing depression and starvation.

After briberization, Step Two of the IMF/World Bank one-size-fits-all rescue-your-economy plan is 'Capital Market Liberalization.' In theory, capital market deregulation allows investment capital to flow in and out. Unfortunately, as in Indonesia and Brazil, the money simply flowed out and out. Stiglitz calls this the "Hot Money" cycle. Cash comes in for speculation in real estate and currency, then flees at the first whiff of trouble. A nation's reserves can drain in days, hours. And when that happens, to seduce speculators into returning a nation's own capital funds, the IMF demands these nations raise interest rates to 30%, 50% and 80%.

"The result was predictable," said Stiglitz of the Hot Money tidal waves in Asia and Latin America. Higher interest rates demolished property values, savaged industrial production and drained national treasuries.

At this point, the IMF drags the gasping nation to Step Three: Market-Based Pricing, a fancy term for raising prices on food, water and cooking gas. This leads, predictably, to Step-Three-and-a-Half: what Stiglitz calls, "The IMF riot."

The IMF riot is painfully predictable. When a nation is, "down and out, [the IMF] takes advantage and squeezes the last pound of blood out of them. They turn up the heat until, finally, the whole cauldron blows up," as when the IMF eliminated food and fuel subsidies for the poor in Indonesia in 1998. Indonesia exploded into riots, but there are other examples - the Bolivian riots over water prices last year and this February, the riots in Ecuador over the rise in cooking gas prices imposed by the World Bank. You'd almost get the impression that the riot is written into the plan.

And it is. What Stiglitz did not know is that, while in the States, BBC and The Observer obtained several documents from inside the World Bank, stamped over with those pesky warnings, "confidential," "restricted," "not to be disclosed." Let's get back to one: the "Interim Country Assistance Strategy" for Ecuador, in it the Bank several times states - with cold accuracy - that they expected their plans to spark, "social unrest," to use their bureaucratic term for a nation in flames.

That's not surprising. The secret report notes that the plan to make the US dollar Ecuador's currency has pushed 51% of the population below the poverty line. The World Bank "Assistance" plan simply calls for facing down civil strife and suffering with, "political resolve" - and still higher prices.

The IMF riots (and by riots I mean peaceful demonstrations dispersed by bullets, tanks and teargas) cause new panicked flights of capital and government bankruptcies. This economic arson has it's bright side - for foreign corporations, who can then pick off remaining assets, such as the odd mining concession or port, at fire sale prices.

Stiglitz notes that the IMF and World Bank are not heartless adherents to market economics. At the same time the IMF stopped Indonesia 'subsidizing' food purchases, "when the banks need a bail-out, intervention (in the market) is welcome." The IMF scrounged up tens of billions of dollars to save Indonesia's financiers and, by extension, the US and European banks from which they had borrowed.

A pattern emerges. There are lots of losers in this system but one clear winner: the Western banks and US Treasury, making the big bucks off this crazy new international capital churn. Stiglitz told me about his unhappy meeting, early in his World Bank tenure, with Ethopia's new president in the nation's first democratic election. The World Bank and IMF had ordered Ethiopia to divert aid money to its reserve account at the US Treasury, which pays a pitiful 4% return, while the nation borrowed US dollars at 12% to feed its population. The new president begged Stiglitz to let him use the aid money to rebuild the nation. But no, the loot went straight off to the US Treasury's vault in Washington.

Now we arrive at Step Four of what the IMF and World Bank call their "poverty reduction strategy": Free Trade. This is free trade by the rules of the World Trade Organization and World Bank, Stiglitz the insider likens free trade WTO-style to the Opium Wars. "That too was about opening markets," he said. As in the 19th century, Europeans and Americans today are kicking down the barriers to sales in Asia, Latin American and Africa, while barricading our own markets against Third World agriculture.

In the Opium Wars, the West used military blockades to force open markets for their unbalanced trade. Today, the World Bank can order a financial blockade just as effective - and sometimes just as deadly.

Stiglitz is particularly emotional over the WTO's intellectual property rights treaty (it goes by the acronym TRIPS, more on that in the next chapters). It is here, says the economist, that the new global order has "condemned people to death" by imposing impossible tariffs and tributes to pay to pharmaceutical companies for branded medicines. "They don't care," said the professor of the corporations and bank loans he worked with, "if people live or die."

By the way, don't be confused by the mix in this discussion of the IMF, World Bank and WTO. They are interchangeable masks of a single governance system. They have locked themselves together by what are unpleasantly called, "triggers." Taking a World Bank loan for a school 'triggers' a requirement to accept every 'conditionality' - they average 111 per nation - laid down by both the World Bank and IMF. In fact, said Stiglitz the IMF requires nations to accept trade policies more punitive than the official WTO rules.

Stiglitz greatest concern is that World Bank plans, devised in secrecy and driven by an absolutist ideology, are never open for discourse or dissent. Despite the West's push for elections throughout the developing world, the so-called Poverty Reduction Programs "undermine democracy."

And they don't work. Black Africa's productivity under the guiding hand of IMF structural "assistance" has gone to hell in a handbag. Did any nation avoid this fate? Yes, said Stiglitz, identifying Botswana. Their trick? "They told the IMF to go packing."

So then I turned on Stiglitz. OK, Mr Smart-Guy Professor, how would you help developing nations? Stiglitz proposed radical land reform, an attack at the heart of "landlordism," on the usurious rents charged by the propertied oligarchies worldwide, typically 50% of a tenant's crops. So I had to ask the professor: as you were top economist at the World Bank, why didn't the Bank follow your advice?

"If you challenge [land ownership], that would be a change in the power of the elites. That's not high on their agenda." Apparently not.

Ultimately, what drove him to put his job on the line was the failure of the banks and US Treasury to change course when confronted with the crises - failures and suffering perpetrated by their four-step monetarist mambo. Every time their free market solutions failed, the IMF simply demanded more free market policies.

"It's a little like the Middle Ages," the insider told me, "When the patient died they would say, "well, he stopped the bloodletting too soon, he still had a little blood in him."

I took away from my talks with the professor that the solution to world poverty and crisis is simple: remove the bloodsuckers.

[Peter Presland]

Magda

I was pointed at that blog-post a few days ago from a comment on Craig Murray's Blog (He's the Ex-British Ambassador to Uzbekistan whose sacking is a case study in the black political arts in itself, and one I follow quite closely). There has obviously been no mention of it in the MSM - other than a couple of general 'Summer-of-unrest' preparation reports like that referenced in the article; neither do I expect there to be. There was no response to the comment either. It was from a respected regular commentator but nobody followed up on it.

Having said all that, there is a strange, fractious feel to things here in the UK right now. Similar to the US I guess but far less developed so far. Fear of another 'terrorist' (how I hate having to use that word) attack continues to be sedulously stoked up by officialdom in all its forms, with the papers currently full of the most lurid speculation about what our glorious security services have saved us from this time with the latest bout of arrests (I'll try to get around to a thread on it because there is clearly a lot of deep politics involved with the whole thing). Anyway, given all the circumstances I would be surprised if contingencies for serious civil unrest were not being prepared - deeply hidden from public view naturally. Whether the 'deeply hidden' requirement is compatible with what is claimed in that blog is another matter, though I have to say it does have a certain ring to it.

[David Healy]

A shame UK citizens aren't armed like America citizens are. Especially after the election of Obama (whom the US electorate thought for sure was going to outlaw every rifle and pistol). LMAO! As it stands, there is a severe shortage of ammunition now. Gun sales "post Obama election" are up a staggering 30%...

[Bruce Clemens]

A shame UK citizens aren't armed like America citizens are.

It is. But our UK friends are under a much more difficult and restrictive regime, and do not have the luxury of constitutionally guaranteed gun ownership.

That having been said, our (U.S.citizens') constitutional guarantee of gun ownership is worth about squat. Recall the illegal confiscations from gun owners in not-flooded neighborhoods of New Orleans after Katrina. Those folks turned over their shotguns, hunting rifles and registered handguns when faced with military personnel at their doors with automatic weapons.

American citizens, armed. Not a shot fired. What hope do we have?

[Myra Bronstein]

"Is Posse Comitatus Dead? US Troops on US Streets

In a barely noticed development, a US Army unit is now training for domestic operations under the control of US Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command. An initial news report in the Army Times newspaper last month noted that in addition to emergency response the force “may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control.” The military has since claimed the force will not be used for civil unrest, but questions remain."
[Discussion follows/transcript here.]
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/10/7/us...it_will_be


"The Posse Comitatus Act is a United States federal law passed on June 16, 1878 after the end of Reconstruction, with the intention (in concert with the Insurrection Act of 1807) of substantially limiting the powers of the federal government to use the military for law enforcement. The Act prohibits most members of the federal uniformed services (today the Army, Air Force, and State National Guard forces when such are called into federal service) from exercising nominally state law enforcement, police, or peace officer powers that maintain "law and order" on non-federal property (states and their counties and municipal divisions) within the United States.

The statute generally prohibits federal military personnel and units of the National Guard under federal authority from acting in a law enforcement capacity within the United States, except where expressly authorized by the Constitution or Congress. The Coast Guard is exempt from the Act."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act

[Peter Presland]

Bruce & David

I'm afraid you will not find much support on either side of the political spectrum over here for gun ownership - even of the sporting variety - let alone licensed handguns, among our docile and fearful population. That applies perhaps especially on the so called 'Left' too. Our actual gun laws are probably THE most extreme on the entire planet such that even Olympic sportmen are not allowed to own or keep single-shot pistols and have to travel to France, Germany, wherever to practice. The absurdity of it all is breathtaking. As with the so called 'terrorist threat' our MSM are constantly winding everyone up about 'Gun Crime' (Though just lately 'Knife crime' has eclipsed it somewhat). Kill somebody with your bare hands or a hammer and you might expect the normal sentence tariff for murder or manslaughter. Use a gun and you can forget normality or any possibility of future parole. Paranoia about guns is a staple of Establishment propaganda and the public appear to lap it up. It produces some heart-rendingly unjust results too. Here is an example that struck very close to me:

The husband of one of my wife's work colleagues was a gamekeeper with 2 teenage sons. He had never had a conviction of any sort. In 2007 he was falsely accused of killing badgers by the RSPCA who succeeded in getting the police to investigate. During the investigation his house was searched (In the very thorough and destructive way they do these days given half a chance) and an 'illegally held' handgun found. The police conceded that there was no case to answer on the badger killing allegation but charged him with illegal possession of a firearm. In August last year he was given 3 YEARS IN PRISON. Sentencing him, the judge exercised 'maximum judicial discretion' in reducing the sentence from the mandatory 5 years because he accepted that the weapon had been inherited from a relative who had kept it following demobilisation after WW2 and that there was no evidence of it's ever having been fired or any criminal intent beyond simple possession - And the guy was supposed to be grateful!

Well, he wasn't because, before the trial, at which he pleaded guilty, he had secreted some strychnine in his sock. After sentence, when he had been taken down to the holding cells, he asked for a cup of tea. Left alone with it, he took the strychnine and died.

I guarantee not 1 person in 10 million of our population knows or has read about that - because it has simply not been reported anywhere - even our local paper. It is a guilty little secret you see. We can't have the details of how a 'salt-of-the-earth' family man who had harmed nobody, dealt with state persecution in the only way he felt left to him now can we?

'Move along there obedient little sheeple - nothing to see here - and don't forget, Big Brother is watching you'

Here are about the only references you will find on the web.

http://tinyurl.com/679uzf

http://tinyurl.com/6gf6cu

http://tinyurl.com/58kwe6

The truly bizarre thing is that the mass of the population seem to find this police-state prison that has been relentlessly fashioned for us is somehow normal - they seem to have this overwhelming need to be protected from the baddies and the baddies seem to be everywhere everywhere

[Peter Presland]

Further to my previous post on gun control the following little anecdote illustrates the paranoia evoked by any mention of guns over here. It has become a little generic with the telling but is based on fact:

A remote-dwelling farmer detects an intruder on his property at night and dials 999 (911 in the US). He is asked if he has been threatened and says "not yet because the intruder does not know he has been spotted". He is advised to go inside and lock the door as there is no police response unit available right now but to call again if he is threatened. He replies "OK then I'll get my shot gun and deal with it myself"

5 minutes later an armed response unit arrives, lights flashing, sirens wailing and complete with hovering helicopter. The chief cop admonishes the unarmed farmer "You said you were going to confront the intruder with a 12 bore shot gun". The farmer replies "And you said there were no police response units available". That sums things up pretty accurately.

Mention guns - in almost any context - and reason flies out the window. Somewhat akin to placing a large life-like illuminated pulsating dildo in a bakers shop window. Ooh's and aah's and outraged over-reaction. And, to continue with the obscene voyeuristic analogy, whenever a TV news item involves footage of the police, you can bet your sweet life there will be numerous zooming close-ups of the guns they are carrying - truly shocking stuff eh? But the viewers love it. Similarly in the cops & robber TV shows everyone carries and uses guns like it's the most natural thing in the world - same with video games etc etc.

But the law-abiding public cannot be trusted with the means to defend themselves. Not only is it a serious criminal offence to posses a handgun in your own home; the same applies to tasers and pepper sprays. The State insists on an absolute monopoly on violence - and boy does it use it. Burglars and other nare-do-wells understand all this only too well; they know that potential victims will be unarmed and they behave accordingly.

It really is a totally crazy world we inhabit over here.

[Magda Hassan]

That is a very tragic story about your wife's colleague, Peter. It can be a shocking and soul destroying experience for people to come up against state power being exercised against them.

I don't know quite what I think about gun control. I know that there are certainly some people I would never trust with weapons of any kind but then I don't think they should be behind the wheel of a car or out of short pants either. In my brief time in the military there were some joint exercises with the police and I must say that there was quite a bit of difference in the handling of the arms and attitude between the parties with the military been much more professional and the police being cowboys so it never surprises me to hear of police shootings of innocent people. I don't think an unarmed populace and a separate armed professional body is the solution either because power attracts idiots and egotists. What I do observe is that the state and its masters are deathly afraid of those below them.

As Marx says 'The rich will do anything for the poor except get off their backs"

[Bruce Clemens]

Peter, that is heart rending. And I believe we will soon see stories of that sort play out over here in the U.S. It seems we are about 5-10 years behind the UK in terms of acceptance of the government-as-nanny state.

Myra, that's exactly what we're seeing on the streets here. My nephew is active-duty Army, was in the first Gulf War and has been to Iraq, and is getting ready to deploy again. I recently learned from him that after Katrina, he was part of a force that was sent to New Orleans. He told me that at one point he drew his weapon on a civilian who he found looting somewhere and was a half second from killing him before the person finally complied with my nephew's commands. Again, he is not National Guard, he is active-duty Army. I had no idea he was there until he told me this last summer at a family reunion. What good is Posse Comitatus when the "authorities" get away with violating the Constitution daily and no one calls them on it?

In addition to that we are seeing the increasing militarization of our civilian police forces. I live in a medium size Midwestern town, and I recently saw a shiny new armored personnel carrier with a gun turret on top driving through town. It must have just arrived. It was sparkling white and in blue letters said "Springfield Police". My god, what is this town preparing for? They've kept it under wraps- not a peep in the local media and I have not seen it on the street since.

Between Homeland Security grants and FEMA grants and asset forfeiture money the police forces all across our area are absolutely swimming in money right now and are arming-up to an insane level.