John Pilger on the Manchester attack

John Pilger on "Terror in Britain: What did the Prime Minister Know?"

We speak to legendary filmmaker and journalist, John Pilger about MI6's connection to the Libya-Manchester atrocity ahead of tomorrow's Arianna Grande's benefit gig for those affected by the Manchester attack.

John Pilger on the Manchester terrorist attack

No one says it quite like John Pilger

TERROR IN BRITAIN: WHAT DID THE PRIME MINISTER KNOW?

John Pilger

John Pilger,

31 May, 2017

The unsayable in Britain's general election campaign is this. The causes of the Manchester atrocity, in which 22 mostly young people were murdered by a jihadist, are being suppressed to protect the secrets of British foreign policy.

Critical questions - such as why the security service MI5 maintained terrorist "assets" in Manchester and why the government did not warn the public of the threat in their midst - remain unanswered, deflected by the promise of an internal "review".

The alleged suicide bomber, Salman Abedi, was part of an extremist group, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, that thrived in Manchester and was cultivated and used by MI5 for more than 20 years.

The LIFG is proscribed by Britain as a terrorist organisation which seeks a "hardline Islamic state" in Libya and "is part of the wider global Islamist extremist movement, as inspired by al-Qaida".

The "smoking gun" is that when Theresa May was Home Secretary, LIFG jihadists were allowed to travel unhindered across Europe and encouraged to engage in "battle": first to remove Mu'ammar Gadaffi in Libya, then to join al-Qaida affiliated groups in Syria.

Last year, the FBI reportedly placed Abedi on a "terrorist watch list" and warned MI5 that his group was looking for a "political target" in Britain. Why wasn't he apprehended and the network around him prevented from planning and executing the atrocity on 22 May?

These questions arise because of an FBI leak that demolished the "lone wolf" spin in the wake of the 22 May attack - thus, the panicky, uncharacteristic outrage directed at Washington from London and Donald Trump's apology.

The Manchester atrocity lifts the rock of British foreign policy to reveal its Faustian alliance with extreme Islam, especially the sect known as Wahhabism or Salafism, whose principal custodian and banker is the oil kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Britain's biggest weapons customer.

This imperial marriage reaches back to the Second World War and the early days of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. The aim of British policy was to stop pan-Arabism: Arab states developing a modern secularism, asserting their independence from the imperial west and controlling their resources. The creation of a rapacious Israel was meant to expedite this. Pan-Arabism has since been crushed; the goal now is division and conquest.

In 2011, according to Middle East Eye, the LIFG in Manchester were known as the "Manchester boys". Implacably opposed to Mu'ammar Gadaffi, they were considered high risk and a number were under Home Office control orders - house arrest - when anti-Gadaffi demonstrations broke out in Libya, a country forged from myriad tribal enmities.

Suddenly the control orders were lifted. "I was allowed to go, no questions asked," said one LIFG member. MI5 returned their passports and counter-terrorism police at Heathrow airport were told to let them board their flights.

The overthrow of Gaddafi, who controlled Africa's largest oil reserves, had been long been planned in Washington and London. According to French intelligence, the LIFG made several assassination attempts on Gadaffi in the 1990s - bank-rolled by British intelligence. In March 2011, France, Britain and the US seized the opportunity of a "humanitarian intervention" and attacked Libya. They were joined by Nato under cover of a UN resolution to "protect civilians".

Last September, a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee inquiry concluded that then Prime Minister David Cameron had taken the country to war against Gaddafi on a series of "erroneous assumptions" and that the attack "had led to the rise of Islamic State in North Africa". The Commons committee quoted what it called Barack Obama's "pithy" description of Cameron's role in Libya as a "shit show".

In fact, Obama was a leading actor in the "shit show", urged on by his warmongering Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, and a media accusing Gaddafi of planning "genocide" against his own people. "We knew... that if we waited one more day," said Obama, "Benghazi, a city the size of Charlotte, could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world."

The massacre story was fabricated by Salafist militias facing defeat by Libyan government forces. They told Reuters there would be "a real bloodbath, a massacre like we saw in Rwanda". The Commons committee reported, "The proposition that Mu'ammar Gaddafi would have ordered the massacre of civilians in Benghazi was not supported by the available evidence".

Britain, France and the United States effectively destroyed Libya as a modern state. According to its own records, Nato launched 9,700 "strike sorties", of which more than a third hit civilian targets. They included fragmentation bombs and missiles with uranium warheads. The cities of Misurata and Sirte were carpet-bombed. Unicef, the UN children's organisation, reported a high proportion of the children killed "were under the age of ten".

More than "giving rise" to Islamic State - ISIS had already taken root in the ruins of Iraq following the Blair and Bush invasion in 2003 - these ultimate medievalists now had all of north Africa as a base. The attack also triggered a stampede of refugees fleeing to Europe.

Cameron was celebrated in Tripoli as a "liberator", or imagined he was. The crowds cheering him included those secretly supplied and trained by Britain's SAS and inspired by Islamic State, such as the "Manchester boys".

To the Americans and British, Gadaffi's true crime was his iconoclastic independence and his plan to abandon the petrodollar, a pillar of American imperial power. He had audaciously planned to underwrite a common African currency backed by gold, establish an all-Africa bank and promote economic union among poor countries with prized resources. Whether or not this would have happened, the very notion was intolerable to the US as it prepared to "enter" Africa and bribe African governments with military "partnerships".

The fallen dictator fled for his life. A Royal Air Force plane spotted his convoy, and in the rubble of Sirte, he was sodomised with a knife by a fanatic described in the news as "a rebel".

Having plundered Libya's $30 billion arsenal, the "rebels" advanced south, terrorising towns and villages. Crossing into sub-Saharan Mali, they destroyed that country's fragile stability. The ever-eager French sent planes and troops to their former colony "to fight al-Qaida", or the menace they had helped create.

On 14 October, 2011, President Obama announced he was sending special forces troops to Uganda to join the civil war there. In the next few months, US combat troops were sent to South Sudan, Congo and the Central African Republic. With Libya secured, an American invasion of the African continent was under way, largely unreported.

In London, one of the world's biggest arms fairs was staged by the British government. The buzz in the stands was the "demonstration effect in Libya". The London Chamber of Commerce and Industry held a preview entitled "Middle East: A vast market for UK defence and security companies". The host was the Royal Bank of Scotland, a major investor in cluster bombs, which were used extensively against civilian targets in Libya. The blurb for the bank's arms party lauded the "unprecedented opportunities for UK defence and security companies."

Last month, Prime Minister Theresa May was in Saudi Arabia, selling more of the £3 billion worth of British arms which the Saudis have used against Yemen. Based in control rooms in Riyadh, British military advisers assist the Saudi bombing raids, which have killed more than 10,000 civilians. There are now clear signs of famine. A Yemeni child dies every 10 minutes from preventable disease, says Unicef.

The Manchester atrocity on 22 May was the product of such unrelenting state violence in faraway places, much of it British sponsored. The lives and names of the victims are almost never known to us.

This truth struggles to be heard, just as it struggled to be heard when the London Underground was bombed on July 7, 2005. Occasionally, a member of the public would break the silence, such as the east Londoner who walked in front of a CNN camera crew and reporter in mid-platitude. "Iraq!" he said. "We invaded Iraq. What did we expect? Go on, say it."

At a large media gathering I attended, many of the important guests uttered "Iraq" and "Blair" as a kind of catharsis for that which they dared not say professionally and publicly.

Yet, before he invaded Iraq, Blair was warned by the Joint Intelligence Committee that "the threat from al-Qaida will increase at the onset of any military action against Iraq... The worldwide threat from other Islamist terrorist groups and individuals will increase significantly".

Just as Blair brought home to Britain the violence of his and George W Bush's blood-soaked "shit show", so David Cameron, supported by Theresa May, compounded his crime in Libya and its horrific aftermath, including those killed and maimed in Manchester Arena on 22 May.

The spin is back, not surprisingly. Salman Abedi acted alone. He was a petty criminal, no more. The extensive network revealed last week by the American leak has vanished. But the questions have not.

Why was Abedi able to travel freely through Europe to Libya and back to Manchester only days before he committed his terrible crime? Was Theresa May told by MI5 that the FBI had tracked him as part of an Islamic cell planning to attack a "political target" in Britain?

In the current election campaign, the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has made a guarded reference to a "war on terror that has failed". As he knows, it was never a war on terror but a war of conquest and subjugation. Palestine. Afghanistan. Iraq. Libya. Syria. Iran is said to be next. Before there is another Manchester, who will have the courage to say that?

UK home to 23,000 potential terrorists

Nigel Farage says the problem is much worse than previously thought.

He's not wrong!

I can find no reference to this story in the Guardian – how could it when the problem doesn’t exist? Lol

Manchester attack: UK threat level reduced from critical to 

severe – as it happened

Huge scale of terror threat revealed: UK home to 23,000 jihadists

TheTimes,

27 May, 2017

Intelligence officers have identified 23,000 jihadist extremists living in Britain as potential terrorist attackers, it emerged yesterday.

The scale of the challenge facing the police and security services was disclosed by Whitehall sources after criticism that multiple opportunities to stop the Manchester bomber had been missed.

About 3,000 people from the total group are judged to pose a threat and are under investigation or active monitoring in 500 operations being run by police and intelligence services. The 20,000 others have featured in previous inquiries and are categorised as posing a “residual risk”.

The two terrorists who have struck in Britain this year — Salman Abedi, the Manchester bomber, and Khalid Masood, the Westminster killer — were in the pool of “former subjects of interest” and no longer subject to any surveillance.

Anti-terrorism efforts came under renewed scrutiny when it emerged that Abedi, who murdered 22 people when he detonated a suicide bomb among crowds leaving a pop concert at Manchester Arena on Monday, had been a former subject of interest to MI5.

In a series of fast-moving developments yesterday and today:

● The prime minister downgraded the terror threat from “critical” to “severe” this morning, announcing that soldiers will remain deployed on the streets until Monday

● Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley, the country’s most senior anti-terrorism police officer, said “significant arrests” meant that a “large part of the network” around Abedi had been wound up.

● Two key properties were identified: a flat in Blackley, north Manchester, where the explosives were made, and a short-term let apartment in the city centre where the device was assembled. Police said that they had “much of the risk contained”.

● It was announced that armed police would patrol some beaches this weekend as the threat level remained critical; there would also be a heavy police presence visible at hundreds of bank holiday events.

● Theresa May made the bombing an election issue by accusing Jeremy Corbyn of blaming British military action overseas for terrorist attacks in the UK. “I want to make one thing very clear to Jeremy Corbyn and to you: it is that there can never, ever be an excuse for terrorism,” she said.

● World leaders at the G7 summit in Sicily called on internet companies to act urgently and “substantially increase their effort to address terrorist content”. The prime minister said she was clear that “corporations can do more”.

Ben Wallace, the security minister, told The Times that the existence of a database of thousands of potential attackers was a stark illustration of the magnitude of the threat. “This reveals the scale of the challenge from terrorism in the 21st century,” he said. “Never has it been more important to invest in intelligence-led policing.”

MI5’s capacity to investigate is limited to about 3,000 individuals at any one time. People are added to and removed from the group of “live” suspects depending on assessments of who poses the greatest risk. When an investigation is closed, the people identified drop into a growing group whose risk is seen as reduced.

Sources say that the pool of “former subjects of interest” has swollen to 20,000 during the years of Islamist threat since 2001.

There is concern that the intelligence agencies have been poor at detecting former subjects of interest who return to extremism.

The two men who murdered Fusilier Lee Rigby in 2013 had been known to the agencies but had dropped down the priority list and their continued adherence to violent extremism was missed. David Anderson, QC, the former reviewer of anti-terrorism laws, noted concerns in his 2015 report about the “speed with which things can change” around suspects and “the difficulties in knowing how best to prioritise limited surveillance resources”. Senior police have also spoken of the difficulty in identifying the triggers that might “reactivate” extremist behaviour.

Raffaello Pantucci, director of international security studies at the Royal United Services Institute, said that the figures were “disturbing but not surprising”. He added: “For many of these people, the jihadist ideology never leaves them — it is very deeply ingrained.”

Anthony Glees, head of security and intelligence studies at the University of Buckingham, said: “To have 23,000 potential killers in our midst is horrifying. We should double the size of MI5, as we did in World War Two, and expand the number of intelligence-led police by thousands. We can’t go on as if this wasn’t happening.” Last night Ariana Grande, the American singer whose concert was targeted by Abedi, said she planned to return to Manchester to stage a benefit concert for the victims. Liam Gallagher will donate profits from his first solo gig next week to victims.

The same story carried by RT

23,000 potential terrorists live in Britain, intelligence shows – UK media

Around 23,000 jihadist extremists currently living in the UK have been identified by intelligence services as potential terrorists, the Times reports, citing government officials. About 3,000 of those are under investigation as possible threats.

“The huge scale” of the terrorist threat in Britain has been revealed in the wake of the Manchester bombing, the Times reported on Saturday, saying the number was disclosed by unnamed Whitehall sources.

UK authorities have identified 23,000 potential jihadist extremists. The problem is much worse than we first thought.

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11:11 AM - 27 May 2017

The MI5 can only investigate about 3,000 individuals at one time, the newspaper said, explaining that the list of “live” suspects is constantly updated. When those who are believed to pose a greater risk are added to the list, the investigations and active monitoring of others are closed, and they are then moved to a “former subjects of interest” group. This pool of potential attackers, categorized as posing a “residual risk,” has grown to include 20,000 people since 2001, the report said.

The man behind the recent terrorist attack in Manchester, suicide bomber Salman Abedi, who murdered 22 people and injured over a hundred at a pop concert, had been among the 20,000 who are considered “former subjects of interest,” the Times reported.

Another attacker, Khalid Masood, who rammed a vehicle into pedestrians on London’s Westminster Bridge and then stabbed a police officer to death in March, was also in the pool. Both men were no longer under MI5 surveillance.

“For many of these people, the jihadist ideology never leaves them, it is very deeply ingrained,” the director of international security studies at the Royal United Services Institute, Raffaello Pantucci, told the Times, adding that the number disclosed was “disturbing but not surprising.”

The database of potential attackers “reveals the scale of the challenge from terrorism in the 21st century,” UK Security Minister Ben Wallace said, adding that the magnitude of the threat requires investment “in intelligence-led policing.”

“To have 23,000 potential killers in our midst is horrifying. We should double the size of MI5, as we did in World War Two, and expand the number of intelligence-led police by thousands,” the head of security and intelligence studies at the University of Buckingham, Anthony Glees, told the newspaper.

Five hundred active operations are currently managed by the UK security services, Reuters reported, citing “source with knowledge of the matter.” These investigations involve 3,000 people judged as posing a threat.

A large-scale investigation unfolded in the UK this week, following the attack on the Manchester Arena concert hall. Eleven suspects are now in custody, UK Prime Minister Theresa May said on Saturday, while announcing that the security threat level has been lowered from ‘critical’ to ‘severe.’

“The public should be clear about what this means. A threat level of severe means an attack is highly likely. The country should remain vigilant,” she said.

Although a “large part of the network” believed to be connected to the Manchester attacker has been rounded up, according to the UK’s most senior counterterrorism police officer, Mark Rowley, other possible cell members might be on the loose.

Armed officers will remain deployed on the streets throughout Britain until Monday, with security stepped up at around 1,300 events over the bank holiday weekend.

From the Independent -

Manchester attack: Government could exploit public fears to launch attack onpeople’s rights activists warn

Politicians may be about to use the horrific attacks in Manchester to exploit public fears and launch new policies, activists have warned.

The desire to stop another attack happening again using technological approaches and surveillance could actually lead to empowering criminals and terrorists, the Open Rights Group has warned.

Drawing attention to apparent attempts to force companies to weaken their encryption and security so that they can read everyone's messages, the organisation's executive director Jim Killock has warned against relying on security measures.

One in four British Muslims 'have some sympathy for motives behindCharlie Hebdo attacks'

Jeremy Corbyn slams the West's "War on Terror" as a failure.

How long can Jeremy Corbyn maintain this principled position without seeming "unpatriotic"?

Corbyn Agrees: Foreign Policy Responsible for Manchester Attack

Jeremy Corbyn has slammed the West's "War on Terror" as a failure.

Discussing Manchester and the "clash of civilisations' narrative

SUNDAY WIRE: ‘Threat Level: Ludicrous’ with Mike Robinson plus special guests

Episode #187 of SUNDAY WIRE SHOW resumes this May 28th, 2017 as guest host Patrick Henningsen brings you this week’s LIVE broadcast on the Alternate Current Radio Network…

This week we deliver another LIVE broadcast this week from the M3 Motorway in Great Britain, with host Patrick Henningsen, alongside UK Columne ditor Mike Robinson, as we delve into Manchester and the disturbing ‘Clash of Civilizations’ narrative being peddled by personalities and pundits in the mainstream and alternative media. In the second and third hours we’re joined by ACR’s Hesher and Funk Soul and crew to discuss breaking geopolitical  and world news today – further unraveling the globalist agenda.
SUPPORT 21WIRE – SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV

Strap yourselves in and lower the blast shield – this is your brave new world…

*NOTE: THIS EPISODE MAY CONTAIN STRONG LANGUAGE AND MATURE THEMES*

Listen to "Episode #187 – SUNDAY WIRE: ‘Threat Level: Ludicrous’ with Mike Robinson plus special guests" on Spreaker.

One of the important aspects of this broadcast is the calling-out of Tommy Robinson and Alex Jones and their right-wing "clash of civilisations" narrative and call for summary justice on the street. How does differ from Wahhabi extremism and street executions in Syria?

Listen here.

The links between the Manchester bomber and British Intelligence

Manchester Bomber May Have Been Groomed By UK Intelligence

The alleged perpetrator of last week’s bombing in Manchester has been linked to a Libyan terror group that has been aided in the past by British intelligence authorities - a fact that has been conveniently ignored by mainstream media, despite their intense coverage of the attack.

By Whitney Webb

Mint Press,

27 May, 2017

MANCHESTER — As the worst terrorist attack to hit the United Kingdom since 2005, last week’s bombing of a concert in Manchester has since been a constant fixture of the news cycle both in the UK and abroad. bsent from mainstream media accounts of the event – and the man allegedly behind it – are several key coincidences that have raised concerns, particularly regarding links between British intelligence and the alleged suicide bomber, British-born Salman Abdi.

Absent from mainstream media accounts of the event, however – and the man allegedly behind it – are several key coincidences that have raised concerns, particularly regarding links between British intelligence and the alleged suicide bomber, British-born Salman Abdi.

Media reports have already established that Abedi, a Libyan national, was radicalized in the hotbed of radical extremism that Libya has become since the U.S.-NATO backed invasion that ousted Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

Though most mainstream accounts don’t mention the UK’s role in destabilizing and overthrowing the Libyan government in 2011 – that is, causing Libya’s current state of chaos by arming right-wing rebels who now make up al-Qaeda and ISIS – several have mentioned the link between Abedi and the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG).

Magnus Ranstorp‏Verified account @MagnusRanstorp

Father of Manchester bomber Salman Abedi was Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) member

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When the Western-orchestrated uprising began in 2011, Abedi and his father, Ramadan Abedi, returned to Libya to fight on behalf of the LIFG. As the West sought to overthrow Gaddafi, British intelligence agency MI5 established a “rat line” that sent anti-Gaddafi exiles living in England to the front lines in Tripoli and elsewhere.

As reported by Middle East Eye, MI5 utilized an “open door” policy that allowed Libyan exiles and British-Libyan citizens to freely travel to Libya to help topple Gaddafi, even though some had been subject to counter-terrorism control orders. One British citizen with ties to Libya was under house arrest at the time for suspected ties to extremist groups. However, he was allowed to travel to Libya with no questions asked.

MI5’s ties to the LIFG go back decades. One MI5 whistleblower asserted that the UK covertly funded the LIFG, which at the time was an al-Qaeda affiliate, in order to help them carry out a failed assassination attempt targeting Gaddafi.

In addition, the Telegraph reported that “A group of Gaddafi dissidents, who were members of the outlawed Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), lived within close proximity to Abedi in Whalley Range” in Manchester. “Among them was Abd al-Baset Azzouz, a father of four from Manchester, who left Britain to run a terrorist network in Libya overseen by Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s successor as leader of al-Qaeda,” the report dded.

This information suggests that the UK government knowingly and intentionally harbored al-Qaeda-linked terrorists within their borders, suggesting that the UK government’s private stance on al-Qaeda may be different than its public stance, as the ties between these men and the LIFG were hardly a secret.

Republican U.S. Sens. Mark Kirk of Illinois, Marco Rubio of Florida, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, and John McCain of Arizona, display the ‘victory’ sign while on a 2011 visit to Libya.

If true, the UK government would not be alone in its attempts to legitimize the LIFG. In 2011, U.S. Senator and notorious war hawk John McCain met with the group and later asserted that they were not terrorists, but “patriots.” The U.S. government further cemented this perspective in 2015, when it removed the LIFG from its list of designated terror organizations.

In addition, Abedi had been reported to British authorities years ago, when he allegedly expressed support for suicide bombings. The authorities took no action. In fact, the British government allowed him to travel to Libya even after he was flagged as a potential terrorist.

Lee John Barnes‏ @LeeJohnBarnes

Home Secretary Amber Rudd admits the Manchester bomber was a known terrorist & was still allowed to go to Libya

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This finding prompted journalist Max Blumenthal to pointedly ask in an article for Alternet: “What did the British government know about Abedi and when did it know it? Was British intelligence attempting to groom Abedi as an informant?”

Such actions on behalf of British intelligence are hardly unheard of. Indeed, MI5 had tried the same with Mohammed Emwazi, better known as the Daesh member “Jihadi John.” MI5 hounded Emwazi for nearly four years in their attempts to recruit him as a spy, threatening him with harsh punishment if he refused to collaborate. Upon leaving the UK in 2013, Emwazi said he blamed MI5 for driving him to “the brink of madness.”

Other documents released by the human rights group Cage UK have revealed how MI5 has not only groomed extremists as collaborators but also worked to push young, vulnerable men down the path of extremism. These findings suggest that Abedi may have been just another one of their pawns.