by
United States Marine Field McConnell
Plum City Online - (AbelDanger.net)
March 17, 2016
1. Abel Danger (AD) alleges that Mark Burnett unwittingly (?) developed a reality TV show named Combat Missions where actors and scriptwriters have learned how to stage false-flag events such as the precision mortar attack on the CIA annex in Benghazi on September 11, 2012.
2. AD alleges that alien mercenaries embedded in 8(a) companies deployed by the Clinton Foundation are working with scabs in the Screen Actors Guild – now the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists – to put Donald Trump in the White House
3. AD asserts that Serco banking shareholders have equipped Clinton's 8(a) companies and Trump's scabs with Navy onion router devices to help them predict the precise time of death of high-value death-pool targets such as the former SEALs Tyrone S. Woods and Glen Doherty who died in a mortar attack during the Benghazi Combat Mission attributed to Islamic militants.
4. United States Marine Field McConnell (http://www.abeldanger.net/2010/01/field-mcconnell-bio.html) challenges FBI Director James Comey, a former director of Serco's death-pool banker HSBC, to investigate the apparent Burnett stagecraft behind the precision mortar fire during Combat Mission Benghazi.
New State Dept Email: Mortar Hit Location During Attack Benghazi - Second Wave!
Combat Missions trailer
The Hollywood Blacklist: 1947-1960
Copy of SERCO GROUP PLC: List of Subsidiaries AND [Loan Shark] Shareholders!
(Mobile Playback Version)
[Serco's] Defense Ammunition Center
Serco... Would you like to know more?
"Combat Missions is a one-hour-long reality TV show produced by Mark Burnett and hosted by former Survivor castaway Rudy Boesch that aired from January to April in 2002 on the USA Network. It pits four teams of highly experienced military and police operatives against each other in physical challenges and "mission" scenarios. Each team has a call sign and corresponding color. The four teams are Alpha (Red), Bravo (Blue), Charlie (Yellow) and Delta (Green). The team members were past and present members of SWAT, the United States Army Special Forces, the Navy SEALs, Marine Recon, the CIA Special Operations Group, the Delta Force, and the U.S. Army Rangers. The mission scenarios has each team face off against the opposing "Shadow force" (not another team) using MILES gear in real-life combat situations. The show was not picked up for a second season.
Scott Helvenston, one of the contestants from the Delta team went on to work for Blackwater USA in Iraq after the show and was killed in action on March 31, 2004."
"The 2012 Benghazi attack took place on the evening of September 11, 2012, when Islamic militants attacked the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, killing U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and U.S. Foreign Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith.[7]Stevens was the first U.S. Ambassador killed in the line of duty since 1979.[8] The attack has also been referred to as the Battle of Benghazi.[9]
Several hours later, a second assault targeted a different compound about one mile away, killing CIA contractors Tyrone S. Woods and Glen Doherty.[10][11] Ten others were also injured in the attacks.
Many Libyans condemned the attacks and praised the late ambassador. They staged public demonstrations condemning the militias (formed during the 2011 civil war to oppose leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi)[12][13][14] that were suspected of the attacks. The United States immediately increased security worldwide at diplomatic and military facilities and began investigating the Benghazi attack.[15][16] In the aftermath of the attack,State Department officials were criticized for denying requests for additional security at the consulate prior to the attack. In her role as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton subsequently took responsibility for the security lapses.[17]
On August 6, 2013, it was reported that the U.S. had filed criminal charges against several individuals, including militia leader Ahmed Abu Khattala, for alleged involvement in the attacks.[18] Khattala has been described by Libyan and U.S. officials as the Benghazi leader of Ansar al-Sharia, which was listed in January 2014 by the U.S. Department of State as a terror organization.[19][20][21] On the weekend of June 14, 2014, U.S. Army special operations forces, in coordination with the FBI, captured Khattala in Libya.[22]
Initially, top U.S. officials and the media reported that the Benghazi attack was a spontaneous protest triggered by an anti-Muslim video, Innocence of Muslims.[23] Subsequent investigations determined that there was no such protest and that the attacks were premeditated.[24] Captured suspect Ahmed Abu Khattala stated that the assault was indeed in retaliation for the video Innocence of Muslims.[25]"
"Top Military Commanders Suggest A Different Group Attacked The CIA Annex In Benghazi
Donna Cassata, Associated Press
July 10, 2014, 5:45 AM WASHINGTON (AP) — Well-trained attackers executed the deadly dawn assault on a CIA complex in Benghazi, Libya, suggesting different perpetrators from those who penetrated the U.S. diplomatic mission the previous night, according to newly revealed testimony from top military commanders.
The initial attack, on Sept. 11, 2012, killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and communications specialist Sean Smith and set the mission ablaze. Nearly eight hours later at the CIA complex nearby, two more Americans, contract security officers Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, died in a mortar attack that showed clear military training, retired Gen. Carter Ham told Congress in closed-door testimony earlier this year.
The House Armed Services Committee released the testimony Wednesday.
The second assault probably was the work of a new team of militants who had seized on reports of violence at the diplomatic mission the night before and hit the Americans while they were most vulnerable, according to testimony that could clarify the events. The testimony also reveals how little information the military had on which to base an urgent response.
Bitter recriminations in the U.S. followed the 2012 attacks, including Republican-led congressional investigations and campaign-season denunciations of the Obama administration, which made inaccurate statements about the Libyan attacks. The testimony released Wednesday underscored a key detail that sometimes has been lost in the debate: that the attacks were two distinct events over two days on two different buildings, perhaps by unrelated groups.
The U.S. government still has not fully characterized the first attack in which, according to Ham and eight other military officers, men who seemed familiar with the lightly protected diplomatic compound breached it and set it on fire, killing Stevens and Smith. A disorganized mob of looters then overran the facility.
In testimony to two House panels earlier this year, the officers said that commanders didn't have the information they needed to understand the nature of the attack, that they were unaware of the extent of the U.S. presence in Benghazi at the time and they were convinced erroneously for a time that they were facing a hostage crisis without the ability to move military assets into place that would be of any use.
To this day, despite the investigations, it's not clear if the violence resulted from a well-planned, multiphase military-type assault or from a loosely connected, escalating chain of events.
Two House panels — Armed Services and Oversight and Government Reform — conducted interviews with the nine officers on separate days from January to April.
In their testimony, military officials expressed some uncertainty about the first attack, describing protests and looting in an assault that lasted about 45 minutes.
The military attache to the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli told Congress the first attack showed some advance planning. The Libyan police officer guarding the diplomatic compound fled as it began.
The defense attache, whose name wasn't released, suggested the attackers "had something on the shelf" — an outline of a plan based on previously obtained information about the compound and its security measures, so they were ready to strike when the opportunity arose. "They came in, and they had a sense of purpose, and I think it sometimes gets confused because you had looters and everyone else coming in," he said. "It was less than kind of full, thought-out, methodical."
Ham testified that the second attack, which killed Woods and Doherty at the annex a mile from the diplomatic compound where the assault began the night before, showed clear military training. It was probably the work of a new team of militants, taking advantage after reports of violence at the first site and American vulnerability.
"Given the precision of the attack, it was a well-trained mortar crew, and in my estimation they probably had a well-trained observer," said Ham, who headed the U.S. command in Africa. The second attack showed "a degree of sophistication and military training that is relatively unusual and certainly, I think, indicates that this was not a pickup team. This was not a couple of guys who just found a mortar someplace." Ham said the nearly eight-hour time lapse between the two attacks also seemed significant. "If the team (that launched the second attack) was already there, then why didn't they shoot sooner?" he asked.
"I think it's reasonable that a team came from outside of Benghazi," he said of the second attack in testimony on April 9. Violent extremists saw an opportunity "and said, 'Let's get somebody there.'" He also acknowledged that the absence of American security personnel on the ground soon enough after the first attack "allowed sufficient time for the second attack to be organized and conducted," he said.
Stevens had gone to Benghazi from the embassy in Tripoli to open a cultural center, State Department officials said.
The attacks came as President Barack Obama was in a close re-election battle, campaigning in part on the contention that al-Qaida no longer posed a significant threat to the United States and that, blending the economy and the fight against terrorism, General Motors was alive but "Osama bin Laden is dead." A terror attack on American assets could have damaged that argument.Five days after the attack, after feverish email exchanges about her "talking points" among national security staff members and their spokesmen, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice linked the Benghazi attacks to protests in Tunisia and Cairo over an anti-Islam video. Weeks later, U.S. officials retracted that account but never fully articulated a new one.
Republicans seized on the inaccuracies, contending that the Obama administration was covering up a terror attack for political gain. Several congressional and independent investigations have faulted the State Department for inadequate security, but they have not provided a full reading of who was involved in the violence, what the motives were and how they could pull off such a seemingly complicated, multipronged assault.
People on both sides of the debate tend to link the two incidents as one attack.
The congressional testimony that distinguishes the attacks came from military officials in Tripoli or, like Ham, coordinating the response in Washington. Most have never given a public account. But they agreed that confusion reigned from the outset.
"We're under attack," was the first report the military received from Benghazi. That message came from Stevens' entourage to Tripoli in the late afternoon of Sept. 11. Word was relayed to the defense attache, who reported up the chain of command.
That report gave no indication about the size or intensity of the attack.The defense attache testified that the assault on the diplomatic mission was followed by a mob that complicated and confused the situation.
He said of the original attackers, "I don't think they were on the objective, so to speak, longer than 45 minutes. They kind of got on, did their business, and left." For hours after that, he said, there were looters and "people throwing stuff and you see the graffiti and things like that."
Once the first attack ended around 10 p.m., the military moved to evacuate Americans from Benghazi, while preparing for what it erroneously believed might have been an emerging hostage situation involving Stevens.
In fact, Stevens died of smoke inhalation after the diplomatic post was set on fire in the first attack.
Seven-and-a-half hours later, at dawn, mortars crashed on a CIA compound that had been unknown to top military commanders.
The military worked up a response on numerous fronts.
At one point, fewer than 10 U.S. military personnel in Libya were grappling with the mortar and rocket-propelled grenade attack on Americans who had taken cover at the CIA facility and, some 600 miles away, the evacuation of about three dozen people from the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli by a convoy of armored vehicles.
An unarmed Predator drone conducting an operation nearby in eastern Libya had been repositioned over Benghazi, yet offered limited assistance during the nighttime and with no intelligence to guide it. A standby force training in Croatia was ordered to Sicily, while another farther afield was mobilized. Neither was nearly ready in time to intervene during the first 45-minute attack and couldn't predict the quick mortar attack the next morning. An anti-terrorism support team in Spain was deployed, though it, too, was hours away.
American reinforcements of a six-man security team, including two military personnel, were held up at the Benghazi airport for hours by Libyan authorities. Drone images and intelligence hadn't provided indications of a new attack, but word eventually came from two special forces troops who had made it to the annex and reported casualties from the dawn attack up the chain of command. In Tripoli, military and embassy officials were evacuating the embassy there and destroying computer hardware and sensitive information.
The administration last month apprehended its first suspect, Ahmed Abu Khattala, and brought him to the United States to stand trial on terrorism charges.
The Justice Department maintains in court documents that Abu Khattala was involved in both attacks, and it describes the first breach on the diplomatic post as equally sophisticated. The government said a group of about 20 men, armed with AK-47- rifles, handguns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers, stormed the diplomatic facility in the first attack.
Abu Khattala supervised the looting after Americans fled, the government says, and then returned to the camp of the Islamist militant group Ansar al-Sharia, where the Justice Department says a large force began assembling for the second attack.
The Justice Department provided no supporting documentation for those conclusions. They also reflect the divisions among current and former government officials about the two attacks.
In her book "Hard Choices," former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton wrote that there were scores of attackers with different motives. "It is inaccurate to state that every single one of them was influenced by this hateful video. It is equally inaccurate to state that none of them were. Both assertions defy not only the evidence but logic as well."
Abu Khattala's lawyer says the government has failed to show that he was connected to either attack.
Ham, who happened to be in Washington that week, briefed Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey. They informed the president.
Many of the military officials said they didn't even know about the diplomatic mission in Benghazi, let alone the CIA's clandestine installation nearby. Few knew of Stevens visiting the city that day. Given all of the confusion, Ham said there was one thing he clearly would have done differently: "Advise the ambassador to not go to Benghazi."
Associated Press writer Connie Cass contributed to this report.
___
Follow Donna Cassata on Twitter at http://twitter.com/@DonnaCassataAP and Bradley Klapper at http://twitter.com/@bklapperAP Copyright (2014) Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed."
"Before Donald Trump made great reality TV, before his campaign to make American reality great, he never watched any of the shows. He didn't like the whole idea of reality TV. “That’s for the bottom feeders of society," Trump told friends.
Then, in 2002, "Survivor" creator Mark Burnett came to see him at Trump Tower. Burnett, a former T-shirt salesman on Venice Beach, had achieved stratospheric ratings with a show based in exotic spots such as the Australian outback and the Polynesian islands. But he had little kids at home, and he was desperate to do a show in a U.S. city. Burnett's road home, he realized, was through Trump. Above: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at a November campaign stop in Fort Dodge, Iowa. (Charles Ommanney/The Washington Post)
"The Apprentice" would star Trump as judge, jury and executioner in a weekly winnowing of young go-getters vying to run one of his businesses. Trump's agent told him it was a terrible idea — business shows never work on TV, he said.
Trump disagreed. Indeed, he fired the agent shortly thereafter. "If I would have listened to him," Trump told The Washington Post, "I wouldn't have done the show.”
THE DECIDERS
Nothing reveals more about politicians than the decisions they make — why they chose to do something, how they made it happen, what came of it. In the days before the first votes are cast in Iowa and New Hampshire, The Washington Post is exploring one key choice by each leading presidential candidate and explain the insight it offers into the way he or she might operate in the White House.
Not halfway into that first, hour-long meeting with Burnett, Trump made up his mind. He sensed that “The Apprentice” had enormous potential to introduce him to a broader audience, and especially to younger people.
"My jet's going to be in every episode," he told Jim Dowd, then NBC's publicity director and now head of a PR firm, Dowd Ink. "Even if it doesn’t get ratings, it's still going to be great for my brand."
Burnett walked out of the meeting with a handshake deal. Trump secured not only a starring role on a show made by TV’s hottest producer but also a 50 percent ownership stake in “The Apprentice.”
The man who now seeks to be commander in chief had consulted no one, done no research. He liked the idea. He bought it.
It was a classic Trump moment, an example of the gut-instinct decision-making that he proudly touts in nearly every campaign speech. Buy a show. Build a wall. Pull out of a debate. Make America great again. "It's very easy," Trump promises.
What was harder was the decision to run for president, which Trump had talked about for decades. He didn't run for president because of "The Apprentice," but according to the show's executives and producers, without "The Apprentice" there would be no candidacy."
"Loan Improvement Jan 31, 2001 SBA modernizes to help feed its growing programs
BY PATRICIA DAUKANTAS | GCN STAFF
Under a five-year plan for overhauling its information technology systems, the Small Business Administration recently acquired new software for financial and other administrative tasks. .. In the first phase of the modernization, the agency has upgraded systems for managing its extensive portfolio of guaranteed loans, chief operating officer Kristine Marcy [Field McConnell's sister] said. SBA processed its first electronic loan last November through its Sacramento, Calif., office and plans to add more private lenders during fiscal 2001. .. Marcy said. Banks had been asking SBA to make faster decisions on loan guarantees. The agency decided to aim for a [onion router] turnaround time of one hour. In the second phase of modernization, SBA is revamping its financial, human resources, procurement and travel systems with Web-enabled Oracle Corp. applications. .. The second-phase integrator, SRA International Inc. of Arlington, Va., has subcontracted with a number of small firms for things such as training and data conversion [Note Serco protégé Base One opened a document conversion center in the Bronx in 2006, presumably to deal with Obama's passport problems]. .. In the final phase of the modernization, SBA will upgrade the computers in its 8(a) Business Development Program, which assists small businesses in competing for government contracts, Marcy said. The agency wants to be able to improve its tracking of clients' successes and failures [through to liquidation by the SBA's preferred lenders and sureties such as HSBC and Travelers Casualty and Surety Company of America - note merged with Citigroup and John Deutch's CIA friends!]."
"WHY ARE STRIKEBREAKERS CALLED SCABS?
March 25, 2014 Melissa One comment
Kayla R. asks: Why are strikebreakers called scabs?
Striving to win safer working conditions, shorter hours and better pay, over the past few hundred years laborers have periodically joined together in work stoppages, called strikes. Only effective when the work needed by the "boss" (be it a single business, a whole industry or an entire nation) doesn't get done; if replacement workers do the strikers' jobs, the strike usually fails. As you can imagine, those replacement workers are not, and historically have not, been very popular.
Derived from the Old English sceabb and the Old Norseskabb (both meaning "scab, itch"), the word "scab" had become an insult by the late 1500s, having adopted a secondary definition that meant "a lowlife".
With an increasing number of strikes, and therefore replacement workers, during the second half of the 18th century in England, the word "scab" was put into use as a derogatory term for strikebreakers, as noted in Bonner & Middleton's Bristol Journal in 1777: The Conflict [between labor and capital] would not been [sic] so sharp had not there been so many dirty Scabs; no Doubt but timely Notice will be taken of them.
By 1806, the term was in common use in the U.S. as well, although other favorites included "blackleg," "rat," "fink," and "ratfink." Throughout the 19th century, scabs in the U.S. were frequently recruited from new immigrant and other economically challenged communities, and often had no idea they would be breaking a strike until they crossed the picket line. Regardless, scabs were so reviled, that, in response to the use of Chinese immigrants to break strikes (and the perception that they were taking all of the jobs), Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882.
In 1905, Jack London (yes, that Jack London) justified a hatred of scabs:
He who takes from another man’s purse takes from his existence. To strike at a man's food and shelter is to strike at his life . . . .
It is for this reason that a laborer is so fiercely hostile to another laborer who offers to work for less pay or longer hours. . . .
In addition to the use of bricks, clubs, and bullets, the [striking] laborer finds it necessary to express his feelings in speech. Just as the peaceful country-dweller calls the sea-rover a "pirate," . . . the [striking] laborer applies the opprobrious epithet "scab" to the laborer who takes from him food and shelter . . .
Not limited to mere epithets, however, the early labor movement was rife with violent episodes, and striking workers were sometimes killed. Scabs were not immune to this brutality, including those attacked during the Herrin Massacre of 1922, when heavily armed union miners forced a group of strikebreakers to surrender:
The union workers forced the strikebreakers to walk toward Herrin. On the way, a man with a revolver stated, "The only way to free the country of strikebreakers is to kill them all off and stop the breed." . . . Two men took [the mine superintendent] away from the pack. Later, a farmer heard gunshots and . . . [he eventually] found [the superintendent] with two bullet wounds in his stomach, one through the body, and one through the head. The prisoners and the angry mob continued [on to] where yet another group of radical union workers waited. In the woods was a large barbed wire fence. The hostages were placed in front of it and told to run for their lives. Fire rang out and some of the strikebreakers were hit. Others climbed over the fence. . . . One of the radicals noticed that Shoemaker [the assistant superintendent] was still alive and shot him in the head. Some men made it past the fence but were tracked down and murdered.
At the end of the day, somewhere between 18 and 20 men, including detective agency employees, professional strikebreakers and non-union scabs, had been killed. Buried in the Herrin Cemetery, not a single relative appeared for their interment. If one of the union members who attended the burial gave a eulogy, he may well have relied on another famous quote by Jack London:
After God had finished the rattlesnake, the toad and the vampire, he had some awful substance left with which he made a SCAB. A SCAB is a two-legged animal with a corkscrew soul, a water-logged brain and a combination backbone made of jelly and glue. Where others have hearts he carries a tumor of rotten principles. A strikebreaker is a traitor to his God, his country, his family and his class!
"The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) was an American labor union which represented over 100,000 film and television principal and background performers worldwide. On March 30, 2012, the union leadership announced that the SAG membership voted to merge with the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists(AFTRA) to create SAG-AFTRA.[2] …
In October 1947, the members of a list of suspected communists working in the Hollywood film industry were summoned to appear before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), which was investigating Communist influence in the Hollywood labor unions. Ten of those summoned, dubbed the "Hollywood Ten", refused to cooperate and were charged with contempt of Congress and sentenced to prison. Several liberal members of SAG, led by Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Danny Kaye, and Gene Kelly formed the Committee for the First Amendment (CFA) and flew to Washington, DC, in late October 1947 to show support for the Hollywood Ten. (Several of the CFA's members, including Bogart, Edward G. Robinson, and John Garfield later recanted, saying they had been "duped", not realizing that some of the Ten were really communists.)
The president of SAG – future United States President Ronald Reagan – also known to the FBI as Confidential Informant "T-10", testified before the committee but never publicly named names. Instead, according to an FBI memorandum in 1947: "T-10 advised Special Agent [name deleted] that he has been made a member of a committee headed by Mayer, the purpose of which is allegedly is to 'purge' the motion-picture industry of Communist party members, which committee was an outgrowth of the Thomas committee hearings in Washington and subsequent meetings . . . He felt that lacking a definite stand on the part of the government, it would be very difficult for any committee of motion-picture people to conduct any type of cleansing of their own household".[7] Subsequently a climate of fear, enhanced by the threat of detention under the provisions of the McCarran Internal Security Act, permeated the film industry. On November 17, 1947, the Screen Actors Guild voted to force its officers to take a "non-communist" pledge. On November 25 (the day after the full House approved the ten citations for contempt) in what has become known as the Waldorf Statement, Eric Johnston, president of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), issued a press release: "We will not knowingly employ a Communist or a member of any party or group which advocates the overthrow of the government of the United States by force or by any illegal or unconstitutional methods."
None of those blacklisted were proven to advocate overthrowing the government – most simply had Marxist or socialist views. The Waldorf Statement marked the beginning of the Hollywood blacklist that saw hundreds of people prevented from working in the film industry. During the height of what is now referred to as McCarthyism, the Screen Writers Guild gave the studios the right to omit from the screen the name of any individual who had failed to clear his name before Congress. At a 1997 ceremony marking the 50th anniversary of the Blacklist, the Guild's president made this statement:
Only our sister union, Actors Equity Association, had the courage to stand behind its members and help them continue their creative lives in the theater. ... Unfortunately, there are no credits to restore, nor any other belated recognition that we can offer our members who were blacklisted. They could not work under assumed names or employ surrogates to front for them. An actor's work and his or her identity are inseparable. Screen Actors Guild's participation in tonight's event must stand as our testament to all those who suffered that, in the future, we will strongly support our members and work with them to assure their rights as defined and guaranteed by the Bill of Rights.
— Richard Masur, Hollywood Remembers the Blacklist[8]"
"CIA Lists Provide Basis for Iraqi Bloodbath
By Hanna Batatu
The following is an excerpt from The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978).
In this excerpt, Hanna Batatu describes the ferocious violence of the Ba`athists when they came to power in their first coup in Iraq in early 1963. Of special interest is his mention of the lists, which he believes U.S. intelligence provided to the coup-makers.
Evidently, the CIA helped bring Saddam Hussein's thuggish party to power and fatally weakened the prospects for Iraqi democracy. Some reliable sources believe that more than ten thousand were killed and more than a hundred thousand arrested in the coup and the bloody weeks that followed, described by historians Peter and Marion Sluglett as "some of the most terrible violence hitherto experienced in the postwar Middle East." (pp. 985-987)
On the reckoning of the Communists, no fewer than 5,000 "citizens" were killed in the fighting from 8 to 10 February, and in the relentless house-to-house hunt for Communists that immediately followed. Ba`athists put the losses of their own party at around 80. A source in the First Branch of Iraq's Directorate of Security told this writer in 1967 that some 340 Communists died at the time. A well-placed foreign diplomatic observer, who does not wish to be identified, set the total death toll in the neighborhood of 1,500. The figure includes the more than one hundred soldiers who fell inside the Ministry of Defense and "a good lot of Communists."
At any rate, the wound to the Community party was severe and, insofar as its members were concerned, proved to be only the prelude of a seemingly unending year of horror. The new rulers had a past score to settle and, in their revengeful ardor, went to unfortunate extremes. This districts that had risen against them were treated as enemy country, Nationalist Guardsmen and units of the armed forces spread through them combing houses and mud huts. Upon the slightest resistance or on mere suspicion of an interest to resist, Communists – real or hypothetical – were felled out of hand. The number of those seized so taxed the existing prisons that sports clubs, movie theaters, private houses, an-Nihayah Palace and, in the first days, even a section of Kifah Street, were turned into places of confinement. The arrests were made in accordance with lists prepared beforehand. It cannot be unerringly established where these lists came from or who compiled them, but in this connection something that King Husain of Jordan affirmed seven months later in a tíªte-í -tíªte with Muhammad Hasanein Haikal, chief editor of Al-Ahram, at the Hotel Crillon in Paris, is well worth quoting: You tell me that American Intelligence was behind the 1957 events in Jordan. Permit me to tell you that I know for a certainty that what happened in Iraq on 8 February had the support of American Intelligence. Some of those who now rule in Baghdad do not know of this thing but I am aware of the truth. Numerous meetings were held between the Ba`ath party and American Intelligence, the more important in Kuwait. Do you know that . . . on 8 February a secret radio beamed to Iraq was supplying the men who pulled the coup with the names and addresses of the Communists there so that they could be arrested an executed. [Al-Ahram, 27 September 1963]
It is not clear what prompted Husain to say these things. He had, of course, never been a friend of the Ba`ath party. But his observations should be read in the light of the recent revelation that he has been since 1957 in the pay of the C.I.A. It is perhaps pertiment to add that a member of the 1963 Iraqi Ba`ath Command, who asked anonymity, asserted in a conversation with this writer that the Yugoslav embassy in Beirut had warned certain Ba`athi leaders that some Iraqi Ba`athists were maintaining surreptitious contacts with representatives of American power. The majority of the command in Iraq was, it would appear, unaware of what was said to have gone on. Be that as it may, it is necessary, in the interest of truth, to bring out that, insofar as the names and addresses of Communists are concerned, the Ba`athists had ample opportunity to gather such particulars in 1958-1959, when the Communists came wholly into the open, and earlier, during the Front of National Unity Years – 1957-1958 – when they had frequent dealings with them on all levels.
Besides, the lists in question proved to be in part out of date. They at least did not lead the Ba`ath immediately to the Communists of senior standing. Some of the latter were, anyhow, out of the country. ‘Abd-us-Salam an-Nasiri was in Moscow on an undisclosed mission. ‘Aziz al-Hajj in Prague on the staff of the World Marxist Review. Zaki Khatiri had been in People's China and, returning at this juncture, sought refuse with Tudeh. ‘Amer ‘Abdullah lived in exile in Bulgaria, by order of the party. Baha-ud-Din Nuri was recuperating from an illness somewhere in Eastern Europe. Other Communist leaers had slipped into Kurdistan or had changed their addresses. However, Hamdi Ayyub al-‘Ani, a member of the Baghdad Local Committee, fell into the net that the Ba`ath had cast. Losing courage under examination, he gave away party secretary Hadi Hashim al-A`dhami, from whose lips more secrets were forced, but only after he had been laid limp with a broken back. Ultimately, on 20 February, First Secretary Husain ar-Radi himself was taken. Although various means were employed to make him speak, he did not yield. Four days later he died under torture. When eventually the new government gave notice of his death, it circumstanced the facts after its own manner: on 9 March it announced that ar-Radi, together with Muhammad Husain Abu-l-`Iss, an ex-member of the Politbureau, and Hasan `Uwainah, a worker and a liaison member of the Central Committee, had been condemned on the firth to be handed until they were dead for bearing arms "in the face of authority" and inciting "anarchist elements to resist the revolution" and that the sentences had been carried out on the morning of the seventh.
One adversity after another now pounded the party. It was the 1949 ordeal reenfacted, but on a wider and more intense scale. The hurt to the cadre went this time very deep. Not a single organization in the Arab part of Iraq remained intact. Violence was perpetrated even upon the women. Executions by summary judgment grew rife. Sympathizers were paralyzed by despondency. The influence of fear became extreme."
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Time called on Serco's NPL contract
By Gill Plimmer
Serco, the FTSE 100 outsourcing company, has lost its contract to run the National Physical Laboratory – which built the first atomic clock – after the government said it would seek academic partners to take over the centre instead.
The laboratory has been managed by Serco on a profit-share basis since 1994. But David Willetts, science minister, has decided that the government can "encourage greater interaction with businesses" by ending the contract in March 2014, when the company's 17-year tenure comes to an end.
The decision highlights the vulnerability of some of the government's biggest suppliers to political change. Although the coalition is widely accepted to be engaged in the biggest wave of outsourcing since the 1980s, contracts can be pulled at the last minute, even once companies have spent significant amounts on the bidding process.
Kean Marden, analyst at Jefferies, said there were still UK government contracts worth £3.5bn in revenues in the pipeline, as advertised in the Official Journal of the European Union. But this is down from the £4bn of bidding opportunities it found in May. The decrease takes account of a surprise decision last month to cancel a programme to outsource nine prisons each year to the private sector and instead keep the running of custodial services in-house.
It also includes a scaling back of the private sector's involvement in police services after Surrey Police Authority pulled out of discussions with G4S in the wake of the company's failure to provide 12,000 security staff it had promised for the London Olympics. The National Physics Laboratory still has a role in setting UK time, with radio signals based on its clocks used to set everything from the pips on the radio to the rail network. An apple tree grown from a cutting of Newton's famous tree is still growing at its site in Teddington, London.
Serco said it was disappointed by the decision and pointed to a 30 per cent reduction in overhead costs over the life of its deal, as well as a doubling of scientific citations as well as third party revenues.
"We have managed NPL for the last 17 years and we are very proud that during that time it has flourished, both scientifically and commercially," Serco said. The company has won £5.6bn of contracts so far this year.
Mr Willetts said there were significant "opportunities which would be difficult to realise under an extension of the current contract". He said the change would reflect the government's aim to strengthen "both fundamental research and engagement with business" at the centre.
"I consider that the partners should have a clear, long-term stake in the ownership and operation of the National Physical Laboratory which would not be possible under the current arrangements which, of necessity, must be time-limited," Mr Willetts said. "A partnership with an academic institution would also allow for the formation of a dedicated applied science postgraduate institute.""
"Serco announces office carbon reduction initiative
International outsourcing business Serco has announced it is to introduce new software aimed at helping its offices cut back on carbon emissions.
Under the new initiative, the company's offices in 35 countries will make use of the newly-launched Acco2unt software from Greenstone Carbon Management.
This new technology will be used to help office managers measure, store and report levels of carbon emissions, thereby making it easier to carry out green audits and assess where cuts can be made.
In addition, it is intended that the data compiled through the use of the software will also enable Serco to draw up [carbon-capping death-pool onion-router] benchmarks for its operations across the globe.
Announcing the development, Tim Davis, head of assurance reporting at Serco, said: "The complex nature of Serco's business operations demanded an easy to use enterprise carbon accounting tool that would help us aggregate, measure and manage carbon emissions – quickly, accurately and cost-effectively."
This comes as the Federation of Small Businesses has joined forces with the Prince's Mayday Network to help UK companies cut their carbon emissions."
"Serco do a bunch more that didn't even make our story: As well as thanking God for his success, CEO Chris Hyman is a Pentecostal Christian who has released a gospel album in America and fasts every Tuesday. Amazingly, he was also in the World Trade Centre on 9/11, on the 47th floor addressing shareholders [such as Wells Fargo with an insured interest in the leveraged lease on the WTC Twin Towers]. Serco run navy patrol boats for the ADF, as well as search and salvage operations through their partnership with P&O which form Defence Maritime Services. Serco run two Australian jails already, Acacia in WA and Borallon in Queensland. They’re one of the biggest companies In the UK for running electronic tagging of offenders under house arrest or parole."
Yours sincerely,
Field McConnell, United States Naval Academy, 1971; Forensic Economist; 30 year airline and 22 year military pilot; 23,000 hours of safety; Tel: 715 307 8222
David Hawkins Tel: 604 542-0891 Forensic Economist; former leader of oil-well blow-out teams; now sponsors Grand Juries in CSI Crime and Safety Investigation
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