Lockerbie: Megrahi Was Framed

punditman says...

Punditman has learned over time that things are rarely as they appear to be in the Big media, with the exception of perhaps sports scores (they usually get that right). The rest is usually spin.

How can punditman make such a broad statement? Easily. The "spin" on any given story fulfills certain assumptions about the way journalists, editors and owners look at the world. Granted, this varies somewhat across the spectrum, from centre-right to centre-left to further right with a few token lefties, libertarians and odd balls thrown in to make it all seem fun and fair.

But the range of allowable thought is actually a lot narrower than many people assume, especially when one starts digging into specific stories that play out when new information comes to light. Big Media don't like to admit they were wrong or lazy; in particular when getting it right the first time involves prowling around the edges of the "dark side" of government espionage, covert deception and official malfeasance. For the most part, these institutions are heavily invested in the status quo's way of looking at the world. They don't like complexity if complexity puts egg on their face. It's much easier to toe the White House/White Hall line.

What externality is punditman babbling about? The recent release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahiin in the Lockerbie bombing case is a perfect example of what punditman is prattling about. If you have fifteen minutes to spare and the ability to employ elementary logic you will easily see that this act of mass murder, this tragedy, this "court case," wreaked of intrigue, coverups and "more than meets the eye" from the very beginning. The "powers that be" were definitely up to something. But what? And why? Eric Margolis believes this case was a frame up and said so in his August 30th column, Muammar Qaddafi: Mad Like a Fox. He ends it with "Happy birthday, Moammar." That makes punditman feel a bit uncomfortable and slightly perplexed. After all, Margolis believes that Libya was "guilty as hell" of another atrocity—the bombing of the French UTA airliner in 1989—but the column is well researched. And it is in the Toronto Sun, an example of one of those contrarian columnists that occasionally break the mold.

But for the most part the rest of the media remain in la la land when it comes to the background intrigue to this case. A sense of renewed rage about Megrahi's release is understandable only if it is a clear-cut case, which it is not.

So what was the Lockerbie bombing all about? Was Iran behind it, in a tit-for-tat response to this:

1988: The U.S. intervenes on Iraq's side in its eight-year war against Iran. A U.S. navy Aegis cruiser, Vincennes, violates Iranian waters and "mistakenly" shoots down an Iranian civilian Airbus airliner in Iran's air space. All 288 civilians aboard die. Then vice-president George H.W. Bush vows, "I'll never apologize ... I don't care what the facts are."

The Vincennes' trigger-happy captain is decorated with the Legion of Merit medal for this crime by Bush after he becomes president. Washington quietly pays Iran $131.8 million US in damages.

If indeed Iran was culpable, why the kangaroo court case that followed? What "bigger" issues were involved? Did the West need Iran all of a sudden as it prepared to launch the Gulf War against Iraq? What facts and suppressed evidence do Western governments not want exposed to the light of day? Is it all about oil?

John Pilger scolds the media, who aside from a few notable exceptions, have put on a disgraceful performance in the service of state power. Good job, John.

by John Pilger

The hysteria over the release of the so-called Lockerbie bomber reveals much about the political and media class on both sides of the Atlantic, especially Britain. From Gordon Brown’s "repulsion" to Barack Obama’s "outrage," the theater of lies and hypocrisy is dutifully attended by those who call themselves journalists. "But what if Megrahi lives longer than three months?" whined a BBC reporter to the Scottish First Minister, Alex Salmond. "What will you say to your constituents, then?"

Horror of horrors that a dying man should live longer than prescribed before he "pays" for his "heinous crime": the description of the Scottish justice minister, Kenny MacAskill, whose "compassion" allowed Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi to go home to Libya to "face justice from a higher power." Amen.

The American satirist Larry David once addressed a voluble crony as "a babbling brook of bullsh*t." Such eloquence summarizes the circus of Megrahi’s release.

No one in authority has had the guts to state the truth about the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 above the Scottish village of Lockerbie on 21 December 1988 in which 270 people were killed. The governments in England and Scotland in effect blackmailed Megrahi into dropping his appeal as a condition of his immediate release. Of course there were oil and arms deals under way with Libya; but had Megrahi proceeded with his appeal, some 600 pages of new and deliberately suppressed evidence would have set the seal on his innocence and given us more than a glimpse of how and why he was stitched up for the benefit of "strategic interests."

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Deadly Immunity

punditman says...
Yep, dear reader, you may have noticed that Peacenik is absent from the blog these past few days. You would be correct. He's off at his summer cottage preparing for whatever it is you prepare for at your summer cottage. Personally I drink beer and prepare for nothing when I am on vacation, but I expect a full report in the near future from Peacenik's survivalist compound. He does have lots of beer, so I assume Peacenik is in a fine mood as he prepares for the end of whatever it is that is ending.

In the meantime, Punditman says that Punditman has noticed yet another article about the dangers of vaccines and yet another Big Pharma/government cover-up. This 2005 article by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. shows the depth of collusion between Big Parma and the US government. Punditman thinks this is highly relevant because of the current "debate" on the swine flu virus, plans to develop a vaccine and make you and your loved ones get jabbed either through mandatory vaccinations under emergency powers or through intense social pressure. Yep, that's what I predict at this juncture. Actually, I've noticed that there's no debate at all going on in the mainstream media. All is well in the corporate-media-medical matrix. It's just online wingnuts like me that are raising eyebrows and sounding alarms.

When your views run contrary to accepted wisdom, the usual progression goes something like this: First, skeptics and critics are ignored. That's the pure censorship phase and this is where we are currently with swine flu. Contrary opinion is 100% absent from mainstream discourse. It is sort of how punditman feels when he mentions the 1976 swine flu vaccine fiasco that led to crippling disease and death for thousands and ensuing lawsuits. He gets that "eyes glazed over" look from unaware, frivolous-TV-viewing folk who pass themselves off as thinking monkeys. Then, if we skeptics get louder, we'll be labeled wingnuts. That's the next step. Then, with enough pressure, perhaps the powers that be will listen to our legitimate concerns. I think.

Of course by then it could be too late and the damage could be done, with untold numbers maimed by an unsafe vaccine for a threat that may have originated in a lab.

And of course, punditman could be completly wrong too.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. investigates the government cover-up of a mercury/autism scandal

ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.
(June 20, 2005)

In June 2000, a group of top government scientists and health officials gathered for a meeting at the isolated Simpsonwood conference center in Norcross, Georgia. Convened by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the meeting was held at this Methodist retreat center, nestled in wooded farmland next to the Chattahoochee River, to ensure complete secrecy. The agency had issued no public announcement of the session -- only private invitations to fifty-two attendees. There were high-level officials from the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration, the top vaccine specialist from the World Health Organization in Geneva and representatives of every major vaccine manufacturer, including GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Wyeth and Aventis Pasteur. All of the scientific data under discussion, CDC officials repeatedly reminded the participants, was strictly "embargoed." There would be no making photocopies of documents, no taking papers with them when they left.

The federal officials and industry representatives had assembled to discuss a disturbing new study that raised alarming questions about the safety of a host of common childhood vaccines administered to infants and young children. According to a CDC epidemiologist named Tom Verstraeten, who had analyzed the agency's massive database containing the medical records of 100,000 children, a mercury-based preservative in the vaccines -- thimerosal -- appeared to be responsible for a dramatic increase in autism and a host of other neurological disorders among children. "I was actually stunned by what I saw," Verstraeten told those assembled at Simpsonwood, citing the staggering number of earlier studies that indicate a link between thimerosal and speech delays, attention-deficit disorder, hyperactivity and autism. Since 1991, when the CDC and the FDA had recommended that three additional vaccines laced with the preservative be given to extremely young infants -- in one case, within hours of birth -- the estimated number of cases of autism had increased fifteenfold, from one in every 2,500 children to one in 166 children.

Even for scientists and doctors accustomed to confronting issues of life and death, the findings were frightening. "You can play with this all you want," Dr. Bill Weil, a consultant for the American Academy of Pediatrics, told the group. The results "are statistically significant." Dr. Richard Johnston, an immunologist and pediatrician from the University of Colorado whose grandson had been born early on the morning of the meeting's first day, was even more alarmed. "My gut feeling?" he said. "Forgive this personal comment -- I do not want my grandson to get a thimerosal-containing vaccine until we know better what is going on."

But instead of taking immediate steps to alert the public and rid the vaccine supply of thimerosal, the officials and executives at Simpsonwood spent most of the next two days discussing how to cover up the damaging data. According to transcripts obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, many at the meeting were concerned about how the damaging revelations about thimerosal would affect the vaccine industry's bottom line. "We are in a bad position from the standpoint of defending any lawsuits," said Dr. Robert Brent, a pediatrician at the Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children in Delaware. "This will be a resource to our very busy plaintiff attorneys in this country." Dr. Bob Chen, head of vaccine safety for the CDC, expressed relief that "given the sensitivity of the information, we have been able to keep it out of the hands of, let's say, less responsible hands." Dr. John Clements, vaccines advisor at the World Health Organization, declared that "perhaps this study should not have been done at all." He added that "the research results have to be handled," warning that the study "will be taken by others and will be used in other ways beyond the control of this group."

In fact, the government has proved to be far more adept at handling the damage than at protecting children's health. The CDC paid the Institute of Medicine to conduct a new study to whitewash the risks of thimerosal, ordering researchers to "rule out" the chemical's link to autism. It withheld Verstraeten's findings, even though they had been slated for immediate publication, and told other scientists that his original data had been "lost" and could not be replicated. And to thwart the Freedom of Information Act, it handed its giant database of vaccine records over to a private company, declaring it off-limits to researchers. By the time Verstraeten finally published his study in 2003, he had gone to work for GlaxoSmithKline and reworked his data to bury the link between thimerosal and autism.

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