Cyprus

"The Embassy does not believe that the loss of Cyprus-owned physical infrastructure, nor the interruption of key resource exports from the island, would immediately affect the security, national economic security, and/or public health or safety of the United States. A Connecticut-sized Mediterranean island some 5000 miles from the East Coast of the United States, Cyprus simply is too small, too distant, and too lacking in natural resources to affect U.S. interests in that fashion.

Under the terms of the 1960 independence treaties, Great Britain was allowed to retain two "Sovereign Base Areas" (SBAs) and several isolated sites scattered throughout Cyprus, such as the RAF radar dome on Mt. Olympus, the island's highest point, and various antenna arrays in Ayios Nikolaos, near Famagusta. Via varied formal agreements and informal arrangements, the United States enjoys some access to and benefits from these UK facilities. Unlike the Cyprus-owned infrastructure noted above, the damage or complete loss of SBA-housed facilities would pose a threat to our national security interests in the eastern Mediterranean."

Confidential diplomatic cable sent by US Ambassador in Nicosia 

Ronald L. Schlicher to the State Department 

29 January 2008, 

published by WikiLeaks on 1 September 2011

Zionism in the Age of the Dictators - by Lenni Brenner

Contradiction, Collusion and Controversy 
by Edward Mortimer 
The Times (London), February 11, 1984: 

Zionism in the Age of the Dictators 
by Lenni Brenner (Croom Helm, £9.95) 



Who told a Berlin audience in March 1912 that each country can absorb only a limited number of Jews, if she doesn't want disorders in her stomach. Germany already has too many Jews?

No, not Adolf Hitler but Chaim Weizmann, later president of the World Zionist Organization and later still the first President of the State of Israel.

And where might you find the following assertion, originally composed in 1917 but republished as late as 1936: "The Jew is a caricature of a normal, natural human being, both physically and spiritually. As an individual in society he revolts and throws off the harness of social obligation, knows no order nor discipline?"

Not in Der Sturmer but in the organ of the Zionist youth organization, Hashomer Hatzair.

As the above quoted statement reveals, Zionism itself encouraged and exploited self-hatred in the Diaspora. It started from the assumption that anti-Semitism was inevitable and even in a sense justified so long as Jews were outside the land of Israel.

It is true that only an extreme lunatic fringe of Zionism went so far as to offer to join the war on Germany's side in 1941, in the hope of establishing the historical Jewish state on a national  and totalitarian basis, and bound by a treaty with the German Reich. Unfortunately this was the group which the present Prime Minister of Israel chose to join.

That fact gives an extra edge of topicality to what would in any case be a highly controversial study of the Zionist record in the heyday of European fascism by Lenni Brenner, and American Trotskyist writer who happens also to be Jewish. It is short (250 pages), crisp and carefully documented. Mr Brenner is able to cite numerous cases where Zionists collaborated with anti-Semitic regimes, including Hitler's; he is careful also to put on record the opposition to such policies within the Zionist movement.

In retrospect these activities have been defended as a distasteful but necessary expedient to save Jewish lives. But Brenner shows that most of the time this aim was secondary. The Zionist leaders wanted to help young, skilled and able-bodied Jews to emigrate to Palestine. They were never in the forefront of the struggle against fascism in Europe.

That in no way absolves the wartime Allies for their callous refusal to make any serious effort to save European Jewry. As Brenner says, Britain must be condemned for abandoning the Jews of Europe; but, it is not for the Zionists to do it.






Preface

"Why another book on the Second World War, which is probably the most written about subject in human history? Why another book on the Holocaust, which has been movingly described bymany survivors and scholars? As a general subject, the age of the dictators, the world war, and the Holocaust have indeed been covered but has the interaction between Zionism and Fascism
and Nazism been adequately explored? And if not, why not?

The answer is quite simple. Different aspects of the general subject have been dealt with, but there is no equivalent of the present work, one that attempts to present an overview of the movement's world activities during that epoch. Of course, that is not an accident, but rather a sign that there is much that is politically embarrassing to be found in that record.

Dealing with the issues brings difficult problems, one of the most difficult arising out of the emotions evoked by the Holocaust. Can there by any doubt that many of the United Nations delegates who voted for the creation of an Israeli state, in 1947, were motivated by a desire to somehow compensate the surviving Jews for the Holocaust? They, and many of Israels other well-wishers, cathected the state with the powerful human feelings they had toward the victims of Hitlers monstrous crimes. But therein was their error: they based their support for Israel and Zionism on what Hitler had done to the Jews, rather than on what the Zionists had done for the
Jews. To say that such an approach is intellectually and politically impermissable does not denigrate the deep feelings produced by the Holocaust.

Zionism, however, is an ideology, and its chronicles are to be examined with the same critical eye that readers should bring to the history of any political tendency. Zionism is not now, nor was it ever, co-extensive with either Judaism or the Jewish people. The vast majority of Hitlers Jewish victims were not Zionists. It is equally true, as readers are invited to see for themselves, that the majority of the Jews of Poland, in particular, had repudiated Zionism on the eve of the Holocaust, that they abhored the politics of Menachem Begin, in September 1939, one of the leaders of the self-styled Zionist-Revisionist movement in the Polish capital. As an anti-Zionist Jew, the author is inured to the charge that anti-Zionism is equivalent to anti-Semitism and Jewish self-hatred.



It is scarcely necessary to add that all attempts to equate Jews and Zionists, and therefore to attack Jews as such, are criminal, and are to be sternly repelled. There cannot be even the slightest confusion between the struggle against Zionism and hostility to either Jews or Judaism.

Zionism thrives on the fears that Jews have of another Holocaust. The Palestinian people are deeply appreciative of the firm support given them by progressive Jews, whether religious as with Mrs Ruth Blau, Elmer Berger, Moshe Menuhin, or Israel Shahak or atheist as with Felicia Langer and Lea Tsemel and others on the left. Neither nationality nor theology nor social theory can, in any way, be allowed to become a stumbling block before the feet of those
Jews, in Israel or elsewhere, who are determined to walk with the Palestinian people against injustice and racism. It can be said, with scientific certainty, that, without the unbreakable unity of Arab and Jewish progressives, victory over Zionism is not merely difficult, it is impossible. 

Unless this book were to become an encyclopaedia, the material had necessarily to be selected, with all due care, so that a rounded picture might come forth. It is inevitable that the scholars of
the several subjects dealt with will complain that not enough attention had been devoted to their particular specialties. And they will be correct, to be sure; whole books have been written on
particular facets of the broader problems dealt with herein, and the reader is invited to delve further into the sources cited in the footnotes. An additional difficulty arises out of the fact that so much of the original material is in a host of languages that few readers are likely to know.

Therefore, wherever possible, English sources and translations are cited, thus giving sceptical readers a genuine opportunity to verify the research apparatus relied upon.

As readers are committed to discovering by reading this book, the consequences of Zionist ideology deserve study and exposure. That is what is attempted here. As an unabashed anti-Zionist, I clearly conclude that Zionism is wholly incorrect; but that is my conclusion
drawn from the evidence. The conclusions are, in short, my own. As for the persuasiveness of the arguments used in arriving at them, readers are invited to judge for themselves.

Possible Implications of Faulty US Technical Intelligence in the Damascus Nerve Agent Attack of August 21, 2013 - by Ted Postol

Possible Implications of Faulty US Technical Intelligence in the Damascus Nerve Agent Attack of August 21, 2013

What is the main policy issue?

• The Syrian Improvised Chemical Munitions that Were Used in the August 21, Nerve Agent Attack in Damascus Have a Range of About 2 Kilometers
• The UN Independent Assessment of the Range of the Chemical Munition Is in Exact Agreement with Our Findings
• This Indicates That These Munitions Could Not Possibly Have Been Fired at East Ghouta from the “Heart”, or from the Eastern Edge, of the Syrian Government Controlled Area Shown in the Intelligence Map Published by the White House on August 30, 2013.
• This mistaken Intelligence Could Have Led to an Unjustified US Military Action Based on False Intelligence.
• A Proper Vetting of the Fact That the Munition Was of Such Short Range Would Have Led to a Completely Different Assessment of the Situation from the Gathered Data
• Whatever the Reasons for the Egregious Errors in the Intelligence, the Source of These Errors Needs to Be Explained.
• If the Source of These Errors Is Not Identified, the Procedures that Led to this Intelligence Failure Will Go Uncorrected, and the Chances of a Future Policy Disaster Will Grow With Certainty

THE BOTTOM LINE

  The Syrian Improvised Chemical Munitions that Were Used in the August 21, Nerve Agent Attack in Damascus Have a Range of About 2 Kilometers

  This Indicates That These Munitions Could Not Possibly Have Been Fired at East Ghouta from the “Heart” or the Eastern Edge of the Syrian Government Controlled Area Depicted in the Intelligence Map Published by the White House on August 30, 2013.

  This faulty Intelligence Could Have Led to an Unjustified US Military Action Based on False Intelligence.

  A Proper Vetting of the Fact That the Munition Was of Such Short Range Would Have Led to a Completely Different Assessment of the Situation from the Gathered Data

  Whatever the Reasons for the Egregious Errors in the Intelligence, the Source of These Errors Needs to Be Explained.

  If the Source of These Errors Is Not Identified, the Problems That Led to this Intelligence Failure Will Go Uncorrected, and the Chances of a Future Policy Disaster Will Grow With Certainty.

We've Got Some Half Price Cracked Ice, Miles and Miles of Carpet Tiles,TV's, Deep Freeze and David Bowie LP's

"It's too late to be hateful"

The Teicher Affidavit

Wobbly Lines in the Sand

By Joseph E. Persico;

Published: May 9, 1993

TWIN PILLARS TO DESERT STORM America's Flawed Vision in the Middle East From Nixon to Bush. By Howard Teicher and Gayle Radley Teicher. Illustrated. 418 pp. New York: William Morrow & Company. $23.

HOWARD TEICHER, mad as hell and apparently not going to take it anymore, is caustic about United States Middle East policies. He is scornful of major figures he worked under, principally Ronald Reagan and Caspar W. Weinberger, and angry over his shabby treatment at the hands of a Government he served for 10 years. Mr. Teicher, a member of the National Security Council staff until 1987, registers his discontent in "Twin Pillars to Desert Storm," essentially an insider's notebook revealing how Middle East policy has been shaped, or misshaped, in the past 25 years.

Mr. Teicher's rise was meteoric, from graduate student intern who was taken on the State Department payroll as a clerk-typist in the Carter years to key participant in Middle East policy making in the Reagan White House by age 26.

The title of the book, written with his wife, Gayle Radley Teicher, an attorney in Washington and author of a study on covert actions, derives from this premise: Beginning with the Nixon-Kissinger era, American Middle East policy had two objectives, to keep the oil flowing and to block expanded Soviet influence in the region. The means to these ends was "twin pillars," a strategy of militarily supporting, initially, Saudi Arabia and Iran, which would then presumably do America's bidding. Twin pillars has proved a monumental flop, Mr. Teicher says, and "Operation Desert Storm was the inevitable result of America's flawed vision in the Middle East."

The book makes a convincing case. The Iran pillar collapsed early, with the fall of the Shah in 1979. Washington then began wooing an unlikely, unworthy and unreliable replacement pillar, Iraq, a country on America's terrorism blacklist and ruled by the brutal Saddam Hussein. Support for Iraq was stepped up during the Reagan era when it appeared that Iran might win the Iran-Iraq war, leaving the hostile Khomeini regime in control of the Persian Gulf and the flow of oil. Twin pillars led President George Bush to cozy up even closer to Mr. Hussein, convincing him that the United States would countenance his seizing of Kuwait.

But if the twin pillars are cracked, what is the alternative? Dependence on the region's oil, Mr. Teicher says, "is too great to permit the United States to rely on other countries to protect this vital interest." "For better or for worse," the book argues, "it is a fact that the people of the Middle East, Muslims, Jews and Christians alike, are impressed and persuaded by military action." Consequently, America must be prepared "to use force judiciously when necessary." An example: as the Shah began to collapse, Mr. Teicher urged that "the sooner the United States undertook decisive military action the better." Apparently, America was to prop up by force a leader rejected by his own people. One has a sense that in Mr. Teicher's world other nations exist to fulfill America's interests.

Mr. Teicher is blistering toward Mr. Weinberger, the former Secretary of Defense, who emerges as a star pupil in the school that believes support of Israel explains all the United States' problems with the Arab world. Mr. Weinberger, Mr. Teicher says, unwisely chose to punish Israel for destroying the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak in 1981 because the attack disturbed United States-Arab relations. He attributes the 1982 Lebanese Phalangist massacre of Palestinian civilians at the Sabra and Shatila camps to Mr. Weinberger's premature withdrawal of United States marines. Responsibility for the deaths in 1983 of 241 United States marines in the truck bombing of their Beirut barracks, Mr. Teicher says, "rests squarely on the shoulders" of Mr. Weinberger, along with Gen. John W. Vessey, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for leaving the troops in an untenable position.

Mr. Teicher was equally appalled by President Reagan's lackadaisical leadership, which allowed the President's subordinates to ignore direct orders and do as they pleased: "Ronald Reagan's failure to exert decisive leadership would lead to America's humiliating defeat in Lebanon in 1984, the 1986 Iran Affair and the blind tilt toward Baghdad, the latter contributing directly to the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait." Thus is dismissed the President who supposedly restored America's prestige abroad.

Mr. Teicher's story vividly recalls the bad old days when virtually every friction around the world was inflated to fit the superpower rivalries of the cold war. "Twin Pillars to Desert Storm" describes United States diplomats trying to mediate a quarrel between Lebanon's Christians and its Druze tribesmen, hoping thus to defuse tensions between Syria and Israel so that their respective sponsors, the Soviet Union and the United States, would not be propelled to the nuclear brink. So much for any misplaced nostalgia for the relative stability of the old East-West stalemate.

As for Mr. Teicher's rocket rise, he flamed out over Iran-contra. He had been sent, behind the United States Ambassador's back, to put the arm on Israel for cash for the Nicaraguan contras, an act that won him the undying enmity of State Department careerists. He was ordered to accompany Robert C. McFarlane and Lieut. Col. Oliver L. North on that bizarre 1986 mission to Teheran in a plane full of Hawk missile parts, an incident that was to further tar him with the arms-for-hostages scandal. He was subsequently hounded by unfounded rumors that the F.B.I. was investigating him as a top Israeli spy. The book quotes a Wall Street Journal correspondent's description of him at the time: "He was young, tireless, committed and sometimes cocky. . . . As he rose through the ranks, his religion and his abrasiveness made him a catalyst for the ugly feud between Arabists and supporters of Israel in the U.S. Government." In the winter of 1987, at age 32, Howard Teicher was forced out of Government, a victim of the Reagan White House's scramble to contain the mushrooming Iran-contra scandal.

One of his early lessons, Mr. Teicher says, was the discovery that Middle East policy was not decided on the merits by dispassionate experts. Rather, it was produced by "the human dimension," concocted of the ambitions, jealousies and competing drives of individuals. Not a bad lesson for a young man, or anyone else, who aspires to play in the power games of nations.

The Teicher Affidavit: Iraq-Gate

Following is the sworn court declaration of former NSC official Howard Teicher, dated 1/31/95, regarding 'Iraqgate.' The document is currently under seal by the US District Court, Southern District of Florida. The original document bears Teicher's dated signature.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF FLORIDA

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff,

v. Case

No.:

93-241-CR-HIGHSMITH

CARLOS CARDOEN,

FRANCO SAFTA,

JORGE BURR,

INDUSTRIAS CARDOEN LIMITADA, DECLARATION OF

a/k/a INCAR, HOWARD TEICHER

SWISSCO MANAGEMENT GROUP, INC.

EDWARD A. JOHNSON

RONALD W. GRIFFIN, and

TELEDYNE INDUSTRIES, INC.,

d/b/a,

TELEDYNE WAH CHANG ALBANY,

)

Defendents.

_____________________________________________

I. Howard Teicher, hereby state that, to the best of my knowledge

and belief, the facts presented herein are true, correct and complete. I

further state that to the best of my knowledge and belief, nothing stated

in this Declaration constitutes classified information.

1. My name is Howard Teicher. From 1977 to 1987, I served in the

United States government as a member of the national security bureaucracy.

>From early 1982 to 1987, I served as a Staff Member to the United States

National Security Council.

2. While a Staff Member to the National Security Council, I was

responsible for the Middle East and for Political-Military Affairs.

During my five year tenure on the National security Council, I had

regular contact with both CIA Director William Casey and Deputy Director

Robert Gates.

3. In the Spring of 1982, Iraq teetered on the brink of losing its

war with Iran. In May and June, 1982, the Iranians discovered a gap in

the Iraqi defenses along the Iran-Iraq border between Baghdad to the north

and Basra to the south. Iran positioned a massive invasion force directly

across from the gap in the Iraqi defenses. An Iranian breakthrough at the

spot would have cutoff Baghdad from Basra and would have resulted in

Iraq's defeat.

4. United States Intelligence, including satellite imagery, had

detected both the gap in the Iraqi defenses and the Iranian massing of

troops across from the gap. At the time, the United States was officially

neutral in the Iran-Iraq conflict.

5. President Reagan was forced to choose between (a) maintaining

strict neutrality and allowing Iran to defeat Iraq, or (b) intervening and

providing assistance to Iraq.

6. In June, 1982, President Reagan decided that the United States

could not afford to allow Iraq to lose the war to Iran. President Reagan

decided that the United States would do whatever was necessary and legal

to prevent Iraq from losing the war with Iran. President Reagan formalized

this policy by issuing a National Security Decision Directive ("NSDD") to

this effect in June, 1982. I have personal knowledge of this NSDD because

I co-authored the NSDD with another NSC Staff Member, Geoff Kemp. The

NSDD, including even its indentifying number, is classified.

7. CIA Director Casey personally spearheaded the effort to ensure

that Iraq had sufficient military weapons, ammunition and vehicles to

avoid losing the Iran-Iraq war. Pursuant to the secred NSDD, the United

States actively supported the Iraqi war effort by supplying the Iraqis

with billions of dollars of credits, by providing U.S. military

intelligence and advice to the Iraqis, and by closely monitoring third

country arms sales to Iraq to make sure that Iraq had the military

weaponry required. The United States also provided strategic operational

advice to the Iraqis to better use their assets in combat. For example,

in 1986, President Reagan sent a secret message to Saddam Hussein telling

him that Iraq should step up its air war and bombing of Iran. This

message was delivered by Vice President Bush who communicated it to

Egyptian President Mubarak, who in turn passed the message to Saddam

Hussein. Similar strategic operational military advice was passed to

Saddam Hussein through various meetings with European and Middle Eastern

heads of state. I authored Bush's talking points for the 1986 meeting

with Mubarak and personally attended numerous meetings with European and

Middle East heads of state where the strategic operational advice was

communicated.

8. I personally attended meetings in which CIA Director Casey or

CIA Deputy Director Gates noted the need for Iraq to have certain weapons

such as cluster bombs and anti-armor penetrators in order to stave off the

Iranian attacks. When I joined the NSC staff in early 1982, CIA Director

Casey was adamant that cluster bombs were a perfect "force multiplier"

that would allow the Iraqis to defend against the "human waves" of Iranian

attackers. I recorded those comments in the minutes of National Security

Planning Group ("NSPG") meetings in which Casey or Gates participated.

9. The CIA, including both CIA Director Casey and Deputy Director

Gates, knew of, approved of, and assisted in the sale of non-U.S. origin

military weapons, ammunition and vehicles to Iraq. My notes, memoranda

and other documents in my NSC files show or tend to show that the CIA knew

of, approved of, and assisted in the sale of non-U.S. origin military

weapons, munitions and vehicles to Iraq.

10. The United States was anxious to have other countries supply

assistance to Iraq. For example, in 1984, the Israelis concluded that

Iran was more dangerous than Iraq to Israel's existence due to the growing

Iranian influence and presence in Lebanon. The Israelis approached the

United States in a meeting in Jerusalem that I attended with Donald

Rumsfeld. Israeli Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir asked Rumsfeld if the

United States would deliver a secret offer of Israeli assistance to Iraq.

The United States agreed. I travelled wtih Rumsfeld to Baghdad and was

present at the meeting in which Rumsfeld told Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq

Aziz about Israel's offer of assistance. Aziz refused even to accept the

Israelis' letter to Hussein offering assistance, because Aziz told us that

he would be executed on the spot by Hussein if he did so.

11. One of the reasons that the United States refused to license

or sell U.S. origin weapons to Iraq was that the supply of non-U.S. origin

weapons to Iraq was sufficient to meet Iraq's needs. Under CIA DIrector

Casey and Deputy Director Gates, the CIA made sure that non-U.S.

manufacturers manufactured and sold to Iraq the weapons needed by Iraq.

In certain instances where a key component in a weapon was not readily

available, the highest levels of the United States government decided to

make the component available, directly or indirectly, to Iraq. I

specifically recall that the provision of anti-armor penetrators to Iraq

was a case in point. The United States made a policy decision to supply

penetrators to Iraq. My notes, memoranda and other documents in my NSC

files will contain references to the Iraqis' need for anti-armor

penetrators and the decision to provide penetrators to Iraq.

12. Most of the Iraqi's military hardware was of Soviet origin.

Regular United States or NATO ammunition and spare parts could not be used

in this Soviet weaponry.

13. The United States and the CIA maintained a program known as

the 'Bear Spares" program whereby the United States made sure that spare

parts and ammunition for Soviet or Soviet-style weaponry were available to

countries which sought to reduce their dependence on the Soviets for

defense needs. If the "Bear Spares" were manufactured outside the United

States, then the United States could arrange for the provision of these

weapons to a third country without direct involvement. Israel, for

example, had a very large stockpile of Soviet weaponry and ammunition

captured during its various wars. At the suggestion of the United States,

the Israelis would transfer the spare parts and weapons to third countries

or insurgent movements (such as the Afghan rebels and the Contras).

Similarly, Egypt manufactured weapons and spare parts from Soviet designs

and porvided these weapons and ammunition to the Iraqis and other

countries. Egypt also served as a supplier for the Bear Spares program.

The United States approved, assisted and encouraged Egypt's manufacturing

capabilities. The United States approved, assisted and encouraged Egypt's

sale of weaponry, munitions and vehicles to Iraq.

14. The mere request to a third party to carry out an action did

not constitute a "covert action," and, accordingly, required no

Presidential Finding or reporting to Congress. The supply of Cardoen

cluster bombs, which were fitted for use on Soviet, French and NATO

aircraft, was a mere extension fo the United States policy of assisting

Iraq through all legal means in order to avoid an Iranian victory.

15. My NSC files are currently held in trhe President Ronald

Reagan Presidential Archives in Simi Valley, California. My files will

contain my notes and memoranda from meetings I attended with CIA director

Casey or CIA Deputy Director Gates which included discussions of Cardoen's

manufacture and sale of cluster bombs to Iraq. My NSC files will also

contain cable traffic among various United States agencies, embassies and

other parties relating to Cardoen and his sale of cluster bombs and other

munitions to Iraq and other Middle Eastern states.

16. Under CIA Director Casey and Deputy Director Gates, the CIA

authorized, approved and assisted Cardoen in the manufacture and sale of

cluster bombs and other munitions to Iraq. My NSC files will contain

documents that show or tend to show the CIA's authorization, approval and

assistance of Cardoen's manufacture and sale of cluster bombs and other

muntions to Iraq.

17. My files will contain notes, memoranda and other documents

that will show that the highest levels fo the United States government,

including the NSC Staff and the CIA, were well aware of Cardoen's arrest

in 1983 in Miami in a sting operation relating to the smuggling of night

vision goggles to Cuba and Libya. My files will also show that the

highest levels of the government were aware of the arrest and conviction

of two of Cardoen's employees and his company Industrias Cardoen.

18. CIA Director William Casey, aware of Cardoen's arrest and the

conviction of his employees and his company, intervened in order to make

sure that Cardoen was able to supply cluster bombs to Iraq. Specifically,

CIA Director Casey directed the Secretaries of the State and Commerce

Departments that the necessary licenses required by Cardoen were not to be

denied. My files will contain notes, memoranda and other documents

showing or tending to show that CIA Director William Casey's intervention

was in order to maintain Cardoen's ability to supply cluster bombs and

other munitions to Iraq.

I declare under penalty of perjury that the foregoing is true and

correct to the best of my memory and recollection.

Executed on 1/31/95

Howard Teicher (signature appears on original)

(end of document) 

Fry the Spy

Stephen Fry is like the Pope to all atheists, liberals, cynics and Anglophiles

Stephen Fry - The Liar.

Fears for Stephen Fry after he quits play

Concern was growing last night over the comedian Stephen Fry, who shocked the theatre world by pulling out of his new West End play in "emotional turmoil" just three days after its opening.

A spokesman for his agents said Fry had not been in touch since Saturday night and they did not know where he was. He was not responding to phone calls. "We are concerned about him," he said. Simon Gray, who wrote the play Cell Mates which co-stars Rik Mayall, said in a statement: "Our main concern is for his safety and well-being."

He added: "Three days after the successful opening of Cell Mates Stephen Fry expressed in a letter to me his great distress at what he considered to be his failure as an actor.

"It is obvious that he is a man in emotional turmoil, and that his sudden departure is the culmination of years of pressure, overwork, and unrelenting, self-sacrificing generosity."

Despite its frankness, the letter raised as many questions as it answered. Fry's agents, Hamilton Asper Management, said: "We're not in contact with him at the moment." A spokesman said he did not know of his client's whereabouts.

Michael Larkin, Mayall's understudy, said last night that the first the play's cast had heard of Fry's withdrawal was yesterday afternoon when they were told he was not coming back.

Fry appeared at the Albery Theatre for only three nights, last Thursday, Friday and Saturday. His understudy, Mark Anderson, had to take over the role on Monday when a note in the programme described Fry as "indisposed". Reviews of the play were generally good.

Fry's last public appearance was on Sunday night, when he narrated Peter and the Wolf during a charity concert at St Mary's Church in north London.

A member of the orchestra said: "He didn't look ill, but he didn't mix with the rest of the orchestra and he didn't go to the party afterwards."

The 37-year-old actor's withdrawal has thrown the production of Cell Mates, a comedy drama in which Fry played the Russian spy George Blake opposite Mayall as Sean Bourke, an Irish petty criminal, into confusion. Fry has driven himself extremely hard since leaving Cambridge. His curriculum vitae lists 43 plays, films, television programmes and serials in which he has appeared.

• 
  
  
• In the comments section of a blog the following shocking claims were made:
• 
  
• ” I have been waiting to see a major BBC celebrity unmasked, this man is protected but you cannot live a life of satanism and debauchery without some inkling coming out.
• 
  
• Stephen Fry lived at Wells- next -the- sea in Norfolk, where the rich Londoners have their holiday homes.
• 
  
• Fry was due to play the lead role on the West End stage in a play about the apostles (Rothschild’s gang of homosexual spies working for Russia), when he suddenly ran away and hid and the search to find him was intense.
• 
  
• Stephen fancies himself as a biliard player and he has a very nice large table at his home, but the wagers were not for money they were for young boys.
• 
  
• One of these boys went to the authorities and the police, because Stephen Fry had connections, brought in MI5,
• 
  
• They tried to get the boy to tell his friends to remain silent as Stephen Fry had contacts who would make things very uncomfortable for the boys.
• 
  
• The BBC legal dept said a performers sexuality is his own, and various pressures and threats made the accusations go away, and he returned to the stage and the play and the public acclaim”.

Bezmenov: Ideological subversion is the process, which is legitimate, overt, and open; you can see it with your own eyes. All you have to do, all American mass media has to do, is to unplug their bananas from their ears, open up their eyes, and they can see it. There is no mystery. [It has] nothing to do with espionage. I know that espionage intelligence-gathering looks more romantic. It sells more deodorants through the advertising, probably. That’s why your Hollywood producers are so crazy about James Bond-type of thrillers.

But in reality, the main emphasis of the KGB is not in the area of intelligence at all. According to my opinion and [the] opinion of many defectors of my caliber, only about 15% of time, money, and manpower [are] spent on espionage as such. The other 85% is a slow process, which we call either ‘ideological subversion,’ or ‘active measures’—‘[?]’ in the language of the KGB—or ‘psychological warfare.’ 

What it basically means is, to change the perception of reality, of every American, to such an extent that despite of the abundance of information, no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interests of defending themselves, their families, their community and their country.

It’s a great brainwashing process, which goes very slow[ly] and is divided [into] four basic stages. The first one [is] demoralization; it takes from 15-20 years to demoralize a nation. Why that many years? 

Because this is the minimum number of years which [is required] to educate one generation of students in the country of your enemy, exposed to the ideology of the enemy. In other words, Marxist-Leninist ideology is being pumped into the soft heads of at least three generations of American students, without being challenged, or counter-balanced by the basic values of Americanism (American patriotism).

The result? The result you can see. Most of the people who graduated in the sixties (drop-outs or half-baked intellectuals) are now occupying the positions of power in the government, civil service, business, mass media, [and the] educational system. 

You are stuck with them. 

You cannot get rid of them. 

They are contaminated; they are programmed to think and react to certain stimuli in a certain pattern. 

You cannot change their mind[s], even if you expose them to authentic information, even if you prove that white is white and black is black, you still cannot change the basic perception and the logic of behavior. 

In other words, these people... the process of demoralization is complete and irreversible. To [rid] society of these people, you need another twenty or fifteen years to educate a new generation of patriotically-minded and common sense people, who would be acting in favor and in the interests of United States society.

Griffin: And yet these people who have been ‘programmed,’ and as you say [are] in place and who are favorable to an opening with the Soviet concept... these are the very people who would be marked for extermination in this country?

Bezmenov: Most of them, yes. Simply because the psychological shock when they will see in [the] future what the beautiful society of ‘equality’ and ‘social justice’ means in practice, obviously they will revolt. 

They will be very unhappy, frustrated people, and the Marxist-Leninist regime does not tolerate these people. Obviously they will join the leagues of dissenters (dissidents).

Unlike in [the] present United States there will be no place for dissent in future Marxist-Leninist America. Here you can get popular like Daniel Ellsberg and filthy-rich like Jane Fonda for being ‘dissident,’ for criticizing your Pentagon. 

In [the] future these people will be simply [squashing sound] squashed like cockroaches. 

Nobody is going to pay them nothing for their beautiful, noble ideas of equality. 

This they don't understand and it will be [the] greatest shock for them, of course.

The demoralization process in [the] United States is basically completed already. For the last 25 years... actually, it's over-fulfilled because demoralization now reaches such areas where previously not even Comrade Andropov and all his experts would even dream of such a tremendous success. Most of it is done by Americans to Americans, thanks to [a] lack of moral standards.

As I mentioned before, exposure to true information does not matter anymore. 

A person who was demoralized is unable to assess true information. The facts tell nothing to him. Even if I shower him with information, with authentic proof, with documents, with pictures; even if I take him by force to the Soviet Union and show him [a] concentration camp, he will refuse to believe it, until he [receives] a kick in his fat-bottom. When a military boot crashes his... then he will understand. But not before that. That's the [tragedy] of the situation of demoralization.

So basically America is stuck with demoralization and unless... even if you start right now, here, this minute, you start educating [a] new generation of American[s], it will still take you fifteen to twenty years to turn the tide of ideological perception of reality back to normalcy and patriotism.

The next stage is destabilization. This time [the] subverter does not care about your ideas and the patterns of your consumption; whether you eat junk food and get fat and flabby doesn’t matter any more. This time—and it takes only from two to five years to destabilize a nation—what matters [are] essentials: economy, foreign relations, [and] defense systems. And you can see it quite clearly that in some areas, in such sensitive areas as defense and [the] economy, the influence of Marxist-Leninist ideas in [the] United States is absolutely fantastic. I could never believe it fourteen years ago when I landed in this part of the world that the process [would have gone] that fast.

The next stage, of course, is crisis. It may take only up to six weeks to bring a country to the verge of crisis. You can see it in Central America now.

And, after crisis, with a violent change of power, structure, and economy, you have [the so-called] period of normalization. 

It may last indefinitely. 

Normalization is a cynical expression borrowed from Soviet propaganda. When the Soviet tanks moved into Czechoslovakia in ‘68, Comrade Brezhnev said, ‘Now the situation in brotherly Czechoslovakia is normalized.’

This is what will happen in [the] United States if you allow all these schmucks to bring the country to crisis, to promise people all kind[s] of goodies and the paradise on earth, to destabilize your economy, to eliminate the principle of free market competition, and to put [a] Big Brother government in Washington, D.C. with benevolent dictators like Walter Mondale, who will promise lots of thing[s], never mind whether the promises are fulfillable or not. 

He will go to Moscow to kiss the bottoms of [a] new generation of Soviet assassins, never mind... he will create false illusions that the situation is under control. [The] situation is not under control. [The] situation is disgustingly out of control.

Most of the American politicians, media, and educational system trains another generation of people who think they are living at the peacetime. False. [The] United States is in a state of war: undeclared, total war against the basic principles and foundations of this system. And the initiator of this war is not Comrade Andropov, of course. It's the system. However ridiculous it may sound, [it is] the world Communist system (or the world Communist conspiracy). Whether I scare some people or not, I don't give a hoot. If you are not scared by now, nothing can scare you.

But you don’t have to be paranoid about it. What actually happens now [is] that unlike [me], you have literally several years to live on unless [the] United States [wakes] up. The time bomb is ticking: with every second [he snaps his fingers], the disaster is coming closer and closer. Unlike [me], you will have nowhere to defect to. Unless you want to live in Antarctica with penguins. This is it. This is the last country of freedom and possibility.

Griffin: Okay, so what do we do? What is your recommendation to the American people?

Bezmenov: Well, the immediate thing that comes to my mind is of course, there must be a very strong national effort to educate people in the spirit of real patriotism, number one. Number two, to explain [to] them the real danger of socialist, communist, whatever, welfare state, Big Brother government. If people will fail to grasp the impending danger of that development, nothing ever can help [the] United States. You may kiss good bye to your freedom, including freedoms [for] homosexuals, [for] prison inmate[s]; all this freedom will vanish, evaporate in five seconds... including your precious lives.

The second thing: [at] the moment at least part of [the] United States population is convinced that the danger is real. They have to force their government, and I'm not talking about sending letters, signing petitions, and all this beautiful, noble activity. I'm talking about forcing [the] United States government to stop aiding Communism. Because there is no other problem more burning and urgent than to stop the Soviet military-industrial complex from destroying whatever is left of the free world. And it is very easy to do: no credits, no technology, no money, no political or diplomatic recognition, and of course no such idiocy as grain deals to [the] USSR.

The Soviet people, 270 [million] Soviets, will be eternally thankful to you if you stop aiding [the] bunch of murderers who sit now in [the] Kremlin, and whom President Reagan respectfully calls ‘government.’ They do not govern anything, least of all such [a] complexity as the Soviet economy.

So basic[ally], two very simple... maybe two simplistic answers or solutions, but nevertheless they are the only solutions: educate yourself, [and] understand what’s going on around you. You are not living at [a] time of peace. You are in a state of war and you have precious little time to save yourself. You don’t have much time, especially if you are talking about [the] young generation. There’s not much time left for convulsions to the beautiful disco music. Very soon it will go [he snaps his fingers] just overnight.

If we are talking about capitalists or wealthy businessmen, I think they are selling the rope from which they will hang very soon. If they don’t stop, if they cannot curb their unsettled desire for profit, and if they keep on trading with the monster of the Soviet Communism, they are going to hang very soon. And they will pray to be killed, but unfortunately they will be sent to Alaska, probably, to manage [the] industry of slaves.

It’s simplistic. I know it sounds unpleasant; I know Americans don’t like to listen to things which are unpleasant, but I have defected not to tell you the stories about such idiocy as microfilm, James Bond-type espionage. This is garbage. You don’t need any espionage anymore. I have come to talk about survival. It’s a question of [the] survival of this system. You may ask me what is [in it] for me. Survival, obviously. Because I like... as I said, I am now in your boat. If we sink together, we will sink beautifully together. 

There is no other place on this planet to defect to.