Nexus - 0505 - New Times Magazine-pages

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LY DD © oF VEN? BRITISH ARMY STRATEGY BEHIND "BLOODY SUNDAY" Or of the most controversial incidents in the Northern Ireland conflict—in which mem- bers of the Ist Battalion, Parachute Regiment, shot dead 14 unarmed civilians during a civil rights march in Derry City on 30 January 1972—was not a military operation which went badly wrong but a pre-planned con- frontation in which civilian casu- alties were an integral part of the British Army's counter-insur- gency strategy. This is the conclusion reached in a 10-page unpublished article compiled and written by former Sunday Times journalists Murray Sayle and Derek Humphrey. It is based on evidence including contemporaneous eye- witness accounts, taped interviews and indirect contact with the IRA. Harold Evans, the editor of the Sunday Times from 1967 to 1981, spiked the story and submitted the account to Lord Widgery, whose official inquiry concluded that the soldiers had opened fire only on identified targets and that many of the vic- tims had handled explosives or guns. The journalists’ report, which has been missing for 26 years, was found in the archive of the National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL) and recently published in the Derry-based magazine, Fingerpost. gence personnel and ‘turned’ official -” IRA members, the MRF cruised the streets of west Belfast in unmarked cars and was responsible for a num- ber of drive-by shootings of civil- ians which were intended to pro- voke the IRA into a confrontation with the army. According to Sayle and Humphrey, Kitson's strategy was "based on the military principle that the way to bring your enemy to bat- tle is to attack something that, for prestige reasons, he will have to defend [and] he will then be annihi- lated by superior strength". The article suggests that the civil- ian victims of "Bloody Sunday" were not shot "in the mistaken belief that they were armed mem- bers of the IRA", but were "accept- able casualties" in an operation which failed disastrously because the IRA refused to be drawn into an armed con- frontation with the Paras. (Source: Intelligence, no. 81, 8 June 1998) and The article claims that the operation was planned by the O/C Ist Para, Lieutenant- Colonel Derek Wilford, based on Brigadier Frank Kitson's counter-insurgency strate- gy: Kitson was a veteran of colonial cam- paigns in Kenya, Malaya, Oman and Cyprus. His theories included the political control of populations, psychological war- fare, and the integrated use of special units and the intelligence services. In 1970 Kitson commanded the 39th Brigade in Belfast, where he set up a pseu- do-gang, the Mobile Reconnaissance Force (MRF). Based at Palace Barracks, east Belfast, and consisting of military intelli- CANCER FIGHTERS ACCUSED OF SUPPRESSING CURES r Robert Atkins, whose name has become a household word since the publication of his revolutionary low-carbo- hydrate diet, has announced: "There is not one, but many cures for cancer available." "But they are all being systematically suppressed by the American Cancer Society, the National Cancer Institute and the major oncology (cancer) centres. They have too much of a vested interest in the status quo." Dr Atkins said that pure politics was keeping the government from testing vari- ous nutritional therapies for cancer. "The government has failed to sponsor new work because their advisory boards are usually made up of experts with other portfolios as well," he explained. "Many are connected with major cancer institu- tions. These, in turn, have a major invest- ment in radiation-delivering equipment. Plus, American orthodox medicine has grown up under the influence of the phar- maceutical industry and its advertising." This is significant because the drug companies could not expect to make money from nutritional therapies as only natural, biological products were involved. (Source: www.rarebooks.net/beck/sup - press.htm) 6 = NEXUS AUGUST - SEPTEMBER 1998