Crimes of the State

OUTRIGHT INSANITY: Bio-weapons research endangers the planet.

2009-05-22T12:45:00.000-07:00

[ Editor's Note: Plead with them to stop this madness. Lock up all samples of potentially catastrophic flu. Prosecute those who have been illegally engaging in biological weapons production. These bugs can kill BILLIONS of human beings.]

The history of the synthetic H1N1 flu virus and a not-so-rosy future
By Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writer

May 21, 2009, 00:20

(WMR) -- The history of the extraction of the genetic material from the corpses of victims of the 1918 Spanish influenza virus who were buried in Arctic permafrost is part �X-Files� and part �Jurassic Park.�

After an unsuccessful 1951 mission, that involved U.S. biological warfare specialists, to extract 1918 Spanish flu genetic material in 1951 from a cemetery in the Inupiat Eskimo village of Brevig Mission, Alaska, scientists made another attempt, a successful one it turns out, in 1997.

Dr. Johan Hultin, from the State University of Iowa, successfully extracted genetic material from the corpse of an obese 30-something female who died from the Spanish flu in 1918, along with 85 percent of Brevig Mission�s (called Teller Mission in 1918) villagers in a single week. The pandemic killed at least 50 million people around the world.

Once the Spanish flu genetic material was obtained from the lungs, spleen, liver, and heart of the Eskimo woman�s corpse, scientists, in a scene reminiscent of the fictional movie �Jurassic Park,� in which genetic material from extinct dinosaurs is used to bring the creatures back to life, recreated the long-since dead 1918 Spanish flu in a U.S. government-funded laboratory. The woman�s organs were cut into one-inch cubes and shipped to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Rockville, Maryland, where the virus�s genetic RNA material was identified and the 1918 Spanish flu was successfully brought back to life.

The search for the frozen bodies of 1918 flu victims was not limited to Alaska. Another team of scientists, acting like Dr. Frankenstein�s �Igor,� set out to dig up the graves of miners who died from the flu in the remote Norwegian mining village of Longyearbyen in Spitsbergen, which lies north of the Arctic Circle.

WMR has learned from a research scientist who has been working on the recreation of the 1918 flu that the genetic material has been re-engineered to synthetically create what is now known as the A/H1N1 virus, or as the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) calls it, the �novel flu.�

The A/H1N1 influenza, which contains genetic material from two strains of swine flu, two strains of human flu, and a single strain of avian flu, has, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), infected, as of May 13, a total of 4,880 people in North America: 2,059 in Mexico; 2,535 in the United States, and 286 in Canada. There have been 56 reported deaths from the flu in Mexico, three in the United States, and one in Canada.

WMR has learned from an A/H1N1 researcher that the current �novel� flu strain is mutating rapidly in humans but no animals have contracted the virus. The enzyme in A/H1N1, as with all influenza A viruses, is called a polymerase. Scientists have calculated the molecular clock of A/H1N1 form the virus�s polymerase rate. Because of the rapid mutation of the virus and the fact that, unlike 1918, rapid global transportation is now the norm, scientists are predicting that the molecular clock of the A/H1N1 virus, coupled with modern transportation, means that almost all the countries of the world will experience an A/H1N1 outbreak within the next few months.

What is different about A/H1N1 is that, unlike other new strains of viruses that rapidly mutate upon emerging and then slow down mutation and then stop entirely, the �novel� or incorrectly-named �swine flu� is showing no signs yet of slowing down its mutation rate and that, according to scientists who worry about A/H1N1 being synthetically-generated, does not happen in nature.

In 2006, at a summit meeting in Cancun, Mexico, President George W. Bush, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and Mexican President Vicente Fox agreed for their nations to coordinate their response to avian flu, which was spreading in Asia. National Public Radio, on April 2, 2006, ran a segment on how bird flu wreaked havoc in 1918 in Brevig Mission. NPR�s Weekend Edition ran a report from Brevig Mission by Lori Townsend of Alaska Public Radio: �The grave has been opened twice by the same pathologist. In 1951, Johann Hultin convinced village elders to allow him to take tissue samples from bodies buried in permafrost. His lab attempts to map the virus were unsuccessful, but he returned in 1997, and when he did, he was once again given permission to re-open the grave.�

WMR has learned from a journalist from Anchorage who covered the 1997 grave exhumation that there was CIA personnel with the team of scientists. Inuit elders of Brevig Mission argued that digging up the graves of the flu victims would release evil spirits. However, money allegedly changed hands between the U.S. government research team and some of the elders, so permission to dig up the graves was granted.

NPR and Alaska Public Radio was reporting what was extracted from the 1918 flu victim�s corpse was the H5N1 avian flu virus, but that was erroneous. Or was it? If what was extracted from the dead woman�s body in Brevig Mission was used to synthetically create the current A/H1N1 virus, there is a strain of avian flu in the virus. But the current A/H1N1 virus also contains swine and human flu strains.

What has been relayed by the researcher is that the original 1918 virus was the H1N1 virus. In Bio-safety level 3 (BSL-s) laboratory work that was largely classified, the virus was artificially combined with common H3N2 and a minor gene splice from the H5N1 Eurasian avian flu strain.

The avian flu or H5N1 virus that struck Asia in 2006 contained some genetic mutations of the 1918 virus. And scientists researching pandemic flu strains have, since the recreation of the 1918 flu, been playing fast and loose with flu samples. On April 17, 2005, The Washington Post reported that Meridian Bioscience, which was under contract to the College of American Pathologists, accidentally distributed the pandemic H2N2/Japan flu strain, as part of a flu testing kit, to influenza laboratories around the world. WHO ordered the labs to immediately destroy the flu sample because it was worried about an accidental release of the pandemic virus, resulting in a global health crisis. In 1957, H2N2 killed a million people around the world.

The Post�s article, by Wendy Orent, states that scientists were working to create an artificial strain of the 1918 virus: �[Scientists] can combine some 1918 genes either with laboratory strains that have been adapted to grow in mice, which don�t normally catch human flu, or with ordinary human flu strains to yield new artificial strains. Then the researcher infects mice with his new strain. Strains using three of the 1918 genes are already known to kill mice.�

The same Post article quotes Peter B. Jahrling, the chief scientist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, about the danger of the virus recreation research. Jahrling stated the research was like �looking for a gas leak with a lighted match.� The article continues: �What concerns Jahrling and Brown, among others, is that experiments involving 1918 genes are not being carried out under the highest biosafety level, BSL-4. While most of the scientists use what is known as BSL-3 plus, or enhanced, conditions, they do not use space suits, chemical showers or gas-tight cabinets in their work.�

Lastly, the article has a stark warning regarding the 1918 flu reconstruction at the military laboratory in Rockville, research led by Dr. Jeffery Taubenberger. The article states: �Even more disturbing is what may happen when Taubenberger publishes the remaining three gene sequences. Then the entire 1918 flu could be built from scratch by anyone, anywhere, who has sufficient resources and skill. It is quite conceivable that resurrected 1918 flu could someday be used as a bioterrorist agent.�

In a January 29, 2006, New York Times article by Jamie Shreeve, titled �Why Revive a Deadly Flu Virus?,� it is reported that the 1918 flu had been successfully revived. The article states: �In October, a team of scientists, [CDC�s Terrence] Tumpey among them, announced that they had recreated the extinct organism from its genetic code -- essentially the scenario played out in the movie ��Jurassic Park,�� albeit on a microbial scale. In the movie, the scientists� self-serving revivification of dinosaurs leads to mayhem and death . . . How dangerous is the 1918 virus to today�s population? Its genetic code is now in public databases, where other researchers can download it to conduct experiments. Scientists from the University of Wisconsin and the National Microbiology Laboratory in Canada have already collaborated to reconstruct the virus from the publicly available sequence. How easy would it be for a bioterrorist to exploit the same information for malevolent ends?�

The article details how the 1918 genetic material was extracted and who worked on the project: �The resurrection of the 1918 influenza virus was a team effort engaging the resources of the C.D.C. in Atlanta, an obscure military pathology lab outside Washington, D.C., an esteemed group of influenza experts at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York and one elderly Swede. Though the story has been told before, it is impossible not to begin with the Swede. In 1950, Johan Hultin, then a 25-year-old graduate student at the University of Iowa, was searching for a Ph.D. topic when he heard a visiting virologist say that the only way to solve the mystery of the 1918 pandemic would be to recover the virus from a victim who had been buried in permafrost.�

There has been yet another secretive U.S. government group involved in researching bio-warfare agents like influenza. Known simply as JASON, the group consists of civilian scientists, the top experts in their fields and a number of Nobel laureates, who meet periodically and issue reports, many of which are classified. JASON has been in existence for 40 years and is thought to be a follow-on to the Manhattan Project, the top secret scientific group that created the atomic bomb during World War II. In fact, some of JASON�s earliest members helped to design both the atomic and hydrogen bombs. Its first three members were scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory, the home of the Manhattan Project.

Operating under the aegis of the MITRE Corporation, a federally-funded contracting entity, JASON scientists primarily met in the highly-secured Building 29 at 3550 General Atomics Court in San Diego. The location is the address of the Torrey Pines Institute. Funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), JASON also has links, according to distribution lists on JASON reports, to the CIA. The CIA maintains an element called the IC [Intelligence Community] JASON Program under the Chief Technical Officer. Traditionally, JASON self-selects its members from a number of academic disciplines. However, JASON almost lost its funding a few years ago, when, after issuing a report critical of the Bush administration�s ballistic missile defense program, DARPA attempted to force three new members, obviously political overseers, on to the JASON membership rolls. DARPA�s chief, Tony Tether, pulled funding for JASON, forcing the group for the first time since its inception in 1959 to look for another Pentagon sponsor. The ballistic missile defense program, also called Star Wars II, was a personal pet project of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

JASON survived when DARPA�s parent orgzniation, the Pentagon�s Directorate for Defense Research and Engineering (DDR&E), provided JASON with direct funding, an indication of the power enjoyed by the secretive JASON organization. JASON also has other federal government sponsors, including the Department of Energy.

JASON is also very much involved in issues of biological warfare. JASON produced a report on Civilian Biodefense in January 2000, which was highly redacted when released. Even the names of the report�s authors and the information on four bio-warfare scenarios is completely blacked out, except for a discussion of a 1947 smallpox incident in Scenario Two. The report also states that the CIA�s Clandestine Measurement and Signatures Intelligence (MASINT) Operations Center and Counter-Proliferation Center were interested in biological weapons intelligence collection and signatures. A section of the report on �Managing Civilian Response� to a bio-war attack is also completely redacted, as is a section on domestic intelligence. A page on the anthrax threat references �psychological BW [biological weapons] warfare.� The JASON report was completed almost two years before anthrax attacks all but suspended the work of Congress after 9/11 and saw the quick passage of the USAPATRIOT Act.

The JASON report also discusses the mining of medical data, including patient billing records, to find out if a disease outbreak has occurred and how far and what direction it is spreading by examining �spatiotemporal patterns,� including �averaging statistics for humans traveling globally.�

In fact, the JASON Civilian Biodefense report mirrors, in many respects, the analysis being currently conducted by medical intelligence (MEDINT) agencies around the world on the outbreak and spread of A/H1N1. And that begs the question: is A/H1N1, artificially-developed by U.S. government scientists, the real thing or a test run for something much worse?

SIDEBAR:

The JASON report on bio-war discusses �managing civilian response.� That also appears be a major concern of the CDC on A/H1N1 at the present time judging from the following internal CDC memo obtained by WMR (note that �swine flu� is being referred to as the �novel H1N1 flu�):

From: CDC Announcements
Sent: Monday, May 11, 2009 10:31 AM
To: CDC All - [REDACTED]

Subject: Public Inquires Regarding Novel H1N1 Flu � CDC-INFO

Public Inquires Regarding Novel H1N1 Flu � CDC-INFO

The CDC National Contact Center, CDC-INFO, is available to assist CDC programs in responding to calls and emails related to the novel H1N1 flu. CDC-INFO maintains current content for phone and email responses; maintains records of calls/emails; collects and analyzes quality assurance and customer satisfaction data; and provides on-demand reports for program partners.

If the general public is contacting you with questions related to the novel H1N1 outbreak, we encourage you to direct those inquires you receive to CDC-INFO. CDC-INFO representatives are available to respond to inquiries 24 hours, 7 days a week via email and phone, in English and Spanish. Emails should be forwarded to cdcinfo@cdc.gov. Telephone inquiries may be routed to 1-800-CDC-INFO (1-800-232-4636).

If you have any questions regarding this email, or for assistance in routing public inquiries, please contact eocjiccdcinfo@cdc.gov.

CDC-INFO�s Novel H1N1 Flu Response

Since April 22, 2009, CDC-INFO has answered more than 29,000 phone and email inquiries from the general public and health care professionals in support of CDC�s novel H1N1 flu response. As of Friday, May 8, 2009, the average hold time for phone calls related to novel H1N1 flu was less than 5 seconds. To date, the states with the highest number of phone inquiries are: California, Texas, New York, Florida, and Georgia.

On Thursday, April 30, 2009, CDC-INFO answered the highest number of inquiries on a single topic in its 4-year history, with 3,127 calls and emails answered related to the novel H1N1 outbreak.

As of May 5, 2009, 75 percent of survey respondents gave CDC-INFO their highest satisfaction rating for the novel H1N1 flu-related services they received.

Supporting CDC�s Mission

The CDC-INFO National Contact Center (1800-CDC-INFO or cdcinfo@cdc.gov) supports CDC�s mission by providing a single trusted source of accurate, timely, consistent, and science-based information for the general public, healthcare providers and public health partners. Information is available on more than 400 CDC health and safety topics, disease prevention, and health promotion information through phone, TTY, and email. CDC-INFO provides critical health information to vulnerable populations, including those without access to CDC�s internet resources or those with low health literacy.

Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.

...a ‘war on terrorism’ red herring

2009-05-22T12:07:00.000-07:00

‘What Pelosi knew’ is a ‘war on terrorism’ red herring

By Larry Chin
Online Journal Associate Editor

May 20, 2009, 00:19

A red herring is a fallacy in which an irrelevant topic is used to divert attention from the original issue. The furor over House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s knowledge of the Bush/Cheney administration’s use of torture is the latest Washington noise that conveniently diverts attention from the illegitimate “war on terrorism” that continues to serve as the justification for torture, murder and war.

Nancy’s clumsy tap dance

In a series of bumbling statements, Pelosi has denied her knowledge of the extent of the Bush/Cheney administration’s use of torture and other “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

Pelosi admits that she was aware, as early as September 2002, that “enhanced interrogation” techniques were being explored by the Bush/Cheney’s Office of Legal Counsel as legal options, but that she was not told that they were being used. A timeline from the CIA and statements from well-placed (but unnamed) Democratic Party sources refute Pelosi’s claim.

In response, Pelosi accused the CIA of lying about the degree of her knowledge, and covering up the fact that torture was already being used without congressional input. She admitted that, as House speaker, she learned in February 2003 that “certain techniques,” including waterboarding, were being used, and that Congresswoman Jane Harman, Pelosi’s replacement as senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee sent, a letter to the CIA’s general counsel with her support.

Essentially, Pelosi passed the buck to Harman, who was the “appropriate person to register a protest,” but did nothing else.

The Harman letter

But Harman’s letter to CIA General Counsel Scott Muller contains no language calling on Bush/Cheney/CIA to cease and desist using torture. It is not a protest, but more of a fawning caress that underscores the full support she and fellow Democrats have continuously lavished upon Bush/Cheney and the CIA.

Jane Harman-letter to CIA General Counsel Scott Muller (February 10, 2003)

In the letter, Harman states that she “realizes” that “we are at a time when the balance between security and liberty must be constantly evaluated and recalibrated in order to protect our nation and its people from catastrophic terrorist attack.” Obviously here, Harman is an enthusiastic proponent of the fabricated pretext of 9/11, and the bogus “war on terrorism.”

Then Harman oozes that she “appreciates the obvious effort” that the CIA made to “address tough questions,” stating that Bush/Cheney lawyers had already assured those who attended the classified briefing (including Pelosi) that the torture methods were within the law, approved by the attorney general, and extensively reviewed by the appropriate lawyers at the CIA, the Justice Department and the National Security Council.

Harman merely asks the CIA general counsel if the senior levels of Bush/Cheney had determined that “the practices” are “consistent with the principles and policies of the United States,” and politely asks what “policy reviews” had taken place.

In fact, Harman’s letter suggests that she was more immediately concerned with how to stage-manage the CIA’s plan to destroy tapes of the capture of alleged terrorist Abu-Zubaydah than with torture. Harman urges the CIA to reconsider the destruction of the Abu-Zubaydah tapes, in order to prevent a political scandal: “The fact of destruction would reflect badly on the Agency.”

In other words, the Harman/Pelosi position, the overriding bipartisan consensus position shared by the majority of Washington’s functionaries, is that there was no problem with torture, as long as sufficient cover had been created for it, and the appropriate parties have concocted the appropriate legal opinions to justify it. As long as everyone’s rear ends were covered, torture gets the green light.

Pelosi’s own words at her recent news conference further bear this out: “We were not told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used. What they did tell us is that they had some . . . Office of Legal Counsel opinions, that they could be used, but not that they would.”

This fallback position itself is damning enough. Torture is the definition of barbarity, an atrocity that goes against moral and ethical laws stretching back to the beginning of human history. It is impossible for Nancy Pelosi, or any coherent human being on the planet, not to know this.

Yet, upon first learning that Bush/Cheney/CIA were “exploring” torture, Pelosi did nothing. She expressed no outrage, expended none of her extensive political power to oppose or stop any of it. Then, one full year later, she again did nothing, except pass the buck to Jane Harman, whose letter, in fact, adds to the evidence of their complicity.

And now, after years of silence, Pelosi supports a “truth commission,” and only because she is under fire.

Republicans and Bush/Cheney apologists, who are themselves directly responsible for all of the worst atrocities and war crimes, have accused Pelosi and other Democrats of only expressing outrage about torture when it became politically expedient to do so, while aggressively pushing “anti-terrorism” when mass fear makes it popular to do so. This accusation is politically on target, if transparently hypocritical.

It is also another crop of red herrings.

The ironclad bipartisan consensus

What must be realized, however, is that the political theater surrounding Pelosi distracts from the larger crime: the Washington “war on terrorism” consensus that continues to provide the pretext for the US government to commit torture, and other atrocities, within US borders and around the world.

The “war on terrorism” is a product of an elite bipartisan consensus deception, supported and nurtured equally by Republicans and Democrats. The “war on terrorism,” itself, is a massive fabrication and cover-up built entirely upon the false-flag operation of 9/11, resting squarely on the perpetual threat of an outside enemy.

The endless criminal abominations begun by Bush/Cheney -- from the USAPATRIOT Act to the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and throughout the world, illegal surveillance, militarization, and torture -- continue under the management of the equally deceptive, equally criminal Obama administration, and Nancy Pelosi.

The Obama administration and the Democratic Party leadership continues to block torture investigations, while deepening and expanding the “war on terrorism” across Central Asia, continuing a host of other Bush/Cheney atrocities, such as military tribunals, illegal surveillance, and covert operations.

The “war on terrorism” continues unabated. Therefore, so will torture and the false confessions needed to keep it all going.

It is no surprise, then, that the same Nancy Pelosi who has almost singlehandedly prevented investigations and prosecutions of the Bush/Cheney administration (taking it “off the table” years ago), also goes along with the idea of “legal” torture.
Of course, Pelosi knows.

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PRESIDENT OF PAKISTAN: Osama bin Laden was US operator

2009-05-12T14:18:00.000-07:00

ALSO: Bin Laden dead for "seven years."

"I've asked my counterparts in the American intelligence agencies and they have not heard of him [Osama bin Laden] since seven years."

Osama bin Laden was US operator: President Asif Ali Zardari

By Arun Kumar

May 11, 2009 "New Karala" -- Washington, May 11 : Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari has alleged that elusive Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was a US operator who had tried to destabilise his late wife Benazir Bhutto's government back in 1989.

In fact, as premier Bhutto had "warned America about Osama bin Laden in 1989 with a call to then US president George H. Bush", Zardari said on NBC's Meet the Press programme Sunday.

"She rang senior Bush and asked of him: 'Are you destabilizing my government?' because he (apparently referring to bin Laden) paid the then opposition $10 million to overthrow the first woman elected (prime minister) in an Islamic country," Zardari added.

"So, we knew that he was your operator," said Zardari responding to a question about bin Laden's whereabouts.

"You'll have been there (in Afghanistan) for eight years. (So) you tell me. You lost him in Tora Bora, I didn't, I was in prison," he countered when asked where bin Laden was before hurling the allegation at Washington.

Asked if Pakistan was actively looking for bin Laden, Zardari replied: "The world is looking for him and we are part of the world look-out brigade."

Zardari also reiterated his belief that bin Laden is dead. "I have a strong feeling and I have reason to believe that because I've asked my counterparts in the American intelligence agencies and they have not heard of him since seven years."

--- IANS

Argument: Propaganda Rising to a War Cirme

2009-05-11T15:38:00.000-07:00

Well this seems to be in part a response to me...

"By Shenonymous, May 6 at 4:41 pm #

When an erosion of freedom of speech begins with any ban, unless it is sedition to overthrow a government, banning anyone for political sentiments will eventually erode your own freedoms, make no mistake about it."

So Thomas Jefferson should have been punished for saying that revolution is a good thing every twenty years or so?

"It is the slipperiest slope imaginable. It is pernicious. That is the nature of fascism. Fascism can occur on the right as well as the fanatical left."

Okay. I don't see how any of that is relevant to what I said.

What I was referring to, context, was incitement to violence: mass murder. This has been acknowledged as constituting war crimes, such as when the result is genocide.

"Savage was not in any way suppressing any one else’s freedom."

Wasn't he? That's a (mindless) blanket defense of a long and stained career. [And irrelevant to what I said, of course. Can you at least try and keep it on point?]

"You who call for limiting Savage’s speech, and travel rights, regardless of how despicable his opinions are, would not censure the Islamists who are calling for the UN via a resolution to outlaw criticism of violent practices in the name of their religion, would you?!"

First of all, I haven't "called" for whatever it is you are saying. That a distracting misrepresentation of what I said.

I said he should be INVESTIGATED FOR WAR CRIMES. War crimes, as we well know, are not actually prosecutable if the person committing them is American, or Israeli apparently. An American Zionist like Savage is in the most priviledged and protected category on earth at the present time.

My position is that people like Yoo, Cheney, Bush, Rummy, Gonzales, et al ad nauseum -- and Savage -- shouldn't be worried about travelling anywhere at all. Their travel arrangements should long ago have been made for them, and they should be sitting in a dock being read extensive lists of war crimes charges.

It's obvious that war crimes prosecutions are only meant for the losers in any given conflict. The victors are spared nuisances like following international law.

"One wonders just how many listen to Savage’s vitriolic broadcasts, and what kind of people they are anyway? Who exactly did Savage incite to violence against Muslims?"

That would be a matter for the court to present. The US has been at war with Muslims for eight years now. The bodies are piling up quite high. Did that elude you?

"This is a claim without any substance."

Propagandists call for people to join the military and go kill the selected enemy. People listening are influenced to do so. They go over and murder the enemy as instructed. There's a case to be examined.

"Free speech" does not protect gangsters who order hits on their rivals. Free speech has numerous limitations regarding "terroristic threats," "coercion," "blackmail" etc. Telling people to commit a crime could land you in prison for "conspiracy." These are standard, rock solid legal principles.

If the same standards were applied to monsters like Goebbels and Savage, there is a case to be made that inciting war is criminal. War is criminal. The Iraq War was clearly a crime (admitted by the head of the United Nations).

You may not agree with the rationale, but this is certainly not a "claim without any substance."

"In 1946, Julius Streicher, the Editor of Der Sturmer, an anti-Semitic paper, was sentenced to hang by the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal for Nazi War Crimes. In sentencing him, the tribunal gave as cause the evidence that “with knowledge of the extermination of the Jews in the Occupied Eastern Territory, this defendant continued to write and publish his propaganda of death.” Streicher was convicted of conspiracy to commit crimes against peace and crimes against humanity. His partner in media crimes, Joseph Goebbels, managed to avoid a similar sentence by committing suicide after first killing his wife and children. "-LINK

"According to prosecutors of the United Nations war crimes tribunal for Rwanda, the answer to both questions is a forceful yes. The three men in the dock, all former Rwandan news media executives, stand accused of genocide and incitement to genocide through their use of radio broadcasts and newspapers. " -LINK

Just because you've never thought about these matters before does not mean that others have not. That's a "permicious" variety of myopia.

http://crimesofthestate.blogspot.com/

FBI TRANSLATOR SIBEL EDMONDS: OPEN CRIMINALITY, STILL...

2009-05-06T12:09:00.000-07:00

[SEE ALSO: Previously from Sibel Edmonds]

In Congress We Trust...Not

The former FBI translator and whistleblower suggests blackmail may be at the heart of Congressional refusal to bring accountability and oversight to its own members - such as both Hastert and Harman - in matters of espionage and national security

Guest Editorial by Sibel Edmonds
Exclusive to The BRAD BLOG...

May 05, 2009 "Brad Blog" -- -I have been known to quote long-dead men in my past writings. Whether eloquently expressed thoughts by our founding fathers, or those artfully expressed by ancient Greek thinkers, these quotes have always done a better job starting or ending my thoughts - that tend to be expressed in long winding sentences. For this piece I am going to break with tradition and start with an appropriate quote from a living current senator, John Kerry: "It's a sad day when you have members of Congress who are literally criminals go undisciplined by their colleagues. No wonder people look at Washington and know this city is broken."

The people do indeed look at Washington and know that this city is 'badly' broken, Senator Kerry. The public confidence in our Congress has been declining drastically. Recent poll results highlight how the American people's trust in their Congress has hit rock bottom. A survey of progressive blogs easily confirms the rage rightfully directed at our Congress for abdicating its role of oversight and accountability. Activists scream about promised hearings that never took place - without explanation. They express outrage when investigations are dropped without any justification. And they genuinely wonder out loud why, especially after they helped secure a major victory for the Democrats. The same Democrats who had for years pointed fingers at their big bad Republican majority colleagues as the main impediment preventing them from fulfilling what was expected of them.

The recent stunning but not unexpected revelations regarding Jane Harman (D-CA) by the Congressional Quarterly provide us with a little glimpse into one of the main reasons behind the steady decline in the integrity of Congress. But the story is almost dead - ready to bite the dust, thanks to our mainstream media's insistence on burying 'real' issues or stories that delve deep into the causes of our nation's continuous downward slide. In this particular case, the 'thank you' should also be extended to certain blogosphere propagandists who, blinded by their partisanship, myopic in their assessments, and ignorant in their knowledge of the inner workings of our late Congress and intelligence agencies, helped in the post-burial cremation of this case.

Ironically but understandably, the Harman case has become one of rare unequivocal bipartisanship, when no one from either side of the partisan aisle utters a word. How many House or Senate Republicans have you heard screaming, or even better, calling for an investigation? The right wing remains silent. Some may have their hand, directly or indirectly, in the same AIPAC cookie jar. Others may still feel the heavy baggage of their own party's tainted colleagues; after all, they have had their share of Abramoffs, Hasterts and the like, silently lurking in the background, albeit dimmer every day. Some on the left, after an initial silence that easily could have been mistaken for shock, are jumping from one foot to the other, like a cat on a hot tin roof, making one excuse after another; playing the 'victims of Executive Branch eavesdropping' card, the same very 'evil doing' they happened to support vehemently. Some have been dialing their trusted guardian angels within the mainstream media and certain fairly visible alternative outlets. They need no longer worry, since these guardian angels seem to have blacked out the story, and have done so without the apparent need for much arm twisting...

Hastert Redux

I am going to rewind and take you back to September 2005, when Vanity Fair published an article, which, in addition to my case and the plight of National Security Whistleblowers, exposed the dark side of the then Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert (R-IL), and the corroborated allegations of his illegal activities involving foreign agents and interests.

Vanity Fair printed the story only after they made certain they were on sure footing in the face of any possible libel by lining up more than five credible sources, and after triple pit-bull style fact-checking. They were vindicated; Hastert did not dare go after them, nor did he ever issue any true denial. Moreover, further vindication occurred only a month ago. On April 10, 2009, The Hill reported that the Former Speaker of the House was contracted to lobby for Turkey. The Justice Department record on this deal indicates that Hastert will now be "principally involved" on a $35,000-a-month contract providing representation for Turkish interests. That seems to be the current arrangement for those serving foreign interests while on the job in Congress --- to be paid at a later date, collecting on their IOU's when they secure their positions with 'the foreign lobby.'

In a recent article for American Conservative Magazine, Philip Giraldi, former CIA officer stationed in Turkey, made the following point: "Edmonds's claims have never been pursued, presumably because there are so many skeletons in both parties' closets. She has been served with a state-secrets gag order to make sure that what she knows is never revealed, a restriction that the new regime in Washington has not lifted."

And then, he hits the nail on its head: "In Hastert's case, it certainly should be a matter of public concern that a senior elected representative who may have received money from a foreign country is now officially lobbying on its behalf. How many other congressmen might have similar relationships with foreign countries and lobbying groups, providing them with golden parachutes for their retirement?"

Congress went mum on my case after the Vanity Fair story, with, of course, the mainstream media making it very easy for them. They turned bipartisan in not pursuing the case, with the same zeal as they have, so far, not pursued the Harman case. Similarly, the mainstream media is happily letting it all disappear.

I was not aware that during the publication of the Hastert story in Vanity Fair, Jane Harman's AIPAC case was already brewing in the background. Moreover, one of the very few people in Congress who was notified about Harman was none other than Hastert --- the man himself. The same Hastert, who in addition to being one of several high-ranking officials targeted by FBI counterintelligence and counterespionage investigations, was also known to be directly involved in several other high profile scandals: from his intimate involvement in the Abramoff scandal, to the Rep. William Jefferson scandal; from his 'Land Deal' scandal - where he cashed in millions off his position while "serving", to the 2006 House Page scandal.

All for One, One for All?

How does it work? How do these people escape the consequences of accountability? Are we talking about the possible use of blackmail by the Executive Branch against Congressional representatives, as if the days of J. Edgar Hoover were never over? Cases such as NSA illegal eavesdropping come to mind, when Congressional members were briefed long before it became public, yet none took any action or even uttered a word; members of both parties. Or is it more likely to be a case of secondhand blackmail, where members of Congress watch out for each other? Or, is it a combination of the above? Regardless, we see this 'all for one, one for all' kind of solidarity in Congress when it comes to criminal conduct and scandals such as those of Hastert and Harman.

Although at an initial glance, based on the wiretapping angle, the Harman case may appear to involve blackmailing --- or a milder version, exploitation of Congress by the Executive Branch --- deeper analysis would suggest even further implications, where Congressional members themselves use the incriminating information against each other to prevent pursuit or investigation of cases that they may be directly or indirectly involved in. Let me give you an example based on the Hastert case mentioned earlier:

In 2004 and 2005 I had several meetings with Rep. Henry Waxman's (D-CA) investigative and legal staff. Two of these meetings took place inside a high-security SCIF, where details and classified information pertaining to my case and those involved could be discussed.

I was told, and at the time I believed it to be the case, that the Republican majority was preventing further action - such as holding a public hearing on my whistleblower revelations. Once the Democrats took over in 2006, that barrier was removed, or so I thought.

In March 2007, I was contacted by one of Rep. Waxman's staff people who felt responsible and conscientious enough to at least let me know that there would never be a hearing into my case by their office, or for that matter, any Democratic office in the House. Based on his/her account, in February 2007 Waxman's office was preparing the necessary ingredients for their promised hearing, but in mid-March the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, called Waxman into a meeting on the case, and after Waxman came out of that twenty-minute meeting, he told his staff 'we are no longer involved in Edmonds' case.' And so they became 'uninvolved.'

What was discussed during that meeting? The facts regarding the FBI's pursuit of Hastert, and certain other representatives, were bound to come out in any Congressional hearing into my case. Now we know that Hastert and Pelosi were both informed of Harman's role in a related case involving counterespionage investigation of AIPAC. Is it possible that Pelosi asked Waxman to lay off my case in order to protect a few of their own in an equally scandalous case? Was there a deal made between the Democratic and Republican leaders in the House to keep this and other related scandals hushed? Will we ever know the answer to these questions? Most likely not, considering the current state of our mainstream media.

And the victims remain the same: The American people who have entrusted their Congress with the role of ensuring oversight and accountability.

This kind of infestation touches everyone in Congress; one need not have a skeleton of his own to get sucked into the swamp of those infested. Does Waxman have to be a sinner to take part in the sin committed by the Hasterts and Harmans of Congress? Certainly not. On the other hand, he and others like him will abide by the un-pledged oath of 'solidarity with your party members' and 'loyalty to your dear colleagues.'

Rotten at its Core

Back to the enablers: How can we explain the continued blackout by the mainstream media, and/or, the logic-free defenses of the Harmans and Hasterts alike by the apologist spinners --- some of whom pass as the 'alternative' media? Some are committing what they rightfully accused the previous administration and their pawns of doing: cherry picking the facts, then, spin, spin, and spin until the real issue becomes blurry and unrecognizable. The conspiracy angle aimed at the timing; Porter Goss' possible beef with Jane Harman; accusing the truth divulgers, CQ sources, of being 'conspirators' with ulterior motives; portraying Harman as an outspoken vigilante on torture. And if those sound too lame to swallow, they throw in a few evil names from the foggy past of Dusty the Foggo man! If the issue and its implications weren't so serious, these spins of reality would certainly make a Pulitzer-worthy satire.

Let's take the issue of timing. First of all, the story was reported, albeit not comprehensively, by TIME magazine years ago. It took a tenacious journalist, more importantly a journalist that could have been trusted by the Intel sources to give it real coverage. It is also possible that the sources who leaked in the Harman case got fed up and disillusioned by the absence of a real investigation and decided to 'really' talk. After all, the AIPAC espionage case was dropped by the Justice Department's prosecutors within two weeks of the Harman revelations.

Same could be said about the Hastert story. At the time, many asked why the story was not told during the earlier stages of my case. It took three years for me and other FBI and DOJ sources to exhaust all channels; Congressional inquiry, IG investigation, and the courts. Those who initially were not willing to come forward and corroborate the details opened up to the Vanity Fair journalist, David Rose, in 2005.

We all can picture one of the President's men in the White House pulling an opposing Congressional member aside and whispering 'if I were you, Congressman, I'd stop pushing. I understand, as we speak, my Justice Department is looking into certain activities you've been engaged in.'

Now let's look at the 'blackmail' and 'Goss Plot' angles. Of course the 'blackmail' scenario is possible; in fact, highly possible. We all can picture one of the President's men in the White House pulling an opposing Congressional member aside and whispering 'if I were you, Congressman, I'd stop pushing. I understand, as we speak, my Justice Department is looking into certain activities you've been engaged in.'

We all can imagine, easily, a high-ranking Justice Department official having a 'discreet' meeting with a member of Congress who's been pushing for a certain investigation of certain department officials for criminal deeds, and saying, 'dear Congresswoman, we are aware of your role in a certain scandal, and are still pondering whether we should turn this into a direct investigation of you and appoint a special prosecutor…'

But, let's not forget, the misuse of incriminating information, for the purpose of blackmail, does not turn the practitioner of the wrongful deed into a victim, nor does it make the wrongful criminal deed less wrong. Instead of spinning the story, taking away attention from the facts in hand, and making Harman a victim, we must focus on this case, on Harman, as an example of a very serious disease that has infected our Congress for far too long. Those who have been entrusted with the oversight and accountability of our government cannot do so if they are vulnerable to such blackmail from the very same people they are overseeing…Period.

Those who have been elected to represent the people and their interests cannot pursue their own greed and ambitions by engaging in criminal or unethical activities against the interests of the same people they've sworn to represent, and then be given a pass.

As for far-reaching ties such as Harman's stand on torture, or a specific beef with former CIA Director Porter Goss, or wild shots from the hip in bringing up mafia-like characters such as Dusty Foggo; please don't make us laugh! Are we talking about the same Hawkish Pro-Secrecy Jane Harman here?! Harman's staunch support of NSA Wiretapping of Americans, the FISA Amendment of 2008, the Patriot ACT, the War on Iraq, and many other activities on the Civil Liberties' No-No list, is widely recognized by almost everyone, apparently, but the authors of the recent apologist spin.

And, let's not forget to add her own long-term cozy relationship with AIPAC, and the large donations she's received from various other AIPAC-related pro-Israeli PACs. To these certain 'wannabe' journalists, driven by far from pure agenda(s), shame on you; as for honor-worthy vigilant activists out there: watch out for these impostors with their newly gained popularity among those tainted in Washington, and take a hard look at whose agendas they are serving as a mouthpiece for.

Despite a certain degree of exposure, cases such as Harman's and Hastert's, involving corruption of public officials, seem to meet the same dead-end. Criminal conduct, by powerful foreign entities, against our national interest, is given a pass, as was recently proven by the abandonment of the AIPAC spy case. The absence of real investigative journalism and the pattern of blackout by our mainstream media seem now to have been almost universally accepted as a fact of life.

Pursuit of cases such as mine, via cosmetically available channels, has been, and continues to be proven futile for whistleblowers.

Therefore, you may want to ask, why in the world am I writing this piece? Because more and more people --- although not nearly enough --- are coming to the realization that our system is rotten at it's core; that in many cases we have been trying to deal with the symptoms rather than the cause.

I, like many others, believed that changing the Congressional majority in 2006 was going to bring about some of the needed changes; the pursuit of accountability being one. We were proven wrong. In 2008, many genuinely bought in to the promise of change, and thus far, they've been let down.

These experiences are disheartening, surely, but they are also eye-opening. I do see many vigilant activists who continue the fight. As long as that's the case, there is hope. More people realize that real change will require not replacing one or two or three, but many more. More people are coming to understand that the road to achieving government of the people passes through a Congress, but not the one currently occupied by the many crusty charlatans who represent only self-interest --- achieved by representing the interests of the few, rather than the majority of the people of this nation. And so I write.

Here I go again, rather than ending this in a long paragraph or two, I will let another long-gone man do it shortly and effectively: "If we have Senators and Congressmen there that can't protect themselves against the evil temptations of lobbyists, we don't need to change our lobbies, we need to change our representatives." - Will Rogers

Sibel Edmonds is a former FBI translator and noted whistleblower who has been under a years-long "gag order", prohibiting her from discussing many details of her allegations of corruption and espionage gleaned during her time at the FBI, due to the continuing "States Secrets privilege" assertions by the Executive Branch. Her own story has been partially documented over the last several years in several different media outlets, including a lead story on CBS' 60 Minutes, a detailed feature in Vanity Fair and, over the years, in a number of exclusive articles here at The BRAD BLOG. She is the Founder and President of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition.

Israeli Spying OK'd: Obama's Injustice Department Exposed

2009-05-04T08:25:00.000-07:00

[Editor's Note: Protecting the guilty is job one for Obama's "Justice" Department. Obama is a puppet of certain entrenched interests. Such as this one.

The AIPAC spying case is not the most egregious or most dangerous case of Israeli spying that has gone unpunished. Look out for more aggressive Israeli activity on US soil now that it is officially sanctioned by the white house.]

New York Times

U.S. to Drop Spy Case Against Pro-Israel Lobbyists

By NEIL A. LEWIS and DAVID JOHNSTON

Published: May 1, 2009

WASHINGTON — A case that began four years ago with the tantalizing and volatile premise that officials of a major pro-Israel lobbying organization were illegally trafficking in sensitive national security information collapsed on Friday as prosecutors asked that all charges be withdrawn.

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Kevin Wolf/Associated Press

Keith Weissman during his arraignment in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., in August 2005.

Ken Wolf/Associated Press

Steven J. Rosen, left, with his attorney Abbe Lowell at U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., in August 2005.

From the beginning, the case against the lobbyists for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee was highly unusual. The two, Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman, were charged under the World War I-era Espionage Act, accused of improperly providing to their colleagues, journalists and Israeli diplomats sensitive information they had acquired by speaking with American policy makers.

Some lawyers at the Justice Department had always had significant reservations about the case, some current and former officials said. They believed that Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman had acted imprudently, but doubted that either man should be criminally prosecuted. Nevertheless, F.B.I. agents poured substantial resources into the case, and the decision to seek a dismissal infuriated many within the law enforcement agency.

But several current and former officials said the decision to abandon the case was no surprise. With adverse judicial rulings making the prosecution increasingly risky, lawyers in the United States Attorney’s Office in Alexandria, Va., and at Justice Department headquarters met on several occasions in recent weeks, agonizing over whether to go forward with the trial, which was scheduled to begin June 2.

Last week, officials from the F.B.I.’s Washington office who investigated the case made their final pleas to keep the case alive, arguing that there was enough evidence to persuade a jury to find the two men guilty. But prosecutors — including some who had worked on the case for years — disagreed.

Joseph Persichini Jr., the top official at the F.B.I.’s Washington office, praised the work of the F.B.I. agents on the case, and said he was “disappointed” in the decision to drop the charges.

The case had raised delicate political issues about the role played by American Jewish supporters of Israel and their close, behind-the-scenes relationships with top government officials. Advocates of civil liberties and of open government asserted that the defendants were being singled out for activities that were part of the accepted and routine way that American policy on Israel and the Middle East had been formulated for years, with people exchanging information.

The decision to drop the case comes just days before Aipac is scheduled to begin its annual policy conference in Washington, which has often served as an advertisement of its influence. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel is scheduled to address the event via satellite.

Lawyers for Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman said in a statement that while they were pleased at the decision, the government had erred in bringing the case in the first place and had caused great damage to their clients. Aipac dismissed the men early in 2004 after prosecutors presented some of their evidence to an Aipac lawyer. The group later agreed to subsidize their legal costs.

The Justice Department said that the decision to drop the case had been made solely by career prosecutors in Alexandria, and that senior officials of the Obama administration had acted only to approve the recommendation.

Several other officials said, however, that while senior political appointees at the Justice Department did not direct subordinates to drop the case, they were heavily involved in the deliberations. These officials said David S. Kris, the newly appointed chief of the department’s national security division, and Dana J. Boente, the interim United States attorney in Alexandria, had conferred regularly with prosecutors and ultimately decided to accept the recommendation to abandon the case. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. was informed and raised no objections.

The case would have been the first prosecution under the espionage law in which no documents were involved and in which the defendants were not officials who provided the information, but the private citizens who received it from them in conversations.

While Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman trafficked in facts, ideas and rumor, they had done so with the full awareness of officials in the United States and Israel, who found they often helped lubricate the wheels of decision-making between two close, but sometimes quarrelsome, friends.

The move by the government to end the case came in a motion filed with the Federal Court in Alexandria.

In pretrial maneuvering, the prosecution suffered several setbacks in rulings from the trial judge, T. S. Ellis III, that were upheld by a federal appeals court in Richmond, Va. Judge Ellis rejected several government efforts to conceal classified information if the case went to trial. Moreover, he ruled that the government could prevail only if it met a high standard; he said prosecutors would have to demonstrate that Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman knew that their distribution of the information would harm United States national security.

The investigation of Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman also surfaced recently in news reports that Representative Jane Harman, a California Democrat long involved in intelligence matters, was overheard on a government wiretap discussing the case. As reported by Congressional Quarterly, which covers Capitol Hill, and The New York Times, Ms. Harman was overheard agreeing with an Israeli intelligence operative to try to intercede with Bush administration officials to obtain leniency for Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman in exchange for help in persuading Democratic leaders to make her chairwoman of the House Intelligence Committee.

Ms. Harman has denied interceding for Mr. Rosen and Mr. Weissman, and has expressed anger that she was wiretapped. She is to be among the featured speakers at the Aipac conference next week.

Over government objections, Judge Ellis had also ruled that the defense could call as witnesses several senior Bush administration foreign policy officials to demonstrate that what occurred was part of the continuing process of information trading and did not involve anything nefarious. The defense lawyers were planning to call as witnesses former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; Stephen J. Hadley, the former national security adviser; and several others. Government policy makers indicated they were clearly uncomfortable with senior officials’ testifying in open court over policy deliberations.

The government’s motion to dismiss said the government was obliged take a final review of the case to consider “the likelihood that classified information will be revealed at trial, any damage to the national security that might result from a disclosure of classified information and the likelihood the government would prevail at trial.”

More Articles in US » A version of this article appeared in print on May 2, 2009, on page A11 of the New York edition.

REUTERS CONFIRMS: "New flu strain is a genetic mix"

2009-04-29T10:50:00.000-07:00

"The new flu virus contains DNA typical to avian, swine and human viruses, including elements from European and Asian swine viruses."

[Editor's Note: This makes it highly unlikely to occur in nature and highly likely (certain) to have originated in a laboratory as some kind of bio-weapon. Who will investigate and prosecute those responsible for this murderous bio-weapon, and its release into the populations of the world?

FACTBOX: New flu strain is a genetic mix

Fri Apr 24, 2009 1:31pm EDT

(Reuters) - A deadly swine flu never seen before has broken out in Mexico, killing at least 16 people and raising fears of a possible pandemic. World Health Organization officials said the flu has killed about 60 Mexicans.

Here are some facts about the virus and flu viruses in general:

* The World Health Organization has confirmed at least some of the cases are a never-before-seen strain of influenza A virus, carrying the designation H1N1.

* Although it's called swine flu, this new strain is not infecting pigs and has never been seen in pigs. The threat is person to person transmission.

* It is genetically different from the fully human H1N1 seasonal influenza virus that has been circulating globally for the past few years. The new flu virus contains DNA typical to avian, swine and human viruses, including elements from European and Asian swine viruses.

* The World Health Organization is concerned but says it is too soon to change the threat level warning for a pandemic-- a global epidemic of a new and dangerous flu.

* When a new strain of flu starts infecting people, and when it acquires the ability to pass from person to person, it can spark a pandemic. The last pandemic was in 1968 and killed about a million people.

* Seven people in the United States have been diagnosed with the new strain. All have recovered, but the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expects more cases.

* Flu viruses mutate constantly, which is why the flu vaccine is changed every year, and they can swap DNA in a process called reassortment. Most animals can get flu, but viruses rarely pass from one species to another.

* From December 2005 through February 2009, 12 cases of human infection with swine influenza were confirmed. All but one person had contact with pigs. There was no evidence of human-to-human transmission in those cases.

* Symptoms of swine flu in people are similar to those of seasonal influenza -- sudden onset of fever, coughing, muscle aches and extreme tiredness. Swine flu appears to cause more diarrhea and vomiting than normal flu.

* Seasonal flu kills between 250,000 and 500,000 people globally in an average year.

* In 1976 a new strain of swine flu started infecting people and worried U.S. health officials started widespread vaccination. More than 40 million people were vaccinated. But several cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome, a severe and sometime fatal condition that can be linked to some vaccines, caused the U.S. government to stop the program. The incident led to widespread distrust of vaccines in general.

(Reporting by Maggie Fox)

New swine flu feared to be weaponized strain -Wayne Madsen

2009-04-28T14:48:00.000-07:00

New swine flu feared to be weaponized strain
By Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writer

Apr 27, 2009

According to two mainstream media journalists, one in Mexico City and the other in Jakarta, who spoke to WMR on background, they are convinced that the current outbreak of a new strain of swine flu in Mexico and some parts of the United States is the result of the introduction of a human-engineered pathogen that could result in a widespread global pandemic, with potentially catastrophic consequences for domestic and international travel and commerce.

The journalists have been told by top officials of the United Nations and the World Health Organization (WHO) about the grave dangers posed by the new and deadly swine flu strain, known as A-H1N1. This flu, never before seen by scientists, has already killed up to 68 people in Mexico and has forced the cancellation of public events, including sports matches and concerts, and the closure of schools, libraries, and museums. Eight cases have been reported in Texas and California. Doctors are examining several students at a Queens high school in New York who displayed symptoms similar to those experienced by swine flu patients in Mexico.

Our Mexico City source said a top scientist for the United Nations, who has examined the outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in Africa, as well as HIV/AIDS victims, concluded that H1N1 possesses certain transmission “vectors” that suggest that the new flu strain has been genetically-manufactured as a military biological warfare weapon. The UN expert believes that Ebola, HIV/AIDS, and the current A-H1N1 swine flu virus are biological warfare agents.

Past swine flu outbreaks have been spread from pigs to humans, who then passed the flu on to other humans. However, with A-H1N1, there have been no reported infections of pigs. In fact, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), A-H1N1 has gene segments from North American swine, bird and human flu strains and a segment from Eurasian swine flu. Costa Rica, Brazil, and Peru have issued alerts to check all incoming passengers from Mexico at border crossings, airports, and seaports for symptoms of the swine flu.

WHO is convening an emergency session of its top medical experts in Geneva and is set to declare H1N1 a “public health event of international concern.” It is reported that WHO will recommend travel restrictions to and from areas where the flu has been reported, including Mexico City and the states of Mexico, Hidalgo, San Luis PotosÃ and Oaxaca.

Our Jakarta source said WHO officials are afraid that the presence of gene segments from dreaded H5N1 bird flu in the A-H1N1 swine flu strain could mean that the new swine flu strain was engineered to “jump species.”

WMR has been informed that the CDC and U.S. Army dug up the body of an Inuit woman who died in 1918 in Brevig Mission, Alaska from an outbreak of Spanish flu. The influenza pandemic that year killed up to 100 million people worldwide in an 18-month period. Brevig Mission saw 72 of its 80 residents die within five days, the worst case recorded anywhere in the world. WMR has been told the genetic material recovered by the U.S. government from the corpse of the Inuit woman provided the basis for the development of the H5N1, or bird (avian), flu strain at the U.S. Army Medical Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) laboratory at Fort Detrick, Maryland, the point of origin for the Ames strain of anthrax used in the 2001 bio-war attacks against the U.S. Congress and the media.

The fear in Asia is that if the A-H1N1 pandemic spreads to the United States, travel to and from the country will be all but shut down.

The following are the symptoms associated with A-H1N1:

· cough

· fever

· sore throat

· shortness of breath

· muscle and joint pain

The drugs Tamiflu and Relenza are seen as the most effective against A-H1N1.

Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.

NARCONEWS: More Than $1 billion In Private-Sector Weapons Exports Approved For Mexico Since 2004

2009-03-31T22:32:00.000-07:00

Legal U.S. Arms Exports May Be Source of Narco Syndicates Rising Firepower

Posted by Bill Conroy - March 29, 2009

[Editor's Note, Cut to the chase:
Mexican authorities in Reynosa across the border from McAllen, seized the country’s single largest stash of cartel weapons — nearly 300 assault rifles, shoulder-fired grenade launchers and a half million rounds of ammunition.

But weeks later, Mexican authorities still have not allowed the ATF access to serial numbers that would help them track down the buyers and traffickers on the U.S. side.

Support NarcoNews, which does outstanding independent journalism that's conspicuously missing from both mainstream and a lot of "alternative" publications.]

Mainstream media and Beltway pundits and politicians in recent months have unleashed a wave of panic in the nation linking the escalading violence in Mexico, and its projected spread into the U.S., to illegal weapons smuggling.

The smokescreen being spread by these official mouthpieces of manufactured consensus is that a host of criminal operators are engaging in straw (or fraudulent) gun purchases, making clandestine purchases at U.S. gun shows or otherwise assembling small caches of weapons here in the states in order to smuggle them south of the border to the “drug cartels.”

The Obama administration is now sending hundreds of additional federal agents to the border in an effort to interdict this illegal arms smuggling to reassure an agitated middle-America that Uncle Sam will get these bad guys. The cascade of headlines from mainstream media outlets printing drug-war pornography assures us in paragraphs inserted between the titillation that the ATF’s Operation Gunrunner and other similar get-tough on gun-seller programs will save America from the banditos of Mexico.

To be sure, some criminal actors in the U.S. are smuggling small arms across the border. But the drug war in Mexico is not being fought with Saturday night specials, hobby rifles and hunting shotguns. The drug trafficking organizations are now in possession of high-powered munitions in vast quantities that can’t be explained by the gun-show loophole.

At least one report in a mainstream media outlet deserves credit for recognizing that trend.

“[Mexican] traffickers have escalated their arms race, acquiring military-grade weapons, including hand grenades, grenade launchers, armor-piercing munitions and antitank rockets with firepower far beyond the assault rifles and pistols that have dominated their arsenals,” states a recent story in the Los Angeles Times. “The proliferation of heavier armaments points to a menacing new stage in the Mexican government's 2-year-old war against drug organizations. …”

Narco News, in a report last December [“Juarez murders shine a light on an emerging Military Cartel”] also examined the increasing militarization of narco-trafficking groups in Mexico and pointed out that U.S. military-issued ammunition popped up in an arms cache seized in Reynosa, Mexico, in November 2008 that was linked to the Zetas, a mercenary group that provides enforcement services to Mexican narco-trafficking organizations.

So where are these military-grade weapons really coming from?

Rather than address that valid question head on, the mainstream media, and now even the Obama administration, have been attempting to paint lipstick on the pig, trumpeting, in the words of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the “courageous efforts undertaken by [Mexican] President Calderon.”

And the “courageous” Mexican President Felipe Calderon, for his part, redirects the blame for the Mexican narco-organization’s increasing firepower back to the U.S.

In a story published by the Associated Press in late February of this year, Mexican President Calderon is quoted alleging the following:

We need to stop the flow of guns and weapons towards Mexico. Let me express to you that we've seized in this two years more than 25,000 weapons and guns, and more than 90 percent of them came from United States, and I'm talking from missiles launchers to machine guns and grenades.

But no matter how hard Calderon and U.S. officials try to disguise the pig, it still oinks.

A Narco News investigation into the flow of arms across the U.S. border appears to lead right back to the systemic corruption that afflicts a vast swath of the Mexican government under President Felipe Calderon and this nation’s own embrace of market-driven free-trade policies.

The deadliest of the weapons now in the hands of criminal groups in Mexico, particularly along the U.S. border, by any reasonable standard of an analysis of the facts, appear to be getting into that nation through perfectly legal private-sector arms exports, measured in the billions of dollars, and sanctioned by our own State Department. These deadly trade commodities — grenade launchers, explosives and “assault” weapons —are then, in quantities that can fill warehouses, being corruptly transferred to drug trafficking organizations via their reach into the Mexican military and law enforcement agencies, the evidence indicates.

“As in other criminal enterprises in Mexico, such as drug smuggling or kidnapping, it is not unusual to find police officers and military personnel involved in the illegal arms trade,” states an October 2007 report by the for-profit global intelligence group Stratfor, which Barron’s magazine once dubbed the Shadow CIA. “… Over the past few years, several Mexican government officials have been arrested on both sides of the border for participating in the arms trade.”

Counting Commerce

The U.S. State Department oversees a program that requires private companies in the United States to obtain an export license in order to sell defense hardware or services to foreign purchasers — which include both government units and private buyers in other countries. These arms deals are known as Direct Commercial Sales [DCS]. Each year, the State Department issues a report tallying the volume and dollar amount of DCS items approved for export.

The reports do not provide details on who the weapons or defense services were exported to specifically, but do provide an accounting of the destination countries. Although it is possible that some of the deals authorized under the DCS program were altered or even canceled after the export licenses were issued, the data compiled by State does provide a broad snapshot of the extensive volume of U.S. private-sector arms shipments to both Mexico and Latin America in general.

According to an analysis of the DCS reports, some $1 billion in defense hardware was approved for export to Mexico via private U.S. companies between fiscal year 2004 and fiscal year 2007 — the most recent year for which data was available. Overall, during the same period, a total of some $3.7 billion in weapons and other military hardware was approved for export under the DCS program to all of Latin America and the Caribbean.

In addition to the military hardware exports approved for Mexico, some $3.8 billion in defense-related “services” [technical assistance and training via private U.S. contractors] also were approved for “export” to Mexico over the same four-year period, according to the DCS reports.

That means the total value of defense-related hardware and service exports by private U.S. companies to Mexico tallied nearly $5 billion over the four-year window. And that figure doesn’t even count the $700 million in assistance already authorized under the Merida Initiative [Plan Mexico] or any new DCS exports approved for fiscal years 2008 and 2009 [which ends Sept. 30].

Following is a sample of the types of arms shipments approved for export to Mexico through the DCS program during fiscal years 2006 and 2007 alone:

• $3.3 million worth of ammunition and explosives, including ammunition-manufacturing equipment;

• 13,000 nonautomatic and semiautomatic firearms, pistols and revolvers at a total value of $11.6 million;

• 42 grenade launchers valued at $518,531;

• 3,578 explosive projectiles, including grenades, valued at $78,251;

• Various night-vision equipment valued at $963,201.

A troubling revelation about the DCS program, which has direct relevance to the drug war in Mexico, is contained in a fiscal 2007 report issued by the State Department. That report summarizes the results of the State Department’s Blue Lantern end-use monitoring program for DCS exports.

That Blue Lantern report found that "the Western Hemisphere (especially Latin America and the Caribbean) continues to be a region with a high incidence of unfavorable cases involving firearms and ammunition." The unfavorable finding indicates that fraud may have occurred and those cases "may be subject to civil enforcement actions or referred to law enforcement for criminal investigation."

For the entire DCS program, and this is a disturbing figure, of the 634 Blue Lantern cases closed in fiscal year 2007, a total of 143, or 23 percent, were deemed “unfavorable."

The Blue Lantern report does not mention specific transactions in detail, but does provide case-study examples. One included in the report indicated that a Latin American firearms dealer acted as a “front company for another Latin American company.”

“[The] owner admits that [the] company exists only on paper…,” the fiscal year 2007 Blue Lantern report states. “[The] host country authorities had temporarily suspended the firearms import licenses to [the] parent company because of its link with small arms smuggling to gangs in [a] third country.”

Given Mexico’s strict gun laws with respect to private individuals, it is likely most of the DCS program defense hardware approved for export to that nation was directed toward the military or law enforcement agencies. But it is precisely that fact which should be raising some alarm in Washington.

Mexico, by Calderon’s own admission, is dealing with a serious corruption problem within the ranks of Mexican law enforcement.

From a December 2008 report in the Los Angeles Times:

Mexican President Felipe Calderon on Tuesday said his government was making strides against corruption but warned that graft remained a threat to the nation's efforts against crime.

Calderon’s rival in the 2006 Mexican presidential race, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, in recent open letter published in the Mexican newspaper Por Esto! and addressed to U.S. Secretary of State Clinton, is even more blunt in his assessment of the extent of corruption within the Calderon regime.

You surely know that all of this began when a group of about 30 traffickers of influence and corrupt politicians, using the cover of so-called neoliberal economic policies, took control of the Mexican State, as well as a good part of national and so-called public goods. And these policies of pillaging that has enriched a minority in an exaggerated and obscene manner, in a way that has not occurred in any other part of the world, has condemned the Mexican people to exile and survival.

And that corruption is not limited to Mexican law enforcement. Sources provided Narco News with a PowerPoint presentation prepared for the DEA that indicates the following:

Between Jan 2000-Dec 2006: More than 163,000 military members were criminally processed during former president Vicente Fox’s 6 years term of office. The majority of the crimes were: [the list includes abuse of power, homicide, embezzlement, kidnapping, bank robbery, illegal possession of firearms and health crimes [essentially organized crime].

Another slide in that same DEA PowerPoint presentation states that the Mexican military reported an average of 1,200 desertions per month in 2006.

And it should not be ignored that the Zetas, one of the most violent drug-organization groups in Mexico right now, was founded by former elite Mexican special-operations troops — many of whom received some training in the United States.

[The two most recent DCS reports can be found at these links: FY2006 and FY2007.]

The Elephant in the Room

A former senior U.S. Customs Inspector, who asked that his name not be used, provided the following reaction when presented with the DCS data:

I would agree entirely [that] DCS (and DoD gifted, as opposed to DCS sold) weapons are obviously the simplest explanation for the massive rise in the number of fully automatic weapons, grenades, rockets, etc., obtained by the narcotics gangs. … That is to say, they are obtaining their weapons from their own, Mexican, government, by various illegal means.

… The Mexican government has a long and well-documented history of corruption at all levels, from city to federal. Most of the weapons being "displayed" [in the media] are simply not available for sale to American civilians, particularly including the grenades — both 40mm and hand types. …

… The source of these weapons can be easily traced by ATF. … All foreign sales must be reported to ATF prior to shipment, just in case the government wishes to hold up a shipment to a particular country, etc. Tracing the serial numbers would be easy, with US government assistance, of course.

But that assumes the Mexican government, and our own government, really want to trace those weapons. A November 2008 report in the San Antonio Express News, which includes details of the major weapons seizure in Reynosa, Mexico, that same month involving the Zetas, reveals the following:

Another example of coordination problems occurred this month. Mexican authorities in Reynosa across the border from McAllen, seized the country’s single largest stash of cartel weapons — nearly 300 assault rifles, shoulder-fired grenade launchers and a half million rounds of ammunition.

But weeks later, Mexican authorities still have not allowed the ATF access to serial numbers that would help them track down the buyers and traffickers on the U.S. side.

To be sure, cartel corruption and intimidation of Mexican law enforcement at every level and in every agency has caused some dysfunction.

A former DEA agent, who also asked not to be named, says the shipment of military-grade weapons to the Mexican government under the DCS program, given the extent of corruption within that government, is essentially like “shipping weapons to a crime syndicate.”

At least one individual with long connections to U.S. intelligence agencies is convinced that the corrupt transfer of arms between the Mexican military and narco-criminals in Mexico is more than theory.

Tosh Plumlee is a former CIA contract pilot who flew numerous missions delivering arms to Latin America and returning drugs to the United States as part of the covert Iran/Contra operations in the 1980s, according to public records. After becoming troubled by those government-sanctioned missions, Plumlee decided to take his concerns to Congress.

Plumlee was eventually called to testify before Congress on a number of occasions, only to find that the Congressional committees hearing his testimony ordered it classified — which meant if Plumlee later spoke about it publicly, he would be violating the law.

Plumlee, however, still has deep contacts in the spook world, some of whom, it seems, want him to bring some information forward concerning the nature of the drug war in Juarez, Mexico. As a result, Plumlee says he recently made a journey with individuals he described as “sensitive sources” to a small warehouse in Juarez — located just across border from El Paso, Texas. Plumlee says he agreed to accompany the sources because he is currently doing research for a book he is writing about the drug war.

Plumlee says it was clear to him that the warehouse was not part of a Mexican military operation, yet it was packed with U.S. military weapons — including grenades, grenade launchers, LAW anti-tank weapons [essentially high-tech bazookas], M16 rifles and night-vision equipment.

Plumlee says his sources indicated that the U.S. weapons in that warehouse — as well as another warehouse located elsewhere in Juarez that he did not visit — were now under the control of a narco-trafficking organization, which had obtained the munitions from corrupt elements of the Mexican military.

Plumlee concedes he does not know why he was allowed to step inside that warehouse and later walk out alive. All he can say for sure is that he was being used to get the information out and suspects that those weapons have since been relocated.

As incredible as Plumlee’s story sounds, it cannot really be surprising that there would be stores of weapons in clandestine warehouses in a city like Juarez, which, since the beginning of 2008, has produced about 2,000 of the estimated 7,000 murders in Mexico’s bloody drug war. And whether anyone chooses to believe Plumlee’s information or not, it is clear he has a long history of being a player in the netherworld of black operations, and might well be trusted by some players who still engaged in that dark art.

Mike Levine, a former DEA agent who has years of experience participating in dangerous undercover operations overseas, says Plumlee is who he claims to be. Levine now hosts a radio show in New York City on a Pacifica Radio station [the Expert Witness Radio Show] and Plumlee has appeared on that show several times over the years.

Here’s what Levine has to say about Plumlee’s credibility:

Before I invited Tosh to come on the air, because his story was so incredible, I vetted him through government agents, all of whom said he is the real thing. I have a copy of the air map he turned over to a San Diego Weekly newspaper, bearing notations of all his drug flights, which first sold me on the guy.

After he had made many revelations on-air in New York, and mainstream media continued to ignore him, Congress was apparently listening. I had been told by my own sources that agencies like CIA were regularly recording our show. (I used to remind them, on air, to make sure they pressed the red button to record.)

So Tosh calls me one day in around 1997 and says that Congress had asked him to testify about his experiences, in closed-door session. I told him, "If you do that, they are going to do nothing but classify your testimony making it illegal for you to tell your own story."

And that, indeed, is what did happen, according to Tosh.

Could it be that Plumlee was used as a type of message in a bottle because, like has happened so many times in the past history of this nation, the normal chain of command and our politicians in Washington, D.C., simply don’t want to hear the truth, don’t want to risk rocking the boat of international relations with Mexico or interrupting the free-trade flow of a multi-billion dollar “legal” arms business?

After all, if our government had to concede that the Mexican military is so wracked with corruption and beyond the control of Mexican President Calderon that it cannot be trusted to control its own weapons, then how can U.S. cooperation with Calderon’s government have any hope for success in what many would argue is an already ill-conceived drug war?

In fact, if that is what we are now confronting in Mexico, it is likely that U.S. cooperation with Calderon’s government, when it takes the form of U.S. weapon shipments, is likely only going to fuel further bloodshed and put U.S. agents and operatives now in the field assisting in those efforts at grave risk.

Narco News did seek to get comment from officials at both the Department of Justice and the Department of State about the issues raised in this story. To date, those queries — both by phone and e-mail — have been met with dead silence.

Stay tuned ….

GREATEST THEFT IN WORLD HISTORY?

2009-03-31T13:33:00.000-07:00

Bloomberg News spins as follows:

"The U.S. government and the Federal Reserve have spent, lent or committed $12.8 trillion, an amount that approaches the value of everything produced in the country last year, to stem the longest recession since the 1930s. "

"The money works out to $42,105 for every man, woman and child in the U.S. and 14 times the $899.8 billion of currency in circulation. "

This is theft. This is debt servitude. This is not much different than selling your grandchildren into slavery in order to give money to multi-millionaire gamblers today.

Obama has continued egregiously fraudulent "bailout" practices started by Bush. Previously they bailed out the Savings and Loans which were raided back in the late 80's under poppy Bush, with brother Neil Bush profiting handsomely from that looting spree.

This is as blatantly immoral as it is criminal and destructive to the nation. They are using the cover of a "rescue" to dump shiploads of our tax money on the lawns of billionaires. There is no kind, innocent way of spinning this, unless one is willing to turn off all powers of critical thought and become the mindless drones who believe whatever is told to them on their televisions.

This is pure madness, and by design, will enrich the vulture class oligarchs while destroying the lives of most of the population, already under siege for decades since Nafta, the stagnation of wages, the crushing of unions, the rotting of the education system, etc.

It's last call for America. What happens from here on out will be unrecognizable.

More "war on terror" blather

2009-03-19T11:51:00.001-07:00

Response to: A Progressive, Twenty-First Century Approach for Pakistan, by Arun Krishnan

There is no "war on terror," and this ridiculous phrase should never be used without quotation marks.

There will NEVER, EVER be solutions to this problem until the masses understand that terrorist networks in Asia have been created, sponsored, trained, armed, protected by covert intelligence agencies with the full knowledge and support of US leaders and US CIA. This is established in numerous ways, but hard research is needed to piece the puzzle together.

Top of the list: ISI, the Pakistani intelligence agency has been playing with fire at least since the late 1970s. The Islamic militant networks were championed with ISI personnel and US and Saudi money. The Saudis have long supported Taliban and Al Qaeda. This was perfectly acceptable to Washington who longed for a new international enemy to replace the collapsed "communist threat."

It's like bashing one's head against the wall because so much ignorance and partial truth is printed in mainstream journals, and supposedly "alternative" journals regarding this BOGUS "war on terror." The "war on terror" was engineered with full US complicity to provide the "war that won't end in our lifetimes."

Both major US parties are on board the farce. And the corpses continue to pile up.

If one can never hold accountable the puppet masters in western intelligence who with treasonous intent support terrorism one can never even begin to solve the issue. It is as simple as that. Conspiracies exist, despite the mindless bleating of the dittoheaded press. Justice and accountability are the real myths.

http://crimesofthestate.blogspot.com/

Raw Story: Libel the Opposition on "Climate Change?"

2009-03-19T09:21:00.001-07:00

"Climate change deniers" is a slanderous misrepresentation, in a completely biased propaganda article.

The sizable contingent of SKEPTICS to the hystrionics and computer-generated hysteria of the "global warming" and "carbon tax" lobby are rarely given the media coverage that the official line is given. This is obvious even in this article, which implies skeptics should be censored since they have "media outlets everywhere," taken to be a bad thing that the opposition voice is heard at all.

This "deniers" libel is a clear misrepresentation. Nobody "denies" that the climate changes. It has always changed, throughout history.

The main criticism is twofold:

1) The THEORY that man made releases of emissions is the cause of the changes is not proven, in the slightest, but is taken for granted. It is assumed by the "hysteria lobby."

2) Data presented by Gore, Mann, et al. at the IPCC/UN has been shown to be faked, fraudulent, cooked, on more than one occasion. See "hockey stick" for some info on that fiasco.

Add to that several other notable realities:

A) Other planets had also warmed recently, as a result of abnormally active SUN.

B) The temperature has been COOLING for the past several years, despite the ever present addition of small amounts of carbon to the air.

C) The total amount of carbon in the air is a fraction of one percent, dwarfed by other factors.

D) Temperatures were hotter than today during the middle ages, and previous to that several thousand years ago -- this is NOT the "hottest" period on record, and that is a blatant lie.

E) Normal seasonal activity is taken out of context and blown out of proportion. Every time an iceberg appears, or the ice melts on the ocean, we are reminded to be hysterical again. Only, the North ice came back recently, covering over a huge patch of ocean, restoring levels to 1979 (thus erasing all that hysterical chicken little evidence that catastrophe was around the corner).

F) Carbon taxes will be placed on YOU, your family, your food, your transportation, and will drastically alter the balance of taxation IN THE WORLD. This will be quite a regressive tax plan that will damage real people, and will create new money flows from bottom (us) to top (them). Perhaps a few minutes thought would be in order?

G) Al Gore's "ice core record" in An Inconvenient Truth was presented misleadingly. Gore never said that the carbon changes FOLLOW the temperature changes, which they actually do, but presented (with his big expensive video monitor) that carbon changes were the CAUSE of the temperature changes. This has never happened in that entire millions year history he presented. This was misleading, at the least. Carbon follows temperature, not vice-versa. This NEW theory assumes the reverse, that the carbon is the cause, not the effect.

There are other reasons to be SKEPTICAL of the pronouncements of political leaders and their hired gun scientists. There is another side to the story, and should in no way be censored. This is after all a political fight more than a scientific debate. I don't think I've EVER seen the global warming lobby big wigs ever debate a skeptical scientist in a fair discussion of the facts.

As a matter of fact, skeptical scientists are routinely denied a place at the IPCC, and their views literally censored out of reports there. Fact.

The scientific method, for those of you unfamiliar, posits a theory, and then attempts to FALSIFY (or disprove) it. If it cannot be falsified, it is accepted as tentative "truth." What the IPCC does is essentially unscientific. It is a political forum.

http://crimesofthestate.blogspot.com/

Letter to Paid Journalists Covering "harsh interrogation techniques"

2009-03-18T11:28:00.001-07:00

Mr. or Ms. "Journalist,"

You realize that you're part of a propaganda effort, don't you? Why doesn't the phrase, "torture, a felony punishable by twenty years imprisonment and the death penalty if the victim dies, as several detainees have done..." ever appear anywhere in the mainstream media?

Where's General Taguba's report? And General Taguba as a source?

Where's General Karpinsky, and the memo written in Donald Rumsfeld's handwriting, "MAKE SURE THIS HAPPENS?"

Where's the long history of torture and the CIA going back to its creation? The studies of CIA torture practices in Viet Nam, in Central America and their support of death squads and torture "manuals" for decades?

You are not a journalist, my friend. You are a low level tool of mind washing.

______________________________________________
John Doraemi publishes Crimes of the State at:
http://crimesofthestate.blogspot.com/

MUST SEE: THE OBAMA DECEPTION

2009-03-13T11:57:00.000-07:00

Jones vs. Obama

Ten trillion dollars looted in a matter of months, the imminent collapse of the US economy, mandatory compulsory "national security" paramilitary "service" openly demanded... Is it worth 2 hours of your time to investigate these matters critically?

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7718996325782443244&ei=Upe5SbScI6L-qAOJnOG1AQ&q=obama+deception&hl=en

Alex Jones' new documentary is out, online for free. Jones tends to be hyperbolic and acerbic.

If, however, even ten percent of what he says is true, we are fucked.

Congressman Ron Paul on US Foreign Policy Assumptions

2009-03-11T10:57:00.000-07:00

Imagine

By Ron Paul

March 10, 2009 -- Imagine for a moment that somewhere in the middle of Texas there was a large foreign military base, say Chinese or Russian. Imagine that thousands of armed foreign troops were constantly patrolling American streets in military vehicles. Imagine they were here under the auspices of “keeping us safe” or “promoting democracy” or “protecting their strategic interests.”

Imagine that they operated outside of US law, and that the Constitution did not apply to them. Imagine that every now and then they made mistakes or acted on bad information and accidentally killed or terrorized innocent Americans, including women and children, most of the time with little to no repercussions or consequences. Imagine that they set up check points on our soil and routinely searched and ransacked entire neighborhoods of homes. Imagine if Americans were fearful of these foreign troops, and overwhelmingly thought America would be better off without their presence.

Imagine if some Americans were so angry about them being in Texas that they actually joined together to fight them off, in defense of our soil and sovereignty, because leadership in government refused or were unable to do so. Imagine that those Americans were labeled terrorists or insurgents for their defensive actions, and routinely killed, or captured and tortured by the foreign troops on our land. Imagine that the occupiers’ attitude was that if they just killed enough Americans, the resistance would stop, but instead, for every American killed, ten more would take up arms against them, resulting in perpetual bloodshed. Imagine if most of the citizens of the foreign land also wanted these troops to return home. Imagine if they elected a leader who promised to bring them home and put an end to this horror.

Imagine if that leader changed his mind once he took office.

The reality is that our military presence on foreign soil is as offensive to the people that live there as armed Chinese troops would be if they were stationed in Texas. We would not stand for it here, but we have had a globe straddling empire and a very intrusive foreign policy for decades that incites a lot of hatred and resentment towards us.

According to our own CIA, our meddling in the Middle East was the prime motivation for the horrific attacks on 9/11. But instead of re-evaluating our foreign policy, we have simply escalated it. We had a right to go after those responsible for 9/11, to be sure, but why do so many Americans feel as if we have a right to a military presence in some 160 countries when we wouldn’t stand for even one foreign base on our soil, for any reason? These are not embassies, mind you, these are military installations. The new administration is not materially changing anything about this. Shuffling troops around and playing with semantics does not accomplish the goals of the American people, who simply want our men and women to come home. 50,000 troops left behind in Iraq is not conducive to peace any more than 50,000 Russian soldiers would be in the United States.

Shutting down military bases and ceasing to deal with other nations with threats and violence is not isolationism. It is the opposite. Opening ourselves up to friendship, honest trade and diplomacy is the foreign policy of peace and prosperity. It is the only foreign policy that will not bankrupt us in short order, as our current actions most definitely will. I share the disappointment of the American people in the foreign policy rhetoric coming from the administration. The sad thing is, our foreign policy WILL change eventually, as Rome’s did, when all budgetary and monetary tricks to fund it are exhausted.

by Ron Paul

Congressman Ron Paul of Texas enjoys a national reputation as the premier advocate for liberty in politics today.

Is Counterpunch doing covert CIA propaganda now?

2009-03-09T14:58:00.000-07:00

"Peter Lee is a business man who has spent thirty years observing, analyzing, and writing on Asian affairs."

Is he really? Is that all he's doing?

Mr. Lee invites us to:

Meet Gulbuddin Hekmatyar

Pretty condescending, yes, as some of us have been acquainted for 10-20 years with the name. But, see, the thing that stands out most in Hekmatyar's history is something that Lee doesn't mention at all. Hekmatyar was the biggest DRUG SMUGGLER in Afghanistan and he was also working closely with CIA/ISI.

Drugs/CIA, drugs/CIA. Pretty hard meme to forget. Pretty hard to write 2800 words on Hekmatyar and omit such a meaty fact -- unless one is motivated to do so for some reason.

Mr. Lee goes so far as to put the drug issue squarely on the shoulders of the Taliban (omitting the puppet president's own role which is public). He blames drugs on the "old Khalq government" and even on "Al Qaeda."

But not one word acknowledging that Hekmatyar was a huge drug lord with intelligence agency connections for many years. It's apparently okay to call Hekmatyar "a brutal, capricious and violently anti-American warlord," but CounterPunch and Mr. Peter Lee can't seem to get around to the narcotics activity. Now, why is that?

There's quite an overt agenda at work here.

"The Worst-Best Hope in Afghanistan?"

Mr. Lee is trying to sell Hekmatyar to an American audience as the next Afghan leader.

"Then, in a November 2008 article entitled Afghan Rebel Positioned for Key Role, the Washington Post gave a hint that Gulbuddin Hekmatyar might be the kind of guy we can do business with:"

"We?" Who the fuck is "we" Mr. Peter Lee? And what is the extent of this "business" which you have conventiently omitted from your propaganda?

"As the Taliban grows in strength, Hekmatyar fades, and the hopes for a native Afghan government able to dictate terms to Mullah Omar fades with him."

The CIA's old drug lord client appears to be losing steam. We are to side with CIA elements who see Hekmatyar as the sort of drug lord, murderer whom they "can do business with." We are to forget all about the heroin (as Peter Lee and CounterPunch have explicitly done for us), and which the CIA would like to have disappear down the memory hole. The CIA's interests and this article would seem to be in perfect synchronization.

Given Counterpunch's previous absurd positions (see 9/11, Cockburn) this isn't all too surprising to me. It may come as a shocker to some of Cockburn's loyal readers.

See Hekmatyar in An Unholy Alliance, part 2 I believe. When Counterpunch brings up the CIA/drug connections I may change my opinion of them. Not until.

ABS. MUST SEE: CIA/ISI US ALLIES AND THE DRUG TRADE

2009-03-09T14:14:00.000-07:00

An Unholy Alliance

"This 1996 documentary examines the CIA's connection to the global drug trade, with a focus on opium and heroin. Posted on YouTube with the permission of Director Chris Hilton, who now makes his home at Essential Media and Entertainment: http://www.essential-media.com/index.php More info on the documentary here: http://www.oneworldmagazine.org/seek/deamon/epis2.html"

SIX PART SERIES

Examines China, Laos, Burma, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Implicates "allied" governments, intelligence services and high level US officials in the international drug trade.

Does NOT include South and Central America, or events after 1996 such as Taliban, 9/11, the US war in support of the "Northern Alliance" etc.

PART 1:

Sen. Leahy's "Truth Commission" a response to criticism

2009-03-09T12:03:00.000-07:00

We should support Senator Leahy's proposal for a "Truth Commission" despite its toothless appearance. I will respond to Jesse Richard's (TVNewsLies) accusation that such a commission would be a "sham."

I agree with Richard that it has all the potential of being a "white wash" and ineffectual, but we must pursue this and support it anyway.

This is the only game in town
It is politically acceptable to a majority
It will expose further the criminal nature of the state
It will meet with intense opposition from the perps, as it puts them on the defensive. They may commit perjury, obstruction of justice, or other new crimes which are indicted.
Those who refuse to testify would be open to prosecution
Exposed crimes will lead to evidence of other crimes
Exposed crimes will destroy the credibility of the perps
Exposing their crimes will turn the public and Congress further against them
As knowledge of crimes snowballs, a sea change may occur, as with Richard Nixon. Nixon was elected in one of the most sweeping majorities in history in 1972. Two years later he ran away from the white house to avoid impeachment.
Leahy himself may get on board more serious crimes like the anthrax attacks and 9/11. He was personally targeted for assassination by anthrax, and he knows full well that some lone-nut scientist with no motive was not behind it.
It is necessary to convince the apathetic public how egregious the situation is before anything substantial can be done. A result of this commission would be to educate the ignorant and apathetic about some truths they are blissfully unaware. As 9/11 was at its core a psy-op to manipulate the public toward aggressive war, such a truth commission could counter this previous programming.
Inspiring millions to complain to the Justice Department and demand "justice" is what is needed. This has not occurred on a massive scale (I couldn't even get my blog urging this posted as a sticky on the 911blogger homepage).
Simultaneous criminal prosecutions are not precluded, and they may force more disclosures and more testimony so that the full extent of the covert crimes is exposed. Rats turning on one another is exactly what is needed.
And most importantly: THE US CONGRESS CANNOT GRANT IMMUNITY FROM PROSECUTION IN INTERNATIONAL COURTS. Exposing evidence of Crimes Against the Peace and Crimes Against Humanity will aid international jurors in forming legal cases against the high criminals from the former US regime, as well as send a clear warning to the current US regime and future US regimes. This in and of itself is the most compelling reason to support the politically tenable investigations of the Bush regime, despite some token grants of immunity by the Senate.

TRUTHOUT (SIC)

2009-03-03T11:42:00.000-08:00

TruthOut Isn't

Crimes of the State

For years the editors of Truthout.org have fallen far short of their audacious name. The September 11th controversies have been censored ruthlessly, despite the merit of the facts presented which dispute official government claims.

Similarly, evidence of US government protected drug trafficking is summarily deleted there, and no links to sources such as Daniel Hopsicker or NarcoNews are allowed.

But now, with the rise of Obama, Truthout has retreated to a position of demagogic hero worship. Fawning pieces attempting to portray Obama as some kind of "progressive" visionary (like this one) are followed by endless praise and gushing public displays of affection. Why wouldn't they be? Opposing views are censored out.

I'm not going to bog down in minutia critical of Obama, but Paul Craig Roberts does a pretty decent job in this piece whose link was censored over at the Truthout thread.

I'd rather focus on the narrow blinkered philosophy that censors opposing views NOT BECAUSE THEY LACK MERIT, but because they have merit. Such a disservice to readers and to the truth itself should be called out. Hypocrisy of this nature must be acknowledged, and it sure won't be acknowledged on Truthout.org's servers. So I mention it here.

What "Truthout" (sic) has done is replace critical analysis with blind, ignorant partisanship. Partisan mindlessness is the number one problem with the US political system, in my opinion. It allows for the information complex to weed out opposing parties, opposing leaders, opposing voices. If they don't carry a card from the Democrats or the Republicans then they are censored out.

We see, daily, how this formula has performed in the real world. We see the dire condition of the American Republic. We see the lawlessness, the abuses of power, the overt ongoing criminality, the protection of high official felons. We see it all, as it is so blunt, so egregious, that it can't be completely hushed up.

Yet "change" the empty rhetoric of the latest puppet leader is all we are permitted to "hope" for. Real change, sans quotations, is "off the table."

"I am new enough on the national political scene that I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views." -Barack H. Obama, The Audacity of Hope

The Current Betrayals

2009-03-02T11:17:00.000-08:00

A Banana Republic By 2012?

Change for the Worse

By Paul Craig Roberts

March 02, 2009 "Information Clearing House" -- -President Obama has presented the most irresponsible budget in US history. His fiscal year 2010 budget projects federal spending of $3.5 trillion and a federal deficit of $1.75 trillion. In other words, 50 percent of the government’s budget consists of red ink.

And Americans are angry that sub-prime borrowers took mortgages they couldn’t afford.

The bald fact is that the US government is going to have to borrow--or print--half of the money it intends to spend in Obama’s first budget. This fact has fallen through the cracks as New York Times headlines proclaim “A Bold Plan Sweeps Away Reagan Ideas.” It certainly does sweep away Reagan ideas. No Reagan budget ever presumed that the federal government could borrow half of its annual expenditures. Indeed, Obama’s budget deficit for 2010 alone exceeds the totality of “Reagan Deficits” for Reagan’s two terms of office.

As presidential budgets are marketing devices rather than financial statements, they are imbued with optimistic assumptions. Obama’s budget is based on optimistic assumptions about the extent of decline in GDP. A more realistic projection of GDP decline would reveal that Obama’s budget is the first since World War II in which more than half of the government’s expenditures must be financed by red ink. I suspect that the red ink component of the FY 2010 budget will surpass World War II budgets.

To whom can the US government turn for $1.75 trillion for FY 2010, on top of $1.2 trillion for FY 2009?

Not to taxpayers. Obama’s net tax increase comes to $170 billion over 10 years, or $17 billion a year, a drop in the bucket. A supply-side economist could have told him that not even these paltry revenues will be realized.

Not to private savers. Americans are over their heads in debts.

Not to foreigners. Thanks to Clinton/Bush financial deregulation and Wall Street and bankster greed, the rest of the world is in financial turmoil and hasn’t $1.75 trillion in savings to lend. Possibly, the stock market will collapse further, and whatever remaining wealth Americans have will flow into “safe” US Treasuries.

The only other alternative is the printing press. Printing press finance would destroy the dollar as reserve currency and ignite high inflation. The US would be unable to pay for its imports, and Americans whose incomes do not rise with the rate of inflation would be plowed under.

This prospect is not a “war on terror” scare tactic like “anthrax,” “weapons of mass destruction,” “al Qaeda connections,” and “Iranian nukes.”

The economic catastrophe that the US faces is very real. But there is no awareness of this reality in Obama’s budget. The crux of Obamanomics is the assumption that the economy can run forever on consumer loans, if we can just get the banks to lend, and the federal government can run forever on loans from China, Japan,and Saudi Arabia.

Obama is requesting $130 billion for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan during 2010 plus a $75 billion supplemental request for the wars during 2009. This $205 billion is on top of $534 billion for the Pentagon in 2010, for total military spending of $739 billion.

The Chinese government’s budget shows China’s military spending at $59 billion in 2008. (The Pentagon claims Chinese military spending is between $97 billion and $139 billion.) Russia’s military spending in 2009 is projected to be about $50 billion.

In the midst of the greatest economic crisis in US history when trillions of dollars are being added to US national debt, Obama’s budget spends more on two pointless wars than the total military spending of China and Russia combined. Obama’s wars serve only the profits of the military/security complex and the promotion rate of military officers. The longer the wars continue, the larger the number of officers who can retire at higher ranks, thus further swelling future annual deficits and the national debt.

Moreover, as is becoming apparent, the Bush/Obama war in Afghanistan cannot be fought without fighting a war in Pakistan.

As if this isn’t enough war, Obama parrots Dick Cheney’s charge, totally unsupported by any evidence, that Iran is making nuclear weapons. The chances are high that the new White House Moron will have us at war in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq. As Obama’s wars expand, the $205 billion for war in Iraq and Afghanistan will become $400 billion annually and then $600 billion annually.

Obama’s “troop withdrawal” from Iraq has proved to be just another con job. Obama has announced that the withdrawal doesn’t include the 50,000 US soldiers who will remain in Iraq indefinitely--like the US troops that have been kept in Japan and Germany for 64 years and in Korea since the early 1950s,

Meanwhile Medicare is on the ropes. The latest Medicare trustees report says that Medicare’s funds for hospital payments will be exhausted in 10 years. To make ends meet, Obama proposes cutting payments to Medicare providers.

Obama’s plan is to make doctors and patients pay for Medicare. One way to get National Health is to make it uneconomic for private health care to service Medicare patients. Already many doctors will not accept Medicare patients because of the low payments, endless paperwork, and risk of prosecution for “over-billing.” Looking at one recent Medicare patient medical bill, Medicare and supplemental insurance paid 29 percent of the billed amount, requiring the doctor to eat 58.5 percent of his charges and the patient to pay 12.5 percent. The doctor was paid $93.16 on a $320.89 bill. And Obama wants to reduce payments to providers?

What is Obama thinking? A country that can’t afford Medicare can’t afford National Health. Medicare provides only for the elderly, and it provides very little. A person pays the Medicare tax as long as he earns and on the totality of earnings. For the rich the Medicare tax can exceed the cost of a gold-plated private insurance policy.

Basic Medicare leaves a person unprotected. To provide better coverage, it is necessary to enroll in Medicare Part B for which the premium is $308.30 per month or $3,699.60 per year. On top of this, a person needs a privately supplied supplemental policy to complete Medicare coverage. AARP’s policy, which, after deductibles are met, covers half of drug costs, cost the “Medicare protected” elderly $ 273.50 per month or $3,282 per year. The drug prescription plan passed by Congress costs the individual yet more.

The two supplements to Medicare cost the Medicare patient $6,981.60 per year. In addition, if the Medicare patient has much retirement income besides Social Security, he pays income tax on 85% of the $3,699.60 Medicare Part B premium as it is part of taxable Social Security, which for someone in the 25% bracket is another $925 dollars.

In the late 1970s, Democratic Senator Russell Long, Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, told me that as Social Security was collected as a tax on wages and salaries, the US government had promised never to tax the benefits. So much for any commitment that the US government makes to the American people.

A top Social Security income, net of Medicare Part B premium, is $23,220 per year. Deduct the AARP policy, and the elderly who have paid in maximum Social Security taxes, get $20,000 per year. Of course, few Social Security retirees receive the maximum payment. AARP’s Public Policy Institute reports that in 2006 the average annual Social Security benefit for a retired worker was $12,372. Such a worker would have little left after paying the Medicare Part B premium and an additional premium for a supplement.

Offshoring and “free trade” have destroyed employer-provided health coverage for millions of employees. Private health care coverage can cost as much as one-third and even one-half of a person’s earned income, and some people are not insurable. National Health seems to be in the cards--only there is no money for it. All the money is being spent in pointless wars and on bailouts of financial fraud. The Obama budget puts bankster bailouts and pointless wars ahead of the health of the American people.

National Health advocates emphasize that a single-payer system is less expensive because it eliminates layers of profits. It is also less expensive for a less promising reason. Unless there is a parallel private health care system, National Health systems limit health spending to what is provided in the government budget. Over time, health care has to compete with everything else in the budget. Every part of the budget has its partisans and special interests. It is fantasy to assume that National Health will always be well funded. Just look at the state of the National Health Service in the UK.

Obama’s plan to tax the rich is another con job. Obama’s budget defines the rich as a person with a $250,000 before tax income. This is a rotten joke. The rich are the banksters, such as Hank Paulson with his $160 million annual bonus, and heads of hedge funds with their $1,000 million annual incomes. To confuse the struggling middle class with the real rich is criminal. A person with a $250,000 income before tax does not come close to being rich. Obama’s “tax the rich” scheme will devastate the upper middle class and leave the super rich undamaged.

The only change we have from Obama and the Democrats is for the worse. Bush’s FY 2008 budget deficit was $450 billion. The FY 2009 deficit is projected at $1.2 trillion. The budget deficit in Obama’s first budget is $1.75 trillion, a fourfold increase in two years.

Obama’s projected budget deficits are an understatement. For example, Obama’s budget assumes a less steep economic decline than the economy is experiencing, and it projects that war costs will drop to $50 billion annually beginning in 2011--this despite Obama sending more troops to Afghanistan and recent congressional testimony of Lt. General David Barno, former head of US forces in Afghanistan, who said the war in Afghanistan could last until 2025.

The “war on terror” will never end, because the moronic US government has defined everyone who resists US hegemony as a “terrorist.” The great danger to American civil liberty is that the US government regards as terrorists American citizens who realize that the neoconservative dream of American hegemony is a fantasy. As the Obama regime has not repealed the Bush regime rule-- “you are with us or against us”--Americans who oppose hegemonic war are lumped into the “against us” category.

There seems little chance that civil liberties will be restored. Obama and his “liberal” Justice (sic) Department have sided with Bush/Cheney on every important civil liberties issue. Yet, the ACLU sees “hope” in Obama’s rhetoric!

On February 21 Yahoo News reported: “President Barack Obama's administration has sided with predecessor George W. Bush on the rights of detainees at Bagram air base in Afghanistan, saying they cannot challenge their detention in US courts. In a two-sentence court filing Friday, the US Justice Department said "the government adheres to its previously articulated position" of denying habeas corpus rights to Bagram detainees, backing a similar decision by the Bush administration.”

“Earlier this month,” Yahoo News reports, “the Obama administration backed another Bush anti-terror policy when it urged a federal court to dismiss a lawsuit accusing Boeing Company of helping fly suspects to secret CIA detention centers overseas. The Justice Department said the case should be thrown out to protect state secrets.”

Do you remember the illegal spying? The US telecom industry succumbed to Bush regime pressure and broke the law together with President Bush. The illegal act made the US telecom industry subject to lawsuits, but the Bush regime placed its co-conspirators above the law.

Now Obama has sided with the Bush regime. On February 26, therawstory.com reported: “The Obama Justice Department continues to stand behind a Bush era law meant to prevent lawsuits against telecommunications companies accused of illegally sharing private customer information with intelligence agencies. In a brief filed late Wednesday obtained by Raw Story, the Department of Justice provided its views to Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker, after the San Francisco federal judge questioned the constitutionality of the wide-sweeping law and whether it gives the U.S. Attorney General too much power in deciding whether a company is immune from lawsuits after it has shared information with federal agents.”

On February 26 antiwar.com reported that the “new CIA director (Leon Panetta) declares nothing has changed, nothing will change.” Panetta declared that the US policy of conducting war on Pakistan’s sovereign territory “would continue.” The attacks, Panetta claimed, “have been successful.” For the CIA, claims of success equal legality. Did the Bush regime ever express greater arrogance and hubris?

With Rahm Israel Emanuel, an Israeli dual citizen, in charge of the White House and Obama’s schedule, Obama will have an even less independent foreign policy in the Middle East than Bush. Somehow someone among the Obamacons managed to put forward an appointment that could challenge the Israel Lobby’s stranglehold. Charles Freeman, former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, former top Pentagon official, and president of the Middle East Policy Council, was chosen by Admiral Denis Blair, Director of National Intelligence, to head the National Intelligence Council.

The neocons went berserk. Steve Rosen, formerly of AIPAC, currently indicted as an Israeli spy, Gabriel Schoenfeld, who wants the New York Times indicted for allegedly violating the Espionage Act for reporting the Bush regime’s illegal spying, Daniel Pipes, who sees Muslim terrorists under every bed, Michael Rubin of the warmonger American Enterprise Institute, and Frank Gaffney, possibly the goofiest person in America, damned Freeman’s appointment as “deeply troubling,” because Freeman has an open mind on the Middle East situation.

In other words, if you are not on Israel’s side, you are disqualified.

There is no more certain indication of continuing war in the Middle East on Israel’s behalf than for Freeman’s appointment to be blocked.

Pay close attention to this one. If Obama succumbs to the Israel Lobby and nixes Blair’s appointment of Freeman, the US will have to finance interminable wars on top of trillion dollar bailouts and massive unemployment.

The US might not even make it to 2012 before it is a banana republic.

Dr. Roberts was assistant secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, columnist for Business Week and the Scripps Howard News Service, Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and William E, Simon Chair in Political Economy, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University.

6 Million Dead in Congo. Who is responsible?

2009-02-22T14:14:00.000-08:00

The conflict in the Congo is a resource war waged by U.S. and British allies
By Kambale Musavuli
Online Journal Guest Writer

Feb 19, 2009, 00:17

Since Rwanda and Uganda invaded the Congo in 1996, they have pursued a plan to appropriate the wealth of Eastern Congo either directly or through proxy forces. The December 2008 United Nations report is the latest in a series of U.N. reports dating from 2001 that clearly documents the systematic looting and appropriation of Congolese resources by Rwanda and Uganda, two of Washington and London�s staunchest allies in Africa.

However, in the wake of the December 2008 report, which clearly documents Rwanda�s support of destabilizing proxy forces inside the Congo, a series of stunning proposals and actions have been presented which all appear to be an attempt to cover up or bury the damning U.N. report on the latest expression of Rwanda�s aggression against the Congolese people.

The earliest proposal came from Herman Cohen, former assistant secretary of state for African affairs under George Herbert Walker Bush. He proposed that Rwanda be rewarded for its well documented looting of Congo�s wealth by being a part of a Central and/or East African free trade zone whereby Rwanda would keep its ill-gotten gains.

French President Nicholas Sarkozy would not be outdone; he also brought his proposal off the shelf, which argues for essentially the same scheme of rewarding Rwanda for its 12-year war booty from the Congo. Two elements are at the core of both proposals.

One is the legitimization of the economic annexation of the Congo by Rwanda, which for all intents and purposes represents the status quo. And two is basically the laying of the foundation for the balkanization of the Congo or the outright political annexation of Eastern Congo by Rwanda. Both Sarkozy and Cohen have moved with lightning speed past the Dec. 12, 2008, United Nations report to make proposals that avoid the core issues revealed in the report.

The U.N. report reaffirms what Congolese intellectuals, scholars and victims have been saying for over a decade in regard to Rwanda�s role as the main catalyst for the biblical scale death and misery in the Congo. The Ugandan and Rwandan invasions of 1996 and 1998 have triggered the deaths of nearly 6 million Congolese. The United Nations says it is the deadliest conflict in the world since World War II.

The report �found evidence that the Rwandan authorities have been complicit in the recruitment of soldiers, including children, have facilitated the supply of military equipment, and have sent officers and units from the Rwandan Defense Forces� to the DRC. The support is for the National Congress for the Defense of the People, or CNDP, formerly led by self-proclaimed Gen. Laurent Nkunda.

The report also shows that the CNDP is sheltering a war criminal wanted by the International Criminal Court, Gen. Jean Bosco Ntaganda. The CNDP has used Rwanda as a rear base for fundraising meetings and bank accounts, and Uganda is once more implicated as Nkunda has met regularly with embassies in both Kigali and Kampala.

Also, Uganda is accepting illegal CNDP immigration papers. Earlier U.N. reports said that Kagame and Museveni are the mafia dons of Congo�s exploitation. This has not changed in any substantive way.

The report implicates Tribert Rujugiro Ayabatwa, a close advisor to Paul Kagame, president of Rwanda. Rujugiro is the founder of the Rwandan Investment Group. This is not the first time he has been named by the United Nations as one of the individuals contributing to the conflict in the Congo.

In April 2001, he was identified as Tibere Rujigiro in the U.N. Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth in the Democratic Republic of the Congo as one of the figures illegally exploiting Congo�s wealth. His implication this time comes in financial contributions to CNDP and appropriation of land.

This brings to light the organizations he is a part of, which include but are not limited to the Rwanda Development Board, the Rwandan Investment Group, of which he is the founder, and Kagame�s Presidential Advisory Council. They have members as notable as Rev. Rick Warren, business tycoon Joe Ritchie, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Scott Ford of Alltell, Dr. Clet Niyikiza of GlaxoSmithKline, former U.S. President Bill Clinton and many more.

These connections provide some insight into why Rwanda has been able to commit and support remarkable atrocities in the Congo without receiving even a reprimand in spite of the fact that two European courts have charged their top leadership with war crimes and crimes against humanity. It is only recently that two European nations, Sweden and the Netherlands, have decided to withhold aid from Rwanda as a result of its aggression against the Congolese people.

The report shows that the Congolese soldiers have also given support to the FDLR and other armed groups to fight against the aggression of Rwanda�s CNDP proxy. One important distinction must be made in this regard. It appears that the FDLR support comes more from individual Congolese soldiers as opposed to overall government support.

The Congolese government is not supporting the FDLR in incursions into Rwanda; however, the Rwandan government is in fact supporting rebel groups inside Congo. The Congolese population is the victim of the CNDP, FDLR and the Congolese military.

The United Nations report is a predictable outgrowth of previous reports produced by the U.N. since 2001. It reflects the continued appropriation of the land, theft of Congo�s resources, and continuous human rights abuses caused by Rwanda and Uganda. An apparent aim of these spasms is to create facts on the ground -- land expropriation, theft of cattle and other assets -- to consolidate CNDP/Rwandan economic integration into Rwanda.

Herman Cohen�s �Can Africa Trade Its Way to Peace?� in the New York Times reflects the disastrous policies that favor profits over people. In his article, the former lobbyist for Mobutu and Kabila�s government in the United States and former assistant secretary of state for Africa from 1989 to 1993 argues, �Having controlled the Kivu provinces for 12 years, Rwanda will not relinquish access to resources that constitute a significant percentage of its gross national product.�

He adds, �The normal flow of trade from eastern Congo is to Indian Ocean ports rather than the Atlantic Ocean, which is more than a thousand miles away.� Continuing his argument, he believes that �the free movement of people would empty the refugee camps and would allow the densely populated countries of Rwanda and Burundi to supply needed labor to Congo and Tanzania.�

Cohen�s first mistake in providing solutions to the conflict is to look at the conflict as a humanitarian crisis that can be solved by economic means. Uganda and Rwanda are the aggressors. Aggressors should not define for the Congo what is best, but rather it is for the Congo to define what it has to offer to its neighbor.

A lasting solution is to stop the silent annexation of Eastern Congo. The International Court of Justice has already weighed in on this matter when it ruled in 2005 that Congo is entitled to $10 billion in reparations due to Uganda�s looting of Congo�s natural resources and the commission of human rights abuses in the Congo. It would have in all likelihood ruled in the same fashion against Rwanda; however, Rwanda claimed to be outside the jurisdiction of the court.

The United States and Great Britain�s implication is becoming very clear. These two great powers consider Rwanda and Uganda their staunch allies and, some would argue, client states. These two countries have received millions of dollars of military aid, which, in turn, they use in Congo to cause destruction and death.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame is a former student at the U.S. military training base Fort Leavenworth and Yoweri Museveni�s son, Lt. Gen. Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, graduated from the same U.S. military college in the summer of 2008. Both the United States and Great Britain should follow the lead of the Dutch and Swedish governments, which have suspended their financial support to Rwanda.

With U.S. and British taxpayers� support, we now see an estimated 6 million people dead in Congo, hundreds of thousands of women systematically raped as an instrument of war and millions displaced.

A political solution will resolve the crisis, and part of that requires pressure on Rwanda in spite of Rwanda�s recent so-called �house arrest� of Laurent Nkunda. African institutions such as the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the African Union are primed to be more engaged in the Congo issue. Considering Congo�s importance to Africa, it is remarkable that they have been so anemic in regard to the Congo crisis for so long.

Rwanda�s leader, Paul Kagame, cannot feel as secure or be as arrogant as he has been in the past. One of his top aides was arrested in Germany as a result of warrants issued by a French court and there is almost global consensus that pressure must be put on him to cease his support of the destabilization of the Congo and its resultant humanitarian catastrophe.

In addition to pressure on Kagame, the global community should support the following policies:

1. Initiate an international tribunal on the Congo.

2. Work with the Congolese to implement a national reconciliation process; this could be a part of the international tribunal.

3. Work with the Congolese to assure that those who have committed war crimes or crimes against humanity are brought to justice.

4. Hold accountable corporations that are benefiting from the suffering and deaths in the Congo.

5. Make the resolution of the Congo crisis a top international priority.

Living is a right, not a privilege, and Congolese deaths must be honored by due process of the law. As the implication of the many parties in this conflict becomes clear, we should start firmly acknowledging that the conflict is a resource war waged by U.S. and British allies.

We call upon people of good will once again to advocate for the Congolese by following the prescriptions we have been outlining to end the conflict and start the new path to peace, harmony and an end to the exploitation of Congo�s wealth and devastation of its peoples.

Kambale Musavuli is spokesperson and student coordinator for Friends of the Congo. He can be reached at Kambale@friendsofthecongo.org.

Online Journal: NSA’s meta-data email surveillance program exposed

2009-02-11T18:51:00.000-08:00

NSA’s meta-data email surveillance program exposed
By Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writer

WMR has learned details of one of the most important components of the National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretapping program code named “STELLAR WIND.” The highly-classified STELLAR WIND program was initiated by the George W. Bush administration with the cooperation of major U.S. telecommunications carriers, including AT&T and Verizon.

The interception of text communications by STELLAR WIND was a major priority of the NSA program.

The major NSA system for intercepting text communications is called PINWALE. On September 15, 2008, WMR first reported on how PINWALE was used to target Russian e-mails: “Code-named PINWALE, the NSA e-mail surveillance system targets Russian government, military, diplomatic, and commercial email traffic and burrows into the text portions of the email to search for particular words and phrases of interest to NSA eavesdroppers.”

WMR has learned additional details of PINWALE. The system is linked to a number of meta-databases that contain e-mail, faxes, and text messages of hundreds of millions of people around the world and in the United States.

Informed sources have revealed to WMR that PINWALE can search these meta-databases using various parameters like date-time, group, natural language, IP address, sender and receipients, operating system, and other information embedded in the header. When an NSA analyst is looking for Persian or Arabic e-mails, the sender and recipients are normally foreign nationals, who are not covered by restrictions on eavesdropping on U.S. “persons” once imposed on NSA by United States Signals Intelligence Directive 18 (USSID 18). However, STELLAR WIND and PINWALE negated both USSID 18 and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 by permitting NSA analysts to read the e-mails, faxes, and text messages of U.S. persons when PINWALE search parameters included searches of e-mails in English. When English language text communications are retrieved, analysts read the text message content to determine whether it contains anything to do with terrorism. However, rather than being deleted, the messages are returned to the meta-databases.

Text message records in PINWALE, a system developed by NSA contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, are contained in three major meta-databases code-named LION HEART, LION ROAR, and LION FUSION.

Not only are text communications between U.S. persons in the United States and recipients abroad contained in the PINWALE meta-databases but text messages between U.S. persons within the United States are also held in the databases.

WMR reported on May 10, 2005, that Booz Allen is also the major contractor for an NSA database code named “FIRSTFRUITS” that tracked not only the articles of journalists but contained intercepts of their communications, “ . . . part of the upkeep of the [FIRSTFRUITS] system has been outsourced to outside contractors such as Booz Allen.”

The involvement of the telecommunications companies in STELLAR WIND and PINWALE was revealed when former AT&T technician Mark Klein leaked AT&T documents on the program in 2006. AT&T’s interception entailed NSA snooping equipment being placed within AT&T centers in San Francisco; Bridgeton, Missouri; San Diego; San Jose; Atlanta; Seattle; and Los Angeles.

The Obama administration recently appealed a decision by U.S. Judge Vaughn Walker of the U.S. Court for the Northern District of California who ruled that a lawsuit brought by the Al Haramain Islamic charity (Al Haramain v. Bush), in which the charity charges that it was the subject of illegal warrantless wiretapping under STELLAR WIND, could proceed.

WMR has previously reported that STELLAR WIND may have been used to prosecute Democratic governors and other Democratic officials around the country. WMR has received confirmation that when NSA analysts monitoring e-mails and other text messages, encountered information from PINWALE meta-databases that did not involve terrorism or foreign counterintelligence issues but did involve other possible criminal matters, NSA lawyers would determine whether such information should be turned over to Department of Justice criminal prosecutors. However, with information passed to WMR that NSA directors Michael Hayden and Keith Alexander were in total lockstep with the Bush-Cheney political agenda, with Alexander once boasting to a group of NSA employees that “I am a Rumsfeld man,” there is the real possibility that PINWALE data ended up in the hands of U.S. attorneys like Patrick Fitzgerald in his vendetta against deposed Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, and Alice Martin and Leura Canary in their Bush White House-directed political prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman.

If Fitzgerald’s legal brief against Blagojevich contains PINWALE-derived wiretap information it would explain why he has been unsuccessful in finding a grand jury in Chicago to indict Blagojevich. WMR was specifically told that e-mails between Washington and Chicago would be contained in PINWALE and that is something that could pose a problem for Fitzgerald in explaining where all his intercepts of Blagojevich originated. It may also explain why the Obama administration does not want details of STELLAR WIND to be exposed in Al Haramain v. Bush.

Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.

9/11 Bush Treason: Contact the Justice Department& W.H. Right Now!

2009-01-20T12:18:00.000-08:00

COMPLAINT

Notice of High Treason perpetrated by former President George Walker Bush and other members of his Administration relating to the Terrorist Attacks of September 11th, 2001 ("9/11").

[Now is the time to press our case for justice and the full disclosure of 9/11. Demand that Obama's Justice Department act on the known high treason perpetrated by Bush et. al. Keep pressure on by spreading the word and encouraging thousands (millions) of like-minded people to do the same.

Contacts:
White House
202-456-1111, 202-456-1414
http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/

Attorney General
202-353-1555,
AskDOJ@usdoj.gov

Inspector General
oig.hotline@usdoj.gov,
inspector.general@usdoj.gov

National Security Division
nsd.public@usdoj.gov

Additional contacts at end.]

1. Applicable law: US Code Title 18, Chapter 115, § 2382. Misprision of treason.

"Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States and having knowledge of the commission of any treason against them, conceals and does not, as soon as may be, disclose and make known the same to the President or to some judge of the United States, or to the governor or to some judge or justice of a particular State, is guilty of misprision of treason and shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than seven years, or both."

2. The "classification" by the former President, George W. Bush, of the activities of "certain foreign governments" which assisted and sponsored the 9/11 hijackers while they lived in the United States, amounts to "aid and comfort" to the "enemy," and therefore treason under the U.S. Constitution.

Evidence:

A) Statements by former Senator Bob Graham (FL), the chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, made on PBS Newshour, December 11, 2002:

"I was surprised at the evidence that there were foreign governments involved in facilitating the activities of at least some of the terrorists in the United States.

I am stunned that we have not done a better job of pursuing that to determine if other terrorists received similar support and, even more important, if the infrastructure of a foreign government assisting terrorists still exists for the current generation of terrorists who are here planning the next plots.

To me that is an extremely significant issue and most of that information is classified, I think overly-classified. I believe the American people should know the extent of the challenge that we face in terms of foreign government involvement. That would motivate the government to take action."

B) The FOREIGN OPERATIONS, EXPORT FINANCING, AND RELATED PROGRAMS
APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2004, Amendment No. 1994, from the Congressional Record, October 28, 2003:

"The amendment is as follows:

(Purpose: To urge the President to release information regarding
sources of foreign support for the 9-11 hijackers)

At the appropriate place, insert the following:
Sec. . Sense of the Senate on declassifying portions of
the Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 2001.
(a) Findings.--The Senate finds that--
(1) The President has prevented the release to the American public of 28 pages of the Joint Inquiry into Intelligence
Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 2001.
(2) The contents of the redacted pages discuss sources of foreign support for some of the September 11th hijackers while they were in the United States.
(3) The Administration's decision to classify this
information prevents the American people from having access to information about the involvement of certain foreign governments in the terrorist attacks of September 2001.
(...)
(b) Sense of the Senate.--It is the sense of the Senate
that in light of these findings the President should declassify the 28-page section of the Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the
Terrorist Attacks of September 2001 that deals with foreign sources of support for the 9-11 hijackers, and that only
those portions of the report that would directly compromise ongoing investigations or reveal intelligence sources and
methods should remain classified."

C) FBI documents released under the Freedom of Information Act, and published by INTELWIRE.COM, reveal that Omar Al Bayoumi, who lived with two of the alleged 9/11 hijackers and supported them financially, was an agent for the government of Saudi Arabia.

"An FBI memo details the phone records of Omar Al Bayoumi, a Saudi citizen who assisted hijackers Khalid Al-Midhar and Nawaf Al-Hazmi in relocating to San Diego in early 2000. Bayoumi helped them find an apartment and pay their rent and introduced them to people in the local community.

Bayoumi also kept in close contact with his apparent employer, the Saudi government. The exact nature of Bayoumi's employment has remained unclear, but numerous associates suspected him of being a Saudi intelligence officer.

Read the document: 2002-04-15: FBI Letterhead Memorandum, Omar Al Bayoumi Contacts With Saudi Government
http://intelfiles.egoplex.com/2002-04-15-FBI-LHM-omar-al-bayoumi2.pdf

(...)
Bayoumi was "employed by the Saudi government to monitor the activities of Saudi dissidents that resided in the U.S.," the memo states, according to "a prominent Islamic leader in San Diego."

Other FBI interviewees said Bayoumi was "an employee of the Saudi Arabian Government (who) traveled to mosques throughout the world to monitor and observe Saudi citizens for signs of dissident behavior."

Another source said Bayoumi "was connected with a Saudi Arabian company that is equivalent to the Federal Aviation Administration," and said he was paid $5,000 a month to be a student.

The memo below details Bayoumi's phone contacts with the Saudi government over slightly less than two months in 2000, around the time the hijackers arrived in San Diego. Phone records revealed Bayoumi called local Saudi officials, including the consulate in San Diego, 34 times. He called Saudi officials in Washington D.C. 141 times in the same period, according to the memo -- more than twice a day on average.

Calls appear to be directed to the Saudi Cultural Mission, the Saudi Education Mission, the Saudi Embassy in Washington, the Saudi Consulate in San Diego, the Saudi National Guard, and the Saudi Islamic Affairs Department.

Although the notation is unclear due to FBI redactions, it also appears Bayoumi called a U.S. Department of State diplomat."

D) The intelligence service of Pakistan, Inter-Services Intelligence, was accused in the Times of India newspaper, October 9, 2001, ("India helped FBI trace ISI-terrorist links") of ordering wire transfers in excess of $100,000 from their agent in Dubai UAE to Mohammad Atta in Florida. The chief of the Pakistani ISI resigned immediately as these revelations were made public in the press. This information has also been made "classified" by the former President, and no full accounting of these activities has been made available to the citizens of the United States.

"...top sources confirmed here on tuesday, that the [ISI chief] general lost his job because of the "evidence" india produced to show his links to one of the suicide bombers that wrecked the world trade centre. the us authorities sought his removal after confirming the fact that $100,000 were wired to wtc hijacker mohammed atta from pakistan by ahmad umar sheikh at the instance of gen mahumd. senior government sources have confirmed that india contributed significantly to establishing the link between the money transfer and the role played by the dismissed isi chief. while they did not provide details, they said that indian inputs, including sheikh’s mobile phone number, helped the fbi in tracing and establishing the link. a direct link between the isi and the wtc attack could have enormous repercussions. the us cannot but suspect whether or not there were other senior pakistani army commanders who were in the know of things. evidence of a larger conspiracy could shake us confidence in pakistan’s ability to participate in the anti-terrorism coalition. indian officials say they are vitally interested in the unravelling of the case since it could link the isi directly to the hijacking of the indian airlines kathmandu-delhi flight to kandahar last december. ahmad umar sayeed sheikh is a british national and a london school of economics graduate who was arrested by the police in delhi following a bungled 1994 kidnapping of four westerners, including an american citizen."

3) Treason is defined in the U.S. Constitution, Article III, Section 3:

"Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort..."

CONCLUSION

The overt actions of the former President of the United States to make "classified" the participation of "foreign governments" in the attacks of 9/11 2001 clearly amount to "aid and comfort" to the "enemy" as per the Constitutional definition of treason. Specifically, the governments of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and potentially others, have been implicated by credible evidence and by the statements of high-ranking US officials.

This hiding of the facts by the former President and his Administration amounts to a cover-up after the fact of the identities of the true sponsors of the September 11th attacks on America.

Therefore, former president George Walker Bush and other responsible members of his Administration are guilty of high treason according to the laws of this land. This most serious matter deserves a full investigation and prosecution immediately. In the words of former Senator Bob Graham:

"I believe the American people should know the extent of the challenge that we face in terms of foreign government involvement."

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The Facts About Hamas and the War on Gaza

2009-01-13T15:07:00.000-08:00

Seeing Through the Lies
The Facts About Hamas and the War on Gaza

By NORMAN FINKELSTEIN

The record is fairly clear. You can find it on the Israeli website, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs website. Israel broke the ceasefire by going into the Gaza and killing six or seven Palestinian militants. At that point—and now I’m quoting the official Israeli website—Hamas retaliated or, in retaliation for the Israeli attack, then launched the missiles.

Now, as to the reason why, the record is fairly clear as well. According to Ha’aretz, Defense Minister Barak began plans for this invasion before the ceasefire even began. In fact, according to yesterday’s Ha’aretz, the plans for the invasion began in March. And the main reasons for the invasion, I think, are twofold. Number one; to enhance what Israel calls its deterrence capacity, which in layman’s language basically means Israel’s capacity to terrorize the region into submission. After their defeat in July 2006 in Lebanon, they felt it important to transmit the message that Israel is still a fighting force, still capable of terrorizing those who dare defy its word.

And the second main reason for the attack is because Hamas was signaling that it wanted a diplomatic settlement of the conflict along the June 1967 border. That is to say, Hamas was signaling they had joined the international consensus, they had joined most of the international community, overwhelmingly the international community, in seeking a diplomatic settlement. And at that point, Israel was faced with what Israelis call a Palestinian peace offensive. And in order to defeat the peace offensive, they sought to dismantle Hamas.

As was documented in the April 2008 issue of Vanity Fair by the writer David Rose, basing himself on internal US documents, it was the United States in cahoots with the Palestinian Authority and Israel which were attempting a putsch on Hamas, and Hamas preempted the putsch. That, too, is no longer debatable or no longer a controversial claim.

The issue is can it rule in Gaza if Israel maintains a blockade and prevents economic activity among the Palestinians. The blockade, incidentally, was implemented before Hamas came to power. The blockade doesn’t even have anything to do with Hamas. The blockade came to—there were Americans who were sent over, in particular James Wolfensohn, to try to break the blockade after Israel redeployed its troops in Gaza.

The problem all along has been that Israel doesn’t want Gaza to develop, and Israel doesn’t want to resolve diplomatically the conflict, both the leadership in Damascus and the leadership in the Gaza have repeatedly made statements they’re willing to settle the conflict in the June 1967 border. The record is fairly clear. In fact, it’s unambiguously clear.

Every year, the United Nations General Assembly votes on a resolution entitled “Peaceful Settlement of the Palestine Question.” And every year the vote is the same: it’s the whole world on one side; Israel, the United States and some South Sea atolls and Australia on the other side. The vote this past year was 164-to-7. Every year since 1989—in 1989, the vote was 151-to-3, the whole world on one side, the United States, Israel and the island state of Dominica on the other side.

We have the Arab League, all twenty-two members of the Arab League, favoring a two-state settlement on the June 1967 border. We have the Palestinian Authority favoring that two-state settlement on the June 1967 border. We now have Hamas favoring that two-state settlement on the June 1967 border. The one and only obstacle is Israel, backed by the United States. That’s the problem.

Well, the record shows that Hamas wanted to continue the ceasefire, but only on condition that Israel eases the blockade. Long before Hamas began the retaliatory rocket attacks on Israel, Palestinians were facing a humanitarian crisis in Gaza because of the blockade. The former High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, described what was going on in Gaza as a destruction of a civilization. This was during the ceasefire period.

What does the record show? The record shows for the past twenty or more years, the entire international community has sought to settle the conflict in the June 1967 border with a just resolution of the refugee question. Are all 164 nations of the United Nations the rejectionists? And are the only people in favor of peace the United States, Israel, Nauru, Palau, Micronesia, the Marshall Islands and Australia? Who are the rejectionists? Who’s opposing a peace?

The record shows that in every crucial issue raised at Camp David, then under the Clinton parameters, and then in Taba, at every single point, all the concessions came from the Palestinians. Israel didn’t make any concessions. Every concession came from the Palestinians. The Palestinians have repeatedly expressed a willingness to settle the conflict in accordance with international law.

The law is very clear. July 2004, the highest judicial body in the world, the International Court of Justice, ruled Israel has no title to any of the West Bank and any of Gaza. They have no title to Jerusalem. Arab East Jerusalem, according to the highest judicial body in the world, is occupied Palestinian territory. The International Court of Justice ruled all the settlements, all the settlements in the West Bank, are illegal under international law.

Now, the important point is, on all those questions, the Palestinians were willing to make concessions. They made all the concessions. Israel didn’t make any concessions.

I think it’s fairly clear what needs to happen. Number one, the United States and Israel have to join the rest of the international community, have to abide by international law. I don’t think international law should be trivialized. I think it’s a serious issue. If Israel is in defiance of international law, it should be called into account, just like any other state in the world.

Mr. Obama has to level with the American people. He has to be honest about what is the main obstacle to resolving the conflict. It’s not Palestinian rejectionism. It’s the refusal of Israel, backed by the United States government, to abide by international law, to abide by the opinion of the international community.

And the main challenge for all of us as Americans is to see through the lies.
Norman Finkelstein is author of five books, including Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, Beyond Chutzpah and The Holocaust Industry, which have been translated into more than 40 foreign editions. He is the son of Holocaust survivors. This article is an edited extract of the views of Finkelstein given at DemocracyNow.org. His website is www.NormanFinkelstein.com

International Law is Clear: Genocide

2009-01-11T11:15:00.000-08:00

The United States Promotes Israeli Genocide Against the Palestinians

Prof. Francis A. Boyle
Global Research,
Saturday, Jan 11, 2008

(from “Tackling America’s Toughest Questions,” now at Amazon.com)

As long ago as October 19, 2000, the then United Nations Human Rights Commission (now Council) condemned Israel for inflicting “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity” upon the Palestinian people, most of whom are Muslims. The reader has a general idea of what a war crime is, so I am not going to elaborate upon that term here. But there are different degrees of heinousness for war crimes. In particular are the more serious war crimes denominated “grave breaches” of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Since the outbreak of the first Intifada in 1987, the world has seen those heinous war crimes inflicted every day by Israel against the Palestinian people living in occupied Palestine: e.g., willful killing of Palestinian civilians by the Israeli army and by Israel’s illegal paramilitary settlers. These Israeli “grave breaches” of the Fourth Geneva Convention mandate universal prosecution for the perpetrators and their commanders, whether military or civilian, including and especially Israel’s political leaders.

But I want to focus for a moment on Israel’s “crimes against humanity” against the Palestinian people—as determined by the U.N. Human Rights Commission itself, set up pursuant to the requirements of the United Nations Charter. What are “crimes against humanity”? This concept goes all the way back to the Nuremberg Charter of 1945 for the trial of the major Nazi war criminals in Europe. In the Nuremberg Charter of 1945, drafted by the United States Government, there was created and inserted a new type of international crime specifically intended to deal with the Nazi persecution of the Jewish people:

Crimes against humanity: namely, murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before or during the war, or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the country where perpetrated.

The paradigmatic example of “crimes against humanity” is what Hitler and the Nazis did to the Jewish people. This is where the concept of “crimes against humanity” came from. And this is what the U.N. Human Rights Commission determined that Israel is currently doing to the Palestinian people: crimes against humanity. Expressed in legal terms, this is just like what Hitler and the Nazis did to the Jews. That is the significance of the formal determination by the U.N. Human Rights Commission that Israel has inflicted “crimes against humanity” upon the Palestinian people. The Commission chose this well-known and long-standing legal term of art quite carefully and deliberately based upon the evidence it had compiled.

Furthermore, the Nuremberg “crimes against humanity” are the historical and legal precursor to the international crime of genocide as defined by the 1948 Genocide Convention. The theory here was that what Hitler and the Nazis did to the Jewish people was so horrific that it required a special international treaty that would codify and universalize the Nuremberg concept of “crimes against humanity.” And that treaty ultimately became the 1948 Genocide Convention.

Article II of the Genocide Convention defines the international crime of genocide in relevant part as follows:

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

….

As documented by Israeli historian Ilan Pappe in his seminal book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006), Israel’s genocidal policy against the Palestinians has been unremitting, extending from before the very foundation of the State of Israel in 1948, and is ongoing and even intensifying against the 1.5 million Palestinians living in Gaza. Zionism’s “final solution” to Israel’s much touted “demographic threat” allegedly posed by the very existence of the Palestinians has always been genocide.

Certainly, Israel and its predecessors-in-law—the Zionist agencies, forces, and terrorist gangs—have committed genocide against the Palestinian people that actually started on or about 1948 and has continued apace until today in violation of Genocide Convention Articles II(a), (b), and (c). For at least the past six decades, the Israeli government and its predecessors-in-law—the Zionist agencies, forces, and terrorist gangs—have ruthlessly implemented a systematic and comprehensive military, political, and economic campaign with the intent to destroy in substantial part the national, ethnical, racial, and different religious (Jews versus Muslims and Christians) group constituting the Palestinian people. This Zionist/Israeli campaign has consisted of killing members of the Palestinian people in violation of Genocide Convention Article II(a). This Zionist/Israeli campaign has also caused serious bodily and mental harm to the Palestinian people in violation of Genocide Convention Article II(b). This Zionist/Israeli campaign has also deliberately inflicted on the Palestinian people conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction in substantial part in violation of Article II(c) of the Genocide Convention.

Article I of the Genocide Convention requires all contracting parties such as the United States “to prevent and to punish” genocide. Yet to the contrary, historically the “Jewish” state’s criminal conduct against the Palestinians has been financed, armed, equipped, supplied and politically supported by the “Christian” United States. Although the United States is a founding sponsor of, and a contracting party to, both the Nuremberg Charter and the Genocide Convention, as well as the United Nations Charter, these legal facts have never made any difference to the United States when it comes to its blank-check support for Israel and their joint and severable criminal mistreatment of the Palestinians—truly the wretched of the earth!

The world has not yet heard even one word uttered by the United States and its NATO allies in favor of “humanitarian intervention” against Israel in order to protect the Palestinian people, let alone a “responsibility to protect” the Palestinians from Zionist/Israeli genocide. The United States, its NATO allies, and the Great Powers on the U.N. Security Council would not even dispatch a U.N. Charter Chapter 6 monitoring force to help protect the Palestinians, let alone even contemplate any type of U.N. Charter Chapter 7 enforcement actions against Israel – shudder the thought!. The doctrine of “humanitarian intervention” so readily espoused elsewhere when U.S. foreign policy goals are allegedly at stake has been clearly proved to be a joke and a fraud when it comes to stopping the ongoing and accelerating Israeli campaign of genocide against the Palestinian people.

Rather than rein in the Israelis—which would be possible just by turning off the funding pipeline—the United States government, the U.S. Congress, and U.S. taxpayers instead support the “Jewish” state to the tune of about 4 billion dollars per year, without whose munificence this instance of genocide – and indeed conceivably the State of Israel itself – would not be possible. What the world witnesses here is (yet another) case of “dishumanitarian intervention” or “humanitarian extermination” by the United States and Israel against the Palestinians and Palestine. In today’s world genocide pays so long as it is done at the behest of the United States and its de jure or de facto allies such as Israel.

Of course miracles can always happen. But I anticipate no fundamental change in America’s support for the Israeli campaign of genocide against the Palestinians during the tenure of the Obama/Clinton administration.

Israel's Big Lie

2009-01-10T13:46:00.000-08:00

What Humanitarian Crisis?

Livni's Big Lie

by Rannie Amiri
Global Research, January 10, 2009

“There is no humanitarian crisis in the [Gaza] Strip.” - Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, 1 January 2009.

In 1925, Adolf Hitler, writing in Mein Kampf, defined ‘The Big Lie’. He called it a lie so enormous that people “…would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.”

By now it should be obvious that Livni and other Israeli officials have decided to do just that; utilizing the same technique in service of their public relations campaign to justify the atrocities taking place in Gaza, they simultaneously claim they do not exist.

Indeed, it is yet another astonishing example of how practices from such an ignominious period of history have become incorporated into the military and propaganda armamentarium of the Israeli government and the behavior of the settler community, without even the batting of an eye to reflect its historical irony.

Take, for example, the recent riots by Israeli settlers in the Palestinian city of Al-Khalil, also known as Hebron. It is home to 200,000 Palestinians and 500 extremist settlers, protected day and night by Israeli soldiers. In early December and under the order of Israel’s High Court, they were evicted from a disputed building (quite gently of course) by those soldiers. During the confrontation between the two, a group of settlers went marauding through Hebron, shooting indiscriminately at Palestinian civilians while attempting to lynch others, setting cars on fire and burning down houses. A few weeks earlier, mosques in Hebron had been spray painted and desecrated with virulent anti-Islamic, anti-Arab slogans and houses had Stars of David painted on them. The reports and images of their December rampage were so disturbing that even Prime Minister Ehud Olmert could find no words to describe it other than calling it a “pogrom”.

In the case of the current Gaza onslaught, Livni’s remark in Paris that there was no humanitarian crisis in Gaza and everything is “completely as it should be” is an excellent example of The Big Lie. Its propagation has no doubt been aided by the Israeli government prohibiting journalists from entering Gaza (despite a High Court ruling ordering them to lift the ban).

But facts always run contrary to The Big Lie. According to the agencies of the United Nations and multiple international relief organizations:

Eighty percent of Gazans were dependent on humanitarian assistance during the crippling 18-month siege of Gaza but before the outbreak of hostilities.

Nearly all food shops have closed and there is currently a severe shortage of flour, rice, milk and canned goods.

One quarter to one half of Gaza’s 1.5 million people are without water. Seventy-five percent have been without electricity for over a week. Fuel is in short supply and with winter at hand, this has caused terrible hardship to the majority who live in unlit, unheated homes (and who are also forced to keep their windows open to prevent shattering glass from nearby explosions).

Cooking gas is extremely scarce since the tunnels into Egypt—the lifeline that kept Gaza barely afloat during the siege—were bombed.

Supplies of regular diesel—the only means hospitals have for running backup generators and which they now exclusively run on—are very low. According to the United Nations, these generators are “close to collapse.” Diesel is also needed to run water and sewage pumps; absolute necessities in providing adequate sanitation and preventing the outbreak of disease.

Even before the military campaign commenced, 75 percent of Gaza’s children were malnourished, 46 percent anemic and 30 percent suffered from stunted growth.

The United Nations Human Rights Council’s Special Rapporteur for the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories, Dr. Richard Falk, said that Israel was “… allowing only barely enough food and fuel to enter to stave off mass famine and disease.”

A hallmark of The Big Lie is its repetition.

“Hamas is trying to create the appearance of a humanitarian crisis, but together with the international organizations, we are preventing this from happening.”

- Colonel Moshe Levi, Commander of the Israeli army's Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration, 1 January 2009.

The reality:

John Ging, head of the United Nations Relief and Words Agency (UNRWA), the organization responsible for feeding half of Gaza’s 1.5 million residents:

“We have a catastrophe unfolding in Gaza for the civilian population. The people of Gaza City and the north now have no water. That comes on top of having no electricity. They're trapped, they're traumatized, they're terrorized by this situation … The inhumanity of this situation, the lack of action to bring this to an end, is bewildering to them” (Daily Telegraph, 5 Jan 2009).

“Gaza was already bad enough but what I saw today was utter devastation. It's just horrible to see this, horrible to see civilians caught up in this. Gaza went through ‘crisis’ a long time ago and what I saw today was a catastrophe in the making” (The Guardian, 5 Jan 2009).

Chris Gunness, spokesman for the UNRWA:

“When you look at the Israeli assertions about the humanitarian situation it is very hard to square this with the extraordinarily dire situation on the ground in Gaza. Any claims about human need at this stage need to be grounded in reality” (Daily Telegraph, 1 Jan 2009).

Maxwell Gaylard, UN Humanitarian Coordinator for the Palestinian Territories:

“By any definition this is a humanitarian crisis and more” (AFP, 3 Jan 2009).

“The WFP [World Food Programme] stopped sending food in there because their warehouses are full to the top.”

- Major Avital Leibovitz, military spokesman, 4 January 2009.

Christine Van Nieuwenhuyse, WFP representative in Gaza (reported to be “furious” at the above comment):

“The current situation in Gaza is appalling, and many basic food items are no longer available on the market” (Press TV, 2 Jan 2009).

Maxwell Gaylard, UN Humanitarian Coordinator for the Palestinian Territories:

“Conditions for parents and children in Gaza are dangerous and frightening. It is absolutely crucial that there is an end to the fighting. Without it, more civilians will continue to be killed. Without the violence stopping, it is extremely difficult to get food to people who need it” (The Scotsman, 3 Jan 2009).

“Electricity and communications are down over much of the strip both on account of lack of fuel and damage to critical infrastructure. Over a million people are currently without power, and over a quarter million without running water, some for up to six days” (Washington Post, 6 Jan. 2009).

The Associated Press, 4 Jan 2009:

And in the central Gaza refugee camp of Nusseirat, Munir Najar said he only had another day's worth of flour to feed his family of seven, but ventured out to find streets deserted and shops closed.

“There's not a loaf of bread to be found,” said Najar, 43.

“There is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza.”

- Israeli Cabinet Secretary Oved Yehezkel, 4 January 2009.

The New York Times, 5 Jan 2009:

Many here would dispute that [Yehezkel’s statement]. With power lines down, much of Gaza has no electricity. There is a dire shortage of cooking gas.

Dr. Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian who was allowed into Gaza last week to give emergency medical aid, and who has worked in many conflict zones, said the situation was the worst he had seen.

The hospital lacked everything, he said: monitors, anesthesia, surgical equipment, heaters and spare parts. Israeli bombing nearby blew out windows, and like the rest of Gaza, here the severely limited fuel supplies were running low.

Dominic Nutt, spokesman for Save the Children:

“We need to deliver more food and blankets to ensure that children do not die of hunger and cold” (Daily Telegraph, 5 Jan 2009).

Sadi Ali, project manager for the Palestinian Water Authority:

“There is a risk of the spread of all sorts of water borne diseases such as dysentery and cholera” (Daily Telegraph, 4 Jan 2009).

Pierre Krähenbühl, Director of Operations of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC):

“There is no doubt in my mind that we are dealing with a full blown and major crisis in humanitarian terms. The situation for the people in Gaza is extreme and traumatic as a result of ten days of uninterrupted fighting. In that sense, their situation has clearly become intolerable” (ICRC.org, 6 Jan 2009).

The truth, as always, runs in stark contrast to the utterances of those peddling the latest of Israel’s Big Lies. Just as in 1948 when the ‘people without a land for a land without a people’ myth was used as cover to expel 700,000 indigenous inhabitants from historical Palestine, The Big Lie is once again being employed to obfuscate the reality of the crimes being committed in Gaza.

Let us hope this time, they do not get away with it.

Rannie Amiri is an independent commentator on the Arab and Islamic worlds. He may be reached at: rbamiri@yahoo.com.

ICH: Holocaust Denied

2009-01-08T10:20:00.000-08:00

Holocaust Denied

The lying silence of those who know

By John Pilger

January 08, 2009 "Information Clearinghouse" -- -"When the truth is replaced by silence," the Soviet dissident Yevgeny Yevtushenko said, "the silence is a lie." It may appear the silence is broken on Gaza. The cocoons of murdered children, wrapped in green, together with boxes containing their dismembered parents and the cries of grief and rage of everyone in that death camp by the sea, can be viewed on al-Jazeera and YouTube, even glimpsed on the BBC. But Russia's incorrigible poet was not referring to the ephemeral we call news; he was asking why those who knew the why never spoke it and so denied it. Among the Anglo-American intelligentsia, this is especially striking. It is they who hold the keys to the great storehouses of knowledge: the historiographies and archives that lead us to the why.

They know that the horror now raining on Gaza has little to do with Hamas or, absurdly, "Israel's right to exist." They know the opposite to be true: that Palestine's right to exist was canceled 61 years ago and the expulsion and, if necessary, extinction of the indigenous people was planned and executed by the founders of Israel. They know, for example, that the infamous "Plan D" resulted in the murderous depopulation of 369 Palestinian towns and villages by the Haganah (Jewish army) and that massacre upon massacre of Palestinian civilians in such places as Deir Yassin, al-Dawayima, Eilaboun, Jish, Ramle and Lydda are referred to in official records as "ethnic cleansing." Arriving at a scene of this carnage, David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, was asked by a general, Yigal Allon, "What shall we do with the Arabs?" Ben-Gurion, reported the Israeli historian Benny Morris, "made a dismissive, energetic gesture with his hand and said, ‘Expel them'. The order to expel an entire population "without attention to age" was signed by Yitzhak Rabin, a future prime minister promoted by the world's most efficient propaganda as a peacemaker. The terrible irony of this was addressed only in passing, such as when the Mapan Party co-leader Meir Ya'ari noted "how easily" Israel's leaders spoke of how it was "possible and permissible to take women, children and old men and to fill the roads with them because such is the imperative of strategy … who remembers who used this means against our people during the [Second World] war … we are appalled."

Every subsequent "war" Israel has waged has had the same objective: the expulsion of the native people and the theft of more and more land. The lie of David and Goliath, of perennial victim, reached its apogee in 1967 when the propaganda became a righteous fury that claimed the Arab states had struck first. Since then, mostly Jewish truth-tellers such as Avi Schlaim, Noam Chomsky, the late Tanya Reinhart, Neve Gordon, Tom Segev, Yuri Avnery, Ilan Pappe and Norman Finklestein have dispatched this and other myths and revealed a state shorn of the humane traditions of Judaism, whose unrelenting militarism is the sum of an expansionist, lawless and racist ideology called zionism. "It seems," wrote the Israeli historian Ilan Pappe on 2 January, "that even the most horrendous crimes, such as the genocide in Gaza, are treated as desperate events, unconnected to anything that happened in the past and not associated with any ideology or system … Very much as the apartheid ideology explained the oppressive policies of the South African government, this ideology – in its most consensual and simplistic variety – has allowed all the Israeli governments in the past and the present to dehumanize the Palestinians wherever they are and strive to destroy them. The means altered from period to period, from location to location, as did the narrative covering up these atrocities. But there is a clear pattern [of genocide]."

In Gaza, the enforced starvation and denial of humanitarian aid, the piracy of life-giving resources such as fuel and water, the denial of medicines and treatment, the systematic destruction of infrastructure and the killing and maiming of the civilian population, 50 per cent of whom are children, meet the international standard of the Genocide Convention. "Is it an irresponsible overstatement," asked Richard Falk, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and international law authority at Princeton University, "to associate the treatment of Palestinians with this criminalized Nazi record of collective atrocity? I think not."

In describing a "holocaust-in-the making," Falk was alluding to the Nazis' establishment of Jewish ghettos in Poland. For one month in 1943, the captive Polish Jews led by Mordechaj Anielewiz fought off the German army and the SS, but their resistance was finally crushed and the Nazis exacted their final revenge. Falk is also a Jew. Today's holocaust-in-the-making, which began with Ben-Gurion's Plan D, is in its final stages. The difference today is that it is a joint US-Israeli project. The F-16 jet fighters, the 250-pound "smart" GBU-39 bombs supplied on the eve of the attack on Gaza, having been approved by a Congress dominated by the Democratic Party, plus the annual $2.4 billion in war-making "aid," give Washington de facto control. It beggars belief that President-elect Obama was not informed. Outspoken on Russia's war in Georgia and the terrorism in Mumbai, Obama's silence on Palestine marks his approval, which is to be expected, given his obsequiousness to the Tel Aviv regime and its lobbyists during the presidential campaign and his appointment of Zionists as his secretary of state, chief of staff and principal Middle East advisers. When Aretha Franklin sings "Think," her wonderful 1960s anthem to freedom, at Obama's inauguration on 21 January, I trust someone with the brave heart of Muntadar al-Zaidi, the shoe-thrower, will shout: "Gaza!"

The asymmetry of conquest and terror is clear. Plan D is now "Operation Cast Lead," which is the unfinished "Operation Justified Vengeance." The latter was launched by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2001 when, with Bush's approval, he used F-16s against Palestinian towns and villages for the first time. In the same year, the authoritative Jane's Foreign Report disclosed that the Blair government had given Israel the "green light" to attack the West Bank after it was shown Israel's secret designs for a bloodbath. It was typical of New Labor Party's enduring, cringing complicity in Palestine's agony. However, the 2001 Israeli plan, reported Jane's, needed the "trigger" of a suicide bombing which would cause "numerous deaths and injuries [because] the 'revenge' factor is crucial." This would "motivate Israeli soldiers to demolish the Palestinians." What alarmed Sharon and the author of the plan, General Shaul Mofaz, the Israeli Chief of Staff, was a secret agreement between Yasser Arafat and Hamas to ban suicide attacks. On 23 November, 2001, Israeli agents assassinated the Hamas leader, Mahmud Abu Hunud, and got their "trigger"; the suicide attacks resumed in response to his killing.

Something uncannily similar happened on 5 November last, when Israeli special forces attacked Gaza, killing six people. Once again, they got their propaganda "trigger." A ceasefire initiated and sustained by the Hamas government – which had imprisoned its violators – was shattered by the Israeli attack and homemade rockets were fired into what used to be Palestine before its Arab occupants were "cleansed." The On 23 December, Hamas offered to renew the ceasefire, but Israel's charade was such that its all-out assault on Gaza had been planned six months earlier, according to the Israeli daily Ha'aretz.

Behind this sordid game is the "Dagan Plan," named after General Meir Dagan, who served with Sharon in his bloody invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Now head of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence organization, Dagan is the author of a "solution" that has seen the imprisonment of Palestinians behind a ghetto wall snaking across the West Bank and in Gaza, effectively a concentration camp. The establishment of a quisling government in Ramallah under Mohammed Abbas is Dagan's achievement, together with a hasbara (propaganda) campaign relayed through a mostly supine, if intimidated western media, notably in America, that says Hamas is a terrorist organization devoted to Israel's destruction and to "blame" for the massacres and siege of its own people over two generations, long before its creation. "We have never had it so good," said the Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Gideon Meir in 2006. "The hasbara effort is a well-oiled machine." In fact, Hamas's real threat is its example as the Arab world's only democratically elected government, drawing its popularity from its resistance to the Palestinians' oppressor and tormentor. This was demonstrated when Hamas foiled a CIA coup in 2007, an event ordained in the western media as "Hamas's seizure of power." Likewise, Hamas is never described as a government, let alone democratic. Neither is its proposal of a ten-year truce as a historic recognition of the "reality" of Israel and support for a two-state solution with just one condition: that the Israelis obey international law and end their illegal occupation beyond the 1967 borders. As every annual vote in the UN General Assembly demonstrates, 99 per cent of humanity concurs. On 4 January, the president of the General Assembly, Miguel d'Escoto, described the Israeli attack on Gaza as a "monstrosity."

When the monstrosity is done and the people of Gaza are even more stricken, the Dagan Plan foresees what Sharon called a "1948-style solution" – the destruction of all Palestinian leadership and authority followed by mass expulsions into smaller and smaller "cantonments" and perhaps finally into Jordan. This demolition of institutional and educational life in Gaza is designed to produce, wrote Karma Nabulsi, a Palestinian exile in Britain, "a Hobbesian vision of an anarchic society: truncated, violent, powerless, destroyed, cowed … Look to the Iraq of today: that is what [Sharon] had in store for us, and he has nearly achieved it."

Dr. Dahlia Wasfi is an American writer on Palestine. She has a Jewish mother and an Iraqi Muslim father. "Holocaust denial is anti-Semitic," she wrote on 31 December. "But I'm not talking about World War Two, Mahmoud Ahmedinijad (the president of Iran) or Ashkenazi Jews. What I'm referring to is the holocaust we are all witnessing and responsible for in Gaza today and in Palestine over the past 60 years … Since Arabs are Semites, US-Israeli policy doesn't get more anti-Semitic than this." She quoted Rachel Corrie, the young American who went to Palestine to defend Palestinians and was crushed by an Israeli bulldozer. "I am in the midst of a genocide," wrote Corrie, "which I am also indirectly supporting and for which my government is largely responsible."

Reading the words of both, I am struck by the use of "responsibility." Breaking the lie of silence is not an esoteric abstraction but an urgent responsibility that falls to those with the privilege of a platform. With the BBC cowed, so too is much of journalism, merely allowing vigorous debate within unmovable invisible boundaries, ever fearful of the smear of anti-Semitism. The unreported news, meanwhile, is that the death toll in Gaza is the equivalent of 18,000 dead in Britain. Imagine, if you can.

Then there are the academics, the deans and teachers and researchers. Why are they silent as they watch a university bombed and hear the Association of University Teachers in Gaza plea for help? Are British universities now, as Terry Eagleton believes, no more than "intellectual Tescos, churning out a commodity known as graduates rather than greengroceries"?

Then there are the writers. In the dark year of 1939, the Third Writers' Congress was held at Carnegie Hall in New York and the likes of Thomas Mann and Albert Einstein sent messages and spoke up to ensure the lie of silence was broken. By one account, 3,500 jammed the auditorium and a thousand were turned away. Today, this mighty voice of realism and morality is said to be obsolete; the literary review pages affect an ironic hauteur of irrelevance; false symbolism is all. As for the readers, their moral and political imagination is to be pacified, not primed. The anti-Muslim Martin Amis expressed this well in Visiting Mrs. Nabokov: "The dominance of the self is not a flaw, it is an evolutionary characteristic; it is just how things are."

If that is how things are, we are diminished as a civilized society. For what happens in Gaza is the defining moment of our time, which either grants the impunity of war criminals the immunity of our silence, while we contort our own intellect and morality, or gives us the power to speak out. For the moment I prefer my own memory of Gaza: of the people's courage and resistance and their "luminous humanity," as Karma Nabulsi put it. On my last trip there, I was rewarded with a spectacle of Palestinian flags fluttering in unlikely places. It was dusk and children had done this. No one told them to do it. They made flagpoles out of sticks tied together, and a few of them climbed on to a wall and held the flag between them, some silently, others crying out. They do this every day when they know foreigners are leaving, believing the world will not forget them.

Nafeez Ahmed on Israel's War Crimes

2009-01-07T18:44:00.000-08:00

Gaza Catastrophe: Resource Conflict?

Natural Gas, Palestinian Elections, and Israel’s Subversion of the ‘Peace Process’

By Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed

January 07, 2009 "Information Clearinghouse" -- Israel claims it is fighting in Gaza to stop Hamas rocket-fire against Israel, the continuation of which constituted a flagrant breach of the six-months ceasefire. Hence, the objective of the military operation is limited by the aim of putting an end to the rocket-fire. In fact, the current outbreak of violence cannot be understood without analysing the asymmetries in military violence between the two parties; the dynamic structure of the conflict in the context of the character of the Israeli occupation; the central role of recent discoveries of substantial natural gas reserves in Gaza; and joint Anglo-American and Israeli attempts to monopolise the lucrative (and strategic) energy resources through a political process tied to a corrupt Palestinian Authority run by Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah Party. Hamas’ unprecedented victory in democratic elections in 2006 fundamentally threatened these plans. Operation Cast Lead, the concurrent Israeli military venture, was operationalised as a war plan in early 2008, and already finalised in detail as far back as 2001 by Israeli military intelligence. Its execution in late December 2008 into January 2009 is designed to head-off not only domestic Israeli elections, but more significantly, the outcome of further incoming Palestinian democratic elections likely to consolidate Hamas’ power, to permanently shift the balance of geopolitical and economic power in its favour. The long-term goal is the “cantonization” of the Occupied Territories making way for increased Israeli encroachment, and ultimately the escalation of Palestinian emigration.

Disproportionate Violence – 700: 4

Who bears primary responsible for the violence? You decide:

Nearly 700 Palestinians are dead, and 3,00 Palestinians injured. At least 13,000 civilians – half of them children – have been forced to flee their homes, now turned to rubble. (Save the Children Alliance, 02.01.09) Israeli human rights groups, like B’Tselem (The Israeli Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories) based in Jerusalem, confirm that the Israeli military is committing war crimes by intentionally targeting the civilian population in Gaza.

As I write, here comes news of example: “Israeli shelling kills dozens at UN school in Gaza” reports the London Guardian. More than 40 Palestinians were killed “after missiles exploded outside a UN school” in Jabaliya refugee camp by two Israeli tank shells, “where hundreds of people were sheltering from the continuing Israeli offensive.” Several dozen civilians were wounded. The school was clearly marked according to officials. And elsewhere, “at least 12 members of an extended family, including seven young children, were killed in an air strike on their house in Gaza City.” Hours earlier, “three young men – all cousins – died when the Israelis bombed another UN school, the Asma primary school in Gaza City,” where about 400 Palestinians had sought shelter “after fleeing their homes in Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza.”

As foreign journalists remain banned from entry into Gaza for for no plausible reason, Israeli human rights groups like B’Tselem are reporting extensively on the deliberate mass destruction of civilian life and infrastructure by Israeli forces. B’Tselem points out that Israeli officials have described how the entirety of Palestinian society can be considered as providing a support network to Hamas, and is therefore a legitimate target. But worse, the stories that B’Tselem brings to light, ignored by mainstream media pundits, are deeply horrifying. Here are some examples:

On 1 Jan. 2009, the Israeli army killed four women and eleven children in the Jabalya refugee camp. B’Tselem comments: “Such extensive loss of civilian life constitutes a grave breach of international humanitarian law and cannot be justified on military grounds.” (B’Tselem, 4.01.09) The Israeli human rights group documents dozens of eye-witness testimonies confirming. On 4^th January, “soldiers opened fire from a tank toward a passenger taxi outside Gaza City. The four children in the taxi witnessed their mother and another woman killed.” On 27^th December, two Palestinian toddlers “aged three and six, stepped out of their home to feed chickens in the yard. Before they reached the coop, the house was hit by the bombing of a nearby building.” The three year old was killed.

This barely scratches the surface of what has been done. Other Israeli human rights groups, UN agencies, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, Save the Children, along with dozens of other credible independent organizations confirm that Israeli forces are indiscriminately targeting the entire Palestinian civilian population, blowing up residential areas, destroying power plants, bombing sewage facilities, annihilating hospitals, pummelling roads, all into bloody rubble.

Compare the hundreds of Palestinians killed, thousands injured, and tens of thousands made homeless, to the fact that only 4 Israelis have been killed due to Hamas rocket-attacks since the outbreak of conflict in December. (Guardian, 03.01.09) Of course, these deaths are condemnable and outrageous. But they are not cases of massive, systematic massacres of civilians - which are precisely what Palestinians have been experiencing under Israeli politico-territorial domination for the last decade.

The Long-Term View - 5000: 14

Consider, for instance, that on 19^th September 2007, Israel’s security cabinet unanimously declared the entire Gaza Strip an “enemy entity” – solely due to ongoing Hamas rocket-fire. Yet that rocket-fire was and is a response to continued indiscriminate Israeli military bombardments. In January 2007, Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) staged three days of air strikes killing 30 Palestinians, and on the 17^th, the Gaza strip was placed under total closure. In response, over 150 rockets and mortars were fired into Israel between the 15^th and 18^th of that month by Hamas. Yet while these caused no injuries or fatalities to any Israelis, in that same period, nearly 700 Palestinians (including 224 civilians of whom 78 were children) were killed by Israeli extra-judicial executions.

Indeed, over the last 7 years of conflict, a grand total of 14 Israelis were killed by Hamas’ rocket-fire, compared to an estimated 5,000 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces with advanced American and British-supplied military equipment (Guardian, 30.12.08) “Among those killed in the first wave of strikes”, reports the Guardian, “were eight teenage students waiting for a bus and four girls from the same family in Jabaliya, aged one to 12 years old.”

Who Broke the Ceasefire?

It is a matter of historical record that the tentative six-month ceasefire was broken by Israel. On 4^th November 2008, Israeli forces raided Gaza late at night killing 6 Palestinians, eliciting Hamas rocket-fire. (Guardian, 05.11.08) By late December, Israel called for a 48-hour truce in retaliatory attacks. An official from the UN Relief and Works Agency reported that Israel flagrantly violated the lull, exploiting the opportunity to drop 100 tonnes of bombs on Hamas government installations. (Ha'aretz, 30.12.08)

Root Cause of Palestinian Resistance: Structural Genocide in the Occupied Territories

After Hamas came to power in democratic elections, Israel imposed a brutal siege on Gaza in 2005, denying 1.5 million Palestinians electricity, fuel, food imports, medical supplies, and vital maintenance goods and spare parts. As water and sanitation services deteriorated, hunger and ill-health intensified, and mortality rates increased. International aid agencies like Oxfam warned of a major public health crisis.

The UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories, Richard Falk, said that the siege of Gaza warned that the Israeli siege of Gaza, threatening the lives of an entire civilian population, expressed genocidal intent:

“Is it an irresponsible overstatement to associate the treatment of Palestinians with this criminalized Nazi record of collective atrocity? I think not. The recent developments in Gaza are especially disturbing because they express so vividly a deliberate intention on the part of Israel and its allies to subject an entire human community to life-endangering conditions of utmost cruelty. The suggestion that this pattern of conduct is a holocaust-in-the-making represents a rather desperate appeal to the governments of the world and to international public opinion to act urgently to prevent these current genocidal tendencies from culminating in a collective tragedy... But it would be unrealistic to expect the UN to do anything in the face of this crisis, given the pattern of US support for Israel and taking into account the extent to which European governments have lent their weight to recent illicit efforts to crush Hamas as a Palestinian political force.”

“Here’s One I Prepared Earlier…”

The siege was a strategy to prepare the ground for a protracted military operation, known as “Cast Lead”. Although justified on the grounds of stopping Hamas rocket-fire, the operation was planned over six months before the launch of the operation at the end of 2008.

Canadian analyst Professor Michel Chossudovsky from the University of Ottawa has revealed that Operation Cast Lead is in fact the legacy of “a broader military-intelligence agenda first formulated by the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2001”, aiming to produce a “planned humanitarian disaster,” designed to inflict mass civilian casualties and terror – that is, to weaken resistance, increase Israeli control, and encourage Palestinian emigration. Contrary to Israeli official rhetoric, military targets are secondary to this principal objective.

In this respect, operation beginning in December 08 actually implements what was known as the “Dagan Plan” in 2001 - Operation Justified Vengeance, named after known its founder, retired general and current Mossad commander, Meir Dagan. The operation planned to destroy “the infrastructure of the Palestinian leadership” and collect the arms of “various Palestinian forces and expelling or killing its military leadership.” The cumulative impact of this strategy would be to eliminate the viability of Gazan political and military resistance to Israeli penetration, permitting the forcible “cantonization” of the Occupied Territories under the nominal rule of the politically-coopted Fatah faction.

Hints that the scope of the operation, already killing and injuring thousands of Palestinian civilians, would be far broader than hitherto admitted, came when Deputy Defence Minister Matan Vilnai told Israeli Army Radio that the Palestinians would “bring upon themselves a bigger Holocaust because we will use all our might to defend ourselves.”

Post-1999: Gaza as Locus of Resource Conflict

The question, of course, is why now? Pundits have pointed at the telling coincidence of imminent Israeli elections, requiring the Olmert cabinet to find new ways to regain some semblance of credibility after the disastrous Hizbullah defeat in southern Lebanon, not to mention the impact of domestic scandals. Yet even more significant is the role of imminent Palestinian elections. As of September 2008, Israeli political observes noted an erupting “constitutional crisis” in the Occupied Territories due to disagreement “between Hamas and Fatah over when the next Palestinian elections will be held.” Hamas officials stated that they would “not acknowledge Abu Mazen’s legitimacy as President of the Palestinian Authority (PA) after January 2009, when it believes his term in office is due to finish.” According to Hamas, “new elections should be held in January 09′ since according to the PA’s Basic Law (which also serves as its temporary constitution) Abu Mazen finishes his Presidential term after 4 years.” In the event of failure to do so, the Presidency “temporarily passes to the Speaker of the Parliament, Abd al-‘Aziz Dweik.” As he is currently imprisoned by Israeli authorities, Hamas would resort to appointing Dweik’s deputy “who is also a Hamas member.”

Given the growing weakness of Abbas and the increasing popularity of Hamas, it was far from likely that the PA would be able to forestall elections until January 2010, as it had wanted to, without severe recriminations and domestic opposition. Both presidential and parliamentary elections were therefore likely in 2009, and would have allowed Hamas to consolidate its power in the Occupied Territories.

Israeli military and policy planners clearly recognized that this would create significant difficulties for Israel’s own plans for the Occupied Territories. A decade back, the British the oil firm BG International discovered a huge deposit of natural gas just off the Gaza coast, containing 1.2 trillion cubic feet of gas valued at over $4 billion. Controlling security over air and water around Gaza, Israel quickly moved to negotiate a deal with BG to access Gaza’s natural gas at cheap rates.

The incentives for Israel are obvious – as the Telegraph reports: “Israel’s indigenous gas fields - north of the Gaza Marine field - could run out within a few years and the only other long-term source will be a pipeline from neighbouring Egypt.”

The British Foreign Office, described the reserves as “by far the most valuable Palestinian natural resource.” Tel Aviv journalist Arthur Neslen cites an informed British source saying, “The UK and US, who are the major players in this deal, see it as a possible tool to improve relations between the PA and Israel. It is part of the bargaining baggage.” The project could provide up to 10 per cent of the Israel’s energy needs, at around half the price the same gas would cost from Egypt. The Gaza Strip would be effectively circumvented, as the gas would be piped directly onshore to Ashkelon in Israel. Neslen reports another informed source noting “an obvious linkage” between the BG-Israel deal and “attempts to bolster the Olmert-Abbas political process.” Yet this process is designed precisely to marginalise the Palestinian people, as Neslen reports that “up to three-quarters of the $4bn of revenue raised might not even end up in Palestinian hands at all. While the PIF officially disputes the percentages, it will provide no others for fear of a public backlash.” The “preferred option” of the US an UK is that the gas revenues would be held in “an international bank account over which Abbas would hold sway.” No wonder then, that Ziad Thatha, the Hamas economic minister, had denounced the deal as “an act of theft” that “sells Palestinian gas to the Zionist occupation.”

Things didn’t go quite according to plan. In fact, before any deal could be finalised, Hamas won the 2006 elections to the Palestinian Legislative Council, provoking a bitter power struggle between Hamas and the pro-west Fatah, fuelled by the input of US and Israeli arms to the latter. Ultimately, the Palestinian Authority split in 2007, with Hamas taking control of Gaza and Fatah taking control of West Bank. Having been excluded from the US-UK brokered gas deal between Israel and the PA, one of the first things that Hamas did after getting elected was to declare that the natural gas deal was void, and would have to be renegotiated.

With Hamas declaring the constitutional imperative to hold elections in 2009, as early as January if possible, Israeli military and policy planners recognized the probability of a Hamas win – with all its political implications. At one time even stating its willingness to recognise Israel's right to exist within its 1967 borders, a consolidated Hamas government in control of Gaza’s natural resources would fundamentally alter the balance of power in the region, granting Palestinians the prospects of sustained economic growth, foreign investment, unprecedented infrastructure development, and thereby the prospect of a far more equal relationship with Israel, who in coming years needs to increasingly diversify energy supplies. Meanwhile Israel’s original Anglo-America sponsored plans for the Occupied Territories – a docile Fatah-controlled patchwork of underdeveloped cantonized Bantustans whose natural resources are controlled by Israel and profited by Anglo-American companies – would be thrown into the sea.

Israeli Military Objectives

Pundits, slavishly quoting Israeli defence sources, claim that Israel is trying to stop the Hamas rocket-fire, and will keep the operation rolling until they believe that they have degraded Hamas military capabilities sufficiently so as to forever prevent Hamas from firing rockets at Israel again. Ever. Failing this, pundits tend to be confused about the scope of Israel’s objectives, noting that the state aim is rather vague and intrinsically impossible to measure.

Given the preceding analysis, Israel’s official war aim is difficult to take seriously. On the contrary, there is thus little doubt that Operation Cast Lead is aimed at obliterating Hamas as a viable source of politico-military resistance in the Palestinian Territories, paving the way for the “cantonization” of the latter under the erection of the corrupt Abbas-led PA, before imminent 2009 Palestinian elections could consolidate Hamas’ socio-political entrenchment. The operation thus has two major objectives:

1) The short-term objective is to allow Israeli and Anglo-American unchallenged monopolisation of the Gaza gas reserves, and continued apartheid-style domination of the Territories.

2) The long-term objective is to create permanent conditions facilitating Israel’s re-encroachment on the Territories, encouraging Palestinian emigration and expulsion from their homes, and absorbing their remaining lands under renewed Israeli settler-colonisation programmes.

The attack on Gaza is, therefore, a war on democracy; a war on the right of peoples to self-determination; a war on the right of peoples’ to utilise their own resources for their own benefit. It continues and extends the policies of repression and discrimination perpetrated by Israel in the Occupied Territories since 1948, when three quarters of a million Palestinians were forced from their homes, and hundreds massacred, by Israeli forces in the Nakba (Catastrophe). Since then, Israel has continued to violate UN resolutions, attempted to grab as much territory as possible from the Palestinians, denied them the right to statehood and self-determination, and instituted racist laws to deprive them of civil liberties and human rights. Even Israeli officials like Ami Ayalon, the retired head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security service, have condemned these policies as a form of “apartheid”: “The things a Palestinian has to endure, simply coming to work in the morning, is a long and continuous nightmare that includes humiliation bordering on despair… We have to decide soon what kind of democracy we want here. The present model integrates apartheid and is not commensurate with Judaism.” (Ma’ariv, 05.12.00)

Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine is supported by the US, Britain, and Western Europe, through financial aid, extensive supplies of arms and military equipment, diplomatic support. The global social justice movement needs to extend its support for Gaza far beyond marching and demonstrations, by pressuring media, government and civil society institutions to recognize that the Gaza crisis is an outcome of long-term policies that can only be understood in the context of recognizing the reality of Israel as a Setter-Colonial Apartheid regime sponsored by Anglo-American power.

Thus, the global social justice movement should look to widening and deepening public understanding of the origins of the current crisis in the contemporary conjuncture of the global imperial system. Yet just as South African apartheid required a massive international campaign of diplomatic and economic boycotting to bring it down, so too will the Israeli Settler-Colonial Apartheid regime require a comprehensive campaign of diplomatic and economic boycotts to weaken the nexus that ties Anglo-American power to Israel, and move toward a meaningful resolution of the conflict based on democracy and equality for Jews and non-Jews, together.

Where can we start, practically? An outstanding example is to call for the establishment of an International Criminal Tribunal for Israel (ICTI) under UN Charter Article 22, as has been advocated by the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC), a London-based NGO with Special Consultative Status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council. As IHRC Chairman Massoud Shadjareh observed, “The setting up of such a tribunal is long-overdue, and is desperately needed to address the war crimes perpetrated not only in the current attacks on Gaza but in previous campaigns against the Lebanese and Palestinians. The relevant procedures and precedents are in place. It is time for the UN to act if it hopes to regain a shred of credibility amongst the outraged peoples of the world.” The IHRC's call for a tribunal resonates with numerous comments from independent experts on Israeli war crimes, such as Francis Boyle, Professor of International Law at the University of Illinois:

“The establishment of ICTI would provide some small degree of justice to the victims of Israeli war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide against the Peoples of Lebanon and Palestine--just as the ICTY has done in the Balkans. Furthermore, the establishment of ICTI by the U.N. General Assembly would serve as a deterrent effect upon Israeli leaders such as Prime Minister Olmert, Foreign Minister Livni, Defense Minister Barak , Chief of Staff Ashkenazi and Israel's other top generals that they will be prosecuted for their further infliction of international crimes upon the Lebanese and the Palestinians.”

So here’s something you can do to make the establishment of an ICTI a real possibility – write to the UN General Assembly President, demanding the creation of an Israeli war crimes tribunal under UN Charter Article 22.

Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, Executive Director Institute for Policy Research & Development

ICH - Real History / Real Hypocrisy: Terrorism and the Double Standard

2009-01-02T12:47:00.001-08:00

How Hypocrisy on 'Terrorism' Kills

By Robert Parry

January 01, 2009 "Consortium News" Israel, a nation that was born out of Zionist terrorism, has launched massive airstrikes against targets in Gaza using high-tech weapons produced by the United States, a country that often has aided and abetted terrorism by its client military forces, such as Chile's Operation Condor and the Nicaraguan contras, and even today harbors right-wing Cuban terrorists implicated in blowing up a civilian airliner.

Yet, with that moral ambiguity excluded from the debate, the justification for the Israeli attacks, which have killed at least 364 people, is the righteous fight against "terrorism," since Gaza is ruled by the militant Palestinian group, Hamas.

Hamas rose to power in January 2006 through Palestinian elections, which ironically the Bush administration had demanded. However, after Hamas won a parliamentary majority, Israel and the United States denounced the outcome because they deem Hamas a "terrorist organization."

Hamas then wrested control of Gaza from Fatah, a rival group that once was considered "terrorist" but is now viewed as a U.S.-Israeli partner, so it has been cleansed of the "terrorist" label.

Unwilling to negotiate seriously with Hamas because of its acts of terrorism - which have included firing indiscriminate short-range missiles into southern Israel - the United States and Israel sat back as the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza worsened, with 1.5 million impoverished Palestinians packed into what amounts to a giant open-air prison.

When Hamas ended a temporary cease-fire on Dec. 19 because of a lack of progress in those negotiations and began lobbing its little missiles into Israel once more, the Israeli government reacted on Saturday with its lethal "shock and awe" firepower - even though no Israelis had been killed by the post-cease-fire missiles launched from Gaza. [Since Saturday, four Israelis have died in more intensive Hamas missile attacks.]

Israel claimed that its smart bombs targeted sites related to the Hamas security forces, including a school for police cadets and even regular policemen walking down the street. But it soon became clear that Israel was taking an expansive view of what was part of the Hamas military infrastructure, with Israeli bombs taking out a television station and a university building as well as killing a significant number of civilians.

As the slaughter continued on Monday, Israeli officials confided to Western journalists that the war plan was to destroy the vast support network of social and other programs that undergird Hamas's political clout.

"There are many aspects of Hamas, and we are trying to hit the whole spectrum, because everything is connected and everything supports terrorism against Israel," a senior Israeli military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the Washington Post.

"Hamas's civilian infrastructure is a very, very sensitive target," added Matti Steinberg, a former top adviser to Israel's domestic security service. "If you want to put pressure on them, this is how." [Washington Post, Dec. 30, 2008]

Since the classic definition of "terrorism" is the use of violence against civilians to achieve a political goal, Israel would seem to be inviting an objective analysis that it has chosen its own terrorist path. But it is clearly counting on the U.S. news media to continue wearing the blinders that effectively limit condemnations about terrorism to people and groups that are regarded as Washington's enemies.

Whose Terrorism?

As a Washington-based reporter for the Associated Press in the 1980s, I once questioned the seeming bias that the U.S.-based wire service applied to its use of the word "terrorist" when covering Middle East issues. A senior AP executive responded to my concerns with a quip. "Terrorist is the word that follows Arab," he said.

Though meant as a lighthearted riposte, the comment clearly had a great deal of truth to it. It was easy to attach "terrorist" to any Arab attack - even against a military target such as the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983 after the Reagan administration had joined hostilities against Muslim forces by having U.S. warships lob shells into Lebanese villages.

But it was understood that different rules on the use of the word "terrorism" applied when the terrorism was coming from "our side." Then, no American reporter with any sense of career survival would think of injecting the word "terrorist" whatever the justification.

Even historical references to acts of terrorism - such as the brutal practice by American revolutionaries in the 1770s of "tar and feathering" civilians considered sympathetic to the British Crown or the extermination of American Indian tribes - were seen as somehow diluting the moral righteousness against today's Islamic terrorists and in favor of George W. Bush's "war on terror."

Gone, too, from the historical narrative was the fact that militant Zionists employed terrorism as part of their campaign to establish Israel as a Jewish state. The terrorism included killings of British officials who were administering Palestine under an international mandate as well as Palestinians who were driven violently from their land so it could be claimed by Jewish settlers.

One of the most famous of those terrorist attacks was the 1946 bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem where British officials were staying. The attack, which killed 91 people including local residents, was carried out by the Irgun, a terrorist group run by Menachem Begin who later founded the Likud Party and rose to be Israel's prime minister.

Another veteran of the campaign of Zionist terrorism was Yitzhak Shamir, who also became a Likud leader and eventually prime minister.

In the early 1990s, as I was waiting to interview Shamir at his Tel Aviv office, I was approached by one of his young female assistants who was dressed in a gray and blue smock with a head covering in the traditional Hebrew style.

As we were chatting, she smiled and said in a lilting voice, "Prime Minister Shamir, he was a terrorist, you know." I responded with a chuckle, "yes, I'm aware of the prime minister's biography."

Blind Spot

To maintain one's moral purity in denouncing acts of terror by U.S. enemies, one also needs a large blind spot for recent U.S. history, which implicates U.S. leaders repeatedly in tolerance or acts of terrorism.

For instance, in 1973, after a bloody U.S.-backed coup overthrew the leftist Chilean government, the new regime of Gen. Augusto Pinochet joined with other South American dictatorships to sponsor an international terrorist organization called Operation Condor which assassinated political dissidents around the world.

Operation Condor mounted one of its most audacious actions on the streets of Washington in 1976, when Pinochet's regime recruited Cuban-American terrorists to detonate a car bomb that killed Chile's former foreign minister Orlando Letelier and an American co-worker, Ronni Moffitt. The Chilean government's role immediately was covered up by the CIA, then headed by George H.W. Bush. [For details, see Robert Parry's Secrecy & Privilege.]

Only weeks later, a Venezuela-based team of right-wing Cubans - under the direction of Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles - blew a Cubana Airliner out of the sky, killing 73 people. Bosch and Posada, a former CIA operative, were co-founders of CORU, which was described by the FBI as "an anti-Castro terrorist umbrella organization."

Though the U.S. government soon learned of the role of Bosch and Posada in the Cubana airline attack - and the two men spent some time in a Venezuelan jail - both Bosch and Posada since have enjoyed the protection of the U.S. government and particularly the Bush Family.

Rebuffing international demands that Bosch and Posada be held accountable for their crimes, the Bushes - George H.W., George W. and Jeb - have all had a hand in making sure these unrepentant terrorists get to live out their golden years in the safety and comfort of the United States.

In the 1980s, Posada even crossed over into another U.S.-backed terrorist organization, the Nicaraguan contras. After escaping from Venezuela, he was put to work in 1985 by Oliver North's contra-support operation run out of Ronald Reagan's National Security Council.

The Nicaraguan contras were, in effect, a narco-terrorist organization that partially funded its operations with proceeds from cocaine trafficking, a secret that the Reagan administration worked hard to conceal along with the contras' record of murder, torture, rape and other crimes in Nicaragua. [See Parry's Lost History.]

President Reagan joined, too, in fierce PR campaigns to discredit human rights investigators who documented massive atrocities by U.S. allies in Central America in the 1980s - not only the contras, but also the state terrorism of the Salvadoran and Guatemalan security forces, which engaged in wholesale slaughters in villages considered sympathetic to leftist insurgents.

Generally, the major U.S. news outlets treaded very carefully when allegations arose about terrorism by "our side."

When some brave journalists, like New York Times correspondent Raymond Bonner, wrote about politically motivated killings of civilians in Central America, they faced organized retaliation by right-wing advocacy groups which often succeeded in damaging or destroying the reporters' careers.

Double Standards

Eventually, the American press corps developed an engrained sense of the double standards. Moral outrage could be expressed when acts of terrorism were committed by U.S. enemies, while studied silence - or nuanced concern - would be in order when the crimes were by U.S. allies.

So, while the U.S. news media had no doubt that the 9/11 terrorist attacks justified invading Afghanistan, there was very little U.S. media criticism when President Bush inflicted his "shock and awe" assault on Iraq, a war that has resulted in hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths.

Though many Muslims and others around the world have denounced Bush's Iraq invasion as "state terrorism," such a charge would be considered far outside the mainstream in the United States. Instead, Iraqi insurgents are often labeled "terrorists" when they attack U.S. troops inside Iraq. The word "terrorist" has become, in effect, a geopolitical curse word.

Despite the long and bloody history of U.S.-Israeli participation in terrorism, the U.S. news media continues its paradigm of pitting the U.S.-Israeli "good guys" against the Islamic "bad guys." One side has the moral high ground and the other is in the moral gutter. [For more on the U.S. media's one-sided approach, see the analysis by Greg Mitchell of Editor & Publisher.]

Any attempt to cite the larger, more ambiguous and more troubling picture draws accusations from defenders of U.S.-Israeli actions, especially the neoconservatives, of what they call "moral equivalence" or "anti-Semitism."

Yet it is now clear that acquiescence to a double standard on terrorism is not just a violation of journalistic ethics or an act of political cowardice; it is complicity in mass murder. Without the double standard, it is hard to envision how the bloodbaths - in Iraq (since 2003), in Lebanon (in 2006) and in Gaza (today) - would be possible.

Hypocrisy over the word "terrorism" is not an innocent dispute over semantics; it kills.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book ,Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat. His two previous books are Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth'.

PROJECT CENSORED 2009

2008-12-31T13:35:00.000-08:00

ISRAEL'S CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY IN GAZA

2008-12-30T16:18:00.000-08:00

What Humanitarian Crisis?

Livni's Big Lie

by Rannie Amiri
Global Research

Holocaust Denied
The lying silence of those who know
By John Pilger

Gaza Catastrophe: Resource Conflict?

Natural Gas, Palestinian Elections, and Israel’s Subversion of the ‘Peace Process’

By Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed

Gaza's One-Sided Images
By BRIAN CLOUGHLEY

Q&A: Israel Bars Credible Observers from Gaza
Thalif Deen Interviews U.N. Human Rights Expert RICHARD FALK

Party to Murder
by Chris Hedges

Israel’s ‘Crime Against Humanity’

Chris Hedges

MEDUSA, INDEED

2008-12-27T15:09:00.000-08:00

Crimes of the State Blog

"Conspiracism is raising its Medusa’s head again, her lethal visage wreathed with hissing absurdities, immobilizing judgement, melting intellect to pumice." --Alexander Cockburn (ignoring all evidence that is contrary to his irrational biases)

Blather at new heights of cognitive dissonance over at CounterPunch this weekend. Cockburn uses the term "conspiracism", as if that were a real thing, to mock any and all comers, even in a piece about the minutiae of some Wall Street fraud (Bernie Madoff).

But how can he get away with this childish mocking about the JFK assassination, without having to address even one piece of evidence at all?

Here is the entirety of what Cockburn says about "conspiracism" and the JFK assassination in that piece:

"Journalist Russ Baker suggests in a new book, Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, the Powerful Forces That Put It In The White House, And What Their Influence Means for America, “the strong possibility” (I quote from a respectful resume of his conclusions) that the 41st president, G.H.W.Bush, father of the present resident at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, “was involved in assassinating President Kennedy, and that Bush was involved in staging the Watergate break-in (and the break-in at Dan Ellsberg's psychiatrist's) with the purpose of having these break-ins exposed and the blame placed on President Nixon.”

We’re back with the old notion of a secret, all-powerful permanent government, engendered in the WASP-nest of Skull and Bones, headquartered in Langley and locked in alternate collusion and combat with another permanent secret all-powerful government, headquartered in Zion and, if we are to believe the conspiracists, exultant at this hour at the tremendous coup of Bernie Madoff’s supposed victims."

No, idiot. We're "back" at looking at shady cia-connected characters and what they were doing in the 1960s and 70s. Cockburn uses Bush's status as former president as some kind of legal defense which automatically places him on the right side of the law. Quite odd for a left wing, revolutionary rag like CounterPunch. No?

You would think, from Cockburn's tone, that there was no controversy surrounding the JFK assassination. Is that the audience he's preaching to? Because Noam Chomsky accepts the Warren Commission, that makes it an honest investigation, magic bullet and all? Is that what Cockburn is shoveling?

This is beyond ridiculous. Cockburn feels no need to back up anything he says, and like Bill O'Reilly, or Rush Limbaugh, can simply sneer and mock with impunity.

The US Congress, by the way, also came to the conclusion that there was most likely a conspiracy to kill Kennedy (while continuing to white-wash and protect the guilty). This was 30 years ago, and yet still to this day, the term "conspiracism" is wielded like a rubber chicken.

Cockburn is a dishonest propagandist, apparently shilling for the criminal deep state. He makes no attempt to get at the truth of the matters, yet takes fevered sides, and attempts with hystrionics and ridicule to paint the opposition as insane. This is a recurring pattern, not an isolated incident.

Recall that Cockburn investigated CIA connected drug smuggling that actually happened (conspiracy) during the Iran Contra period. That's a very dangerous road to take. Did he go too far? Was he warned off? Is he in fear for his life, and is he now in the position of taking orders when they arrive regarding certain no-touch subjects?

Cockburn's book Whiteout: CIA, Drugs and the Press is available at Amazon -- but is conspicuously removed and absent from CounterPunch and their books section...

Where is the CounterPunch equivalent to Daniel Hopsicker's explosive series on CIA connected planes dropping out of the sky in Mexico full of cocaine?

Nothing of the sort appears in CounterPunch these days.

Have I solved it?

This does not absolve Cockburn for his dishonest propaganda. He doesn't have to be so accomodating at demonizing "conspiracy theories" for his handlers. But, perhaps, he does it so ineptly and blatantly that one could easily see through the charade if one wanted to research a few basic facts?

I'm going to have a drink and toast Alexander Cockburn, for at least making it entertaining.

http://crimesofthestate.blogspot.com/

VISA EXPRESS

2008-12-26T12:37:00.000-08:00

[More smoking guns among the smoking ruins. "Visa Express" was a real program instituted to allow Saudis to obtain US visas through their travel agents, instead of having to appear at the US embassy. It was used by most of the alleged 9/11 hijackers, in a fashion very much like that described by former State Department official Michael Springmann -- in order ot allow "unqualified applicants" like those on terrorist watchlists, to enter the USA "legally." This is highly damning evidence directly related to the treason of 9/11/01.]

Thanks to www.historycommons.org

September 10, 2000: Hijacker Hanjour’s Visa Application Rejected
9/11 hijacker Hani Hanjour applies for a US visa at the US consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Hanjour, who has already spent a good deal of time in the US (see October 3, 1991-February 1992, Spring 1996, October 1996-December 1997, and 1998), uses a passport issued on July 24, 2000. His application is incomplete, as he says he is a student, but fails to give his school’s name and address. His application is denied as he says he wants to stay for three years, raising concerns he might become an immigrant. After his application is screened, he is referred to a consular officer for an interview. Hanjour says he wants to attend flight school in the US, changing his status from “student” to “tourist” after arrival. However, the officer denies the visa application “because he has been in the States long enough to decide what he wanted.” Hanjour will return to the consulate two weeks later and successfully obtain a visa with a different application (see September 25, 2000). [9/11 Commission, 8/21/2004, pp. 13, 174-5 pdf file] The consular officer who denies this visa will later give mistaken testimony about it to the House Committee on Government Reform. He will claim that the application was made under the Visa Express program, and that he refused to issue the visa immediately because Hanjour applied for a tourist visa, but wanted to go to the US to study. He will say that the denial is “for administrative reasons” so that Hanjour has to come in for an interview. However, the 9/11 Commission will find that the date the application is made is the same date that it is rejected, so this consular officer must be mistaken about the application being made under the Visa Express program, which will not start until 2001 (see May 2001), as well as the reason for the denial. [9/11 Commission, 8/21/2004, pp. 37-38 pdf file]

April 11-June 28, 2001: 9/11 ‘Muscle’ Hijackers Arrive in Dubai on Way to US
The muscle hijackers arrive in Dubai on their way to the US (see April 23-June 29, 2001):

April 11: It is not known when Ahmed Alghamdi first arrives in Dubai, but he leaves on April 8, traveling to an unknown destination, and returns on April 11;
April 12: Satam al Suqami arrives in the United Arab Emirates from Malaysia (see April 1-May 27, 2001);
May 7, 2001: Ahmed Alhaznawi arrives in Abu Dhabi from Karachi by plane;
May 13: Ahmed Alnami arrives in the United Arab Emirates by plane from Saudi Arabia;
May 26: Hamza Alghamdi enters the United Arab Emirates;
May 27: Abdulaziz Alomari arrives in Dubai from Malaysia (see April 1-May 27, 2001);
June 1: It is not known when Wail Alshehri first arrives in Dubai, but he leaves on May 29, traveling to an unknown destination, and returns on June 1 with Ahmed Alhaznawi, who previously arrived on May 7, but must have left in the meantime;
June 12: Saeed Alghamdi arrives in the United Arab Emirates from Saudi Arabia;
June 28: Salem Alhazmi arrives in the United Arab Emirates from Saudi Arabia. [US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, 7/31/2006, pp. 42-50 pdf file]

The hijackers typically remain in Dubai for a few weeks before moving on to the US (see April 23-June 29, 2001). While in Dubai the hijackers purchase traveler’s checks:

April 28: Majed Moqed purchases $2,980 in MasterCard travelers’ checks from the Thomas Cook Exchange in the nearby emirate of Sharjah;
May 27, 2001: Ahmed Alnami purchases $10,000 of American Express travelers’ checks and Hamza Alghamdi purchases the same amount of Visa travelers’ checks in Dubai;
June 6, 2001: Ahmed Alhaznawi purchases $3,000 of American Express travelers’ checks in Dubai;
June 7, 2001: Wail Alshehri purchases $14,000 of American Express travelers’ checks in Sharjah;
June 24: Fayez Ahmed Banihammad purchases $4,000 of Thomas Cook travelers’ checks in Sharjah. [US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, 7/31/2006, pp. 44-48 pdf file]

In addition, Wail Alshehri obtains an international driving permit in Sharjah on June 5. [US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Alexandria Division, 7/31/2006, pp. 47 pdf file] Some of these hijackers are assisted by plot facilitator Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi (see Early-Late June, 2001). It is not clear who helps the others, although Dubai-based Ali Abdul Aziz Ali previously assisted some of the hijackers (see June 29, 2000-September 18, 2000), and Saeed Sheikh, who has Dubai connections, may also assist some of them (see Early August 2001). In addition, Victor Bout, an arms dealer who flies shipments for al-Qaeda and the Taliban through the UAE, is based in Sharjah (see Mid-1996-October 2001).

May 2001: Hijackers Take Advantage of New, Anonymous Visa Express Procedure
The US introduces the “Visa Express” program in Saudi Arabia, which allows any Saudi Arabian to obtain a visa through his or her travel agent instead of appearing at a consulate in person. An official later states, “The issuing officer has no idea whether the person applying for the visa is actually the person in the documents and application.” [US News and World Report, 12/12/2001; US Congress, 9/20/2002] At the time, warnings of an attack against the US led by the Saudi Osama bin Laden are higher than they had ever been before— “off the charts” as one senator later puts it. [Los Angeles Times, 5/18/2002; US Congress, 9/18/2002] A terrorism conference had recently concluded that Saudi Arabia was one of four top nationalities in al-Qaeda. [Star-Tribune (Minneapolis), 5/19/2002]

Suspect Travel Agency - Ten Saudi travel agency companies are allowed to issue US visas as part of the program. One company, Fursan Travel and Tourism, is a subsidiary of Al Rajhi Banking & Investment Corp., a multibillion Saudi banking conglomerate. Fursan is also the only one out of the ten deputized to handle the collection and initial processing of US visas. After 9/11, the CIA will suggest taking action against Al Rajhi for its suspected support of Islamist militancy, but the Bush Administration will decide not to do anything (see Mid-2003 and Mid-2003). It is believed that al-Qaeda and other militant groups advised their operatives to use Al Rajhi for their banking needs (see Before September 11, 2001). [Wall Street Journal, 10/13/2003]

Used by 9/11 Plotters - Five hijackers—Khalid Almihdhar, Abdulaziz Alomari, Salem Alhazmi, Saeed Alghamdi, and Fayez Ahmed Banihammad—use Visa Express over the next month to enter the US. [US Congress, 9/20/2002] Alomari has a bank account with Al Rajhi, but it is unknown if he or any of the other hijackers use Fursan, the Al Rajhi subsidiary, since the names of travel agencies do not appear on copies of the hijackers’ visa applications that are later made public. [Wall Street Journal, 10/13/2003] Even 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed will successfully get a US Visa through the “Visa Express” program in July (using a false name but real photograph), despite a posted $2 million reward for his capture. [Los Angeles Times, 1/27/2004]

Saudi Visas Almost Never Rejected - Only three percent of Saudi visa applicants are turned down by US consular officers in fiscal 2000 and 2001. In contrast, about 25 percent of US visa seekers worldwide are rejected. Acceptance is even more difficult for applicants from countries alleged to have ties to terrorism such as Iraq or Iran. [Washington Post, 10/31/2001] The widely criticized program is finally canceled in July 2002, after a public outcry. [Wall Street Journal, 10/13/2003]

June 12, 2001: 9/11 Hijacker Obtains US Visa, despite Lying on Application
9/11 hijacker Saeed Alghamdi obtains a US visa from the American consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The application is made through the Visa Express program (see May 2001), using a passport issued two days earlier.

Lie on Application - He lies on his application form, claiming that he has never before applied for a US visa, when in fact he obtained one the previous year (see September 4, 2000). Fellow hijackers Khalid Almihdhar and Ahmed Alnami make similar false statements on their visa applications around this time (see April 23, 2001 and June 13, 2001), although Alnami corrects his application. The information about his previous visa is available at the consulate, but is not accessed, as consular workers do not usually examine previous visa issuances, only refusals. The 9/11 Commission will speculate that he lied on purpose to conceal the previous application. [9/11 Commission, 8/21/2004, pp. 24 pdf file]

Fraudulent Features - The commission will also suggest that one or more of Alghamdi’s passports may contain fraudulent features, but will claim that this is not certain as Alghamdi’s passport was not recovered after 9/11. [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 563-4; 9/11 Commission, 8/21/2004, pp. 42 pdf file] This is an error by the Commission, as Alghamdi’s passport will actually be found after 9/11 and the Commission will be aware of this (see Shortly After September 11, 2001).

Same Consular Official - At least 11 of the 15 visas issued to the hijackers in Jeddah are issued by the same consular officer, but it is unclear whether Alghamdi’s visa is issued by that officer or another one (see Before September 3, 2000). [9/11 Commission, 8/21/2004, pp. 33 pdf file]

KSM's Travel Agent - The travel agency used for the Visa Express application is Minhal Travel, which will also later be used by 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed to obtain a US visa (see July 23, 2001). [9/11 Commission, 8/21/2004, pp. 24, 29 pdf file]

June 13, 2001: 9/11 Hijacker Almihdhar Obtains US Visa Despite Incorrect Passport and Lies on Application, even though US Intelligence Knows He Is an Al-Qaeda Operative
9/11 hijacker Khalid Almihdhar obtains a second US visa from the US consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. His passport, which was issued two weeks previously (see June 1, 2001), lacks an expiry date, but contains an indicator of possible terrorist affiliation used by the Saudi authorities to track suspected radicals (see November 2, 2007). His application form is incomplete, as it lists his occupation as “businessman,” but does not give his employer’s name and address.

Lies on Application Form - The form, which is submitted through the Visa Express program (see May 2001) meaning he is not interviewed, contains two lies: he says he has never received an American visa or traveled to the US, whereas he received a visa in 1999 (see April 3-7, 1999) and traveled to the US on it in 2000 (see January 15, 2000). As Almihdhar’s first visa was also issued by the Jeddah consulate, through which the CIA sent radical Arabs to the US for training during the Soviet-Afghan war (see September 1987-March 1989), consular officials could discover he is lying, but information about prior visas issuances is not automatically displayed to them. At least eleven of the 15 visas issued to the hijackers in Jeddah are issued by the same consular officer, but it is unclear whether this visa is issued by that officer or another one.

Known Terrorist - By this time several intelligence agencies are aware that Almihdhar is an al-Qaeda operative; for example, the CIA (see January 4-6, 2000), NSA (see December 29, 1999), FBI (see January 5-6, 2000), a US army intelligence program (see January-February 2000), the Saudi General Intelligence Directorate (see 1997), Malaysian Special Branch (see January 5-8, 2000), and an intelligence service in the United Arab Emirates (see January 2-5, 2000)).

Parallels to Case of Blind Sheikh - Almihdhar re-enters the US on the visa three weeks later (see July 4, 2001). The 9/11 Commission will find that the series of missteps preceding the issuance of visas to Almihdhar and the other 9/11 hijackers has some “eerie parallels” to the “series of exceptional failures” that led to US visas being issued to Blind Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman (see December 15, 1986-1989 and July 1990). [9/11 Commission, 8/21/2004, pp. 24-27, 33, 49 pdf file]

June 18, 2001: 9/11 Hijacker Obtains US Visa Using Passport with Fraudulent Travel Stamps
9/11 hijacker Abdulaziz Alomari obtains a US visa from the American consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 525] His application is incomplete, as he lists his home address as the Alqudos hotel in Jeddah. He is not interviewed and the application is submitted by Attar Travel as a part of the Visa Express program (see May 2001). [9/11 Commission, 8/21/2004, pp. 25 pdf file] Further, he leaves blank the fields for his sex, his wife’s name, and his school’s address, although he says he is a student. He claims to be a tourist, that he wants to stay two months from June 25, and that he will first stay at the JKK Whyndam hotel. [US Department of State, 6/18/2001] The 9/11 Commission will say Alomari’s passport contains fraudulent travel stamps whose use will subsequently be associated with al-Qaeda. [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 563-4; 9/11 Commission, 8/21/2004, pp. 25 pdf file] At least 11 of the 15 visas issued to the hijackers in Jeddah are issued by the same consular officer, but it is unclear whether Alomari’s visa is issued by that officer or another one (see Before September 3, 2000). [9/11 Commission, 8/21/2004, pp. 33 pdf file]

June 20, 2001: 9/11 Hijacker Salem Alhazmi Obtains US Visa, despite NSA Surveillance, Incomplete Application, and Possible Lie on Application
9/11 hijacker Salem Alhazmi obtains a US visa from the American consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. There are some problems with his visa application, which is submitted through the Visa Express program (see May 2001):

The application is incomplete;
He gives his occupation as “unemployed,” but this does not concern consular staff because Saudi Arabia is a rich country;
His passport is only four days old;
The passport contains a suspicious indicator of Islamic extremism placed their by Saudi intelligence in order to track him (see June 16, 2001 and November 2, 2007). Some of the radicals who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993 also had Saudi passports with the same indicator (see Around February 1993); [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 563-4; 9/11 Commission, 8/21/2004, pp. 25-6 pdf file]
Some of the other hijackers who apply for visas around this time lie on their applications, claiming never to have received a US visa before, although the opposite is true (see April 23, 2001, June 12, 2001, and June 13, 2001). The 9/11 Commission will not discuss whether Alhazmi claims on this application to have received a US visa before or not, as the Commission will appear not to be aware of any such previous application by Alhazmi. However, according to the 9/11 Congressional Inquiry, Alhazmi did previously obtain a US visa, in 1999 (see April 3-7, 1999); [9/11 Commission, 8/21/2004 pdf file]
The NSA has been intercepting calls between Alhazmi and an al-Qaeda communications hub in Yemen for at least two years (see Early 1999, Shortly Before December 29, 1999, and Summer 2000);
At least 11 of the 15 visas issued to the hijackers in Jeddah are issued by the same consular officer, but it is unclear whether Alhazmi’s visa is issued by that officer or another one (see Before September 3, 2000). [9/11 Commission, 8/21/2004, pp. 33 pdf file]

July 23, 2001: KSM, Using False Name but Real Photo, Is Given US Visa
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM) is granted a visa to enter the US, despite being under a federal terrorism indictment, having a $2 million reward on his head, and being one of only a dozen people in the world on a US domestic no-fly list (see April 24, 2000). There is no evidence that he actually uses his visa to travel to the US. Investigators speculate that he may have considered a trip to shepherd some aspect of the 9/11 plot. He applied for the visa using a Saudi passport and an alias (Abdulrahman al Ghamdi), but the photo he submitted is really of him. He uses the new, controversial Visa Express program that allows Saudis to apply for US visas without having to appear in person at any point during the application process (see May 2001). [Los Angeles Times, 1/27/2004] Just a month earlier, the CIA passed a warning to all US intelligence agencies, certain military commanders, and parts of the Justice and Treasury Departments saying that Mohammed may be attempting to enter the US (see June 12, 2001). However, either this warning isn’t given to immigration officials or else they fail to notice his application. [Los Angeles Times, 1/27/2004]

July 19, 2002: US Finally Ends Controversial Visa Program in Saudi Arabia
Faced with growing criticism of its Visa Express program, the State Department decides to change the program’s name in early July 2002. When that fails to satisfy critics, the program is abandoned altogether on July 19. The Visa Express program allowed anyone in Saudi Arabia to apply for US visas through their travel agents instead of having to show up at a consulate in person. [Washington Post, 7/11/2002] Mary Ryan, the head of the State Department’s consular service that was responsible for letting most of the hijackers into the US, is also forced to retire. It has been pointed out that Ryan deceived Congress by testifying that “there was nothing State could have done to prevent the terrorists from obtaining visas.” However, after all this, Ryan and the other authors of the Visa Express program are given “outstanding performance” awards of $15,000 each. The reporter who wrote most of the stories critical of Visa Express is briefly detained and pressured by the State Department. [Washington Times, 10/23/2002; Philadelphia Daily News, 12/30/2002]

SMOKING GUN(S): Army Field Manual FM 3-05.130, "Unconventional Warfare"

2008-12-23T12:05:00.000-08:00

Unconventional Warfare in the 21st Century: U.S. Surrogates, Terrorists and Narcotraffickers

by Tom Burghardt

(The Intelligence Daily) -- On December 13, the whistleblowing website Wikileaks did investigative- and citizen journalists a great service by publishing the Army Special Operations Forces FM 3-05.130, titled Unconventional Warfare.

Published in September 2008, the 248-page document though unclassified, is restricted "to U.S. Government agencies and their contractors only to protect technical or operational information from automatic dissemination under the International Exchange Program or by other means." The Department of the Army urges recipients to "destroy by any method that will prevent disclosure of contents or reconstruction of the document." Wikileaks has guaranteed that the disappearance of this critical primary source into the bowels of the Pentagon will not occur.

Special Warfare's Nazi Provenance

Since the end of World War II, the United States has acted through proxies either to defeat leftist insurgencies or to subvert "hostile" governments, e.g. those states viewed by Washington and the multinational corporations they serve as ideological competitors.

Historically, U.S. unconventional warfare (UW) doctrine was derived from Nazi experiences in countering "partisan warfare" across Europe during World War II. As analyst and scholar Michael McClintock detailed in his essential study on the topic,

American special warfare doctrine would draw considerably on Wehrmacht and SS methods of terrorizing civilian populations and, perhaps more importantly, of co-opting local factions to combat partisan resistance. The Department of the Army's A Study of Special and Subversive Operations (November 1947) was an early assessment of the lessons learned from World War II in the context of Cold War imperatives. (Instruments of Statecraft: U.S. Guerrilla Warfare, Counterinsurgency, Counterterrorism, 1940-1990, New York: Pantheon Books, 1992, p. 59)

But the United States did more than translate captured Wehrmacht and SS documents: they recruited many Waffen SS veterans, often with an assist from high Vatican officials. Tens of thousands of war criminals were spirited out of Europe along "ratlines" into U.S. hands for clandestine war against the new enemy: the Soviet Union and the international left.

Pathological killers such as SS veteran Klaus Barbie, the Butcher of Lyons, was instrumental when the CIA and the Argentine death-squad generals launched their 1980 "cocaine coup" in Bolivia. Barbie, along with operatives linked to the CIA, Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church and preexisting Nazi networks, "reorganized" Bolivia's intelligence services to reflect the Southern Cone's "changing realities." (For background, see Robert Parry's excellent series, Dark Side of Rev. Moon, The Consortium for Independent Journalism)

Even when the "competition" was peaceful and confined to the political-economic spheres, once the U.S. intervened, violence, civil war and chaos followed. This scenario was played out in Chile during the 1970s, Afghanistan, Angola, Mozambique, Nicaragua and El Salvador throughout the 1980s, in Yugoslavia and the Balkans generally during the 1990s, today in Bolivia and Venezuela and on a planetary scale under the rubric of the "global war on terrorism" (GWOT). The lesson for those who buck the global hegemon? U.S. political subversion and state terror will wreck havoc and halt independent development in its tracks.

And when the global Godfather's military forces directly intervene? Although the U.S. was defeated in Southeast Asia, target countries such as Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia were destroyed by the United States in the process. Devastated economically and socially, decades later these nations have yet to fully recover from the depredations wrought by their American "liberators." However, the U.S. military did learn certain unique skills, not least of which was the application of selective violence against the communist National Liberation Front's civilian infrastructure.

The Phoenix Program, meticulously analyzed in researcher Douglas Valentine's definitive account, was launched in 1967 by the CIA and U.S. Special Forces as a means to win "hearts and minds." But from its inception, Phoenix operators worked in tandem with drug-linked South Vietnamese and Laotian "allies" and morphed into an assassination and torture program that killed thousands. Long after the U.S. withdrew from Southeast Asia, lessons learned through Phoenix and related programs such as Condor and Gladio, were "refined" during the 1970s-1980s in Afghanistan, Italy, Turkey and Central America, and now constitute the bedrock on which the Pentagon's unconventional warfare doctrine operates today.

Throughout the Cold War, U.S. power in proxy states was exercised through repressive police, intelligence agencies and by far-right civilian allies (referred to as "foreign internal defense," FID). Such forces, trained and funded by the U.S., combined a neofascist political outlook with organized criminal activities generally, though certainly not limited to, the international narcotics trade.

NATO's infamous "stay-behind" Operation Gladio networks in Italy and Turkey for example, worked directly with international narcotics syndicates and pro-fascist political parties such as the Italian Avanguardia Nazionale (National Vanguard) founded by the terrorist drug trafficker Stefano delle Chiaie and the Turkish Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi (National Action Party, MHP) and the drug-linked terror gang, the Grey Wolves, founded by Alparslan Türkeş, a German sympathizer during World War II.

With links to those nations' intelligence services, the CIA and the Pentagon, these organizations waged a relentless war against the left through terrorist bombings, murders and assassinations in a bid to destabilize their governments and spark a full-fledged military takeover. Along with the CIA, the United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) have been instrumental in organizing and waging unconventional warfare with the express purpose of maintaining the economic-political status quo in target countries.

As long-time readers of Antifascist Calling are aware, among the more critical issues explored here are those relating to the intersection of corporate and military power and how those interactions play out on the contemporary political plane to subvert democracy and movements for social justice.

Indeed, reference is frequently made to what I have identified, following Peter Dale Scott and other analysts, as the corporatist deep state: that is, the objective interface amongst political elites, multinational corporations, the military, intelligence agencies and organized crime. Unlike Scott however, I contend these linkages do not "transcend" the left-right continuum, but rather are part and parcel of Washington's decades-long war against the left, social justice movements generally and in particular, democratic socialist movements from below.

As we will see in my analysis of FM 3-05.130, USSOCOM make these links explicit, arguing that "UW must be conducted by, with, or through surrogates; and such surrogates must be irregular forces."

As I averred, proxy forces, often aligned with far-right groups and organized crime-linked assets (for the most part interchangeable players) are the preferred "irregular forces" employed by Washington. USSOCOM states that this definition "is consistent with the historical reasons that the United States has conducted UW" and goes on to cite its "support of both an insurgency, such as the Contras in 1980s Nicaragua, and resistance movements to defeat an occupying power, such as the Mujahideen in 1980s Afghanistan." It doesn't get any more explicit than this!

Ideologically Coherent

The authors of FM 3-05.130, far from being militarist troglodytes are knowledgeable and erudite, presenting a broad and ideologically coherent narrative that is both informative and historically intriguing in its transparency and methodological purpose. In other words, unlike their political masters, they don't pull any punches.

Right up front they inform the reader that UW establishes a "litmus test" which is warfare conducted "by, with or through surrogates" and that their preferred assets are irregular forces:

Irregulars, or irregular forces, are individuals or groups of individuals who are not members of a regular armed force, police, or other internal security force. They are usually nonstate-sponsored and unconstrained by sovereign nation legalities and boundaries. These forces may include, but are not limited to, specific paramilitary forces, contractors, individuals, businesses, foreign political organizations, resistance or insurgent organizations, expatriates, transnational terrorism adversaries, disillusioned transnational terrorism members, black marketers, and other social or political "undesirables." (Unconventional Warfare, p. 1-3)

While "conventional warfare" is viewed as a conflict between states, Irregular Warfare (IW) and UW according to FM 3-05.130 is "about people not platforms." Irregular and unconventional warfare "does not depend on military prowess alone."

It also relies on the understanding of such social dynamics as tribal politics, social networks, religious influences, and cultural mores. Although IW is a violent struggle, not all participating irregulars or irregular forces are necessarily armed. People, more so than weaponry, platforms, and advanced technology, will be the key to success in IW. Successful IW relies on building relationships and partnerships at the local level. It takes patient, persistent, and culturally savvy people within the joint force to execute IW. (Unconventional Warfare, p. 1-5)

Indeed, FM 3-05.130 explicitly states that its "strategic purpose [is] to gain or maintain control or influence over the population and to support that population through political, psychological, and economic methods." While both IW and UW seek to influence "relevant populations," UW in contrast to IW, "is always conducted by, with, or through irregular forces." In other words, local surrogates drawn from relevant far-right and/or organized crime-linked assets are the means of eliciting "influence" over "relevant populations."

In Bosnia and Kosovo during the 1990s, "irregular forces" deployed during U.S./NATO destabilization operations in the former Yugoslavia included elements of the Afghan-Arab database of disposable intelligence assets, e.g. al-Qaeda, which have been linked to the CIA, Britain's MI6, Germany's Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) and Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence agency (ISI), as well as long-established drug, arms and human trafficking networks aligned with the Albanian and Turkish Mafias. Indeed, "irregular forces" such as the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) demonstrated all of these relationships in spades.

According to FM 3-05.130, the constituent elements of contemporary IW theory include: Insurgency; COIN (counterinsurgency); UW; Terrorism; CT (counterterrorism); FID (foreign internal defense); Stability, security, transition, and reconstruction (SSTR) operations; Strategic communication (SC); PSYOP; Civil-military operations (CMO); Information operations (IO); Intelligence and counterintelligence (CI) activities; Transnational criminal activities, including narco-trafficking, illicit arms dealing, and illegal financial transactions that support or sustain IW; and Law enforcement activities focused on countering irregular adversaries. (Unconventional Warfare, p. 1-5)

Its but a short step as far as it goes, from citing the elements of UW to deploying the most dubious players as strategic assets in planetary-wide U.S. destabilization operations.

The Media's Role

Explicitly stated is the media's role in advancing the goals of United States national power. As recent exposés in The New York Times and elsewhere have documented, "message force multipliers" such as retired Pentagon officials and former high-ranking officers, often linked to corporate defense firms that rely heavily on Pentagon largesse, have leveraged their expertise and conducted illegal domestic psychological operations (PSYOPS) and information warfare, with the complicity and full knowledge of the giant media firms.

It is important for the official agencies of government, including the armed forces, to recognize the fundamental role of the media as a conduit of information. The USG uses SC to provide top-down guidance for using the informational instrument of national power through coordinated information, themes, messages, and products synchronized with the other instruments of national power. The armed forces support SC themes and messages through IO, public affairs (PA), and defense support to public diplomacy (DSPD). The armed forces must assure media access consistent with classification requirements, operations security, legal restrictions, and individual privacy. The armed forces must also provide timely and accurate information to the public. Success in military operations depends on acquiring and integrating essential information and denying it to the adversary. The armed forces are responsible for conducting IO, protecting what should not be disclosed, and aggressively attacking adversary information systems. IO may involve complex legal and policy issues that require approval, review, and coordination at the national level. (Unconventional Warfare, p. 2-2)

Indeed, as the authors aver, since UW consists of operations conducted "by, with or through irregular forces," engagement with the "human terrain" is "fundamentally a conflict of ideas"! In a nutshell, the "human terrain" explicitly includes the American public who are also the targets of Pentagon propagandistic "information operations." This is stated explicitly:

By contrast, USG-controlled specific instruments of informational power, while narrower in scope, can achieve specific and measurable results useful to prosecuting UW. ARSOF [Army Special Operations Forces] can work with DOS [Department of State] counterparts to identify and engage select TAs [target audiences] that are able to influence behavior within a UWOA [unconventional warfare operating area]. Such TAs may be inside the UWOA itself or outside but able to influence the UWOA. The USG can then subject these TAs, directly or indirectly, to a DOS public diplomacy (PD) campaign coordinated to support the UW effort. Similarly, since UW may be a long-duration or politically sensitive effort, ARSOF and its DOS partner, the Bureau of Public Affairs, can craft a PA campaign intended to keep the U.S. domestic audience informed of the truth in a manner supportive of USG goals and the effective prosecution of UW. (Unconventional Warfare, p. 2-3)

Economic Subversion

For the authors of FM 3-05.130, "properly integrated manipulation of economic power can and should be a component of UW." Never mind that such "manipulation" can and did result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of human beings in Iraq prior to the 2003 U.S. invasion and occupation as well as in a score of other nations that have defied the U.S.

The cases of Chile and Nicaragua are instructive in this regard, where the disgraced president, Richard Nixon, vowed to "make the economy scream," prior to the 1973 coup, or the crippling sanctions and economic embargo imposed on Nicaragua's Sandinista government. Various sanctions regimes unambiguously "can build and sustain international coalitions waging or supporting U.S. UW campaigns." A similar methodology is being applied today against Iran as "punishment" for its legal development of civilian nuclear power.

Like all other instruments of U.S. national power, the use and effects of economic "weapons" are interrelated and they must be coordinated carefully. Once again, ARSOF must work carefully with the DOS and intelligence community (IC) to determine which elements of the human terrain in the UWOA are most susceptible to economic engagement and what second- and third-order effects are likely from such engagement. The United States Agency for International Development's (USAID's) placement abroad and its mission to engage human groups provide one channel for leveraging economic incentives. The DOC's can similarly leverage its routine influence with U.S. corporations active abroad. Moreover, the IO effects of economic promises kept (or ignored) can prove critical to the legitimacy of U.S. UW efforts. UW practitioners must plan for these effects. (Unconventional Warfare, p. 2-7)

Indeed, ARSOF plans for waging UW take an integrated approach and assert that they "can and should exploit the active and analytical capabilities existing in the financial instruments of U.S. power." The application of financial warfare however, including the "persuasive influence" of state and nonstate "actors" regarding the availability and terms "of loans, grants, or other financial assistance" is predicated on towing the U.S. line. The authors aver that "such application of financial power must be part of a circumspect, integrated, and consistent UW plan." In other words, threats, bribery and economic subversion generally can work wonders in getting the attention of recalcitrant states not "on board" with the U.S.

Narcotrafficking Networks and the "Global War on Terror"

For decades, investigative journalists, researchers and analysts have noted the symbiotic relationship amongst international narcotrafficking syndicates, neofascist political groups, U.S. intelligence agencies and U.S. Special Forces in the war against leftist adversaries.

Dozens of books and hundreds of articles by journalists and writers such as Alfred W. McCoy, Peter Dale Scott, Henrik Krüger, Robert Parry, Gary Webb, Jonathan Marshall, Douglas Valentine, Daniel Hopsicker, Bill Conroy as well as exposés by former DEA investigators such as Michael Levine and Celerino Castillo III, have documented the long and bloody history of U.S. complicity in the global drugs trade.

While the United States has pumped billions of dollars into so-called drug eradication programs in target countries such as Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Afghanistan and Mexico through ill-conceived projects such as Plan Colombia and the Mérida Initiative, also know as Plan Mexico, recent reports, most notably by The Narco News Bulletin, have documented the close interrelationships amongst narcotraffickers, rightist extremists, political elites and U.S. intelligence agencies.

Indeed, investigative journalist Bill Conroy recently documented how a U.S. trained and equipped special operations group within the Mexican army (the Zetas) "is now assisting the Mexican military in its narco-trafficking operations along the border."

None of this however, phases the authors of Unconventional Warfare. And why should it. As they themselves describe the doctrine, unconventional warfare is "conducted by, with, or through surrogates; and such surrogates must be irregular forces," the next logical step in the equation is the utilization of transnational criminal networks to advance U.S. national power. The section, "Law Enforcement Instrument of United States National Power and Unconventional Warfare," states this explicitly: no tinfoil hat needed here!

Actors engaged in supporting elements in the UWOA may rely on criminal activities, such as smuggling, narcotics, or human trafficking. Political and military adversaries in the UWOA will exhibit the same sensitivity to official exposure and engagement because criminal entities routinely seek to avoid law enforcement. Sometimes, political and military adversaries are simultaneously criminal adversaries, which ARSOF UW planners must consider a threat. At other times, the methods and networks of real or perceived criminal entities can be useful as supporting elements of a U.S.-sponsored UW effort. In either case, ARSOF understand the importance of coordinating military intelligence preparation of the battlefield (IPB) for specific UW campaigns with the routine intelligence activities conducted by U.S. law enforcement agencies. (Unconventional Warfare, p. 2-7)

During subversive operations by U.S. ARSOF soldiers in target areas, indigenous networks, many of whom are linked to far-right and narcotrafficking groups (Nicaragua, Bosnia, Kosovo), including "former" allies such as al-Qaeda, are referred to as "The Underground" and "The Auxiliary" in FM 3-05.130. Details however, are few and far between and the authors state unambiguously:

There is more SF participation in developing and advising underground [and auxiliary] elements than is widely understood or acknowledged. Most such participation is classified and inappropriate for inclusion in this manual. (Unconventional Warfare, p. 5-5)

Preparing the ground for U.S. attacks and/or subversive operations by proxy forces aligned with American goals are a key component of UW theory. Whether a population is "on-board" with U.S. geostrategic goals or the tactical modalities employed in such campaigns is irrelevant to the new cold warriors of the GWOT. When "persuasion" fails the muscle moves in to get the attention on the "natives."

Organization of the larger indigenous population from which the irregular forces are drawn--the mass base--must likewise be conducted primarily by the irregular organization itself under indirect guidance of SF. The primary value of the mass base to UW operations is less a matter of formal organization than of marshaling population groups to act in specific ways that support the overall UW campaign. The mass base, or general population and society at large, is recognized as an operational rather than a structural effort for ARSOF in UW. Elements of the mass base are divided into three distinct groups in relation to the cause or movement--pro, anti/con, and those who are uncommitted, undecided, or ambivalent. ARSOF, the underground, and the auxiliary then conduct irregular activities to influence or leverage these groups. These groups may be witting or unwitting of the UW nature of the operations or activities in which they are utilized. (Unconventional Warfare, p. 5-5)

In Colombia for example, U.S. "counterdrug" assistance to the corrupt Uribe government flowed directly to the narcotrafficking far-right death squad, the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, or AUC. Though designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the U.S. State Department, the Uribe government's military high command, directly advised by the Pentagon, funneled weapons and intelligence that was used by the narcofascists to murder union organizers, often after payment by U.S. multinational corporations such as Chiquita Brands International, of anyone the group identified as a "guerrilla."

In ARSOF parlance, AUC "influence"--dragging unsuspecting citizens off a bus and beheading them in front of their children, for example--is what is meant when corporate- or drug-linked death squads "conduct irregular activities" to "leverage these groups." But the international community has another term to describe these activities: state terrorism.

In 2004, as part of broad U.S. efforts to unseat Venezuela's socialist President Hugo Chávez, Venezuelan authorities arrested some 100 AUC fighters who were planning to attack specially-selected targets in Caracas. According to published reports, several high-ranking American and Colombian military officers were implicated in the operation.

The parapolitical scandal which continues to rock Bogotá, revealed high-level involvement by Colombia's political and military elite with the narcofascist AUC. But the scandal also revealed the involvement of the U.S. 7th Special Forces Group and the 1st Psychological Operations Battalion in directly training and advising Colombian military units responsible for the worst human rights abuses.

Numerous reports have emerged that detail these linkages, including the 2007 disclosure by the National Security Archive that Colombian Army commander General Mario Montoya "engaged in a joint operation with a Medellín-based paramilitary group. 'Operation Orion' was part of a larger military offensive in the city during 2002-03 to attack urban guerrilla networks. The sweep resulted in at least 14 deaths and dozens of disappearances. The classified intelligence report confirmed 'information provided by a proven source,' according to comments from the U.S. defense attaché included in the document."

This is but the tip of the proverbial iceberg, however.

In Afghanistan, the world's number one producer and processor of opium and its finished "product" heroin, bound for European and U.S. markets, drug trafficking according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNDOC) in their 2008 World Drug Report, is "out of control." According to UNDOC, drug money is used as "a lubricant for corruption, and a source of terrorist financing: in turn, corrupt officials and terrorists make drug production and trafficking easier."

Indeed, since the 2001 U.S. invasion and occupation, opium production has skyrocketed some 1,000% and accounts for a large percentage of the country's gross domestic product. Tellingly, some of the staunchest U.S. allies in the area are directly tied to international narcotics organizations. According to UNDOC, the global increase in opium production "was almost entirely due to the 17% expansion of cultivation in Afghanistan, which is now 193,000 ha [hectares]" reaching 8,700 metric tons in 2007, accounting for a staggering 92% of global opium production!

Despite these horrendous statistics, the authors of FM 3-05.130 can asset that "the methods and networks of real or perceived criminal entities can be useful"! Indeed they can, as a seemingly limitless source of black funds earmarked for U.S. planetary subversion in the interest of expanding American corporate power.

According to a June 2008 report by The Times, after last year's bumper crop sent the price of opium spiraling downwards, the Taliban and U.S.-connected drug lords linked to Hamid Karzai's government, are stockpiling vast quantities of opium in order to induce a rise in world prices. And Time Magazine reported in October that the value of hoarded opium may be as much as $3.2 billion.

Celebrated by the Pentagon and the U.S. media as a "splendid victory," the 2001 invasion and occupation of Afghanistan quickly spiraled out of control and the country now faces a resurgent Taliban, a new base of operations for al-Qaeda in the tribal areas of Pakistan and evidence of Pakistani ISI involvement in aiding the fundamentalist insurgents and the global drugs trade. But for American unconventional warriors, a full accounting of war crimes that ARSOF supervised and their Northern Alliance "allies" carried out have yet to be answered.

As Peter Dale Scott noted in 2002,

It's a bitter irony: The largely successful U.S. campaign against the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan is resulting in an increase of funds for terrorists around the globe.

It is true, as President Bush has insisted, that global terrorism is financed by the flow of illicit drugs. Yet by installing and rewarding a coalition of drug-financed warlords in Kabul, the United States has itself helped restore the flow of Afghan heroin to terrorist groups, from the Balkans and Chechnya to Tajikistan, Pakistan and Kashmir. ("Poppy Paradox: U.S. War in Afghanistan Boosts Terror Funds," Dissident Voice, August 3, 2002)

Indeed, among the staunchest U.S. allies in the region, characters such as Hazrat Ali and Gul Agha, "have been 'bought off' with millions in deals brokered by U.S. and British intelligence." But while America was happy to endorse a drug-linked status quo that relied on its so-called "warlord strategy" to "stabilize" Afghanistan, part of the blowback from these dubious alliances included allowing bin Laden to escape into Pakistan in 2001 after the "battle" of Tora Bora.

But for Pentagon proponents of unconventional warfare, the "price is always right" when it comes to strategic and tactical alliances with narcotraffickers and international terrorists. After all, since "UW must be conducted by, with, or through surrogates; and such surrogates must be irregular forces," everything is permitted.

Visit Antifascist Calling...

Tom Burghardt is a researcher and activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to publishing in Covert Action Quarterly and Global Research, an independent research and media group of writers, scholars, journalists and activists based in Montreal, his articles can be read on Dissident Voice, The Intelligence Daily, Pacific Free Press and the whistleblowing website Wikileaks. He is the editor of Police State America: U.S. Military "Civil Disturbance" Planning, distributed by AK Press.

911blogger: TREASON IN THE WHITE HOUSE

2008-12-21T15:11:00.000-08:00

Treason in the White House: History Will Expose You
by jimd3100's

Why did Bush stop The Senate And Congressional Intelligence joint inquiry investigators from interviewing an Informant who was the landlord of some alleged hijackers who the CIA "accidentally" let into the country?

This isn't a "conspiracy theory" it's a fact. From the report by THE HOUSE PERMANENT SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE AND THE SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE...

"The Administration has to date objected to the Inquiry’s efforts to interview the informant in order to attempt to resolve those inconsistencies. The Administration also would not agree to allow the FBI to serve a Committee subpoena and deposition notice on the informant. Instead, written interrogatories from the Joint Inquiry were, at the suggestion of the FBI, provided to the informant. Through an attorney, the informant has declined to respond to those interrogatories and has indicated that, if subpoenaed, the informant would request a grant of immunity prior to testifying."
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/serialset/creports/pdf/fullreport_errata.pdf

Because our fearless king is a traitor who is protecting Saudi Arabia.

How did those alleged hijackers end up with a U.S. Intelligence asset as a landlord? They were taken there by a Saudi Arabian Intelligence agent. Named Omar al-Bayoumi. BTW, the FBI had already done an investigation on this guy back in the late 90's because of his suspicious activities. Bush doesn't want you to see this stuff, doesn't want you to know who really funds Al Qaeda, because it blows the whole myth. You see, our King is a traitor who is protecting this other country, and their agents who have ties to "al Qaeda".
http://intelfiles.egoplex.com/2001-10-03-FBI-status-penttbomb-nour-bayou...

From senate intelligence investigation:

"In June 2002 testimony before the Joint Inquiry, DCI Tenet said:
"Once in the U.S., the hijackers were careful, with the exception of minor traffic violations, to avoid drawing law enforcement attention and even general notice that might identify them as extremists. They dressed in Western clothes, most shaved their beards before entering the U.S., and they largely avoided mosques."

"FBI Director Mueller appeared to concur:
"While here, the hijackers effectively operated without suspicion, triggering nothing that would have alerted law enforcement and doing nothing that exposed them to domestic coverage. As far as we know, they contacted no known terrorist sympathizers in the United States."
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/serialset/creports/pdf/fullreport_errata.pdf

This is what is known as getting caught in a lie.....

"However, the Joint Inquiry review of documents and interviews of FBI personnel indicate that the six hijackers who served as the leaders and facilitators of the September 11 attacks were not isolated in the United States, but instead maintained a number of contacts in the United States before September 11."

"In a written response The FBI acknowledged that:
. . . the hijackers ‘may have had contact’ with subjects of prior or current counterterrorism investigations in San Diego. Such contact occurred principally through the hijackers’ attendance of religious services at various mosques in San Diego, some frequented by subjects of FBI counterterrorism investigations."
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/serialset/creports/pdf/fullreport_errata.pdf

"At a Joint Inquiry hearing in October 2002, FBI Director Mueller commented on his earlier testimony about the hijackers conduct in the United States:
"When I say that the hijackers did “nothing that exposed them to domestic coverage” . . . and when I say that the hijackers “contacted no known terrorist sympathizers in the United States,” I meant in the context of the hijackers not
contacting — before 9/11 — terrorist sympathizers on whom we had technical or other form of coverage. The point being that had they done so, we might have been able to identify them as a result of that coverage. When making that statement, I did not have in mind what may have been known to the Bureau about persons such as al-Bayoumi a Saudi living in California, who may have assisted hijackers, al-Hazmi and al-Midhar. I can see, however, how the statement could be subject to an alternate interpretation that even as of June 18 we had uncovered no persons who had had contact with the hijackers and were “terrorist sympathizers.” I can assure the Committee that I had no intent to mislead."
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/serialset/creports/pdf/fullreport_errata.pdf

More from the Joint Senate Intelligence report......

"A person the FBI interviewed after September 11 says that he was with al-Bayoumi when the latter met al- Hazmi and al-Mihdhar. This person says that al-Bayoumi invited him to travel to Los Angeles, explaining that he had business at the Saudi Consulate. When they arrived at the consulate, al- Bayoumi met with someone behind closed doors. Al-Bayoumi and the person with whom he had traveled to Los Angeles went to a restaurant, where they met al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar."
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/serialset/creports/pdf/fullreport_errata.pdf

And who was this person al-Bayoumi met at the Saudi Consulate before picking up the alleged hijackers? It is well documented that it was Fahad al Thumairy. Investigators asked al Thumairy about his connection with these hijackers and al-Bayoumi. The Saudi Government refused to let investigators interview him alone. Saudi Gov officials were always present. Thumairy denied knowing any of these people, and was shocked when investigators informed him they had his telephone records and the phone records of Bayoumi which proved they were in contact with each other quite often. He thought he had "diplomatic imunity" from that stuff. He had nothing more to say. This is documented in Philip Shenons' book, and the FOIA documents at intelwire.

http://intelfiles.egoplex.com/2002-04-15-FBI-LHM-omar-al-bayoumi2.pdf
http://www.amazon.com/Commission-Uncensored-History-11-Investigation/dp/...

Page 309 of Shenons book describes how investigators found in classified FBI reports details of an interrogation of an Arabic speaking taxi driver from Los Angelos who was arrested on immigration charges a few months after 9/11. The driver, Qualid Benonmrare, had done chauffeur work for the Saudi consulate, and Thumairy. He was shown a series of photographs of young arab men and asked if he recognized any of them. He shocked the investigators by immediatly picking out the two hijackers Hazmi and Mihdhar, when he realized what he's done he nervously backtracked and denied knowing the pair. He was asked about his ties to Thumairy and he said that the Saudi diplomat introduced him before 9/11 to "two Saudis", who had just arrived in the U.S. and needed help. The investigators believed these were the two terrorists Thumairy claimed to have never met.

Bayoumi admitted knowing Thumairy but only as an Iman at the Mosque. However Thumairy denied knowing both Bayoumi and the two alleged hijackers. Thumairy is a lier.

When al Thumairy tried to re enter the U.S. in 2003 this happend...

"A Saudi consular official was held for two days and expelled from the United States this week because he was suspected of having links with terrorist organizations, the Los Angeles Times reported on Saturday.

"Fahad al Thumairy, 31, arrived on a flight from Frankfurt on Tuesday at Los Angeles International Airport to learn that his visa had been revoked in March, the newspaper reported."

"A State Department spokeswoman declined to comment on the matter on Saturday, and neither the Department of Homeland Security nor the King Fahd Mosque could be reached for comment. The Department of Justice and the Saudi consulate did not immediately return calls seeking comment."
http://www.hvk.org/articles/0503/120.html

"In May 2003, the State Department refused reentry to the chief imam of the King Fahd Mosque in Culver City, Fahad al Thumairy, who also was a Saudi diplomat at the consulate in Los Angeles. The Sept. 11 commission report later said the State Department had determined "he might be connected with terrorist activity."

"The report also said that two of the Sept. 11 hijackers, Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar, "spent time at the King Fahd mosque and made some acquaintances there." Al Thumairy, who reportedly led an "extremist faction" at the mosque, denied knowing the two hijackers. While his denial was "somewhat suspect," the report said there was no evidence connecting him to the hijackers."
http://www.somalilandtimes.net/2003/136/13608.shtml

Back to the Senate Intelligence report.....

"According to several FBI agents, the meeting at the restaurant may not have been accidental. In fact, the FBI’s written response to the Joint Inquiry refers to the restaurant encounter as a “somewhat suspicious meeting with the hijackers.” According to another person the FBI interviewed after September 11, al-Bayoumi said before his trip that he was going to Los Angeles to pick up visitors."

"When al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar moved to San Diego, al-Bayoumi gave them considerable assistance."
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/serialset/creports/pdf/fullreport_errata.pdf

But al-Bayoumi claims he's just a nice guy that enjoys helping strangers, and attends schools that have no records of him.....in other words he's also a lier.

"Newsweek said Mr al-Bayoumi was believed by some local Muslims to be working for Saudi intelligence. Mr al-Bayoumi claimed to be studying at San Diego university but it has no records of him.

"On September 11, Mr al-Bayoumi was studying for a business degree at Aston University, Birmingham. British police questioned him, but he reportedly claimed that he met al-Hazmi and al-Midhar by accident and was simply shown Arab hospitality."

"Congress is preparing a report into the September 11 investigation criticising the administration for failing to pursue leads that point to the Saudi establishment. The FBI is also frustrated that its inquiry into the Saudi role was stymied for political reasons."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/nov/25/alqaida.saudiarabia

Back to the Senate Intelligence report....

"Since September 11, the FBI has learned that al-Bayoumi has connections to terrorist elements. He has been tied to an imam abroad who has connections to al-Qa’ida. Further, the FBI’s Executive Assistant Director for Counterterrorism and Counterintelligence described in testimony before the Joint Inquiry FBI contacts “with the [ redacted] government about collection on a person named [redacted ], who has ties to al-Qa’ida, who has ties to al-Bayoumi.”
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/serialset/creports/pdf/fullreport_errata.pdf

Did you catch that? The FBI Informant that Bush is protecting and that we taxpayers rewarded with $100,000 is friends with terrorists according to the Senate Intelligence committee.

"Despite the fact that he was a student, al-Bayoumi had access to seemingly unlimited funding from Saudi Arabia. For example, an FBI source identified al-Bayoumi as the person who delivered $400,000 from Saudi Arabia for the Kurdish mosque in San Diego. One of the FBI’s best sources in San Diego informed the FBI that he thought that al-Bayoumi must be an intelligence officer for Saudi Arabia or another foreign power."
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/serialset/creports/pdf/fullreport_errata.pdf

So why is Bush protecting Saudi Arabia? Because he has to. He can't allow the Intelligence informant to be interviewed. If he's not interviewed then it was just a "coincidence" that these monitored terrorists who were "accidentally" let into the country were living with an intelligence asset. Keep the myth that they were "al Qaeda" bad guys funded by the evil "al qaeda" leader Bin Laden. We had no intelligence on them once they were accidently let into the country. That is the official story you know, it's all a big "coincidence".

He can't let the informant be interviewed if he is also a CIA asset, because then the whole myth of "these guys were accidentally let into the country and we couldn't find them" is exposed for the lie that it is. All the alleged hijackers were heavily monitored and tracked more than a year before 9/11.

http://georgewashington.blogspot.com/2007/04/government-heard-911-plans-...
http://web.archive.org/web/20020806083614/http://www.bayarea.com/mld/bay...

There is also the possibility this informant is a Saudi Intelligence asset, or both. He certainly knew and worked with the Saudi intelligence asset al-Bayoumi.

He is a living symbol of the CIA and Saudi Intelligence and how they work together. The USSR superpower was brought down by the CIA/Saudi Intelligence network. It's a proven fact they work together.

And who is the biggest Saudi Intelligent asset of them all? Bin Laden. The Bin Laden family is extremely wealthy and powerfull. However, they owe everything they have, everything, to the Saudi Royal family. They would be nothing without the Saudi Royal family. They are also friends of the Bush family.
http://www.amazon.com/Bin-Ladens-Arabian-American-Century/dp/1594201641/...

And you are supposed to believe O. Bin laden wants to overthrow the royal family!

It's a well known fact that Bin Laden is a Saudi Intelligence asset. But you are supposed to believe that "well, yea, he was during the Afghan war against the Soviets, but then he turned on them." Really? When exactly did he turn? Because, I'm guessing never, which might explain this from the Senate Intelligence report......

"According to a U. S. Government official, it was clear from about 1996 that the Saudi Government would not cooperate with the United States on matters relating to Usama Bin Ladin[redacted redacted redacted] reemphasized the lack of Saudi cooperation and stated that there was little prospect of future cooperation regarding Bin Ladin. [redacted] told the Joint Inquiry that he believed the U.S. Government’s hope of eventually obtaining Saudi cooperation was unrealistic because Saudi assistance to the U.S. Government on this matter is contrary to Saudi national interests.
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/serialset/creports/pdf/fullreport_errata.pdf

You see these Saudis with "Links to Al Qaeda" are not the only ones that are documented as being protected by Lord Bush, there is also the leader of the group of Saudis Bush let fly out of the Country just after 9/11, Prince Ahmed bin Salman bin Abdul Aziz, who was later fingered by inmates in Guantanamo as their boss.

"Abu Zubaydah has made startling revelations about secret connections linking Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Osama bin Laden. CIA men flew Zubaydah to an Afghan complex fitted out as a fake Saudi jail chamber, where "two Arab-Americans, now with Special Forces," pretending to be Saudi inquisitors, used drugs and threats to scare him into more confessions."

"Yet when Zubaydah was confronted by the false Saudis, writes Posner, "his reaction was not fear, but utter relief." Happy to see them, he reeled off telephone numbers for a senior member of the royal family who would, said Zubaydah, "tell you what to do."The man at the other end would be Prince Ahmed bin Salman bin Abdul Aziz, a Westernized nephew of King Fahd and a publisher better known as a racehorse owner. His horse War Emblem won the Kentucky Derby in 2002. To the amazement of the U.S., the numbers proved valid. When the fake inquisitors accused Zubaydah of lying, he responded with a 10-minute monologue laying out the Saudi-Pakistani-Osama triangle, according to the book."
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,480240,00.html

"Zubaydah, writes Posner, said the Saudi connection ran through Prince Turki al-Faisal bin Abdul Aziz, the kingdoms longtime intelligence chief. Zubaydah said bin Laden "personally" told him of a 1991 meeting at which Turki agreed to let bin Laden leave Saudi Arabia and to provide him with secret funds as long as al-Qaeda refrained from promoting jihad in the kingdom. The Pakistani contact, high - ranking air force officer Mushaf Ali Mir, entered the equation, Zubaydah said, at a 1996 meeting in Pakistan also attended by Zubaydah. Bin Laden struck a deal with Mir, then in the military but tied closely to Islamists in Pakistans Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), to get protection, arms and supplies for al-Qaeda. Zubaydah told interrogators bin Laden said the arrangement was "blessed by the Saudis," according to Posner."
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,480240,00.html

"Zubaydah said he attended a third meeting in Kandahar in 1998 with Turki, senior ISI agents and Taliban officials. There Turki promised, writes Posner, that "more Saudi aid would flow to the Taliban, and the Saudis would never ask for bin Ladens extradition, so long as al-Qaeda kept its long-standing promise to direct fundamentalism away from the kingdom."
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,480240,00.html

On July 22, 2002, Prince Ahmed was felled by a heart attack at age 43
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,480240,00.html

The others Zubaydah named also quickly died. Remember the interrogation of Zubaydah was videotaped.

According to this declassified FBI document as you can see on page 11/224 Prince Ahmed bin Salman bin Abdul Aziz, who Zubaydah named as his boss and even gave his phone number, was the leader of the Saudis that were allowed to leave the country immediatly after the attacks of 9/11.
http://www.truthout.org/imgs.art_02/saudidocs_2.pdf

Having it on videotape that you let the boss of the "Al Qaeda" inmates leave the country immediatly after 9/11 is not something you want hanging around for all history if you're the President is it?

The 9/11 commission asked the CIA about this. And what did the CIA do? They destroyed the tape and didn't respond. And you were told the tapes were destroyed because they showed torture. Here is the memo Phillip Zelikow made in order to cover his own ass which proves this.
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/national/20071222-INTEL-MEMO.p...

Who is Al Qaeda? And who Fiances them?
It's a terrorist group, run by Intelligence agencies. Always has been.

Who financed Ramzi Yousef? Bin Ladens' brother in law Mohammed Jamal Khalifa.

"Khalifa started the Benevolence International Corporation in the Philippines in 1988, apparently to recruit people for the war against the Soviets. In 1992, that group folded visible operations while another group known as the Islamic Benevolence Committee renamed itself to Benevolence International Foundation. The remains of the Benevolence International Corporation have been accused of assisting the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the Operation Bojinka plot that was foiled in 1995. "

"U.S. and Filipino investigators accused Khalifa of once being an important lieutenant of Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda organization, which was based in Sudan at the time he allegedly was involved in terrorist plots."

"Khalifa was arrested in Saudi Arabia shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks, but was released without charges being filed."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_Jamal_Khalifa

But when you get exposed you get dead. Like the folks Zubaydah fingered.

"On January 31, 2007, Khalifa was murdered by 25 to 30 armed men while visiting a gemstone mine he owned in Sakamilko, near the town of Sakaraha in southern Madagascar. He had recently called in local police to evict people who had been working the gem mine in his absence. Though all his belongings had been stolen there is some conjecture that the death was politically motivated."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_Jamal_Khalifa

"The Benevolence International Foundation was a purported nonprofit charitable trust based in Saudi Arabia. It was a front for al-Qaeda and is now banned worldwide by the United Nations Security Council Committee . It had already been banned by the US Department of the Treasury. It was founded by Adel bin Abdul-Jalil Batterjee of Jeddah, who is now personally embargoed by the UN and by the US."

"Benevolence International Corporation is said to have been started in 1988 by Mohammed Jamal Khalifa of Jeddah, the brother in law of Osama bin Laden. Meanwhile, another group known as the Islamic Benevolence Committee was founded in both Jeddah and Peshawar, Pakistan by Batterjee. The group was a "charity" that openly supported fighters against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolence_International_Foundation

And who was paying Mr al-Bayoumi? Dallah Al-Baraka.

"Al-Bayoumi was assistant to the Director of Finance for Dallah Avco, a DBG company that works with the Saudi aviation authority. The Wall Street Journal has reported that the United States believes the Dallah al-Baraka Bank, another DBG company, was also used by al-Qaeda."
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/funding_terror/

"The Feds discovered that al-Bayoumi had once claimed to be an employee of Dallah Avco, a Saudi aviation-services company suspected of having ties to Al Qaeda. The firm's owner, Saudi billionaire Saleh Abdullah Kamel, has denied the accusation."
http://www.newsweek.com/id/152640/output/print

"Dallah Al-Baraka, is a Saudi Conglomerate founded and owned by Sheikh Saleh Abdullah Kamel In 1975, Dallah Avco was formed to specialize in the construction, operation and maintenance of airport based projects. Its continued success in winning several contracts with the Saudi Ministry of Defense and Aviation, catapulted the group to grow and diversify extensively."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dallah_Al-Baraka

"Sheikh Saleh Abdullah Kamel is a Saudi businessman, chairman and founder of the Dallah al Baraka Group (DBG). He is of also the chairman of the General Council for Islamic Banks. He is estimated to be worth about $2.6 billion. Most of Kamel's business work focus on coded TV channels, trade and civil services."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saleh_Abdullah_Kamel

Sheikh Saleh Abdullah Kamel also helps fund the Saudi Intelligence run group we call today "al Qaeda".

"The "Golden Chain" is a list of purported sponsors of al Qaeda that was seized in March of 2002 raid by Bosnian police authorities of the premises of the Benevolence International Foundation in Sarajevo."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Chain_(al_Qaeda)#Saleh_Abdullah_Kamel

"Adel bin Abdul-Jalil Batterjee is a noted Saudi Arabian businessman and philanthropist, most widely known as the incorporator of the U.S., Canadian, and Saudi Arabian branches of the purported terrorist funding conduit Benevolence International Foundation. Batterjee is free in Saudi Arabia, but is under a worldwide travel ban, financial embargo, and weapons embargo by the UN Committee and a financial embargo the US Department of the Treasury."

"As of 2002 Batterjee was head of the Al Shamal Islamic Bank in Sudan and was one of its largest shareholders. According to a 1996 U.S. State Department factsheet the bank was capitalized with $50 million by Osama bin Laden and other National Islamic Front members. Al-Qaeda members who were funded via this bank included Jamal al-Fadl and Wadih el-Hage."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adel_Batterjee

Are you starting to see how "Al qaeda" is funded and who funds them? Here is someone else who funds them and this will be in the Senate Intelligence report in 30 years when the 28 pages Bush demanded be redacted finally see the light of day......

“About two months after al-Bayoumi began aiding Alhazmi and Almihdhar, NEWSWEEK has learned, al-Bayoumi's wife began receiving regular stipends, often monthly and usually around $2,000, totaling tens of thousands of dollars. The money came in the form of cashier's checks, purchased from Washington's Riggs Bank by Princess Haifa bint Faisal, the daughter of the late King Faisal and wife of Prince Bandar, the Saudi envoy who is a prominent Washington figure and personal friend of the Bush family. The checks were sent to a woman named Majeda Ibrahin Dweikat, who in turn signed over many of them to al-Bayoumi's wife."

"According to then-Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL), who served as a co-chair of the 9/11 Congressional inquiry that preceded the 9/11 Commission, during the period of Alhazmi and Almihdhar’s arrival in the US, Bayoumi had an “unusually large number of telephone calls with Saudi government officials in both Los Angeles and Washington.”
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Page_2_FBI_documents_contradict_Sept._0228...

Princess Haifa bint Faisal also happens to be the sister of the head of Saudi Intelligence at the time.

The 9/11 commission was a coverup. And this is just one of the coverup assignments it had. The 9/11 Commission report said there was no Saudi Arabian assistance to the hijackers and had nothing to do with 9/11.

So you might be asking, why would Saudi Arabia want to attack the U.S.? Well, they probably wouldn't, but an attack in the U.S. can only be stopped by the U.S. and if the people running the Government (PNAC) want an attack in order to carry out their imperialist objectives they have a "great" opportunity. Might even want to get some anthrax cooked up too, in order to help the case for war against Iraq. Since they know Iraq isn't involved in this upcoming "event".

Al Qaeda is a terrorist group run and financed by Intelligence agencies. Does that mean there are not crazy "terrorists"? Yes there is. And Saudi Arabia and the U.S. would love you to join "Al Qaeda" if you fit that description. After all, what's the point of a Military Industrial Complex if you can't use it?

Real History: Afghanistan, by Michael Parenti

2008-12-05T12:39:00.000-08:00

AFGHANISTAN
Another Untold Story

By Michael Parenti

December 05, 2008 "Information Clearinghouse" -- Barack Obama is on record as advocating a military escalation in Afghanistan. Before sinking any deeper into that quagmire, we might do well to learn something about recent Afghan history and the role played by the United States.

Less than a month after the 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, US leaders began an all-out aerial assault upon Afghanistan, the country purportedly harboring Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda terrorist organization. More than twenty years earlier, in 1980, the United States intervened to stop a Soviet “invasion” of that country. Even some leading progressive writers, who normally take a more critical view of US policy abroad, treated the US intervention against the Soviet-supported government as “a good thing.” The actual story is not such a good thing.

Some Real History

Since feudal times the landholding system in Afghanistan had remained unchanged, with more than 75 percent of the land owned by big landlords who comprised only 3 percent of the rural population. In the mid-1960s, democratic revolutionary elements coalesced to form the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). In 1973, the king was deposed, but the government that replaced him proved to be autocratic, corrupt, and unpopular. It in turn was forced out in 1978 after a massive demonstration in front of the presidential palace, and after the army intervened on the side of the demonstrators.

The military officers who took charge invited the PDP to form a new government under the leadership of Noor Mohammed Taraki, a poet and novelist. This is how a Marxist-led coalition of national democratic forces came into office. “It was a totally indigenous happening. Not even the CIA blamed the USSR for it,” writes John Ryan, a retired professor at the University of Winnipeg, who was conducting an agricultural research project in Afghanistan at about that time.
The Taraki government proceeded to legalize labor unions, and set up a minimum wage, a progressive income tax, a literacy campaign, and programs that gave ordinary people greater access to health care, housing, and public sanitation. Fledgling peasant cooperatives were started and price reductions on some key foods were imposed.

The government also continued a campaign begun by the king to emancipate women from their age-old tribal bondage. It provided public education for girls and for the children of various tribes.

A report in the San Francisco Chronicle (17 November 2001) noted that under the Taraki regime Kabul had been “a cosmopolitan city. Artists and hippies flocked to the capital. Women studied agriculture, engineering and business at the city’s university. Afghan women held government jobs—-in the 1980s, there were seven female members of parliament. Women drove cars, traveled and went on dates. Fifty percent of university students were women.”

The Taraki government moved to eradicate the cultivation of opium poppy. Until then Afghanistan had been producing more than 70 percent of the opium needed for the world’s heroin supply. The government also abolished all debts owed by farmers, and began developing a major land reform program. Ryan believes that it was a “genuinely popular government and people looked forward to the future with great hope.”

But serious opposition arose from several quarters. The feudal landlords opposed the land reform program that infringed on their holdings. And tribesmen and fundamentalist mullahs vehemently opposed the government’s dedication to gender equality and the education of women and children.

Because of its egalitarian and collectivist economic policies the Taraki government also incurred the opposition of the US national security state. Almost immediately after the PDP coalition came to power, the CIA, assisted by Saudi and Pakistani military, launched a large scale intervention into Afghanistan on the side of the ousted feudal lords, reactionary tribal chieftains, mullahs, and opium traffickers.

A top official within the Taraki government was Hafizulla Amin, believed by many to have been recruited by the CIA during the several years he spent in the United States as a student. In September 1979, Amin seized state power in an armed coup. He executed Taraki, halted the reforms, and murdered, jailed, or exiled thousands of Taraki supporters as he moved toward establishing a fundamentalist Islamic state. But within two months, he was overthrown by PDP remnants including elements within the military.

It should be noted that all this happened before the Soviet military intervention. National security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski publicly admitted--months before Soviet troops entered the country--that the Carter administration was providing huge sums to Muslim extremists to subvert the reformist government. Part of that effort involved brutal attacks by the CIA-backed mujahideen against schools and teachers in rural areas.

In late 1979, the seriously besieged PDP government asked Moscow to send a contingent of troops to help ward off the mujahideen (Islamic guerrilla fighters) and foreign mercenaries, all recruited, financed, and well-armed by the CIA. The Soviets already had been sending aid for projects in mining, education, agriculture, and public health. Deploying troops represented a commitment of a more serious and politically dangerous sort. It took repeated requests from Kabul before Moscow agreed to intervene militarily.

Jihad and Taliban, CIA Style

The Soviet intervention was a golden opportunity for the CIA to transform the tribal resistance into a holy war, an Islamic jihad to expel the godless communists from Afghanistan. Over the years the United States and Saudi Arabia expended about $40 billion on the war in Afghanistan. The CIA and its allies recruited, supplied, and trained almost 100,000 radical mujahideen from forty Muslim countries including Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Algeria, and Afghanistan itself. Among those who answered the call was Saudi-born millionaire right-winger Osama bin Laden and his cohorts.

After a long and unsuccessful war, the Soviets evacuated the country in February 1989. It is generally thought that the PDP Marxist government collapsed immediately after the Soviet departure. Actually, it retained enough popular support to fight on for another three years, outlasting the Soviet Union itself by a year.

Upon taking over Afghanistan, the mujahideen fell to fighting among themselves. They ravaged the cities, terrorized civilian populations, looted, staged mass executions, closed schools, raped thousands of women and girls, and reduced half of Kabul to rubble. In 2001 Amnesty International reported that the mujahideen used sexual assault as “a method of intimidating vanquished populations and rewarding soldiers.’”

Ruling the country gangster-style and looking for lucrative sources of income, the tribes ordered farmers to plant opium poppy. The Pakistani ISI, a close junior partner to the CIA, set up hundreds of heroin laboratories across Afghanistan. Within two years of the CIA’s arrival, the Pakistan-Afghanistan borderland became the biggest producer of heroin in the world.

Largely created and funded by the CIA, the mujahideen mercenaries now took on a life of their own. Hundreds of them returned home to Algeria, Chechnya, Kosovo, and Kashmir to carry on terrorist attacks in Allah’s name against the purveyors of secular “corruption.”

In Afghanistan itself, by 1995 an extremist strain of Sunni Islam called the Taliban---heavily funded and advised by the ISI and the CIA and with the support of Islamic political parties in Pakistan---fought its way to power, taking over most of the country, luring many tribal chiefs into its fold with threats and bribes.

The Taliban promised to end the factional fighting and banditry that was the mujahideen trademark. Suspected murderers and spies were executed monthly in the sports stadium, and those accused of thievery had the offending hand sliced off. The Taliban condemned forms of “immorality” that included premarital sex, adultery, and homosexuality. They also outlawed all music, theater, libraries, literature, secular education, and much scientific research.

The Taliban unleashed a religious reign of terror, imposing an even stricter interpretation of Muslim law than used by most of the Kabul clergy. All men were required to wear untrimmed beards and women had to wear the burqa which covered them from head to toe, including their faces. Persons who were slow to comply were dealt swift and severe punishment by the Ministry of Virtue. A woman who fled an abusive home or charged spousal abuse would herself be severely whipped by the theocratic authorities. Women were outlawed from social life, deprived of most forms of medical care, barred from all levels of education, and any opportunity to work outside the home. Women who were deemed “immoral” were stoned to death or buried alive.

None of this was of much concern to leaders in Washington who got along famously with the Taliban. As recently as 1999, the US government was paying the entire annual salary of every single Taliban government official. Not until October 2001, when President George W. Bush had to rally public opinion behind his bombing campaign in Afghanistan did he denounce the Taliban’s oppression of women. His wife, Laura Bush, emerged overnight as a full-blown feminist to deliver a public address detailing some of the abuses committed against Afghan women.

If anything positive can be said about the Taliban, it is that they did put a stop to much of the looting, raping, and random killings that the mujahideen had practiced on a regular basis. In 2000 Taliban authorities also eradicated the cultivation of opium poppy throughout the areas under their control, an effort judged by the United Nations International Drug Control Program to have been nearly totally successful. With the Taliban overthrown and a Western-selected mujahideen government reinstalled in Kabul by December 2001, opium poppy production in Afghanistan increased dramatically.

The years of war that have followed have taken tens of thousands of Afghani lives. Along with those killed by Cruise missiles, Stealth bombers, Tomahawks, daisy cutters, and land mines are those who continue to die of hunger, cold, lack of shelter, and lack of water.

The Holy Crusade for Oil and Gas

While claiming to be fighting terrorism, US leaders have found other compelling but less advertised reasons for plunging deeper into Afghanistan. The Central Asian region is rich in oil and gas reserves. A decade before 9/11, Time magazine (18 March 1991) reported that US policy elites were contemplating a military presence in Central Asia. The discovery of vast oil and gas reserves in Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan provided the lure, while the dissolution of the USSR removed the one major barrier against pursuing an aggressive interventionist policy in that part of the world.

US oil companies acquired the rights to some 75 percent of these new reserves. A major problem was how to transport the oil and gas from the landlocked region. US officials opposed using the Russian pipeline or the most direct route across Iran to the Persian Gulf. Instead, they and the corporate oil contractors explored a number of alternative pipeline routes, across Azerbaijan and Turkey to the Mediterranean or across China to the Pacific.

The route favored by Unocal, a US based oil company, crossed Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Indian Ocean. The intensive negotiations that Unocal entered into with the Taliban regime remained unresolved by 1998, as an Argentine company placed a competing bid for the pipeline. Bush’s war against the Taliban rekindled UNOCAL’s hopes for getting a major piece of the action.

Interestingly enough, neither the Clinton nor Bush administrations ever placed Afghanistan on the official State Department list of states charged with sponsoring terrorism, despite the acknowledged presence of Osama bin Laden as a guest of the Taliban government. Such a “rogue state” designation would have made it impossible for a US oil or construction company to enter an agreement with Kabul for a pipeline to the Central Asian oil and gas fields.

In sum, well in advance of the 9/11 attacks the US government had made preparations to move against the Taliban and create a compliant regime in Kabul and a direct US military presence in Central Asia. The 9/11 attacks provided the perfect impetus, stampeding US public opinion and reluctant allies into supporting military intervention.

One might agree with John Ryan who argued that if Washington had left the Marxist Taraki government alone back in 1979, “there would have been no army of mujahideen, no Soviet intervention, no war that destroyed Afghanistan, no Osama bin Laden, and no September 11 tragedy.” But it would be asking too much for Washington to leave unmolested a progressive leftist government that was organizing the social capital around collective public needs rather than private accumulation.

US intervention in Afghanistan has proven not much different from US intervention in Cambodia, Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, Grenada, Panama, and elsewhere. It had the same intent of preventing egalitarian social change, and the same effect of overthrowing an economically reformist government. In all these instances, the intervention brought retrograde elements into ascendance, left the economy in ruins, and pitilessly laid waste to many innocent lives.

The war against Afghanistan, a battered impoverished country, continues to be portrayed in US official circles as a gallant crusade against terrorism. If it ever was that, it also has been a means to other things: destroying a leftist revolutionary social order, gaining profitable control of one of the last vast untapped reserves of the earth’s dwindling fossil fuel supply, and planting US bases and US military power into still another region of the world.

In the face of all this Obama’s call for “change” rings hollow.

Michael Parenti’s recent books are Contrary Notions: The Michael Parenti Reader and the forthcoming God and His Demons. For further information, visit www.michaelparenti.org.

ILLUSION of Change.org

2008-12-01T14:57:00.000-08:00

Obama's mindfuck agenda is on display over at "Change.org" (sic).

Yes, I got the "note" about how my "idea" (Justice? The rule of law?) wasn't eligible for their competition no matter how many votes I got. My thread has been deleted now during the writing of this blog post.

This is in keeping with 9/11 Truth threads being deleted from their site even after ranking at the top (The #1 Spot -- Full Story).

Below is my NOW DELETED THREAD, followed by their "note." Followed by my complaint.

Stop Criminal Covert Activity

Covert intelligence operatives and private mercenaries contracted to the US government have been implicated in crimes ranging from international drug smuggling to terrorism. This unaccountable system must be exposed and stopped. See investigative reporter Daniel Hopsicker for details related to CIA connected planes caught full of cocaine. Make Obama respond to these charges of criminal complicity in the CIA, DEA and FBI.

Apply the law to covert sponsors of terrorism, including prosecuting the former regime for their cooperation with terrorists such as Jundullah and M.E.K. (Seymour Hersh, The New Yorker).

Expose the "foreign governments" (US Senate, October 28, 2003) who assisted the "9/11 hijackers", whose acts were made "classified" by the Bush white house. This is arguably high treason, and is indicative of a wide cover-up of the 9/11 attacks. Disclose the roles of CIA and FBI supervisors who shut down investigations prior to the attacks and hold all parties accountable for their law breaking.

This treason is so damaging that the republic is now in danger of collapse into a fascist police state whose wealth has been plundered by the terrorists in charge. That is not an exaggeration.

- John Doraemi (http://crimesofthestate.blogspot.com/), New Earth, DC Nov 29 @ 09:32AM PST

From "Change.org" (sic).

Hello John,

We wanted to send you a note about an idea you recently submitted on in the Ideas for Change in America competition titled "Stop Criminal Covert Activity."

We support calls for truth and transparency in our government on every subject [LIE] and welcome you to directly petition the new administration about this matter, which you can do at http://change.gov/page/s/ofthepeople. [WASTE OF TIME, BUT DOING ANYWAY] However, this is unfortunately outside the scope of the Ideas for Change in America project, which aims to offer specific policy solutions [WHICH I INCLUDED, OF COURSE] rather than investigations into past government action [THAT IS ALSO A "POLICY"]. As such, it is not eligible to enter the second round of the competition. [CENSORSHIP IS JOB 1]

We understand that good people may disagree with our vision. But this is a private effort not connected to the Obama campaign or transition team [YEAH SURE], and we reserve the right to keep the competition and its content aligned with the stated mission and overall spirit of the project. [SPIRIT OF CORRUPTION AND COMPLICITY]

Thank you for your understanding [TOO MUCH UNDERSTANDING?]. As mentioned above, we welcome you to directly petition the Obama administration about your proposal [IF YOU'RE NOT CONNECTED TO THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION, WHY ARE YOU ALLEGEDLY "WELCOMING" ME?] at http://change.gov/page/s/ofthepeople. And we hope you continue your work to advance change.

Best,

- The Ideas for Change in America Team

#

MY RESPONSE:

So, your policy is that the new regime should shield the old regime from prosecution for its long list of felonies and treason.

You are full of shit.
#

Their response to that:
We never said that the Obama administration shouldn't investigate
Bush's policies and actions, in fact we recommended that you send this
proposal directly to his office at
http://change.gov/page/s/ofthepeople. What we said is that these
types of investigations into past actions are outside of the scope and
intent of our independent project. Our goal is the pairing of people
who have specific concrete policy recommendations with nonprofits in
an effort to present them to the Obama administration, build a
national lobbying campaign, and get a policy implemented.

#

Change-free "change" is the new brand.

They are indeed full of shit.

"We never said that the Obama administration shouldn't investigate Bush's policies and actions,"

You just censor any mention of it, and scrub it off your site. This isn't subtle.

I expected nothing less.

War Crimes of President Bush and His Subordinates

2008-11-27T14:32:00.000-08:00

You Cannot Pardon a Crime you Authorized

War Crimes of President Bush and His Subordinates

by Lawrence Velvel

Global Research, November 27, 2008

Statement from the Steering Committee for the Prosecution for War Crimes of President Bush and His Subordinates

Never before has a president pardoned himself or his subordinates for crimes he authorized. The closest thing to this in U.S. history thus far has been Bush's commutation of Scooter Libby's sentence. Bush is widely expected to follow that commutation with a pardon. Not only did Libby work for the White House, but he was convicted of obstruction of justice in an investigation that was headed to the president. Evidence introduced in the trial, including a hand-written note by the vice president, implicated Bush, and former Press Secretary Scott McClellan has since testified that Bush authorized the exposure of an undercover agent, that being the crime that was under investigation.

There are widespread concerns that Bush might pardon other subordinates for various crimes that he authorized, potentially including torture, warrantless spying, a variety of war crimes, taking the nation to war on fraudulent evidence, and the abuses of the politicized Justice Department. Voices in the media advising Bush to issue such pardons include: Stuart Taylor Jr. (Newsweek 7/12/08) and Alan Dershowitz (Wall Street Journal 9/12/08), while many additional voices have urged Obama to commit to not prosecuting.

The idea that the pardon power constitutionally includes such pardons ignores a thousand year tradition in which no man can sit in judgment of himself, and the fact that James Madison and George Mason argued that the reason we needed the impeachment power was that a president might some day try to pardon someone for a crime that he himself was involved in. The problem is not preemptive pardons of people not yet tried and convicted. The problem is not blanket pardons of unnamed masses of people. Both of those types of pardons have been issued in the past and have their appropriate place. The problem is the complete elimination of any semblance of the rule of law if Bush pardons his subordinates for crimes he instructed or authorized them to commit.

If Bush attempts this, here are possible responses:

1. Immediate impeachment of Bush and Cheney and various pardonees, even if they are out of office. (Here are arguments for the permissibility of such impeachments: http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/37834 )

2. Overturning of the pardons by the new president or by Congress, as Bush's lawyers told him he could do to Clinton's pardon of Marc Rich, which was a far more minor abuse of the pardon power.

3. Legislation banning self-pardons and pardons of crimes authorized by the president.

4. A Constitutional Amendment banning self-pardons and pardons of crimes authorized by the president.

5. Refusal by the courts to honor the supposed pardons.

6. Prosecution of Bush, Cheney, and their subordinates for their crimes.

With thanks to all who have aided over the past millennia in the establishment of the rule of law.

Lawrence Velvel, Dean of Massachusetts School of Law, chairs the Steering Committee whose members include Ben Davis, Marjorie Cohn, Chris Pyle, Elaine Scarry, Peter Weiss, David Swanson, Kristina Borjesson, Colleen Costello, Valeria Gheorghiu, and Andy Worthington.

Lawrence Velvel is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Lawrence Velvel

US Bin-Ladin Hunt Phoney - Prof. Juan Cole

2008-11-19T09:56:00.000-08:00

[Editor's Question: Could this exposure be related to the latest "Al Qaeda" / Taliban threat to attack Paris, France if French troops do not leave Afghanistan?

"The Taliban said it wouldn't come to the negotiating table until all foreign troops left Afghanistan. It also vowed in a videotape to strike in Paris unless coalition member France withdrew its forces."
-Philadelphia Inquirer, Nov. 18 2008

Why single out only France for a special threat? This is curious.]

US Bin-Ladin Hunt Phoney

By Juan Cole

November 17, 2008 "Juan Cole" -- - The USG Open Source Center translates an article from the Persian Afghan press alleging that French troops were at one point close to capturing Usamah Bin Ladin in Afghanistan, but that American forces stopped them from doing so. It says that a forthcoming French documentary containing interviews with the French soldiers provides proof for the allegation. The argument is that the Bush administration needed Bin Ladin to be at large in order to justify its military expansionism.

Afghan article says US Bin-Ladin hunt phoney
Hasht-e-Sobh
Friday, October 3, 2008
Document Type: OSC Translated Text

Afghan article says US Bin-Ladin hunt phoney

Text of article, "Bin-Ladin on the run? The rumour which was fact", by Afghan independent secular daily newspaper Hasht-e Sobh on 29 September

So, the rumour was right: French soldiers trapped Usamah Bin-Ladin, but were not allowed by the Americans to arrest the apparent fugitive leader of Al-Qa`idah. A Bin-Ladin documentary just released by French documentary cinema examines this issue, an issue which has led to heated debate in the French media.

This French documentary shows how the Americans are interested in continuing the game, a bloody and expensive game whose victims are only the unprotected and local people of our dry and dusty country. It was last year that rumours spread about this report in Kabul, but it has not been taken seriously by the media. But watching this revealing French documentary changes the rumours into disturbing facts. "Bin Laden, the failings of a manhunt", produced by Emmanuel Razavi and Eric de Lavarene, two French filmmakers and reporters, assesses and confirms the claims of French soldiers that they could have killed Usamah within two operations, but the American forces prevented them. This film has not been broadcast publicly yet and is to be broadcast by Planet, a French network.

Even though French soldiers have insisted on this in the battlefield many times, the Elysees Palace in Paris and the White House in America have rejected this, and the Afghan leadership does not have any information about it yet!

The main question that arises is the extent to which the "Bin Laden on the run" project is a problem for America and Afghanistan. Seven years of suicide bombing and explosions, blood and violence, unmanned fighter planes, and old vehicles full of explosives, all to catch a long-bearded Arab whom America apparently hates? And an Arab who worked for the CIA in the name of Allah, and who now, also in the name of that same Allah, has conducted a jihad against that same CIA?

Facing the facts in this Usamah film is a bitter and disturbing experience and will make you nervous and wish that what it is that you are watching is just a baseless rumour, or a figment of Hollywood's imagination. But it is not. The pictures are real and you are facing a debate in documentary form. The only justification for the bloody presence of America in Afghanistan is the ambiguous existence of Usamah Bin-Ladin and the Al-Qa'idah terrorist network.

George Bush, with his "war on terror" project, has transformed the middle east and Afghanistan into an inflamed bomb ready to explode, but has not found out anything about his beloved lost Usamah Bin-Ladin so far.

What is seen, and the film also emphases this, is that all these slogans, this fighting and killing are a game, a painful and prolonged game whose end even the players do not know and which is running out of control. Apparently, it is a game of cat and mouse, just like "Tom and Jerry", the famous cartoon. But it is a reality that the stubborn one from Texas does not want to catch the mouse - unlike credulous Tom - and that the long-bearded Wahhabi Arab does not want to hide - unlike the intelligent and roaming Jerry. Their prolonged game has made not only the audiences tired but has also transformed the playground into a big pool of blood.

There have always been questions that neither the politicians have been willing to answer, nor the independent western media to raise. If Usamah is not the lost one of the Americans, then who is? What are the Americans searching for in Afghanistan and who are they looking for? The main media in the West remained silent before the report of the Usamah Bin-Ladin arrest by French soldiers. And, through a news boycott, they reduced a certain fact to a rumour.

Certainly, they will do the same before this film, too. But instead they will try to complicate the scenario. More painful than anything else is the political fair in Kabul, a poor fair where everyone offers his despicable commodity - a combination of generous western customers and thankful sellers of the country. Everyone knows the fact, like "an obvious secret", but no one wants to irritate the delicate minds of their nervous guests, guests who will be staying at home until the new year.
Politicians try to forget such news in Kabul, and this is the advice they give to the people. Forgetting and ignoring such facts is possible, but how can we forget and ignore the bombs exploding next to our houses every day?

Bombs which sometimes rise from the ground and sometimes descend from the air.

(Description of Source: Kabul Hasht-e-Sobh in Dari Kabul Hasht-e Sobh in Dari - Eight-page secular daily launched in May 2007; editor-in-chief, Qasim Akhgar, is a political analyst and Head of the Association for the Freedom of Speech. )

'PEAK DEBT?' We should have been watching...

2008-11-09T09:42:00.000-08:00

[Editor's Note: This account of the history of the US economy, and the dire predictions for the future seem logical and supported by the facts. It is certainly in the interest of the neo-fascist class that America experience a new economic catastrophe. The people are more easily organized into new patterns, and sold new lies, after such economic hardships.]

Renowned economist Mikhail Khazin : U.S. will soon face second “Great Depression”

Yevgeniy Chernyx
KP.ru
Sunday, Nov 9, 2008

Five years ago, I ran the cultural section at Komsomolskaya Pravda. Publishing houses used to send me their new releases now and again for review. One day, after digging through the latest shipment of such literature, I stumbled upon a book titled, “Sunset of the Dollar Empire and the End of the Pax Americana.”

I remember reading the title over to myself several times in disbelief. Way back when, Soviet Americanologists loved to debate the collapse of the U.S. financial empire. But this book was published in 2003.

I flipped through the pages, skimming over the text. The conclusions of the author — an economist named Mikhail Khazin — seemed convincing enough. So I gave the book to our economics columnist at KP Jenya Anisimov, who wrote a review and interviewed the author later at our editorial offices.

All these years, I kept Khazin in the back of my mind, and followed his career as he spoke at various conferences throughout Russia. He seemed certain the U.S. was teetering on the verge of an economic collapse, while other analysts were quick to refute his theory. Now, as his once unfathomable prognosis begins to come true, KP contacted Khazin for an interview.

Fired from the Kremlin!

KP: Mikhail Leonidovich, how did you end up predicting the current financial crisis?

Khazin: In the spring of 1997, the Kremlin established the Presidential Economic Department. I was made the deputy head of the unit. Our first task was to prepare a report for [former President Boris] Yeltsin about the economic situation. We realized an economic crisis was pending in Russia and would take place in the late summer or early fall of 1998 if the country’’s economic policies weren’t changed.

KP: What view did the higher echelons take of your report?

Khazin: They didn’t really take any view at all. No one read the text except for the deputy head of the administration and Yeltsin himself. In the summer of 1998, we were fired from the presidential administration for trying to stop a business project titled, “State Treasury Bills— Exchange Rate Corridor.” This was the biggest financial scheme of the post-Soviet era. Just as we had predicted, an economic crisis gave way that August. Together with my colleagues, I continued researching the reasons behind the crisis.

After becoming seriously consumed in our studies of the U.S. financial system, we found an unprecedented parallel. Just as our T-bill market had sucked all the juices out of the Russian economy, the U.S. financial market was sucking the resources out of the entire planet. We realized a similar fate awaited the U.S. financial system. Our article was published in the summer of 2000 in the “Ekspert” magazine, titled, “Is the U.S. Digging for an Apocalypse.” We concluded that it was just as impossible to avoid an economic crisis in the U.S. as the financial collapse in Russia.

Playing the idiot

KP: The U.S. obviously didn’t listen to the song written by [the renowned Russian rock group] LUBE during perestroika, “Don’t Play the Fool, America!” Seriously, though, what’s the real reason for the economic collapse? Let’s try to do this without any heavy duty financial terms…

Khazin: I’ll try! The economic model that led to the collapse was the result of a crisis in the 1970s. This was a terrible financial crisis that was the result of surplus capital. Even the 19th-Century classics in economics literature concluded that capital grows faster than labor provides compensation. As a result, there is a lack of demand. In traditional capitalism, this problem is solved on account of crises in excess production. And in an imperialistic system, the problem is solved on account of capital outflow. But by the 1970s, these solutions had run their course. However, the internatinoal situation demanded the U.S. either make a great scientific and technological leap forward or lose the Cold War to the USSR. The administration of [President Jimmy] Carter and the head of the Financial Reserve System Paul Walker developed a very tricky concept. For the first time in the history of capitalism, capitalists began helping others, issuing new currency in an effort to stimulate aggregate demand .

KP: They decided to switch on the printing press?

Khazin: Exactly. In the early 1980s, they started to stimulate demand through state support. For example, they launched the “Star Wars” program. As of 1983, they placed an emphasis on the household economies.

KP: You mean, they relied on the average citizens?

Khazin: Yes. For an entire quarter century, households received funds as a result of issuing new currency in larger and larger quantities.

KP: In other words, credit?

Khazin: Yes. The U.S. was able to make the next step in technological progress as a result of this excess demand. They accomplished the collapse of the USSR and numerous other significant fears. But… The boom took place thanks to resources that were supposed to provide for future growth. The country ate its own resources two generations ahead of time. The U.S. built up tremendous debt. This is clearly seen if we compare the growth of debt in U.S. households with the entire U.S. debt and GDP. The economy is growing at an annual rate of 2-3, or at a maximum 4 percent. But debt is increasing at a rate of 8-10 percent.

KP: Well, let the debt keep growing… The U.S. lived fine up until now without a problem… Better than we did!

Khazin: Yes, the U.S. did create a very high standard of living by stimulating consumer demand. Generations lived without having to experience poverty. But it’s impossible to live forever in debt. Household debt has now surpassed the national economy — more than $14 trillion. Now it’s time to pay up. Of course, Wall Street tried to postpone this collapse. I won’t go into detail about derivatives and other such financial assets, but this was just a gasp for air before an inevitable death.

Another problem in the U.S. is that powerful industries were built around this growing demand. Whatever decision Wall Street takes right now, the demand is going to fall. What will happen to these industries? In 2000, we estimated that 25 percent of the U.S. economy would disappear. Today, we think the number is closest to one-third — if not more.

KP: That’s a lot!

Khazin: That’s an incredible amount! But what exactly does this mean — the destruction of one-fourth of the U.S. economy? It means an uncontrollable increase in unemployment, a horrible depression, a sharp increase in the effect of social services on the budget… Now, the U.S. is jumping all over the place doing everything its can to rescue this fraction of the economy. The government is stimulating banks and manufacturing… But regardless, in 2-3 years, the U.S. will face a crisis similar to the Great Depression.

Who is Who

Mikhail Leonidovich Khazin was born in 1962. He studied mathematics at the Yaroslavl University and Moscow State University. In 1984-1991, he worked at the Soviet Academy of Sciences. In 1993-1994, he worked at the State Working Center of Economic Reforms. In 1995-1997, he was the head of the Credit Policy Department at the Economics Ministry. In 1997-1998, he was the deputy head of the Presidential Economics Department. In June 1998, he left state service. At the moment, he is president of the consulting firm, Neokon.
###

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