Thompson onto White House Gay Prostitution Shenanigans
I was skeptical when I first heard the rumours of HST's "suicide" being something more nefarious. But, I'm familiar with Paul William Roberts' work. He's a pro.
Now, I'm having a lot of trouble with this fucking blog program, so I can't add links, etc. At the bottom of this article are a list of links to more info. And, this amusing flash http://www.thetoiletonline.com/leaveit2.htm- ape
from TOTAL INFORMATION ANALYSIS
http://www.total411.info/2005/03/
hunter-thompson-friend-confirms-was.html
Thursday, March 03, 2005
Hunter Thompson friend confirms was on to White House callboy story
Check out this short partial transcript below and this audio file from Thursday's Alex Jones show. The audio clip has material not in the transcript. Jones' sites may or may not plan to post more complete audio.
ALEX JONES: We're talking to a renowned journalist and writer, Paul William Roberts. Wrote a story for The Globe & Mail up in Canada where he talked about Hunter S. Thompson before he died mysteriously a few weeks ago, saying he believed the government may have been involved in 9/11, and he was concerned. He lived basically in a little armored compound... now they're saying he committed suicide.
But Paul has also interviewed people like Saddam Hussein; has written on the subject -- just this whole global empire...
CALLER "Scott from Texas": I was just wondering if you guys might be able to clear up something I heard through the journalist Sherman Skolnick. He is reporting that another story or book, I don't remember exactly which, that Hunter S. Thompson was working on was about this gay prostitution ring in the White House and supposedly that was another touchy topic that he brought out, and the whole...
JONES: Had you heard that from Hunter?
PAUL WILLAM ROBERTS: Yeah, I had heard that quite a lot from Hunter. It goes back to Kissinger, I believe.
JONES: Wow.
Now that's a big confirmation. Now for those who don't know, We have Washington Times articles from 1989, you know -- 'underage call boys in the White House', and so this is serious . .. Hunter was working on that?
ROBERTS: Yeah, in fact Lyndon LaRouche published some stuff about that. And although, you know, a lot of his material was not that trustworthy, in this particular case there were a lot of sources cited and there was no lawsuit. And where there's no lawsuit you can be almost guaranteed that it's true.
CALLER: And I'm wondering if that might not be a hotter issue otherwise, because you get into the Jeff Gannon case and the whole gay prostitution and that's a national security issue.
JONES: Well, Skolnick is saying that now, we're talking about some of the fake reporters, and we know that ... again I haven't confirmed that part of the story but i'd like 2 get some conf on that
CALLER: And also it's interesting too because it dovetails with Jeff Gannon possibly being the leak that leaked the story about Valerie Plame...
JONES: Well let me just add this. I mean, we have the New York Post: 'Top gay porn star services moguls at Bohemian Grove... I mean I have Parade magazine articles, Spy magazine articles from the 80s where, as I said they bus in the gay prostitutes like Beluga caviar for our "Christian conservative" leaders... And is that what Hunter S. Thompson was on to?
ROBERTS: He certainly knew all about that and I believe had written about it. I don't know wheher there was a book in the works, but he certainly had published columns on it...
JONES: Well it certainly looks pretty suspicious. Man let me tell you.
[LATER IN THE PROGRAM]
CALLER "Thomas in Colorado": I never met Mr. -- Dr. Thompson myself, but we had a muutal friend and I'm still friends with this guy and through this mutual friend, I passed on to him about a year ago some of your vidoes. So Dr Thompson watched your videos, I know this for a fact and through my friend I heard that he was impressed and he said something to the effect, "Yes, that's the way it is" or "That's the way things are."
.....---
.....| Posted at 13:07 | PERMA-LINK |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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:: Libertythink :: Encouraging Cognitive Liberty in an Age of Statist Propaganda :: [61]
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http://www.mackwhite.com/ [29]
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WHATREALLYHAPPENED.COM [25]
portland imc - 2005.03.03 - BOMBSHELL: CONFIRMED HUNTER THOMPSON WORKING ON WHITE HOUSE CALL-BOY STORY [21]
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WHATREALLYHAPPENED.COM [10]
WhatReallyHappened.com: March 2005 Archives [10]
WHATREALLYHAPPENED.COM [9]
http://mackwhite.com/ [8]
:: Libertythink :: Encouraging Cognitive Liberty in an Age of Statist Propaganda :: [8]
Friends of Liberty [7]
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seattle.indymedia.org [5]
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Saturday, March 05, 2005
Friday, March 04, 2005
Gorilla Radio Log Blog
These are the outline transcripts for the last few Gorilla Radio introductions. I'll add more over time... -ape
GR 02-91 CFUV 101.9 FM 104.3 Cable ‘cfuv.uvic.ca’
Monday, February 21st, 2005
5:00:00 2:00 Welcome to GR, etc. Barely a month into George Bush’s second “mandate,” and his Neo-con vision of America’s destiny are becoming manifest. Some of his new initiatives include gems like: An escalation of the so-called War on Terror; the dismantling of Social Security; a muzzling of the Liberal Arts on University campuses and scapegoating of professors and other educators not toeing the Bush line; and, just passed last week, a new law eliminating an entire area of jurisprudence, the right of citizens to launch Class Action law suits to seek redress for medical malpractice and corporate malfeasance. And, that’s just for starters! M. Junaid Alam is a Boston-based essayist, interviewer, and co-editor of the radical youth journal, ‘Left Hook.org’ His articles can also be found at DissidentVoice.org. He’s seen George Bush’s ambitions for the new American Century firsthand: M. Shahid Alam is Junaid’s father, and has the dubious distinction of being one of the first of American academics to experience the right wing media wrath currently spreading across the nation. M. Junaid Alam in the first half.
And; Premier Gordon Campbell is determined to end the decades old, “War in the Woods.’ The battle over B.C.’s forest practices have plagued both political parties here, but the unrelentingly corporate-friendly Campbell thinks he’s come up with the answer. In the second half, Ingmar Lee, a Vancouver Island environmentalist, whose activism includes defending Nanaimo’s watershed, the iconic Cathedral Grove, and the few remaining wild places on the island, on the new Truce in the Woods.
And; Janine Bandcroft will be here at the bottom of the hour to bring us up to speed with all that’s good to do in and around Victoria this week. But first, M. Junaid Alam and life with the Neo-cons.
5:02:00 25:00 Discussion w/ M. Junaid Alam
Welcome back to the show, Junaid. Your father, has also been on Gorilla Radio, and I’m concerned about his current situation. “Can you briefly tell us who your dad is, and what he’s experiencing in the Land of the Free?”
5:27:00 1:00 Cart(s)
5:28:00 3:00 Janine Bandcroft
5:31:00 3:00 Music
5:34:00 25:00 Discussion w/ Ingmar Lee
Welcome back to GR, etc. Gordon Campbell seems to have succeeded where none of his predecessors could; he’s solved the decades-old War in the Woods of the province. Or, so his PR people would have you believe. Ingmar Lee, a Vancouver Island environmentalist, whose activism includes defending Nanaimo’s watershed, the iconic Cathedral Grove, and the few remaining wild places on the island, and he joins us now to dissect recently inked forestry agreements here in B.C. “Welcome back to the show, Ingmar. The premier seems to have had an environmental epiphany ! He’s been seen hanging around with Greenpeace, the Rainforest Action Network, and other patchouli-scented longhairs, and has finally come to some understanding of the need to protect B.C.’s forest eco-system. Problem solved! So, now what are we going to talk about? “How about Gordon’s new friends from the Rainforest Solutions Project. Who are the hippies behind the RSP?”
5:59:00 1:00 Thanks to M. Junaid Alam, Ingmar Lee, J-9; upcoming.
6:00:00 --:-- -0-
GR 02-90 CFUV 101.9 FM 104.3 Cable ‘cfuv.uvic.ca’
Monday, February 14th, 2005
5:00:00 2:00 Welcome to GR, etc. The newly “democratic” Palestinian leadership is trying to foster a peace plan, cease fire, road map, anything with Israel. As has always been the case, the onus for any peace is entirely incumbent on Palestine. That it is the victim in the sorry affair that has consumed the middle-east for sixty years charged with solving the problem is simply par for the course. But, there is some hope that with Yasser Arafat out of the picture, his successor, President Mahmoud Abbas can move Israel towards a just peace; though, to date, there has been little offered. Jon Elmer is a Halifax-based journalist who’s lived among the people of occupied Palestine. He produces the blog, ‘From Occupied Palestine.org’ Jon Elmer and the mustard seed of hope in Palestine.
And; America has changed radically in the last four years; true, every president since Woodrow Wilson has pursued a nefarious foreign policy, but none until George W. Bush have dared assail the constitution wholesale as he and his colleagues have. In the newest attack on citizen rights and freedoms, the Bush Administration, aided by the usual chorus of right wing radio and television loudmouth pundits has launched a campaign to purge America’s institutions of higher learning. Kurt Nimmo is a New Mexico-based photographer, multimedia developer, blogger, and author. He’s frequently published by CounterPunch.org, and is a contributor to their political anthology, ‘The Politics of Anti-Semitism.’ His own compilation book, ‘Another Day in the Empire’ is now available from Dandelion Books. Kurt Nimmo and the great witch hunt in the second half.
And; Janine Bandcroft will join us at the bottom of the hour to bring us up to speed with all that’s good to do in and around Victoria this week. But first, Jon Elmer, watching the weary occupation of Palestine.
5:02:00 Discussion w/ Jon Elmer
“Welcome back to the show, Jon. How legitimate were Palestine’s recent elections?”
5:25:00 1:00 Cart(s)
5:28:00 3:00 Janine Bandcroft
5:31:00 3:00 Music
5:34:00 25:00 Discussion w/ Kurt Nimmo
Welcome back to GR, etc. The latest outrage emanating from our troubled neighbour to the south is an all-out media assault on academic freedom. Over the last few months, a concerted campaign to target, muzzle, or otherwise remove university professors outside the blinkered, lock-step “reality” of George Bush’s America has been conducted by right wing radio reactionaries and, predictably, formerly respected newspapers. Kurt Nimmo is a New Mexico-based photographer, multimedia developer, blogger, and author. He’s a contributor to CounterPunch.org’s book, ‘The Politics of Anti-Semitism,’ and his own compilation book of essays, ‘Another Day in the Empire’ is now out. His blog has been one of the most vociferous opponents to the administration’s neo-Medieval approach to public discourse, and has too been pilloried and threatened by that same element of American society that would usher in the next dark age. “Welcome back to the show, Kurt. Just what’s been happening on America’s campuses?”
5:59:00 1:00 Thank to Jon Elmer, Kurt Nimmo, J-9; upcoming and Fdrive.
6:00:00 --:-- -0-
GR 02-91 CFUV 101.9 FM 104.3 Cable ‘cfuv.uvic.ca’
Monday, February 21st, 2005
5:00:00 2:00 Welcome to GR, etc. Barely a month into George Bush’s second “mandate,” and his Neo-con vision of America’s destiny are becoming manifest. Some of his new initiatives include gems like: An escalation of the so-called War on Terror; the dismantling of Social Security; a muzzling of the Liberal Arts on University campuses and scapegoating of professors and other educators not toeing the Bush line; and, just passed last week, a new law eliminating an entire area of jurisprudence, the right of citizens to launch Class Action law suits to seek redress for medical malpractice and corporate malfeasance. And, that’s just for starters! M. Junaid Alam is a Boston-based essayist, interviewer, and co-editor of the radical youth journal, ‘Left Hook.org’ His articles can also be found at DissidentVoice.org. He’s seen George Bush’s ambitions for the new American Century firsthand: M. Shahid Alam is Junaid’s father, and has the dubious distinction of being one of the first of American academics to experience the right wing media wrath currently spreading across the nation. M. Junaid Alam in the first half.
And; Premier Gordon Campbell is determined to end the decades old, “War in the Woods.’ The battle over B.C.’s forest practices have plagued both political parties here, but the unrelentingly corporate-friendly Campbell thinks he’s come up with the answer. In the second half, Ingmar Lee, a Vancouver Island environmentalist, whose activism includes defending Nanaimo’s watershed, the iconic Cathedral Grove, and the few remaining wild places on the island, on the new Truce in the Woods.
And; Janine Bandcroft will be here at the bottom of the hour to bring us up to speed with all that’s good to do in and around Victoria this week. But first, M. Junaid Alam and life with the Neo-cons.
5:02:00 25:00 Discussion w/ M. Junaid Alam
Welcome back to the show, Junaid. Your father, has also been on Gorilla Radio, and I’m concerned about his current situation. “Can you briefly tell us who your dad is, and what he’s experiencing in the Land of the Free?”
5:27:00 1:00 Cart(s)
5:28:00 3:00 Janine Bandcroft
5:31:00 3:00 Music
5:34:00 25:00 Discussion w/ Ingmar Lee
Welcome back to GR, etc. Gordon Campbell seems to have succeeded where none of his predecessors could; he’s solved the decades-old War in the Woods of the province. Or, so his PR people would have you believe. Ingmar Lee, a Vancouver Island environmentalist, whose activism includes defending Nanaimo’s watershed, the iconic Cathedral Grove, and the few remaining wild places on the island, and he joins us now to dissect recently inked forestry agreements here in B.C. “Welcome back to the show, Ingmar. The premier seems to have had an environmental epiphany ! He’s been seen hanging around with Greenpeace, the Rainforest Action Network, and other patchouli-scented longhairs, and has finally come to some understanding of the need to protect B.C.’s forest eco-system. Problem solved! So, now what are we going to talk about? “How about Gordon’s new friends from the Rainforest Solutions Project. Who are the hippies behind the RSP?”
5:59:00 1:00 Thanks to M. Junaid Alam, Ingmar Lee, J-9; upcoming.
6:00:00 --:-- -0-
GR 02-90 CFUV 101.9 FM 104.3 Cable ‘cfuv.uvic.ca’
Monday, February 14th, 2005
5:00:00 2:00 Welcome to GR, etc. The newly “democratic” Palestinian leadership is trying to foster a peace plan, cease fire, road map, anything with Israel. As has always been the case, the onus for any peace is entirely incumbent on Palestine. That it is the victim in the sorry affair that has consumed the middle-east for sixty years charged with solving the problem is simply par for the course. But, there is some hope that with Yasser Arafat out of the picture, his successor, President Mahmoud Abbas can move Israel towards a just peace; though, to date, there has been little offered. Jon Elmer is a Halifax-based journalist who’s lived among the people of occupied Palestine. He produces the blog, ‘From Occupied Palestine.org’ Jon Elmer and the mustard seed of hope in Palestine.
And; America has changed radically in the last four years; true, every president since Woodrow Wilson has pursued a nefarious foreign policy, but none until George W. Bush have dared assail the constitution wholesale as he and his colleagues have. In the newest attack on citizen rights and freedoms, the Bush Administration, aided by the usual chorus of right wing radio and television loudmouth pundits has launched a campaign to purge America’s institutions of higher learning. Kurt Nimmo is a New Mexico-based photographer, multimedia developer, blogger, and author. He’s frequently published by CounterPunch.org, and is a contributor to their political anthology, ‘The Politics of Anti-Semitism.’ His own compilation book, ‘Another Day in the Empire’ is now available from Dandelion Books. Kurt Nimmo and the great witch hunt in the second half.
And; Janine Bandcroft will join us at the bottom of the hour to bring us up to speed with all that’s good to do in and around Victoria this week. But first, Jon Elmer, watching the weary occupation of Palestine.
5:02:00 Discussion w/ Jon Elmer
“Welcome back to the show, Jon. How legitimate were Palestine’s recent elections?”
5:25:00 1:00 Cart(s)
5:28:00 3:00 Janine Bandcroft
5:31:00 3:00 Music
5:34:00 25:00 Discussion w/ Kurt Nimmo
Welcome back to GR, etc. The latest outrage emanating from our troubled neighbour to the south is an all-out media assault on academic freedom. Over the last few months, a concerted campaign to target, muzzle, or otherwise remove university professors outside the blinkered, lock-step “reality” of George Bush’s America has been conducted by right wing radio reactionaries and, predictably, formerly respected newspapers. Kurt Nimmo is a New Mexico-based photographer, multimedia developer, blogger, and author. He’s a contributor to CounterPunch.org’s book, ‘The Politics of Anti-Semitism,’ and his own compilation book of essays, ‘Another Day in the Empire’ is now out. His blog has been one of the most vociferous opponents to the administration’s neo-Medieval approach to public discourse, and has too been pilloried and threatened by that same element of American society that would usher in the next dark age. “Welcome back to the show, Kurt. Just what’s been happening on America’s campuses?”
5:59:00 1:00 Thank to Jon Elmer, Kurt Nimmo, J-9; upcoming and Fdrive.
6:00:00 --:-- -0-
Rigged Perception: Who Really Runs the Terrorist Network
Abu Bakar Bashir: Terrorist or CIA-Mossad Patsy?
March 03, 2005
The United States and Australia wanted Abu Bakar Bashir, supposedly the spiritual leader of Jemaah Islamiyah, to spend the rest of his life in prison for the Bali bombing. Instead, Bashir was “sentenced Thursday to 2 1/2 years in prison for conspiracy,” although the United States and Australia “were hoping for a lengthy prison term to deter terrorism in the world’s most populous Muslim nation [Indonesia],” according to ABC News. “We’d have liked a longer sentence,” lamented Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer.
Jemaah Islamiyah is described as a militant Islamic separatist movement dedicated to the establishment of a fundamentalist Islamic state in Southeast Asia, in particular Indonesia, Singapore, Brunei, Malaysia, and the south of Thailand and the Philippines, as noted by Wikipedia. It is said Jemaah Islamiyah is an al-Qaeda franchise and is connected to Abu Sayyaf, a separatist group based in and around the southern islands of the Philippines, primarily Jolo, Basilan, and Mindanao.
It is interesting Bashir stands accused of leading Jemaah Islamiyah and yet claims both Jemaah Islamiyah and al-Qaeda are CIA ops designed to “to persecute Muslims throughout the world,” according to Richard S. Ehrlich of the Bangkok Post.
According to Sayed Abdullah, who operates an intelligence services firm in Indonesia, “It is clear that the CIA and the Mossad have infiltrated such organizations [Jemaah Islamiyah, Hamas, and Hezbollah].” Abdullah told Kazi Mahmood of IslamOnline the he believe it “is obvious the CIA and the Mossad, assisted by the Australian Special Action Police (SAP) and the M15 of England, are all working towards undermining Muslim organizations in an attempt to weaken the Muslims globally.”
It is no secret the CIA has run covert operations for decades. In Indonesia, the CIA “infiltrated arms and personnel in support of the regional rebellions against Sukarno,” writes Peter Dale Scott. The CIA and the Indonesian military organized “civilian murder bands” that ultimately slaughtered between 250,000 and 500,000 people in 1965. As Mark Zepezauer explains, the “Indonesian military, trained and backed by the US, provoked a leftist coup against its leader, General Suharto. When the coup failed, the military used it as an excuse to depose Sukarno and replace him with Suharto. (According to diplomatic documents, the coup was a setup to justify the military takeover.)”
Organizing, training, and funding radical Mujahedeen in Afghanistan—including Osama bin Laden—is considered the CIA’s “largest and most successful CIA operation in history” and “the one morally unambiguous crusade of our time,” according to George Crile, a veteran producer for the CBS’ 60 Minutes. (See The Largest Covert Operation in CIA History by Chalmers Johnson.)
“By way of deception, thou shalt do war,” is the motto of Mossad, according to Victor Ostrovsky, a former Mossad agent. “Supporting the radical elements of Muslim fundamentalism sat well with the Mossad’s general plan,” writes Ostrovsky. In fact, as UPI correspondent Richard Sale documents, Israel actively funded Hamas. Brig. Gen. Yithaq Segev, the military governor of Gaza, told Sale Israel funded “Islamic movements as a counterweight to the PLO and communists.”
As Sayed Abdullah sees it, the Bali bombing was a classic false flag operation. Bali was “an operation clearly financed and assisted by the CIA and Mossad, made use of Muslims to carry out the final act. Those Muslims were not innocent since they took the bait handed over by the CIA and the Mossad to bomb Bali and to avenge against the U.S. war on the Muslims in Afghanistan.” Abdullah said “to achieve this, the CIA used one of its operatives, Omar Al-Faruq, an Arab living in the U.S. who speaks Arabic and knows a little about Islam and who was sent to Indonesia to infiltrate the so called terrorist groups.”
“Former State Intelligence Coordinating Board (BAKIN) [Badan Koordinasi Intelijen Negara, the Indonesian intelligence agency] chief A.C. Manulang has said that Kuwaiti citizen Omar Al-Faruq, a terrorist suspect who was arrested in Bogor, West Java, on June 5, 2002 and handed over to the US three days later, is a CIA-recruited agent,” Tempo Interactive reported on September 19, 2002. According to Time Magazine, however, “al-Faruq was one of bin Laden’s top representatives in Southeast Asia, responsible for coordinating the activities of the region’s disparate Islamic militant groups and employing their forces to conduct terror attacks against the U.S. and its allies.”
It should be noted that Osama bin Laden worked for the CIA in Afghanistan and al-Qaeda would later appear in Bosnia to help “Kosovo rebels battle for independence from Serbia with the financial and military backing of the United States and NATO,” according to the National Post. “The United States, which had originally trained the Afghan Arabs during the war in Afghanistan, supported them in Bosnia and then in Kosovo. When NATO forces launched their military campaign against Yugoslavia … they entered the Kosovo conflict on the side of the KLA, which had already received ’substantial’ military and financial support from bin Laden’s network, analysts say.”
Is it possible Omar Al-Faruq pulled off the Bali bombings with CIA-Mossad assistance and Abu Bakar Bashir is innocent? “How do we know that the CIA was behind the coup that overthrew Hugo Chavez?” writes William Blum. “Same way we know that the sun will rise tomorrow morning. That’s what it’s always done and there’s no reason to think that tomorrow morning will be any different.” How do we know the CIA and Mossad were behind the Bali bombing? We don’t, not exactly, but we do know they have done similar things in the past.
March 03, 2005
The United States and Australia wanted Abu Bakar Bashir, supposedly the spiritual leader of Jemaah Islamiyah, to spend the rest of his life in prison for the Bali bombing. Instead, Bashir was “sentenced Thursday to 2 1/2 years in prison for conspiracy,” although the United States and Australia “were hoping for a lengthy prison term to deter terrorism in the world’s most populous Muslim nation [Indonesia],” according to ABC News. “We’d have liked a longer sentence,” lamented Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer.
Jemaah Islamiyah is described as a militant Islamic separatist movement dedicated to the establishment of a fundamentalist Islamic state in Southeast Asia, in particular Indonesia, Singapore, Brunei, Malaysia, and the south of Thailand and the Philippines, as noted by Wikipedia. It is said Jemaah Islamiyah is an al-Qaeda franchise and is connected to Abu Sayyaf, a separatist group based in and around the southern islands of the Philippines, primarily Jolo, Basilan, and Mindanao.
It is interesting Bashir stands accused of leading Jemaah Islamiyah and yet claims both Jemaah Islamiyah and al-Qaeda are CIA ops designed to “to persecute Muslims throughout the world,” according to Richard S. Ehrlich of the Bangkok Post.
According to Sayed Abdullah, who operates an intelligence services firm in Indonesia, “It is clear that the CIA and the Mossad have infiltrated such organizations [Jemaah Islamiyah, Hamas, and Hezbollah].” Abdullah told Kazi Mahmood of IslamOnline the he believe it “is obvious the CIA and the Mossad, assisted by the Australian Special Action Police (SAP) and the M15 of England, are all working towards undermining Muslim organizations in an attempt to weaken the Muslims globally.”
It is no secret the CIA has run covert operations for decades. In Indonesia, the CIA “infiltrated arms and personnel in support of the regional rebellions against Sukarno,” writes Peter Dale Scott. The CIA and the Indonesian military organized “civilian murder bands” that ultimately slaughtered between 250,000 and 500,000 people in 1965. As Mark Zepezauer explains, the “Indonesian military, trained and backed by the US, provoked a leftist coup against its leader, General Suharto. When the coup failed, the military used it as an excuse to depose Sukarno and replace him with Suharto. (According to diplomatic documents, the coup was a setup to justify the military takeover.)”
Organizing, training, and funding radical Mujahedeen in Afghanistan—including Osama bin Laden—is considered the CIA’s “largest and most successful CIA operation in history” and “the one morally unambiguous crusade of our time,” according to George Crile, a veteran producer for the CBS’ 60 Minutes. (See The Largest Covert Operation in CIA History by Chalmers Johnson.)
“By way of deception, thou shalt do war,” is the motto of Mossad, according to Victor Ostrovsky, a former Mossad agent. “Supporting the radical elements of Muslim fundamentalism sat well with the Mossad’s general plan,” writes Ostrovsky. In fact, as UPI correspondent Richard Sale documents, Israel actively funded Hamas. Brig. Gen. Yithaq Segev, the military governor of Gaza, told Sale Israel funded “Islamic movements as a counterweight to the PLO and communists.”
As Sayed Abdullah sees it, the Bali bombing was a classic false flag operation. Bali was “an operation clearly financed and assisted by the CIA and Mossad, made use of Muslims to carry out the final act. Those Muslims were not innocent since they took the bait handed over by the CIA and the Mossad to bomb Bali and to avenge against the U.S. war on the Muslims in Afghanistan.” Abdullah said “to achieve this, the CIA used one of its operatives, Omar Al-Faruq, an Arab living in the U.S. who speaks Arabic and knows a little about Islam and who was sent to Indonesia to infiltrate the so called terrorist groups.”
“Former State Intelligence Coordinating Board (BAKIN) [Badan Koordinasi Intelijen Negara, the Indonesian intelligence agency] chief A.C. Manulang has said that Kuwaiti citizen Omar Al-Faruq, a terrorist suspect who was arrested in Bogor, West Java, on June 5, 2002 and handed over to the US three days later, is a CIA-recruited agent,” Tempo Interactive reported on September 19, 2002. According to Time Magazine, however, “al-Faruq was one of bin Laden’s top representatives in Southeast Asia, responsible for coordinating the activities of the region’s disparate Islamic militant groups and employing their forces to conduct terror attacks against the U.S. and its allies.”
It should be noted that Osama bin Laden worked for the CIA in Afghanistan and al-Qaeda would later appear in Bosnia to help “Kosovo rebels battle for independence from Serbia with the financial and military backing of the United States and NATO,” according to the National Post. “The United States, which had originally trained the Afghan Arabs during the war in Afghanistan, supported them in Bosnia and then in Kosovo. When NATO forces launched their military campaign against Yugoslavia … they entered the Kosovo conflict on the side of the KLA, which had already received ’substantial’ military and financial support from bin Laden’s network, analysts say.”
Is it possible Omar Al-Faruq pulled off the Bali bombings with CIA-Mossad assistance and Abu Bakar Bashir is innocent? “How do we know that the CIA was behind the coup that overthrew Hugo Chavez?” writes William Blum. “Same way we know that the sun will rise tomorrow morning. That’s what it’s always done and there’s no reason to think that tomorrow morning will be any different.” How do we know the CIA and Mossad were behind the Bali bombing? We don’t, not exactly, but we do know they have done similar things in the past.
Thursday, March 03, 2005
The HST Hit
"They're Gonna Suicide Me" - The HST Hit
Paul William Roberts is a Canadian journo/poet. He reminds me a lot of Robert Anton Wilson. I tried to get an interview with him from Baghdad when the bombs first fell in March of '03. He said he'd do it, and even pay the satellite phone cost (about $5 a minute), but before we could get it together, his e:mail, everyone's e:mail in Baghdad, went down. - {ape}
Total 9-11 Info / Prison Planet | March 2, 2005
Toronto Globe and Mail | February 26, 2005:
Hunter telephoned me on Feb. 19, the night before his death. He sounded scared. It wasn't always easy to understand what he said, particularly over the phone, he mumbled, yet when there was something he really wanted you to understand, you did. He'd been working on a story about the World Trade Center attacks and had stumbled across what he felt was hard evidence showing the towers had been brought down not by the airplanes that flew into them but by explosive charges set off in their foundations. Now he thought someone was out to stop him publishing it: "They're gonna make it look like suicide," he said. "I know how these bastards think . . ."
Hunter S. Thompson ... was indeed working on such a story.
Now check out this February 25 Associated Press story about Thompson's death. Sounds a lot like a professional hit with a silencer: "I was on the phone with him, he set the receiver down and he did it. I heard the clicking of the gun," Anita Thompson told the Aspen Daily News in Friday's editions.
She said her husband had asked her to come home from a health club so they could work on his weekly ESPN column...
Thompson said she heard a loud, muffled noise, but didn't know what had happened. "I was waiting for him to get back on the phone," she said. (Her account to Rocky Mountain News reporter Jeff Kass is slightly different: "I did not hear any bang," she told Kass. She added that Thompson's son, who was in the house at the time, believed that a book had fallen when he heard the shot, according to Kass' report.)
Mack White sums up the questions well:
Thompson's family says he was not depressed, nor was he in enough to pain to kill himself. In fact, by all reports, he was quite happy. He was talking on the phone to his wife, getting ready to work on his column, when he decided it would be wise to kill himself, so that he could go out (we are told) while "still at the top of his form," even though this would mean not finishing his column or his expose on 9/11 (potentially the most important thing he would ever write) (?)...
RELATED: Hunter S. Thompson Suicide Story Changes
This account says Thompson killed himself while sitting in a chair on his typewriter and yet the original account tells us that Thompson shot himself while talking to his wife on the phone in the kitchen. Why has the story changed andwhat is the significance of the word typed on the paper in light of the fact that Thompson said he would be 'suicided' before being able to release a major story on explosives bringing down the twin towers?
RELATED: Hunter S. Thompson thought 9/11 an inside job
Paul William Roberts is a Canadian journo/poet. He reminds me a lot of Robert Anton Wilson. I tried to get an interview with him from Baghdad when the bombs first fell in March of '03. He said he'd do it, and even pay the satellite phone cost (about $5 a minute), but before we could get it together, his e:mail, everyone's e:mail in Baghdad, went down. - {ape}
Toronto Globe and Mail | February 26, 2005:
Paul William Roberts in his Globe and Mail article of Saturday, February 26, 2005 wrote the following:
Total 9-11 Info / Prison Planet | March 2, 2005
Toronto Globe and Mail | February 26, 2005:
Hunter telephoned me on Feb. 19, the night before his death. He sounded scared. It wasn't always easy to understand what he said, particularly over the phone, he mumbled, yet when there was something he really wanted you to understand, you did. He'd been working on a story about the World Trade Center attacks and had stumbled across what he felt was hard evidence showing the towers had been brought down not by the airplanes that flew into them but by explosive charges set off in their foundations. Now he thought someone was out to stop him publishing it: "They're gonna make it look like suicide," he said. "I know how these bastards think . . ."
Hunter S. Thompson ... was indeed working on such a story.
Now check out this February 25 Associated Press story about Thompson's death. Sounds a lot like a professional hit with a silencer: "I was on the phone with him, he set the receiver down and he did it. I heard the clicking of the gun," Anita Thompson told the Aspen Daily News in Friday's editions.
She said her husband had asked her to come home from a health club so they could work on his weekly ESPN column...
Thompson said she heard a loud, muffled noise, but didn't know what had happened. "I was waiting for him to get back on the phone," she said. (Her account to Rocky Mountain News reporter Jeff Kass is slightly different: "I did not hear any bang," she told Kass. She added that Thompson's son, who was in the house at the time, believed that a book had fallen when he heard the shot, according to Kass' report.)
Mack White sums up the questions well:
Thompson's family says he was not depressed, nor was he in enough to pain to kill himself. In fact, by all reports, he was quite happy. He was talking on the phone to his wife, getting ready to work on his column, when he decided it would be wise to kill himself, so that he could go out (we are told) while "still at the top of his form," even though this would mean not finishing his column or his expose on 9/11 (potentially the most important thing he would ever write) (?)...
RELATED: Hunter S. Thompson Suicide Story Changes
This account says Thompson killed himself while sitting in a chair on his typewriter and yet the original account tells us that Thompson shot himself while talking to his wife on the phone in the kitchen. Why has the story changed andwhat is the significance of the word typed on the paper in light of the fact that Thompson said he would be 'suicided' before being able to release a major story on explosives bringing down the twin towers?
RELATED: Hunter S. Thompson thought 9/11 an inside job
Wednesday, March 02, 2005
Crucible on Campus: Neo-con Youth Movement
The Witchhunts Continue
Columbia University and the New Anti-Semitism
March 2, 2005
Rape, massacre, theft, torture, ethnic cleansing: these are not crimes which nations can defend with ease - especially when unearthed by their own historians. Israel recently faced this most troubling predicament. Combing through declassified state archives, Israeli scholars of the past twenty years have discovered their nation was founded upon the mass expulsion and deliberate destruction of the native Palestinian people. (1) Israel, it turned out, was far more Goliath than David. Since this presented somewhat of a public relations problem for a state still engaged in brutalizing Palestinians and stealing their land, a new self-justifying rationale needed to be authored.
Enter the "new anti-Semitism." This doctrine turns reality on its head, declaring criticism of Israel's racist behavior to be itself racist "anti-Semitic." Empathy for Palestinians being beaten, bullied, and bulldozed out of existence, the doctrine goes, is nothing but some disguised expression of Jew-hatred. Goose-stepping Germans and uprooted Palestinians are portrayed as part of the same unbroken line of anti-Semitism, even though those inhabiting concentration camps today "the largest ever to exist," says Israeli historian Baruch Kimmerling - are the Palestinians themselves. (2) But no matter. Abusing the memory of Holocaust victims to shut down criticism of Israeli crimes crimes unearthed mostly by Jewish historians - may be obscene, but it is also effective.
Wielding this new ideological weapon, Israel's champions aim to cut down pro-Palestinian voices inside America with the same ruthlessness Israeli soldiers employ to shoot up Palestinian children outside their homes. (3) The latest targets in this well-organized hit are Arab-American professors at Columbia University who teach Middle Eastern studies. The targets have been judiciously selected. Since these particular professors are Arab in an age when bombing and torturing Arabs has virtually become a national sport, they make for easy prey; and since they have added to their original sin of being Arab the even graver sin of speaking the truth about Israel's past no less in a country which subsidizes Israel's existence - they also make for necessary prey.
In full accordance with "new anti-Semitism" modus operandi, the attacks paint the professors themselves as the attackers. With Orwellian brushstrokes, they are rendered as demons bent on "intimidating" Jewish students at the university. This much is to be expected. Less expected, however, is the almost embarrassing shoddiness of the trumped-up production. The wild charges made against the professors are so poorly substantiated and the political motives of the accusers so painfully transparent, one almost forgets that America's well-financed pro-Israel network has extensive experience in smearing its opponents. (4)
Curiously, the charges of "silencing" and "intimidation" first made waves when it was learned that the accusing students made their case on camera. They appeared in a short film, titled "Columbia Unbecoming", produced by a Boston-based group called the David Project. At this point it is both necessary and prudent to ask: what is the "David Project"?
At its website, the organization describes itself as "a grassroots initiative that promotes a fair and honest understanding of the Middle East conflict." A noble enough endeavor, no doubt. But a few lines later, we come to this: "We train people to be pro-active in their Israel advocacy" Another page offers for a fee, of course an intense three-hour ideological session titled "Making the Case for Israel." Searching for a "Making the Case for Palestine" program yields no results. Similarly, a look at the speaker's roster reveals many pro-Israeli speakers, but not a single pro-Palestinian. Perhaps most revealing is the text prefacing their speaker section: "For more information on how to bring our speakers to your synagogue, school, church, or community center, please call" (5) Apparently churches and synagogues are welcome, but mosques need not apply. One wonders why.
The site then goes on to describe what it considers to be a "fair and honest position": "The essence of the Middle East conflict is about Jewish existence and self-determination in the face of a hostile Arab world and radical Islamists." (6) Israel's own recent historians take a rather different view. Commenting on the founding of Israel, Senior Lecturer of Military History in the IDF Aryeh Yitzhaki says, "a generation has passed, and it is now possible to face the ocean of lies in which we were brought up. In almost every conquered village in the War of Independence, acts were committed, which are defined as war crimes, such as indiscriminate killings, massacres and rapes." (7) Describing Zionism the founding ideology of Israel another Israeli historian, Tom Segev, writes: "'Disappearing' the Arabs lay at the heart of the Zionist dream, and was also a necessary condition of its existence. With few exceptions, none of the Zionists disputed the desirability of forced transfer - or its morality." (8)
Committing war crimes and disappearing people from their homes doesn't quite square well with pious rhetoric about "self-determination." But the folks at the David Project are free to cling to their pro-Israel political line. That they do so while pretending to be some kind of impartial educational group, however, speaks volumes. So much for "fairness" - and, even more so, "honesty."
Given the clear ideological orientation of the David Project, one is forced to ask the obvious: why would students claiming to be "intimidated" and "silenced" by their professors bypass all university channels, and rush headlong into the arms of a political front group? Looking at the film itself provides us some answers.
In this half-hour production featuring 14 students, only six present firsthand complaints; standing accused are professors Joseph Massad, George Saliba, and Hamid Dabashi. Complaints range from random flyering incidents having nothing to do with professors, to general ideological disagreements with what professors have written, to statements they allegedly made in person. No evidence is presented for any of the charges.
Columbia student Adam Sacarny wrote in the school's newspaper upon seeing the film: "Much like the electoral campaigns, it uses talking points in place of pesky verifiable facts," adding, "The film's case is so shoddy that I fail to see how any critical viewer could leave the theater convinced that [the department] has violated academic integrity standards." (9) Even the generally sympathetic Israeli daily Haaretz admits, "The movie fuses few solid examples of intimidation only some of which involved professors and the students they were teaching with generalized complaints of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic statements and behavior on campus." (10) And despite these students' claims of being "silenced," "intimidated," and "denied"(their own words), not one of them say their grades were affected. (11)
Quite "coincidentally," the main target of the film is the untenured professor
Joseph Massad. He is accused of making outlandish comments and exhibiting an extreme intolerance toward pro-Israeli views in class. Yet only one of the students in the film has even taken a course with the professor. Moreover, precisely none of them even majored in the "offending" department of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures. (12) But rest assured. The complaining students have other "qualifications."
One student shuttles back and forth from America to Israel to explain how to adjust the prefatory sales pitch for the film depending on the audience. (13) Another served in the Israeli military, which, according to events personally witnessed by former New York Times Middle East Bureau chief Chris Hedges, "entice[s] children like mice into a trap and murder[s] them for sport," and which also, according to a CIA study, acquires "data for use in silencing anti-Israel factions in the West" and engages in "sabotage, paramilitary and psychological warfare projects, such as character assassination and black propaganda." (14) Another complaining student who was a lead organizer for the film, Ariel Beery, boasts an impressive resume: he served as a spokesman for the Israeli military, is the head of the on-campus Zionist group, and is also an agent and informer for Daniel Pipes' notorious CampusWatch.org website, where students are encouraged to "report" their professors' political views if they are deemed insufficiently servile to the conservative party line. (15)
But this is not all
None of the targeted professors were even allowed a chance to rebut the charges on the film. The reason for this, according to David Project head Ralph Avi Goldwasser, in comments given to the Israeli daily The Jerusalem Post, is that "the film wasn't meant to be a documentary; it was merely an effort to collect students' testimony about classroom incidents." Unsurprisingly, the David Project is simply being dishonest (again), since it turns out that they deliberately ignored the voices of Jewish and non-Jewish students who found such "incidents" to be fabricated and had no problems with the targeted professors. Eric Posner, who describes himself as "a Jew, an Israeli, a Jerusalemite, and an American," reports that "I was approached last year by Ariel Beery who wanted to hear my opinion about MEALAC and Massad, whose class I was enrolled in at the time. When I expressed my profound appreciation for Massad's critical approach and the multiplicity of perspectives that he offers in his classroom, Beery told me that he wouldn't be calling me back for a taped interview." (16)
Posner also took it upon himself to gather some highly illuminating statements from other students who took Professor Massad's classes. Below are four:
"Several individuals who audited this class regularly attempted to disturb the progress of the class. During these disturbances, the auditors often attempted to dominate the class discussion with personal statements unrelated or extremely loosely related to the course material. They were regularly unprepared for the classroom discussion, not having completed the required reading, and for the most part were largely ignorant of the class' subject matter. It was fairly obvious that these individuals had registered for the course for the sole purpose of disrupting the progress of the class. To my amazement, [Massad] allowed each and every student in the class an opportunity to speak, regardless of their familiarity with the class subject matter and required course material."
-John Taplett"I am Jewish. I am not a Zionist. Joseph Massad is a man who understands the distinction and does not attempt to conflate the two around a vague connection with Israel. Knowing that he is being accused of anti-Semitism is not only a slap in HIS face, it is a slap in the face of every Jew who understands a legacy of oppression and chooses not to become an oppressor."
-Maura Finkelstein"On the question of religion, he was openly critical of all religions including Islam his anti-Israeli opinions could not reasonably have been construed as anti-Semitic. Similarly, while being critical of Israeli policy, he did not hesitate to offer critical opinions of Yasser Arafat. In general, he maintained a tone of critical scholarly inquiry."
-Hitesh Manglani"As for academic discrimination, I am a Jew who wrote a term paper criticizing Palestinian nationalism for its foundation in support for violence, and despite Massad's supposed bias, he gave me an A."
- Benjamin Wheeler (17)
By now the general picture is quite clear. An ideologically motivated clique of Zionist students, possessing no actual evidence of "intimidation" but infuriated upon hearing their fairy-tale version of Israeli history dismantled, teamed up with a pro-Israel political front group masquerading as educators to smear a few Arab professors as "anti-Semites" - conveniently excluding the opinion of those "Semites" who fully support their teachers and actually took classes with them.
More damning than the poverty and hollowness of the film, however, is the fact that it was even produced. After all, what kind of "victimized" students are able to summon to their command the financial and technical resources of something like the David Project? Moreover, how do such "victims" procure for themselves a $3 million dollar building on campus, a privilege no other Columbia group enjoys? (18) Claims to victimization a central feature in the reverse-reality trick known as "the new anti-Semitism" - are also completely discredited by the fact that viciously right-wing tabloids in New York, the Sun and the Daily News, have joined in on the attack against the professors, castigating them as "firebrands" and demanding they be fired. Prominent New York City politicians have also demanded that the professors be "investigated" if not fired outright. (19) Truly remarkable is the "victim" so well-endowed in assets and allies.
I do not mean to suggest, however, that these Zionist students have no understanding of intimidation or persecution - far from it. Indeed, they well know of a place where people are intimidated in extreme ways, often "ordered to urinate and execrate on one other," "beaten and ordered to crawl around;" a place where children are forced to clean their masters' latrines and are then taken into rooms to be beaten senseless, until "they cannot stand up"; where passengers are pulled from cars and then "beaten with rifle butts and helmets"; where pregnant women are prevented from reaching hospitals; where the masters refer to the slaves as a "cancer" requiring "chemotherapy" or "amputation" where in essence, people are treated far worse than anything these students claim to have undergone. (20)
The "where" is occupied Palestine, the people being brutalized are Palestinians, and those doing the brutalizing are Zionists. Here is where millions of natives suffer under military occupation imposed by Israeli soldiers - at least 20% of whom "join the army with the preconception that Arab lives are worth less than Jewish lives, " according to Israeli Major General Elazar Stern. (21) Here is where unarmed 13 year-old girls can be shot twice "from close range at [the] head" and then "sprayed with automatic gunfire" afterwards without penalty. (22) Here is where real, actual, tangible "intimidation" and "silencing" takes place. And here is where our whining Zionists at Columbia could go and learn an object lesson in what intimidation is all about if only they were not preoccupied with endorsing it.
It is a resounding indictment of the intellectual and moral poverty of our times that those who support murder, torture, brutality, and racism - while lounging around in plush multi-million dollar offices on an Ivy League campus and starring in pseudo-documentaries, no less - are considered the victims, those speaking on behalf of the suffering are considered criminals, and those actually suffering from the real atrocities taking place are not considered at all.
For those concerned with justice, the course of action could not be clearer. Now is a time not for interminable hesitance, but immediate resistance. The extraordinary level of arrogance, cruelty, and hate embodied by the forces promoting this and numerous other right-wing witch-hunts cannot be allowed to prowl about unchecked. For this is merely an extension of the war of bombs and bullets being waged upon the Arabs abroad; it is an attempt to Guantanomize our minds, Abu Ghraib our hearts, and Fallujah our souls - to remove from us every last trace of what is the best in each of us: the instinct to side with the weak and aid the oppressed.
To resist this colonization of our compassion, to re-cultivate our resistance against those who believe in the "compassion" of colonization these are the pressing demands of the hour. How vigorously we respond to these demands will determine whether those bruised, beaten children of Palestine will ultimately receive some respite from their inhumane condition, or instead find themselves further abused by the silent whip of indifference. In their eyes we will read either the redemption or indictment of the moral standing of our own country.
M. Junaid Alam, 22, is co-editor of the radical youth journal Left Hook (http://www.lefthook.org), and a student at Northeastern University. He can be reached at alam@lefthook.org.
Notes
1. The Israeli historians who have gone through some of the state's massive archives of the pre-war and war period of 1947-9 sometimes refer to themselves as 'new historians.' They include Simha Flapan, Benny Morris, Avi Shlaim, Tanya Reinhart, Ilan Pappe, and many others. I would recommended as an introduction The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948, edited by Eugene L. Rogan and Avi Shlaim, which contains a number of 'new historian' essays.
2. Kimmerling is cited by American Jewish historian Norman G. Finkelstein in the Postscript to the German edition of his book, The Rise and Fall of Palestine. (http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=4&ar=8) In the preface to Kimmerling's own 2003 book, Politicide, which argues that Israel is trying to exterminate the Palestinians as a political entity, he says his country is experiencing a "recent drift towards fascism." (p. 7)
3. For an account of Israel's pattern of shooting Palestinian children, see the article "Killing children is no longer a big deal," by Gideon Levy, in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, October 17, 2004.
4. For an account of the treatment meted out to those who defy the Israeli line in the U.S. by America's pro-Israeli lobby, see They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel's Lobby, by Paul Findley, who served as congressman of Illinois for over two decades.
5. The David Project website is located at http://www.davidproject.org. See the "Training" and "Speakers" pages.
6. See note 5, the website's front-page box titled "Understanding the conflict."
7. Yitzhaki is cited in the Israeli paper, Ha'ir, by Guy Erlich in his May 6, 1992 article, "Not Only Deir Yassin." Deir Yassin was an Arab village whose inhabitants were massacred by Zionist militia in 1948.
8. Tom Segev, One Palestine, Complete, pp.404-5; cf. pp. 403, 406-7, 508 as cited in the matchless synopsis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, by Norman G. Finkelstein, titled "An Introduction to the Israel-Palestine Conflict." (http://normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=4&ar=10)
9. "Shedding light on MEALAC," by Adam Sacarny, November 12, 2004, Columbia Spectator.
10. "The 'Silent Jews' speak out," by Shoshana Kordova, Haaretz, February 9, 2005.
11. About grades not being affected, see: "Non-academic debate," by Uriel Heilman, The Jerusalem Post, December 23, 2004 (updated December 29, 2004).
12. Only one student actually had Massad for class see "CAN Fights Zionist Smear Campaign at Columbia Univ.," by Suzie Schwartz, a Columbia student, Left Hook, December 17, 2004. (http://lefthook.org/Ground/Schwartz121704.html); and none majored in the department see Eric Posner, as quoted in Independent Press Association (IPA-NY), "The Arab answer to the Columbia University question," by Amal Hageb. (http://www.indypressny.org/article.php3?ArticleID=1834)
13. See note 10.
14. Chris Hedge's A Gaza Diary, published in Harper's, October 2001; CIA study is titled "Israel: Foreign Intelligence and Security Services," reprinted in Counterspy, May-June 1982 as cited in Noam Chomsky's A Fateful Triangle Updated Edition, 1999, cited on page 11, sourced on page 33, as note 9; one of the accusers in the film was Tomy Schoenfeld - "a student who had served in the Israeli army" according to "Mideast Tensions are Getting Personal on Campus at Columbia," by N. R. Kleinfield, The New York Times, January 18, 2005.
15. Ariel Beery proudly advertises himself at his personal website, http://www.arielbeery.com, where it is written, "He finished his service in the IDF Spokesperson's Unit where he wrote and translated information packets" on this specific page: http://www.arielbeery.com/Ariel.html; a host of his "documents" submitted to Campus Watch are kindly made available at the website: http://www.campus-watch.org/docs/author/Ariel+Beery
16. As quoted in IPA piece cited in note 12.
17. All quoted in IPA piece cited in note 12.
18. This is a reference to the Kraft Center - "Understanding the Attacks on Pro-Palestinian Professors at Columbia," by Jonah Birch, a Columbia Student, Left Hook, January 28, 2005. (http://lefthook.org/Ground/Birch012805.html)
19. Congressman Anthony D. Weiner has called for Massad's firing. The New York City Council and members of the New York City Council have called for an outside investigation against him, egged on of course by the Sun and the Daily News.
20. On urination and execration, beating, and being ordered to crawl around, see "Do not say: 'We did not know, we did not hear'," by Aharon Bachar, in Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot, December 3, 1982 as cited in Noam Chomsky's A Fateful Triangle, cited on page 131, sourced on page 176-7. On being forced to clean latrines and then being beaten in rooms, see "Peace Now officers recount atrocities," in Israeli newspaper Al Hamishmar, May 11, 1982 - as cited in Noam Chomsky's A Fateful Triangle, cited on page 132, sourced on page 177; on being beaten with rifle butts and helmets, see "Reports of Torture by Israelis Emerge," by Lee Hockstader, Washington Post, August 18, 2001; for pregnant women being stalled at Israeli checkpoints, see Israeli human rights group B'TSelem's website, www.btselem.org, and see note 3; it was Israeli Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon who said in an August 30, 2002 interview with Haaretz Friday Magazine that there was a "Palestinian threat" the "characteristics of [which] are invisible, like cancer"; he then goes on to elaborate, "There are all kinds of solutions to cancerous manifestations. Some will say it is necessary to amputate organs. But at the moment, I am applying chemotherapy, yes."
21. "General: 1 in 5 troops behave badly at roadblocks," by Gideon Alon, Haaretz, December 6, 2004.
22. "Gaza girl death officer cleared," BBC News, October 15, 2004. The article notes, "Without revealing their identities, soldiers from the Givati brigade platoon told Israeli television how their officer sprayed Iman al-Hams with automatic gunfire on 5 October" after having "approached her and fired two bullets from close range at her head." The army chose not to believe the platoon, and accepted the awe-inspiring explanation of the commander that "he fired into the ground near the girl after coming under fire in a dangerous area." The BBC adds wryly, "It has not explained why the officer shot into the ground rather than at the source of the fire."
Rotten to the...
Chris Floyd is one of the best around. He uses a lot of links, but the annotations urls don't come across active; so it's tedious. For live links on his sources, go to the original. -ape
Global Eye
By Chris Floyd
Core Values
Chris Floyd, The Moscow Times
February 25, 2005
Day in and day out, patriotic American dissidents on both the left and the right keep shovelling through the bloody muck of the Bush Imperium. The filth is endless, Augean; Salon.com recently catalogued 34 ongoing major scandals, equalling or surpassing the depravity of Watergate. Yet still the patriots bend to the task, tossing up steaming piles of ugly truth before the public.
And with every loud splattering of fresh Bushflop, there's a flurry of hope that this time, the dirt will stick; this time, the stench of corruption will be so overwhelming that the nation's long-somnolent conscience will be aroused. Yet each time, the rancid slurry just disappears down the drain: The Bushists tell their butt-covering lies, the "watchdogs" of the media wag their tails and all is well again in the land that Gore Vidal so aptly dubbed the United States of Amnesia. No scandal, no matter how outrageous, ever gains any traction.
But there is a simple reason why patriots on both the right and the left are stymied: because the center is rotten to its well-wadded, self-righteous, wilfully ignorant core. We speak here of the nation's "great and good," pillars of the community and stalwarts of the established order, the "captains, merchant bankers, eminent men of letters, the generous patrons of art, the statesmen and the rulers, distinguished civil servants, chairmen of many committees, industrial lords and petty contractors," in T.S. Eliot's words -- to which we might add, as a modern gloss, the highly credentialed academics, extremely well-remunerated corporate journalists, politically wired churchmen and the innumerable massagers of public opinion and commercial desire.
It is this center -- which prides itself on being sensible, moderate, decent and respectable -- that has become morally corrupted beyond measure, perhaps beyond remedy. Here, where there should be thunderous denunciations of the Bush regime's rape of American honor -- a litany of sins that includes aggressive war, the decimation of cities, vile acts of torture, kidnappings, "renditions," imprisonment without charges, indefinite detention, assassinations, war profiteering and the exaltation of presidential power above the reach of law -- there has been only silent acquiescence, or the rare, decorous, timorous murmur, or, increasingly, enthusiastic support.
An obscure news story from last week, buried in the back pages -- if noted at all -- provides a vivid glimpse of the center rot. It was an ordinary wire piece from Knight-Ridder, standard Washington wonkery about a bureaucratic turf battle. It dealt with one of the recommendations of the "9-11 Commission" -- that assemblage of the great and good whose "independent" investigation of the 2001 terrorist attacks on America unearthed a vast tangle of criminal negligence and fatal incompetence for which, miraculously, not a single member of the great and good bore the least responsibility.
The commission issued a slew of recommendations for upgrading national security, including the much-ballyhooed creation of a new "Director of National Intelligence" to oversee the ever-spreading octopus of U.S. "security organs" -- 15 separate spy agencies at last count (that we know about). The wisdom of this advice was borne out by George W. Bush's choice for the post: John Negroponte, the death-squad enabler and atrocity manager best known for burying evidence of CIA-sponsored murders, massacres and torture in Central America during the Reagan-Bush I years. Fresh from not-dissimilar duties in Baghdad, this distinguished civil servant is now bringing his dark arts to the Homeland -- to general approval from the stalwarts.
But the sages had another, lesser-known recommendation: consolidating "all secret U.S. paramilitary operations, whether clandestine or covert" within the Pentagon. This would make such operations "more robust," the worthies said. But the CIA objected to having its own secret armies taken away. After months of negotiation, it was decided last week that the Pentagon and CIA would keep their separate paramilitary capabilities.
What exactly are these "paramilitary operations" which the commission, the U.S. Congress and all our stalwarts think we should have more of?
As Knight-Ridder notes, they are actions "conducted by armed units that do not belong to conventional military formations" -- in other words, terrorist groups, according to the Bush regime's own definition. Those designated as terrorists by Bush should not be covered by the Geneva Conventions, we are told, because they are not part of a "conventional military formation." They're outlaws, Bush says, fit to be killed or locked up without charges. Yet of course he commands the largest collection of such "outlaws" in the world.
And "outlaw" is no metaphorical term here. As Knight-Ridder explains, specifically "covert" operations are those "in which the U.S. government wants to be able to deny any involvement" because they "at times violate international law or the laws of war."
Here we come to the crux of the rot. Not a single Establishment stalwart involved in the matter -- not Congress, nor the Commission, nor the President, nor the press -- objected in the least to this horrifying reality: that the U.S. government routinely violates "international law and the laws of war" in secret terrorist actions by "unconventional" forces, including CIA operatives, local proxies and hired killers. It's simply accepted, across the board, as standard practice. In fact, the only concern about these admittedly criminal actions -- directed by unrestricted presidential fiat, with their true ends (Counterterrorism? Personal enrichment? Political power games? Ideological zealotry?) forever hidden from public scrutiny -- is how to make them more "robust," more efficient and more deadly.
The great societal bulwarks that should mitigate the abuse of power have instead embraced the barbaric ethos of brute force in order to maintain their own comfort, privilege and self-regard. For them, law has become a pretty sham and honor is a fiction, while respectability and decency are fairy tales for fools and children. Truth will never hold where the center is so murderously corrupted.
Annotations
CIA, Pentagon Reject Recommendation on Paramilitaries
Knight-Ridder, Feb. 16, 2005
A Wave of Torture and Murder in Honduras: Did Washington Know? Yes
Baltimore Sun, June 11, 1995
Promoting the Ambassador of Torture
Democracy Now, Feb. 18, 2005
History of Guatemala's Death Squads
Consortiumnews.com, Jan. 11, 2005
Guatemalan Death Squad Dossier
National Security Archives, May 20, 1999
The CIA in Latin America
National Security Archives, March 14, 2000
Negroponte's Dark Past
The Nation, Feb. 17, 2005
Negroponte's Blind Spots
Consortiumnews.com, Feb. 18, 2005
Alberto Gonzales' Tortured Arguments for Reigning Above the Law
LA Weekly, Jan. 14-20, 2005
Torture Treaty Doesn't Bar `Cruel, Inhuman' Tactics, Gonzales Says
Knight-Ridder, Jan. 26, 2005
The Secret World of US Jails
The Observer, June 13, 2004
The Torture Memos: A Legal Narrative
CounterPunch, Feb. 2, 2005
CIA Takes on Major Military Role: 'We're Killing People!
Boston Globe, Jan. 20, 2002
Reagan and Guatemala's Death Files
Consortiumnews.com, May 26, 1999
Death, Lies and Bodywashing
Consortiumnews.com, 1996
US Wants to Build Network of Friendly Militias to Fight Terrorism
AFP, August 15, 2004
Pentagon Plan for Global Anti-Terror Army
Sydney Morning Herald, Aug. 11, 2004
America's Amnesia on Torture
The Progressive, July 2004
U.S. Arming Baathist Militia's to Combat Shiite Cleric Rule
Asia Times, Feb. 15, 2005
Bush's Death Squads
Ratical.org, Jan. 31, 2002
Bush Has Widened Authority of CIA to Kill Terrorists
New York Times, Dec. 15, 2002
Special Ops Get OK to Initiate Its Own Missions
Washington Times, Jan. 8, 2003
Coward's War in Yemen
Spiked, Nov. 11, 2002
Drones of Death
The Guardian, Nov. 6, 2002
Memo Regarding Presidential Executive Order on Interrogations
Federal Bureau of Investigation, May 22, 2004
Rumsfeld's Dirty Little Secret
Center for American Progress, Jan.
Pentagon's Secret Spy Unit Broadens Rumsfeld's Power
San Francisco Chronicle, Jan. 23, 2005
Pentagon Files Reveal More Allegations of Abuse in Iraq
Los Angeles Times, Jan. 25, 2005
America's Death Squads
Antiwar.com, Jan. 10, 2005
Gonzales Excludes CIA from Rules on Prisoners
New York Times, Jan. 20, 2005
CIA, Pentagon Reject Recommendation on Paramilitaries
Knight-Ridder, Feb. 16, 2005
A Wave of Torture and Murder in Honduras: Did Washington Know? Yes
Baltimore Sun, June 11, 1995
Promoting the Ambassador of Torture
Democracy Now, Feb. 18, 2005
History of Guatemala's Death Squads
Consortiumnews.com, Jan. 11, 2005
Guatemalan Death Squad Dossier
National Security Archives, May 20, 1999
The CIA in Latin America
National Security Archives, March 14, 2000
Negroponte's Dark Past
The Nation, Feb. 17, 2005
Negroponte's Blind Spots
Consortiumnews.com, Feb. 18, 2005
Alberto Gonzales' Tortured Arguments for Reigning Above the Law
LA Weekly, Jan. 14-20, 2005
Torture Treaty Doesn't Bar `Cruel, Inhuman' Tactics, Gonzales Says
Knight-Ridder, Jan. 26, 2005
The Secret World of US Jails
The Observer, June 13, 2004
The Torture Memos: A Legal Narrative
CounterPunch, Feb. 2, 2005
CIA Takes on Major Military Role: 'We're Killing People!
Boston Globe, Jan. 20, 2002
Reagan and Guatemala's Death Files
Consortiumnews.com, May 26, 1999
Death, Lies and Bodywashing
Consortiumnews.com, 1996
US Wants to Build Network of Friendly Militias to Fight Terrorism
AFP, August 15, 2004
Pentagon Plan for Global Anti-Terror Army
Sydney Morning Herald, Aug. 11, 2004
America's Amnesia on Torture
The Progressive, July 2004
U.S. Arming Baathist Militia's to Combat Shiite Cleric Rule
Asia Times, Feb. 15, 2005
Bush's Death Squads
Ratical.org, Jan. 31, 2002
Bush Has Widened Authority of CIA to Kill Terrorists
New York Times, Dec. 15, 2002
Special Ops Get OK to Initiate Its Own Missions
Washington Times, Jan. 8, 2003
Coward's War in Yemen
Spiked, Nov. 11, 2002
Drones of Death
The Guardian, Nov. 6, 2002
Memo Regarding Presidential Executive Order on Interrogations
Federal Bureau of Investigation, May 22, 2004
Rumsfeld's Dirty Little Secret
Center for American Progress, Jan.
Pentagon's Secret Spy Unit Broadens Rumsfeld's Power
San Francisco Chronicle, Jan. 23, 2005
Pentagon Files Reveal More Allegations of Abuse in Iraq
Los Angeles Times, Jan. 25, 2005
America's Death Squads
Antiwar.com, Jan. 10, 2005
Gonzales Excludes CIA from Rules on Prisoners
New York Times, Jan. 20, 2005
Uncle Bucky Makes a Killing
Back in 1991, shortly after the depleted uranium-flaked dust had settled some from the first Gulf War, there was a minor tempest in the press over influence peddling by members of the Presiden George H. W. Bush's family, including his son Neil and his brother Prescott, Jr. Both Neil and Prescott, neither of whom had proven to be exceptionally talented businessmen, had made millions by flagrantly trading on their relationship to the president.
Seeking to distinguish himself from his more predatory relatives, William Henry Trotter Bush, the younger brother of Bush Sr. and an investment banker in St. Louis, gave an interview to disclaim any profiteering on his own part. Indeed, he sounded downright grumpy, as if his older brother hadn't done enough to steer juicy government deals his way. "Being the brother of George Bush isn't a financial windfall by any stretch of the imagination," huffed William H.T. Bush.
Well, perhaps being the brother of the president didn't generate as much business as he hoped, but having the good fortune to be the uncle of the president certainly appears to have padded the pockets of the man endearingly known to George W. Bush as "Uncle Bucky."
A few months before his selection as president, Bush's Uncle Bucky quietly joined the board of a small and struggling St. Louis defense company called Engineered Support Systems, Incorporated (ESSI). Since Bush joined the team, ESSI's fortunes have taken a dramatic turn for the better. This once obscure outfit is now one of the top Pentagon contractors. Next year its revenues will top $1 billion, nearly all of it derived from defense contracts with the Pentagon or with foreign militaries financed by US aid and loan guarantees. Even sweeter, most of these contracts have been awarded in no bid, soul source deals.
True to form, Uncle Bucky claims that ESSI's amazing transformation has nothing to do with him or his nephew, the president. "I don't make any calls to the 202 (DC) Area Code," Bush sneered to the Los Angeles Times.
Uncle Buck's characteristic modesty was swiftly undercut by statements made by top executives at ESSI, who seemed proud that their foresight in inviting Bush on board had paid off so handsomely for all concerned. "Having a Bush certainly doesn't hurt," chuckled Dan Kreher, ESSI's vice president for industrial relations.
Uncle Bucky Bush is 16 years younger than his brother, the former president. According to Kitty Kelley's gripping history of the Bush clan The Family, Bucky was raised "almost as an only child" by his aging parents Dorothy and Prescott Bush, the senator who traded with the Nazis. Bucky was a sensitive and precocious kid with a peculiar devotion to choral music. In fact, the highlight of his career at Yale University was his starring spot with Whiffenpoofs, an elite choir.
While his older brother headed to Texas to make his name in the oil patch, Bucky returned to St. Louis, the Gateway City where the original Bush fortune had been built. He settled into a modest career as an investment banker and corporate consultant. Then, with his nephew poised to seize the White House, Uncle Bucky was offered a seat on the board of ESSI, a military support and defense electronics firm. ESSI's company prospectus describes it as "a diversified supplier of high-tech, integrated military electronics, support equipment and logistics services for all branches of America's armed forces and certain foreign militaries."
Shortly after the attacks of 9/11, ESSI positioned itself to win a series of lucrative Pentagon contracts that would catapult the diminutive firm into the top ranks of defense contractors. Within a few short months, the company's shareholders were given the financial ride of their lives.
By the time of the Iraq war, ESSI was a brawny new player on the defense block. In the spring of 2003, ESSI acquired a military communications company called TAMSCO, whose prime activity was in developing military satellite terminals in the Gulf region and in US bases in Germany in anticipation of a US invasion of Iraq. After the ESSI buy-out, TAMSCO swiftly won contracts from both the Air Force and the Army for more than $90 million for the training of troops in the operation of the system and the installation of radar equipment in Kuwait.
Then Pentagon awarded ESSI a $49 million contract to remodel military trailers for use in Iraq.
In 2003, the Defense Department gave ESSI a huge deal to provide the Army with equipment to search for Iraq's non-existent chemical and biological weapons. Part of this package included a $19 million contract to provide protective tents for US troops from chemical bombs. The tents didn't arrive in Iraq until after it was evident to nearly everyone that the Iraqi military didn't have access to such weapons. This didn't stop the money from flowing into ESSI's coffers and it didn't stop ESSI's executives from playing along in the grand charade. "The potential threat of our troops facing a chemical or biological attack during the current conflict in Iraq remains very real," huffed Michael Shananan, the company's former chairman.
As the invasion transformed into a military occupation of Iraq, ESSI continued to pluck off sweet deals. In late 2003, the Coalition Provisional Authority, whose contracts passed across the Pentagon desk of arch neocon Douglas Feith, awarded ESSI an $18 million deal to engineer a communications system for the CPA offices, barricaded inside Baghdad's Green Zone.
Its executives openly clucked at the likelihood for protracted war. "The increasing likelihood for a prolonged military involvement in Southwest Asia by US forces well into 2006 has created a fertile environment for the type of support products and services we offer," gloated Gerald L. Daniels, the company's Chief Executive Officer. Rarely has corporate glee over the prospects of war profiteering been expressed so brazenly.
But Daniels had a point. Even as things began to go sour for the US in Iraq, ESSI stood to make lots of money. One of its biggest no-bid contracts came in 2004 in the wake of mounting causalities in light-armored vehicles hit by roadside bombs. ESSI won a deal to upgrade the armor of thousands of vehicles in or bound for Iraq. The company's annual report for 2005 forecast that ESSI might make as much as $200 million from this bloody windfall alone.
As the flood of new contracts poured in, ESSI's stock soared. In January of 2005, it reached its all-time high of $60.39 per share. A few days before the stock hit this lofty peak, Uncle Bucky quietly exercised his option to sell 8,438 shares of ESSI stock. He walked away from that transaction with at least $450,000. The stock sale occurred a few days after ESSI announced that the Pentagon had awarded it $77 million in new contracts for the Iraq war and a few days before word leaked to the press that the company was under investigation for its handling of older Pentagon contracts. The timing of the trade was perfect.
In a February 2005 filing with the Securities Exchange Commission, ESSI discreetly disclosed to its shareholders that the inspector general of Pentagon had launched an inquiry into a series of contracts awarded to the company in 2002 for work on the Air Force's troubled automated cargo loading machine called the Tunner.
While the company's chief financial dismissed the probe as "routine" and assured investors that it would have "no effect" on ESSI's fortunes, the Pentagon held to a more restrained assessment of the potential liability. Michael Wynne, acting undersecretary of Defense, said he had referred ESSI contracts valued at $158 million to the Pentagon's inspector general because the deals "appear to have anomalies in them." Many of the contracts were awarded on a no-bid basis and much of the probe appears to focus on the role Pentagon insiders played in steering the contracts to ESSI.
Much of the thrust behind ESSI's sudden rise has been fueled by no-bid or sole-source deals with the Pentagon. These no risk deals are part of a corporate strategy cooked up in part by non other than Uncle Bucky himself. In a profitable bit of self-dealing, ESSI hired its board member, Bucky Bush, as a consultant in 2002. Bush, who pulls in about $45,000 a year in director's fees, was paid an additional $125,000 for his advice on ESSI's buyout of other military contractors. The acquisition strategy outlined by Bush was to train the company's appetite on the gobbling up of companies that held no-bid or sole source deals with the Pentagon.
In January, ESSI spent $37.6 million to buy a New York electronics testing firm called Prospective Computer Analysis, Inc. In defending the purchase to shareholders, executives at ESSI emphasized that the company held "a lot of sole-source contracts."
Most recently, ESSI acquired Spacelink, Inc, a Virginia-based defense company, for $150 million. Spacelink, which supplies parts for military satellites, is poised to cash in on the $80 billion missile defense bonanza.
ESSI isn't the only defense-oriented company to acquire the services of Uncle Bucky. The banker from St. Louis has also been retained as a trustee for the global investment firm Lord Abbott, one of the primary financial underwriters of Halliburton. Lord Abbott is both one of the top 10 shareholders in Dick Cheney's former company, as well as one of its top mutual fund holders. It's all in the family.
Uncle Bucky didn't unload all of his ESSI stock. He still owns 45,000 shares valued at more than $2.5 million. He used the profits from the recent sale to purchase a vacation home in Florida near his other nephew nourishing presidential ambitions, Jeb Bush.
Who knows if the Bucky will finally stop there?
Jeffrey St. Clair is the author of Been Brown So Long It Looked Like Green to Me: the Politics of Nature. This essay is excerpted from his forthcoming book Grand Theft Pentagon, to be published in July by Common Courage Press.
Potters for Peace
Potters for Peace
When the Battlefield has No Borders
By DAVID SMITH-FERRI
February 25, 2005
Given its small population, the rural northern California county where I live is home to an extraordinary number of successful artists. Two of these artists, Jan Hoyman and Doug Browe, also participate in a remarkable organization, Potters for Peace , which began twenty years ago when a group of US potters sought ways to support the work of Nicaraguan potters while simultaneously opposing US aid to the Contras. While this support has grown to involve a wide range of cultural, artistic, and technical exchanges between potters, the organization is increasingly involved in providing the technical expertise to establish ceramic water filtration projects, a "high technique, low technology" system, as Doug puts it, for purifying water.When the Battlefield has No Borders
By DAVID SMITH-FERRI
February 25, 2005
Last year, as untreated sewage continued to flow into drinking water supplies in Iraq and outbreaks of bacteriological diseases such as cholera and typhoid were reported in Basra, Najaf, Sadr City, and elsewhere, Doug was returning from two months in Thailand, spent in a refugee camp on the Burmese border, assisting residents of the camp in the final stages of a ceramic water filter project. It was his second trip to the refugee camp. During the first trip, he had located a source of accessible local clay, supervised the construction of an adobe kiln, and trained several residents in basic pottery techniques.
This second trip focused on the manufacture and firing of the water filters. Ceramic water filters, as Potters for Peace designs them, are essentially urns created from a careful mix of clay and a readily available "fibrous" material--sawdust, rice hulls, straw, etc.--and lined with colloidal silver. The fibrous material, when sized precisely and mixed with the clay in the proper portion, produces a porous urn that will allow the passage of water, but not bacteria--the bacteria are trapped by the fibers in the clay. The colloidal silver, which coats the outside of the urn, provides an additional anti-bacterial barrier. When poured into the filter, water polluted with a bacteriological disease such as e-coli, typhoid, or cholera, emerges bacteriologically clean.
It was my twelve year old daughter who, during a slide-show presentation by Doug of his experiences in Thailand, first suggested the obvious application of ceramic water filtration to Iraq. Clearly, low-tech water filtration is no substitute for reparation of Iraq's water and sewage treatment systems; but while the US occupation focuses on military goals, and "rebuilding" seems permanently stalled in the planning stages or utterly undermined by corruption and violence, a project which provides clean water to people can prevent illness and save lives, albeit on a small scale. This at least was our thinking. Doug and I met several times to discuss our interest in traveling to Iraq, and the basic raw material and equipment needs of the project, and I began to do some research.
The project, however, has never gotten beyond preliminary inquiries because neither of us can quite imagine leaving our families and traveling to Iraq given the reality of violence and kidnappings. The news coming out of Iraq is unremittingly bad. Two years ago, I visited Iraq in the months leading up to the US invasion. While in Basra, after spending the morning visiting leukemia patients in a hospital and having lunch in our semi-air-conditioned hotel, I waded back out into the sickeningly hot day with two other members of Voices in the Wilderness (vitw.org). Hassan, one of the shoeshine boys who slept on the lawn outside the hotel, flagged us down. He was exultant. "Look what we've got," he said. Inside the box, of all things, lay an injured pigeon, captured with a slingshot. The terrified pigeon lay on its side, struggling to breathe and futilely trying to right itself and escape. "We'll keep it alive until later," the boys told us, "and then meat for dinner!"
I thought at the time that the abject pigeon was a bloody symbol for Iraq itself. As difficult as it may have been for people to imagine scaling the sanctions wall to visit Iraq, it wasn't in actuality that difficult to do. But the occupation wall is another thing altogether. The battlefield in Iraq has no borders. As a result, Iraq today is even more isolated than it was during the sanctions regime, when isolation was decreed by fiat.
The news is not only bad, it is also demoralizing. Who hasn't felt worn down by the unremitting violence? Who doesn't know others--people who had been empowered two years ago by worldwide opposition to the invasion--who now feel powerless and are immobilized by it?
It isn't only the lawlessness in Iraq, the daily reports of people killed or injured by violence, it is also the ongoing pictures and reports of conditions at prisons which give a nightmarish quality to popular images of Iraq and work to keep people at a distance. Consider the recent news from US-run Abu Ghraib prison. Last week we learned that Manadel al-Jamadi, a prisoner who died last year in what was labeled a "homicide," actually died during a CIA interrogation, while suspended from his wrists.
We also learned that medical care at the prison has been so haphazard that "Physician's assistants and general practitioners amputated limbs, [and] a dentist did heart surgery Sometimes the hospital ran out of chest tubes, intravenous fluids or medicines. Medical staff members improvised, taking tubes from patients when they died and reusing them, without sterilization" (NYT, 2/4/05). Despite the availability of psychotropic drugs, the hundreds of people at the prison who are mentally ill have gone without treatment, because no psychiatrist has been available to work with them and prescribe the medication. In at least one case, staff used a leash to restrain a prisoner..
While opposition to the US occupation is the central contribution that we can make to the welfare of people in Iraq, its flipside, concrete and productive exchanges with Iraqi people, is also vital. For many people, supporting a worthy humanitarian project is a doorway into Iraq, a way to make a contribution and to connect positively with people there; for others, it is a way to revitalize, leading to greater political involvement. Apart from their intrinsic value, humanitarian projects can be a focus for education about the effects of US policies, and they can be rallying points around which political actions are organized.
In this regard, an opportunity is about to present itself. Over the next six weeks, US citizens in cities from Boston to Seattle to Los Angeles will have an opportunity to talk with and learn from Gino Strada, co-founder of an extraordinary international medical relief agency, Emergency - Life support for civilian war victims, currently operating medical facilities in war zones in Iraq, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Sierra Leone, Sudan, and Angola. It has conducted and concluded projects in Rwanda, Eritrea, Algeria, and Palestine (www.emergency.it). Emergency builds and runs surgical hospitals, rehabilitation centers for landmine victims, and medical clinics; and it builds them in places where no one else will, places which need specialist medical and surgical services: for example in Anabah, in a remote and dangerous region of Afghanistan.
Strada is in the U.S. on a book tour (www.emergencyusa.org), after the recent translation into English of his book, Green Parrots - A War Surgeon's Diary, a journal of his experiences as a surgeon for Emergency. Green Parrots is named after the antipersonnel landmine that looks like a toy and has maimed or killed many of the children Emergency has seen in its clinics in Afghanistan, where an estimated ten million anti-personnel mines and innumerable unexploded cluster bombs dot the landscape. Strada comes to the US directly from work in Afghanistan.
Strada's training as a surgeon and his wide and very personal experience of war and its immediate consequences give him a unique perspective on modern war and a powerful incentive to oppose it. He writes "Today there are many possible causes of war, but there is only one sure outcome: death, injuries, refugees, orphans. Wherever a war is fought, whatever weapons are used, it no longer consists of a clash between armies in a well-defined, limited battlefield. There is no official battle front. The front is the road, the marketplace, the village: the people who live there are the victims. 90% of them are civilians. 34% are children. Many armed groups deliberately mix with the population to avoid identification. Sometimes they actually use civilians as shields. Quite often, targeting and terrorizing large civilian groups are part of an army's primary military strategy."
Emergency has been in Afghanistan for five years and in northern Iraq--Erbil, Sulaimaniya, and Choman--for ten years. It has hopes of staffing a medical facility in Karbala, in South-Central Iraq. Strada's visit to the US is an important opportunity not only because of the critical medical care his organization provides, but also because of the information he can share about the causes and consequences of war around the globe. Perhaps his visit can be a catalyst for individuals and groups to initiate or deepen their commitment to people in war-torn countries such as Iraq, and to oppose US militarism. For information about Strada's tour, visit http://www.emergencyusa.org/GP/tour.php.
David Smith-Ferri is a member of Voices in the Wilderness, a campaign to end U.S. economic and military warfare abroad and at home. He lives in Ukiah, CA. He can be reached at: smithferri@pacific.net
Tuesday, March 01, 2005
The Stepping Stones to Absolute Power: A Public Sacrifice
Stepping Stones to Absolute Power: A Public Sacrifice
C.L.Cook
M1, '05
Way before the 9/11 conspiracy theorists sharpened their pencils and asked the crucial question no-one else would: Cui bono? Who benefits? there was an eerily familiar precedent to the 2001 terrorist attacks in America unfolding in Russia.
The infamous apartment building bombings in 1999 had the effect of bolstering the then-new president, Vladimir Putin's sagging public support during his unremarkable early days in power to a soaring, even heroic status. In the few short months following the bombings, he was also able, incidentally, to bring to fruition his determined effort to take a second swipe at the resolute rebellion in Chechnya. And, maybe in the process, make himself a "War President."
Putin's newly minted Czar-like status lent him the unquestioned authority to "rearrange" the constitution and concentrate legislative power in his own hands. Over the brief few years since the terror campaign against everyday Russians, Putin has managed to use the attacks to reverse virtually all the democratic reforms that resulted from the fall of communism and subsequent break up of the Soviet Union. But, it's not the ghosts of Chechnya keeping Putin up at night these days.
If he appears a man besieged, then he's a perfect portrait of Russia today. The United States and its allies in NATO have drawn a cordon around the former Empire, digesting it slowly with "democracy movements," support of regional tyrants, "shock and awe" extravaganzas in Russian neighbours, Yugoslavia and Afghanistan, and the emplacement of dozens of "hardened" U.S. military bases across the nation's southern flank.
Whispers of government complicity in the apartment bombings began early on: the heirs of the Soviet have an ingrained suspicion of power. But, who best benefits the apartment building bombings? For many, the answer comes up Putin and his hawkish friends in the military/intelligence complex.
The continued war and occupation of Chechnya hasn't been bad for everybody. Certain Russians, and their confrere elites were, and are, making like bandits. And they're not the only ones.
After three buildings had been felled within the month that black September, former KGB agents were caught by local residents and police planting the explosives in the basement of a fourth building. This arrest grew the whispers to a chatter; a disquiet not quelled by feeble official explanations for the red-handed arrest of their admitted agents.
Lame even as a shoolyard defense, Russia audaciously testified: "The agents were simply testing security." They also maintained, sacks of apparent explosives being laid down by their agents when caught in the act were actually harmless "flour." A feeble lie, made immediately apparent by former military men familiar with expolsives at the scene of the crime.
Or was it a crime? No charges were laid.
So, what we are left to ponder is: Would a president use the secret services of the nation to plan mass murder against his own people to forward a sinister conspiracy to undo democracy and create a military dictatorship?
Who could believe such a claim?
Alyona Morozova's family resided in one of three apartment buildings destroyed in the mad 1999 campaign of mahem that rocked Russia, and was all blamed on Chechen rebels.
Chechyna had already suffered a brutal war that saw the razing of cities on a level exeeding even NATO's destruction of Belgrade and the Former Republic of Yugoslavia. But the Chechens, never shy about inflicting damage against their hated oppressors, accepted no credit for a bombing campaign against civilian targets. Morozova wanted answers, and now says her questions have marked her for murder by those fearing the truth most. And, following her near obsessive investigation of the bombings, she points her finger squarely at Putin.
Today, Alyona Morozova finds herself centre stage in a global diplomacy power play that pits the two old Super Foes nose to nose. By filing for asylum in the United States, and the acceptance by the U.S. of her claims of a Putin-backed assassination plot against her, Morozova has become a new piece on a developing new Great Game board. It's a game that still includes massive destructive capabilties, including nuclear, on both sides. But for now, the more subtle thrust and parry...
Move: Russia - Technology leak to Iran {feint}
Counter: U.S.A. - Alyona Morozova {checkmate}
Though the Bush administration may enjoy Vladimir's discomfiture now, they may find themselves a-dangle on their own petard before long. The parallels between Russia's "little 9/11" in '99 and its greater Broadway production in 2001 have already been drawn, and the full scope of Alyona's story may lead to other loose bricks in the New W. O. It could shake the foundation of what appears an increasingly shook World Order.
For Morozova: She just wants out of a country run by a president who wouldn't think twice about haphazardly murdering neighbours; treating the citizenry as nothing better than serfs; fodder; pawns in a cynical game of self-aggrandizement. Alyona Morozova says she has to go. Too many of her friends and colleagues questioning what happened in September '99 have met with misadventure. Too many fatalities. But, should her story echo too loudly, becoming a precedent-parallel tale, staged in America, Alonya Morozova may want to reconsider her destination.
Look for the Morozova Affair, coming soon. It could prove an unraveling worth watching. -ape
By Gwynne Dyer
PRESIDENT George W. Bush leaves the flourishing metropolis of Mainz tomorrow evening, after meeting with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, and flies to Bratislava for a dinner with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. (Mainz? Bratislava? Not Berlin and Moscow? Is Mr Bush avoiding European crowds?) The Russian and American presidents will doubtless maintain a polite facade, but it’s unlikely that Bush will emerge from this meeting to declare once again that "Pootie-Poot" is his soulmate.
The Russian-American relationship is not thriving, and the proof of it is the fact that the United States granted political asylum a month ago to Alyona Morozova, a Russian citizen who claims that her life is in danger because of her role in investigating a series of “terrorist” bombing attacks that killed 246 Russians in September 1999. The chief suspect in the bombings, according to her, is Vladimir Putin.
Three apartment blocks in Russian cities were destroyed by huge bombs that month, including one that left Alyona Morozova’s mother and boyfriend dead under the rubble. There had been peace between Russia and the breakaway republic of Chechnya since 1996, and no Chechen claimed responsibility for the bombings, but then-prime minister Vladimir Putin immediately blamed the atrocities on the Chechens and launched a second war against them that continues to this day.
Boris Yeltsin was in the last year of his presidency then, and he was seeking a way to retire without facing prosecution for the fortunes he and his cronies had amassed in their years of power. Vladimir Putin, former head of the FSB secret police, had recently been appointed prime minister by Yeltsin but was still largely unknown to the Russian public.
The deal was that Yeltsin would pass the presidency to Putin at the end of the year, and Putin would then grant Yeltsin an amnesty for all crimes committed while he was in office. But there was still the tedious business of an election to get through, and Russians who scarcely knew Putin’s name had to be persuaded to vote for him on short notice. How to boost his profile as Saviour of the Nation? Well, a war, obviously.
Alyona Morozova (and many others) claim that Putin’s old friends at the FSB carried out the apartment bombings themselves, in order to give their man a pretext to declare war on Chechnya and make himself a national hero in time for the presidential elections. It would be just one more unfounded conspiracy theory – except that only days after the big Moscow bomb, a resident at a similar apartment building in the city of Ryazan spotted three people acting suspiciously and called the local police.
The police founds sacks in the cellar that they initially said contained hexogen, the explosive used in the other bombings, together with a timer set for 5.30 am. They also discovered that the three people who had planted the explosives were actually FSB agents. Nikolai Patrushev, the head of the FSB, insisted that the sacks contained only sugar and that the whole thing was a training exercise, and the local police fell silent, but there was no proper investigation.
Alyona Morozova fears the Russian government’s wrath because a number of other people who have tried to investigate the incident have been murdered or jailed on trumped-up charges of “espionage.” So she asked for political asylum in the United States: nothing surprising in that. It’s much more surprising that the US government actually granted her asylum, because it is implicitly acknowledging the possibility that President Vladimir Putin, in addition to being a mass murderer of Chechens, may also be a mass murderer of Russians.
You do not do this to countries you expect to be friends with. It may be the right thing to do, in moral terms, but that has not been a significant constraint on US policy towards trusted allies like Algeria, Egypt and Turkmenistan. Something else is going on here.
Just straws in the wind, but count them. Russia has refused to cut its support for Iran’s nuclear power projects despite all of Washington’s blandishments. Moscow is on the brink of a surface-to-air missile deal with Syria that would give that country the ability to challenge Israeli and even American overflights. The European Union is about to end its embargo on arms sales to China. The EU will go ahead with its Galileo satellite geo-positioning system, which can greatly improve missile accuracy, despite US protests that the existing American system (with fuzzed data for non-US military customers) is good enough for everybody. And it will sell the Galileo data to the Chinese.
There is a realignment going on, and it isn’t about ideology. If Russia were a fully democratic country, its foreign ministry would still be worried by US adventurism in the Middle East. If China were a democracy, it would probably be more active in opposing the American military presence in East Asia. And France and Germany, which are genuine democracies, increasingly see the US as a threat – not to them directly, but to global stability.
This change of attitude is not yet an accomplished fact, and a change of course in Washington could still abort the trend. But most of the world’s other major powers are starting to see the United States as a rogue state, and gradually they are responding to that perception. Nothing George W. Bush will say or do on this European trip is likely to change their minds.
Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.
Monday, February 28, 2005
DU Effects: Duh!
Kurt Nimmo
February 28, 2005
It is totally astounding. Bush Senior, Clinton, and Bush the Junior are war criminals of a caliber not witnessed since the war against the people of Vietnam (2-3 million killed).
It is estimated this threesome of mass murder have killed around 1.5 million Iraqis (under the supervision of Bush I and Clinton), at least 3,620 Afghan civilians (according to a count conducted by Marc Herold of the Guardian as of August 2002) and 100,00 Iraqi civilians under the supervision of Bush II (according to research conducted by The Lancet medical journal).
Add to this staggering death toll approaching 2 million another 11,000 Americans killed by “Gulf War Syndrome” and you have crimes of Nuremberg tribunal proportions.
“This malady (from uranium munitions), that thousands of our military have suffered and died from, has finally been identified as the cause of this sickness, eliminating the guessing. The terrible truth is now being revealed,” Arthur N. Bernklau, executive director of Veterans for Constitutional Law in New York, told Bob Nichols…
Terry Jamison, Public Affairs Specialist, Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, Department of Veterans Affairs, at the VA Central Office, recently reported that ‘Gulf Era Veterans’ now on medical disability, since 1991, number 518,739 Veterans.”
Bernklau added: “The long-term effects have revealed that DU (uranium oxide) is a virtual death sentence,” stated Berklau. “Marion Fulk, a nuclear physical chemist, who retired from the Lawrence Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab, and was also involved with the Manhattan Project, interprets the new and rapid malignancies in the soldiers (from the 2003 Iraq War) as ’spectacular … and a matter of concern!’”
Nichols writes that Preventive Psychiatry E-Newsletter charged last week “that the reason Veterans Affairs Secretary Anthony Principi stepped down earlier this month was the growing scandal surrounding the use of uranium munitions in the Iraq War….
The real reason for Mr. Principi’s departure was really never given, however a special report published by eminent scientist Leuren Moret naming depleted uranium as the definitive cause of the ‘Gulf War Syndrome’ has fed a growing scandal about the continued use of uranium munitions by the US Military,” added Bernklau.
Add the World Health Organization (WHO) to the list of culprits. “An expert report warning that the long-term health of Iraq’s civilian population would be endangered by British and US depleted uranium (DU) weapons has been kept secret,” writes Rob Edwards for the Sunday Herald.
“The study by three leading radiation scientists cautioned that children and adults could contract cancer after breathing in dust containing DU, which is radioactive and chemically toxic. But it was blocked from publication by the World Health Organization (WHO), which employed the main author, Dr Keith Baverstock, as a senior radiation advisor. He alleges that it was deliberately suppressed, though this is denied by WHO.”
Baverstock’s study, which has now been passed to the Sunday Herald, pointed out that Iraq’s arid climate meant that tiny particles of DU were likely to be blown around and inhaled by civilians for years to come. It warned that, when inside the body, their radiation and toxicity could trigger the growth of malignant tumors.
The study suggested that the low-level radiation from DU could harm cells adjacent to those that are directly irradiated, a phenomenon known as “the bystander effect”. This undermines the stability of the body’s genetic system, and is thought by many scientists to be linked to cancers and possibly other illnesses.
After Pappy Bush finished his serial mass murder spree in 1991, “the radiation level in plants and animals [around Basra was] as much as 84 times the level that the World Health Organization says is safe,” reports the New Internationalist. “One of the doctors at Basra General Hospital has taken photographs to record all the babies who have been born with deformities.
The pictures are horrifying: babies without eyes, without brains, without arms, without legs, without sex organs, babies with internal organs on the outside of their bodies.” The number of cancer cases in Iraq has increased by up to 10 times and it was estimated at the time “that 44% of Iraq’s people will have cancer within ten years,” according to Felicity Arbuthnot.
As if to make sure hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died in excruciating pain from various cancers, in 1992 “the US dominated Sanctions Committee refuse[d] to permit Iraq to import the clean-up equipment that they desperately need[ed] to decontaminate their country of the Depleted Uranium ammunition that the US fired at them.
Approximately 315 tons of DU dust was left by the use of this ammunition,” writes Hans de Jonge. If you have the stomach, take a look at these photographs of birth deformities and defects in Iraq caused by depleted uranium.
If 315 tons of DU seems like a large amount, consider that Bush II’s invasion left behind 1,700 tons, according to Jane’s, citing the Uranium Medical Research Center (UMRC). The UMRC “team’s preliminary tests showed that air, soil and water samples contained ‘hundreds to thousands of times’ the normal levels of radiation.”
All of this will eventually come back to the somnolent American public—and everybody else—who shrugged, flipped the channel when Bush’s invasion became boring, and voted to “re-elect” a war criminal president and Congress.
“Small particles less than 1 micron in diameter do not settle from the air but become incorporated into atmospheric dust and are transported around the earth until they are removed ("rainout") by rain, pollution or snow,” warns Leuren Moret of Scientists for Indigenous People in a letter sent to Congress critter Jim McDermott.
“Seasonal climate change, agricultural activities, fires and other natural and man-made disturbances will continue to remobilize particles in the upper dust level contaminating terrains off the battlefield… the depleted uranium dust will cycle through the environment both on and off the battlefield contaminating water supplies and food.”
Arjun Makihani, the president of the US Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, told the New Internationalist in 1998, that once “released, the particles can be directly inhaled, can pollute the water table and enter the food chain, spreading radioactive pollution over thousands of square miles. Exposure to this kind of radiation, as well as to chemical pollution, can cause genetic damage because of the ease with which uranium can cross the placenta to the foetus.”
“It’s still hot forever,” Doug Rokke, a former Pentagon DU expert, told Scott Peterson of the Christian Science Monitor. “It doesn’t go away, it only disperses and blows around in the wind.”
So the next time you see an SUV in traffic with a yellow magnetic ribbon calling for everybody to “Support Our Troops,” think about the invisible cancer-causing particles wafting down in the rain or snow and thank Bush-Clinton-Bush (who may eventually kill far more people than Hitler or Stalin ever did).
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