Syria's Chemical Attack: A Chorus of Crap from Media Giants

Structural Inclinations - The Leaning Tower of Propaganda: Chemical Attacks in Ghouta, Syria

by David Edwards - Media Lens

A UN report this month found that, 'Torture and brutality are rife in Libyan prisons two years after the overthrow of leader Muammar Gaddafi.' Around 8,000 prisoners are currently being held without trial in government jails on suspicion of having fought for Gaddafi.

But then, in the aftermath of Nato's 'humanitarian intervention', torture, bombings and assassinations are now par for the course in Libya, as described here by the excellent Interventions Watch.

In similar vein, late last month, thirteen bombs were detonated on a single day in Baghdad killing at least 47 people. More than 5,000 people have been killed so far this year, according to the UN.

Despite all of this - after years of unmissable, terrible carnage in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya - the Pew Research Journalism Project finds that 'the No. 1 message' on CNN, MSNBC and Fox News, and Al Jazeera, was 'that the U.S. should get involved in the conflict' in Syria.

It seems that no level of suffering and chaos are sufficient to impede the structural 'mainstream' inclination to support state violence.

No surprise, then, that much of UK journalism had decided that the current Official Enemy was responsible for the August 21 attacks in Damascus long before the UN published the evidence in its report on 'the alleged use of chemical weapons in the Ghouta area' on September 16.

Just one day after the attacks, a Guardian leader claimed there was not 'much doubt' who was to blame, as it simultaneously assailed its readers with commentary on the West's 'responsibility to protect'. An Independent front page headline one week later read like a sigh of relief: 'Syria: air attacks loom as West finally acts' (Independent, August 26, 2013).

This was a close copy of the media response to the May 2012 massacre in Houla, which was also instantly and personally blamed on Syrian president Assad.

Fog Of War

The rapid media conclusion on Ghouta was particularly striking because the issues are complex – literally, rocket science - and evidence has again been gathered under live fire in the middle of a notoriously ferocious civil, proxy and propaganda war. Earlier claims relating to use of chemical weapons had been adjudged 'a load of old cobblers' by veteran journalist Robert Fisk. It was also clear that instantly declaring Assad's guilt a 'slam-dunk' fed directly into a rapidly escalating US-UK propaganda blitz intended to justify a massive, illegal attack on Syria without UN approval.

With Qatar reportedly supplying 'rebels' to the tune of $3 billion and Saudi Arabia $1 billion, and with Russia supplying the Syrian government with $1 billion in weapons, the stakes are high indeed. The fog of both the propaganda and conventional war obstructs and falsifies the facts at every turn. Who to trust? How can we know the lengths to which different agencies might be willing to go to secure outcomes of vast geopolitical significance?

For example, it is not clear how many people were killed in the August 21 attacks. A preliminary US government estimate, commonly cited by the media, claimed that 1,429 people had been killed, including 426 children. But as investigative journalist Gareth Porter noted:

'That figure, for which no source was indicated, was several times larger than the estimates given by British and French intelligence.' (Our emphasis)

The day before the US estimate was released, British intelligence reported just 350 dead. A couple of days later, a French report concluded that at least 281 people had died. These discrepancies, particularly when contrasted with the precision of the US figures, naturally raise suspicions.

On September 13, three days before the UN report on the Ghouta attacks was published, an incredulous David Aaronovitch of The Times, asked Mehdi Hasan, Huffington Post UK's political director:

'I ask again. Do you seriously doubt Syrian government used chemical weapons two weeks ago?'

Hasan replied:

'Gun to my head, I think he probably did. But... I want to wait & see what inspectors say & hear more about our "intel".'

A few days earlier, Hasan had written:

'I want Assad gone and I believe him to be a brutal and corrupt dictator. I wouldn't be surprised either if it turns out that his troops did use sarin against civilians in Ghouta.'

On August 29, one week after the attacks, the Guardian's George Monbiot commented:

'Where we are: 1. Strong evidence that Assad used CWs [chemical weapons] on civilians. 2. But v hard to see airstrikes producing any improvement. Agree?'

We certainly agreed with Monbiot's second point, but we simply had not seen the evidence justifying his first. We wrote to him quoting chemical weapons expert Jean Pascal Zanders, who worked for the European Union Institute for Security Studies from 2008 to 2013:

'No, where's the "strong evidence"? CW expert Zanders: "In fact, we – the public – know very little". http://tinyurl.com/q4np9qn'

Monbiot replied:

'Perhaps I shd've said strong balance of prob. Rebels wld need a lot of hardware to have done it. Either way, case 4 interv v weak'

In a Guardian article two weeks later, Monbiot wrote:

'None of this is to exonerate Bashar al-Assad's government – or its opponents – of a long series of hideous crimes, including the use of chemical weapons.'

Thus, 'strong evidence', walked back to a 'strong balance of prob', had become an assertion that the Syrian government had committed hideous crimes with chemical weapons.

The comments above pretty much sum up the 'mainstream' view on Syrian government guilt, perceived as ranging from certain to probable. We cite Hasan and Monbiot because they are two of the most vocal and respected anti-war voices working in the corporate media.

The point is not that Aaronovitch, Hasan and Monbiot are wrong – the Assad dictatorship has committed many horrific war crimes, and may have again in Ghouta. But these and numerous similar media claims were not rooted in any evidence we had seen at the time they were made. In other words, UK journalists appeared yet again to be succumbing to the influence of state propaganda demonising an Official Enemy, exactly as happened with Iraq and Libya.

Predicting The UN Report

On September 7, Reuters reported a key point rarely even mentioned by journalists considering the merits of a Western attack on Syria:

'No direct link to President Bashar al-Assad or his inner circle has been publicly demonstrated, and some U.S. sources say intelligence experts are not sure whether the Syrian leader knew of the attack before it was launched or was only informed about it afterward.

'While U.S. officials say Assad is responsible for the chemical weapons strike even if he did not directly order it, they have not been able to fully describe a chain of command for the August 21 attack in the Ghouta area east of the Syrian capital.'

On August 30, the Independent reported:

'The report by Britain's Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) on the Syrian attacks... failed to make a case for war. There was no evidence directly linking President Assad and his coterie to the attack, the blame attached to the regime was by default, inasmuch it was held the opposition did not have the wherewithal to mount such an operation.'

Gareth Porter exposed how the initial US government response to the attacks, released prior to the UN report, was based on 'intelligence that is either obviously ambiguous at best or is of doubtful authenticity, or both, as firm evidence that the Syrian government carried out a chemical weapons attack'.

Porter added, disturbingly, that 'the Obama administration's presentation of the intelligence supporting war' was arguably 'far more politicized than the flawed 2002 Iraq WMD estimate that the George W. Bush administration cited as part of the justification for the invasion of Iraq'.

Brushing these reservations aside, many media predicted that the UN report would go beyond its remit and blame the Syrian government, and even Assad personally. Thus, the Observer: 'some officials [are] claiming it will point the finger at the Assad regime'. (Peter Beaumont, 'US and Russia seal deal over end to Syria chemical arms,' Observer, September 15, 2013)

The Telegraph headlined the same prediction:

'UN report will point to Syrian regime's responsibility for sarin attack' (Ruth Sherlock, Telegraph, September 12, 2013)

And the Daily Mail:

'UN report will point the finger at Assad regime for huge chemical attack... but insiders admit there is only circumstantial evidence' (Simon Tomlinson, Daily Mail, September 12, 2013)

The fiercely pro-war Times headline for September 13, 2013 went further still:

'Assad is to blame for chemical strike — UN'

After publication of the report, the Independent claimed that 'UN weapons inspectors find "clear and convincing" evidence of regime gas attack.' (David Usborne and Kim Sengupta, i-Independent, September 17, 2013)

Despite these numerous predictions and affirmations of blame, the Guardian's Simon Tisdall wrote that the report had been 'shamefacedly cautious'. Why?

'It also seems clear that those responsible for the Ghouta attack, from Assad downwards, are unlikely to face justice soon, or at all. The UN report declined to blame the regime, let alone to name those behind the atrocity.' (Our emphasis)

Commentators, indeed, were wrong to suggest that the UN report had blamed Assad.

If the UN was disgracefully cautious on September 16, Human Rights Watch (HRW) had been bold in blaming the Syrian government one week earlier:

'"Rocket debris and symptoms of the victims from the August 21 attacks on Ghouta provide telltale evidence about the weapon systems used," said Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director at Human Rights Watch. "This evidence strongly suggests that Syrian government troops launched rockets carrying chemical warheads into the Damascus suburbs that terrible morning."'

HRW presents itself as a neutral, dispassionate observer of events in Syria. But HRW director Ken Roth has openly supported, not just a US attack on Syrian government forces, but one that is more than symbolic:

'If Obama decides to strike #Syria, will he settle for symbolism or do something that will help protect civilians?'

John Tirman, Executive Director and Principal Research Scientist at the MIT Center for International Studies, replied to Roth on Twitter that this was:

'Possibly the most ignorant & irresponsible statement ever by a major human-rights advocate. #Syria Escalating war ≠ civ protect'

'Grave Doubts' Expressed By UN Officials

Serious doubts remain about exactly what happened on August 21 in Damascus. Nafeez Ahmed, who writes for the Guardian on the geopolitics of environmental, energy and economic crises, provided a reasonable assessment of the evidence on September 20, here. Ahmed later commented on responsibility for the attacks:

'I remain open-minded about the CW issue and as the article above shows, have drawn no specific conclusions either way.'

Much has been made of the trajectory of rockets that landed in Ghouta calculated by the UN. But the UN report stated:

'The time necessary to conduct a detailed survey ... as well as take samples was very limited. The sites [had] been well travelled by other individuals both before and during the investigation. Fragments and other possible evidence [had] clearly been handled/moved prior to the arrival of the investigation team.'

Robert Fisk noted that he could not recall seeing these words in any media analysis. He commented:

'...it also has to be said that grave doubts are being expressed by the UN and other international organisations in Damascus that the sarin gas missiles were fired by Assad's army. While these international employees cannot be identified, some of them were in Damascus on 21 August and asked a series of questions to which no one has yet supplied an answer. Why, for example, would Syria wait until the UN inspectors were ensconced in Damascus on 18 August before using sarin gas little more than two days later – and only four miles from the hotel in which the UN had just checked in? Having thus presented the UN with evidence of the use of sarin – which the inspectors quickly acquired at the scene – the Assad regime, if guilty, would surely have realised that a military attack would be staged by Western nations'.

Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), including Thomas Drake, Ray McGovern, Matthew Hoh, Philip Giraldi and others, sent a memorandum to Barack Obama on September 6:

'We regret to inform you that some of our former co-workers are telling us, categorically, that contrary to the claims of your administration, the most reliable intelligence shows that Bashar al-Assad was NOT responsible for the chemical incident that killed and injured Syrian civilians on August 21, and that British intelligence officials also know this.'

Ben Caspit, a contributing writer for Al-Monitor's Israel Pulse, has also commented:

'This week I met with an unofficial Israeli source with a background in IDF's [Israeli Defence Force] intelligence branch, though that was quite some time ago... He is a high-tech person with many achievements and great experience in that field. He developed methods for comparing and cross-checking information, methods that have mainly proven themselves when hundreds, thousands and tens of thousands of sources are involved. He wrote a document that rebuts one by one the claims and evidences by which the Assad regime is held responsible for the use of chemical weapons on Aug. 21 in Syria.'

Caspit concluded:

'It's not that I am now convinced that Assad is innocent. It's that now I am a little less convinced that the hands of the Syria president were involved in the chemical attack on Aug. 21.'

Again, none of this means that the Syrian government, and indeed Assad himself, was not to blame for the August 21 attacks. The point is that the corporate media's staggering lack of scepticism again indicates that it is structurally inclined to favour the view of US-UK state power. As former Guardian journalist, Jonathan Cook, has written:

'We should expect the corporations that own our media to be promoting the same agendas as the political elites they own too. It's a self-sustaining and self-reinforcing system.'

Genuinely independent 'mainstream' journalists would of course be energetically exploring and debating the uncertainties surrounding US-UK claims, particularly in light of the catastrophic Iraq deception and the clear difficulty of assessing the quality of all information coming out of Syria.

But in fact almost all detailed discussion of the UN report and the different claims surrounding it has appeared outside the 'mainstream', on small websites and specialist blogs. As ever, corporate media employees have been content to give a lazy nod to US-UK claims so that, as Fisk comments, 'now the world has convinced itself that the Assad regime fired the sarin gas shells on 21 August'.

And as the lesson of Iraq makes clear, with Syria very much in US crosshairs, that conviction may yet result in great calamities in the near future.

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Structural Inclinations - The Leaning Tower of Propaganda: Chemical Weapons Attacks In Ghouta, Syria

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Plutocrats' Plan to Swipe Public Workers' Pensions

Exposed: California's Secret Plan to Gut Public Pensions

by TRNN

Lynn Parramore: California memo just latest example of Wall St's attack on workers' pensions.

 

Lynn Parramore is an AlterNet senior editor. She is cofounder of Recessionwire, founding editor of New Deal 2.0, and author of 'Reading the Sphinx: Ancient Egypt in Nineteenth-Century Literary Culture.' She received her Ph.d in English and Cultural Theory from NYU, where she has taught essay writing and semiotics. She is the Director of AlterNet's New Economic Dialogue Project. Follow her on Twitter @LynnParramore. 

Getting It Back: Catching Up With Tony Hayward's Life

Balancing Geological Potential and Political Risk: Interview with Tony Hayward

 by James Stafford of Oilprice.com

From Kurdistan to Somaliland, for independent oil companies, getting your hands on new exploration acreage where both technical risk and political risk are low is impossible. Exploring for oil and gas in new frontiers is all about striking the right balance between geological potential and political risk. Take it from Anglo-Turkish Genel Energy, the largest producer in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI), where it seems nothing can shake investor confidence right now.

In an exclusive interview with Oilprice.com, former BP chief and current CEO of Genel Energy , Tony Hayward, discusses:

• Why Kurdistan is a great place to be right now
• Why the attacks in Erbil won't shake investor confidence
• What the next milestone will be—and when
• How the relationship with Turkey is helping Kurdistan forge oil and gas independence
• How Kurdistan's oil and gas progress could benefit Iraq as a whole
• What we can expect for future exploration
• The massive geological potential and high political risk of Somaliland
• What we can expect to find in Ethiopia
• What makes Malta and Morocco high-impact prospects
• Why investors should be excited about offshore Cote d'Ivoire
• How to strike the right balance in frontier venues

James Stafford: On 29 September, a series of attacks targeting security forces in the Kurdish capital of Erbil killed six, sparking fears that the conflict in Syria maybe be spreading Kurdistan. Will this do anything to investor confidence in the region?

Tony Hayward: Kurdistan has been a beacon of stability and security in an unstable region, but sadly nowhere is immune to terrorism. As this is the first such incident in Kurdistan for six years, we have no reason to think that it will or should change investor perception.

James Stafford: Right now, Kurdistan is one of the hottest emerging venues out there, and the media is fascinated with the Kurds' success in forging oil and gas independence despite threats emanating from Baghdad. As the largest oil producer in Kurdistan, Genel naturally fields the majority of tricky questions related to these political dynamics. Is there anything that can stop Kurdistan from continuing to pursue oil independence at this point?

Tony Hayward: The impending completion of the pipeline is clearly a significant milestone for the oil industry in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. The relationship between the KRI and Turkey is now very strong, and this has helped the Kurdistan Regional Government to take control of its own exports. The strength of this relationship has helped to give significant momentum to the Kurdistan oil and gas industry.

The signing of an Energy Framework Agreement between Turkey and the KRG in March 2013 was an important step, and we have seen clear evidence of its implementation - KRI crude oil is exported by truck to international markets via Turkey, and a Turkish state-backed energy company has also entered the upstream sector in the KRI, signing 6 PSCs with the KRG and partnering with Exxon in a number of licences. Finally, Turkey and the KRG have agreed a framework for the export of KRI gas to the Turkish gas market – we expect this Gas Sales Agreement to be signed by the end of the year.

Kurdistan has always had the resources, now it is building the infrastructure and has a significant market for its oil and gas. It is a good place to be.

James Stafford: How far along is the pipeline at present?

Tony Hayward: The pipeline from Taq Taq to Fishkabur is very close to completion – welding is now in sight of the pumping station. We expect the entire system, capable initially of exporting some 300,000 barrels a day, to be fully operational around the end of the year. This will be a major inflection point for the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and of course for Genel, allowing us to increase production and realise international prices for our exports.

James Stafford: What can we expect in terms of production once the new pipeline to Turkey comes on line, as planned for the fourth quarter?

Tony Hayward: We have not yet given guidance for production for 2014, but developments at Taq Taq and Tawke are on track to deliver 140,000 barrels a day of working interest production capacity by year end-2014.

James Stafford: What will Baghdad's response be?

Tony Hayward: While it is difficult for us to speculate on this, we believe that the pipeline will be a positive political benefit, allowing for increased exports of oil from the Kurdistan Region of Iraq with regular and stable payments that will benefit Iraq as a whole.

James Stafford: How much oil is reaching Turkey now? Can you take us through the transport route and the costs?

Tony Hayward: At present we are exporting around 30,000-40,000 bopd a day by truck from Taq Taq to Mersin, on the Mediterranean coast in Turkey, where it is sold on the international market. Contractors are receiving full entitlement for the barrels sold.

James Stafford: What can we expect from new exploration in Kurdistan, and what is the average hit rate for exploration?

Tony Hayward: Hopefully more of the same. High impact exploration drilling is continuing in the KRI, and planned wells are targeting around 1bn boe of gross unrisked resources. We also still have work to do to fully assess our recent discoveries, and so the full potential of the region has yet to be evaluated. We remain very excited about the potential volumes in place. Results from Chia Surkh 11 and Taq Taq Deep are expected in Q4, while Miran Deep will spud in 2014. With the African portfolio taken into account, we are targeting over 4bn boe.

We've enjoyed a great run of exploration success in Kurdistan this year, with three successes from three wells adding in excess of 50% to our net contingent resources. While this isn't typical, our hit rate in Kurdistan has been very pleasing and due in no small part to the extensive preparatory work conducted by our technical teams ahead of drilling.

James Stafford: There are plenty of junior oil companies eyeing Kurdistan right now. What does an E&P company need to know about operating in Kurdistan?

Tony Hayward: We have found Kurdistan to be a very good place to operate. As with all places, you should ensure good working relationships with the local government and communities. As one of the first movers in the KRI we were in a very fortunate position – such has been the success in the region the majors have unsurprisingly now got involved, albeit focusing on exploration and appraisal opportunities so far

James Stafford: Genel is no stranger to high-risk venues, and that brings us to Somaliland. What's the political risk of exploring in a country that broke away from Somalia 20 years ago but still is not recognized internationally?

Tony Hayward: As an independent oil company I'm afraid the potential for now finding acreage with a very low technical and political risk is nigh on impossible – you have to have one or the other. Kurdistan was a low technical risk, and we were happy with the level of political risk – and we believe the momentum over the last 18 months has proven us correct.

Somaliland is geologically hugely exciting, and so the risk is on the political side.

James Stafford: Why Somaliland? How explored is Somaliland, and what do you expect to find—and when?

Tony Hayward: Somaliland looks analogous with the prolific Yemen Rift Basins – geologically it looks exceptional, and it is a very underexplored area.

James Stafford: What other areas are worth exploring in terms of geological analogy to the prolific Jurassic Rift Basins of Yemen?

Tony Hayward: We like Ethiopia, hence our decision to farm in to the Adigala Block last month. The Block borders Somaliland, and oil seeps and surface outcrops support the presence of a mature and active Jurassic oil prone system, which we believe is analogous to the Yemen basins. We have identified several large potential structures, with further planned seismic and technical work to be done to identify these leads into drill ready prospects. We are also actively reviewing other opportunities in the region.

James Stafford: Where do you predict the next big find to be in this area, and why?

Tony Hayward: Hopefully in our acreage! We like the geology and we are excited about the prospects, but if we could predict the next big find then we would be in a very blessed position indeed. The only way to ascertain whether hydrocarbons are present in commercial quantities is to drill.

James Stafford: What attracted you to Malta and Morocco? What are your expectations?

Tony Hayward: As with all of our acreage – geology. As we have expanded outside Africa we have targeted opportunities to take material interests in high impact prospects, with the potential for field sizes of at least 250 million bbls. Malta and Morocco both fall firmly in these categories and, while expectations are dangerous in this business, we are confident in the geology and look forward to drilling them both. Morocco will be our first well to spud outside the KRI when it does so in the last quarter of this year.

James Stafford: How excited should investors be at the continued prospects for offshore Cote d'Ivoire due to the fact that it is the same basin where Western Ghana's Jubilee field was discovered?

Tony Hayward: Our prospect is in the same sub basin as the West Coast of Ghana, and the discovery rate there has been 44%. There are clearly proven petroleum systems in the area and there are geological similarities – if the result is the same we will be delighted.

Source: http://oilprice.com/Interviews/Balancing-Geological-Potential-and-Political-Risk-Interview-with-Tony-Hayward.html

Interview by James Stafford of Oilprice.com

GWOT Milk?

The Anti-Empire Report #121

By William Blum – Published October 7th, 2013

The War on Terrorism … or whatever.

“U.S. hopes of winning more influence over Syria’s divided rebel movement faded Wednesday after 11 of the biggest armed factions repudiated the Western-backed political opposition coalition and announced the formation of an alliance dedicated to creating an Islamist state. The al-Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra, designated a terrorist organization by the United States, is the lead signatory of the new group.” 1

Pity the poor American who wants to be a good citizen, wants to understand the world and his country’s role in it, wants to believe in the War on Terrorism, wants to believe that his government seeks to do good … What is he to make of all this?

For about two years, his dear American government has been supporting the same anti-government side as the jihadists in the Syrian civil war; not total, all-out support, but enough military hardware, logistics support, intelligence information, international political, diplomatic and propaganda assistance (including the crucial alleged-chemical-weapons story), to keep the jihadists in the ball game. Washington and its main Mideast allies in the conflict – Turkey, Jordan, Qatar and Saudi Arabia – have not impeded the movement to Syria of jihadists coming to join the rebels, recruited from the ranks of Sunni extremist veterans of the wars in Chechnya, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, while Qatar and the Saudis have supplied the rebels with weapons, most likely bought in large measure from the United States, as well as lots of of what they have lots of – money.

This widespread international support has been provided despite the many atrocities carried out by the jihadists – truck and car suicide bombings (with numerous civilian casualties), planting roadside bombs à la Iraq, gruesome massacres of Christians and Kurds, grotesque beheadings and other dissections of victims’ bodies (most charming of all: a Youtube video of a rebel leader cutting out an organ from the chest of a victim and biting into it as it drips with blood). All this barbarity piled on top of a greater absurdity – these Western-backed, anti-government forces are often engaged in battle with other Western-backed, anti-government forces, non-jihadist. It has become increasingly difficult to sell this war to the American public as one of pro-democracy “moderates” locked in a good-guy-versus-bad-guy struggle with an evil dictator, although in actuality the United States has fought on the same side as al Qaeda on repeated occasions before Syria. Here’s a brief survey:

Afghanistan, 1980-early 1990s: In support of the Islamic Moujahedeen (“holy warriors”), the CIA orchestrated a war against the Afghan government and their Soviet allies, pouring in several billions of dollars of arms and extensive military training; hitting up Middle-Eastern countries for donations, notably Saudi Arabia which gave hundreds of millions of dollars in aid each year; pressuring and bribing Pakistan to rent out its country as a military staging area and sanctuary.

It worked. And out of the victorious Moujahedeen came al Qaeda.

Bosnia, 1992-5: In 2001 the Wall Street Journal declared:

It is safe to say that the birth of al-Qaeda as a force on the world stage can be traced directly back to 1992, when the Bosnian Muslim government of Alija Izetbegovic issued a passport in their Vienna embassy to Osama bin Laden. … for the past 10 years, the most senior leaders of al Qaeda have visited the Balkans, including bin Laden himself on three occasions between 1994 and 1996. The Egyptian surgeon turned terrorist leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri has operated terrorist training camps, weapons of mass destruction factories and money-laundering and drug-trading networks throughout Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Turkey and Bosnia. This has gone on for a decade. 2

A few months later, The Guardian reported on “the full story of the secret alliance between the Pentagon and radical Islamist groups from the Middle East designed to assist the Bosnian Muslims – some of the same groups that the Pentagon is now fighting in “the war against terrorism”. 3

In 1994 and 1995 US/NATO forces carried out bombing campaigns over Bosnia aimed at damaging the military capability of the Serbs and enhancing that of the Bosnian Muslims. In the decade-long civil wars in the Balkans, the Serbs, regarded by Washington as the “the last communist government in Europe”, were always the main enemy.

Kosovo, 1998-99: Kosovo, overwhelmingly Muslim, was a province of Serbia, the main republic of the former Yugoslavia. In 1998, Kosovo separatists – The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) – began an armed conflict with Belgrade to split Kosovo from Serbia. The KLA was considered a terrorist organization by the US, the UK and France for years, with numerous reports of the KLA having contact with al-Qaeda, getting arms from them, having its militants trained in al-Qaeda camps in Pakistan, and even having members of al-Qaeda in KLA ranks fighting against the Serbs. 4

However, when US-NATO forces began military action against the Serbs the KLA was taken off the US terrorist list, it “received official US-NATO arms and training support” 5 , and the 1999 US-NATO bombing campaign eventually focused on driving Serbian forces from Kosovo.

In 2008 Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia, an independence so illegitimate and artificial that the majority of the world’s nations still have not recognized it. But the United States was the first to do so, the very next day, thus affirming the unilateral declaration of independence of a part of another country’s territory.

The KLA have been known for their trafficking in women, heroin, and human body parts (sic). The United States has naturally been pushing for Kosovo’s membership in NATO and the European Union.

Nota bene: In 1992 the Bosnian Muslims, Croats, and Serbs reached agreement in Lisbon for a unified state. The continuation of a peaceful multi-ethnic Bosnia seemed assured. But the United States sabotaged the agreement. 6

Libya, 2011: The US and NATO to the rescue again. For more than six months, almost daily missile attacks against the government and forces of Muammar Gaddafi as assorted Middle East jihadists assembled in Libya and battled the government on the ground. The predictable outcome came to be – the jihadists now in control of parts of the country and fighting for the remaining parts. The wartime allies showed their gratitude to Washington by assassinating the US ambassador and three other Americans, presumably CIA, in the city of Benghazi.

Caucasus (Russia), mid-2000s to present: The National Endowment for Democracy and Freedom House have for many years been the leading American “non-government” institutions tasked with destabilizing, if not overthrowing, foreign governments which refuse to be subservient to the desires of US foreign policy. Both NGOs have backed militants in the Russian Caucasus area, one that has seen more than its share of terror stretching back to the Chechnyan actions of the 1990s. 7

“Omission is the most powerful form of lie.” – George Orwell

I am asked occasionally why I am so critical of the mainstream media when I quote from them repeatedly in my writings. The answer is simple. The American media’s gravest shortcoming is much more their errors of omission than their errors of commission. It’s what they leave out that distorts the news more than any factual errors or out-and-out lies. So I can make good use of the facts they report, which a large, rich organization can easier provide than the alternative media.

A case in point is a New York Times article of October 5 on the Greek financial crisis and the Greeks’ claim for World War Two reparations from Germany.

“Germany may be Greece’s stern banker now, say those who are seeking reparations,” writes the Times, but Germany “should pay off its own debts to Greece. … It is not just aging victims of the Nazi occupation who are demanding a full accounting. Prime Minister Antonis Samarass government has compiled an 80-page report on reparations and a huge, never-repaid loan the nation was forced to make under Nazi occupation from 1941 to 1945. … The call for reparations has elicited an emotional outpouring in Greece, where six years of brutal recession and harsh austerity measures have left many Greeks hostile toward Germany. Rarely does a week go by without another report in the news about, as one newspaper put it in a headline, ‘What Germany Owes Us’.”

“The figure most often discussed is $220 billion, an estimate for infrastructure damage alone put forward by Manolis Glezos, a member of Parliament and a former resistance fighter who is pressing for reparations. That amount equals about half the country’s debt. … Some members of the National Council on Reparations, an advocacy group, are calling for more than $677 billion to cover stolen artifacts, damage to the economy and to the infrastructure, as well as the bank loan and individual claims.”

So there we have the morality play: The evil Germans who occupied Greece and in addition to carrying out a lot of violence and repression shamelessly exploited the Greek people economically.

Would it be appropriate for such a story, or an accompanying or follow-up story, to mention the civil war that broke out in Greece shortly after the close of the world war? On one side were the neo-fascists, many of whom had cooperated with the occupying Germans during the war, some even fighting for the Nazis. Indeed, the British Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, acknowledged in August 1946 that there were 228 ex-members of the Nazi Security Battalions – whose main task had been to track down Greek resistance fighters and Jews – on active service in the new Greek army. 8

On the other side was the Greek left who had fought the Nazis courageously, even forcing the German army to flee the country in 1944.

So guess which side of the civil war our favorite military took? … That’s right, the United States supported the neo-fascists. After all, an important component of the Greek left was the Communist Party, although it wouldn’t have mattered at all if the Greek left had not included any Communists. Support of the left (not to be confused with liberals of course) anywhere in the world, during and since the Cold War, has been verboten in US foreign policy.

The neo-fascists won the civil war and instituted a highly brutal regime, for which the CIA created a suitably repressive internal security agency, named and modeled after itself, the KYP. For the next 15 years, Greece was looked upon much as a piece of real estate to be developed according to Washington’s political and economic needs. One document should suffice to capture the beauty of Washington’s relationship to Athens – a 1947 letter from US Secretary of State George Marshall to Dwight Griswold, the head of the American Mission to Aid Greece, said:

During the course of your work you and the members of your Mission will from time to time find that certain Greek officials are not, because of incompetence, disagreement with your policies, or for some other reason, extending the type of cooperation which is necessary if the objectives of your Mission are to be achieved. You will find it necessary to effect the removal of these officials. 9

Where is the present-day Greek headline: “What The United States Owes Us”? Where is the New York Times obligation to enlighten its readers?

The latest step in the evolution of America’s Police State

“If you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear.”

So say many Americans. And many Germans as well.

But one German, Ilija Trojanow, would disagree. He has lent his name to published documents denouncing the National Security Agency (NSA), and was one of several prominent German authors who signed a letter to Chancellor Angela Merkel urging her to take a firm stance against the mass online surveillance conducted by the NSA. Trojanow and the other authors had nothing to hide, which is why the letter was published for the public to read. What happened after that, however, was that Trojanow was refused permission to board a flight from Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, to Miami on Monday, September 30. Without any explanation.

Trojanow, who was on his way to speak at a literary conference in Denver, told the Spiegel magazine online website that the denial of entry might be linked to his criticism of the NSA. Germany’s Foreign Ministry says it has contacted US authorities “to resolve this issue”. 10

In an article published in a German newspaper, Trojanow voiced his frustration with the incident: “It is more than ironic if an author who raises his voice against the dangers of surveillance and the secret state within a state for years, will be denied entry into the ‘land of the brave and the free’.” 11

Further irony can be found in the title of a book by Trojanow: “Attack on freedom. Obsession with security, the surveillance state and the dismantling of civil rights.”

Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr., who oversees the NSA and other intelligence agencies, said recently that the intelligence community “is only interested in communication related to valid foreign intelligence and counterintelligence purposes.” 12

It’s difficult in the extreme to see how this criterion would apply in any way to Ilija Trojanow.

The story is a poignant caveat on how fragile is Americans’ freedom to criticize their Security State. If a foreigner can be barred from boarding a flight merely for peaceful, intellectual criticism of America’s Big Brother (nay, Giant Brother), who amongst us does not need to pay careful attention to anything they say or write.

Very few Americans, however, will even be aware of this story. A thorough search of the Lexis-Nexis media database revealed a single mention in an American daily newspaper (The St. Louis Post-Dispatch), out of 1400 daily papers in the US. No mention on any broadcast media. A single one-time mention in a news agency (Associated Press), and one mention in a foreign English-language newspaper (New Zealand Herald).

15

Notes
Washington Post, September 26, 2013 ↩
Wall Street Journal, November 1, 2001 ↩
The Guardian (London), April 22, 2002 ↩
RT TV (Moscow), May 4, 2012 ↩
Wall Street Journal, November 1, 2001 ↩
New York Times, June 17, 1993, buried at the very end of the article on an inside page ↩
Sibel Edmonds’ Boiling Frogs Post, “Barbarians at the Gate: Terrorism, the US, and the Subversion of Russia”, August 30, 2012 ↩
Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, October 16, 1946, column 887 (reference is made here to Bevin’s statement of August 10, 1946) ↩
Foreign Relations of the United States, 1947, Vol. V (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1971), pp. 222-3. See William Blum, Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, chapter 3 for further details of the US role in postwar Greece. ↩
Associated Press, October 2, 2013 ↩
Huffington Post, “Ilija Trojanow, German Writer, Banned From US For Criticizing NSA”, October 1, 2013 ↩
Washington Post, October 5, 2013 ↩

Any part of this report may be disseminated without permission, provided attribution to William Blum as author and a link to this website are given.


← Issue #120

Snoops Inc. - Getting to Know Your Big Brothers

The Data Hackers: Mining Your Information for Big Brother

by Pratap Chatterjee  - TomDispatch 

Big Bro is watching you. Inside your mobile phone and hidden behind your web browser are little known software products marketed by contractors to the government that can follow you around anywhere. No longer the wide-eyed fantasies of conspiracy theorists, these technologies are routinely installed in all of our data devices by companies that sell them to Washington for a profit.

That’s not how they’re marketing them to us, of course. No, the message is much more seductive: Data, Silicon Valley is fond of saying, is the new oil. And the Valley’s message is clear enough: we can turn your digital information into fuel for pleasure and profits -- if you just give us access to your location, your correspondence, your history, and the entertainment that you like.

Ever played Farmville? Checked into Foursquare? Listened to music on Pandora? These new social apps come with an obvious price tag: the annoying advertisements that we believe to be the fee we have to pay for our pleasure. But there’s a second, more hidden price tag -- the reams of data about ourselves that we give away. Just like raw petroleum, it can be refined into many things -- the high-octane jet fuel for our social media and the asphalt and tar of our past that we would rather hide or forget.

Tomgram: Pratap Chatterjee, Big Bro Wants You

Sometimes, the world sends you back to school. These last months have offered us a crash course -- call it Surveillance 101 -- in how Washington, enveloped in a penumbra of extreme secrecy, went to work creating a global surveillance state on a scale almost beyond the imagination. It was certainly beyond the imaginations, not to say the technological capabilities, of the grim totalitarian states of the previous century, whose efforts were overwhelmingly focused on surveiling and locking down their own citizens, not those outside their borders.

In this schooling process, an unknown 29-year-old, hired by a private contractor to work for the National Security Agency (NSA), became a global figure and most recently a nominee for the European Parliament’s prestigious Sakharov prize, that continent’s leading human rights award -- and a rare European slap in the face to Washington. In the process, a journalist (Glenn Greenwald), a filmmaker (Laura Poitras), and the British Guardian, along with a host of bit players, created a global drama out of the documents Edward Snowden had liberated from the NSA’s secret universe. From Brazil to India, Belgium to China, the man chased implacably across the globe by the Obama administration has opened a genuine debate on the far-reaching nature of surveillance in our world and seems to be changing the mood of the planet.

Every few days now, yet more stories wash out of the crevasses of that secret world. Last week, there was the dramatic tale of Lavabit, a small email encryption site; a court made documents on the case public and so ungagged the owner, who had closed his own business rather than turn over the encryption keys to the kingdom to the government. Then there was Tor, a “tool designed to protect online anonymity” that most people (myself included) will never have heard of, but that the NSA targeted and attacked. And don’t forget that critique by the New York Times public editor: she took out after a front-page story in her own paper that accepted the unverified word of anonymous U.S. government sources on the significance of a piece the McClatchy news service had written about American “communications intercepts” of the online messages of al-Qaeda honchos.

And yet for all that we now know, and all that has been released but we have yet to absorb, it’s clear that we’re nowhere near fathoming the depths of the U.S. surveillance phenomenon. As Corpwatch’s Pratap Chatterjee shows today, for example, we still know remarkably little about the private surveillance outfits that are providing the NSA and other government agencies with the ability to know us far too well. Tom

The Data Hackers: Mining Your Information for Big Brother

by Pratap Chatterjee

We willingly hand over all of this information to the big data companies and in return they facilitate our communications and provide us with diversions. Take Google, which offers free email, data storage, and phone calls to many of us, or Verizon, which charges for smartphones and home phones. We can withdraw from them anytime, just as we believe that we can delete our day-to-day social activities from Facebook or Twitter.

But there is a second kind of data company of which most people are unaware: high-tech outfits that simply help themselves to our information in order to allow U.S. government agencies to dig into our past and present. Some of this is legal, since most of us have signed away the rights to our own information on digital forms that few ever bother to read, but much of it is, to put the matter politely, questionable.

This second category is made up of professional surveillance companies. They generally work for or sell their products to the government -- in other words, they are paid with our tax dollars -- but we have no control over them. Harris Corporation provides technology to the FBI to track, via our mobile phones, where we go; Glimmerglass builds tools that the U.S. intelligence community can use to intercept our overseas calls; and companies like James Bimen Associates design software to hack into our computers.

There is also a third category: data brokers like Arkansas-based Acxiom. These companies monitor our Google searches and sell the information to advertisers. They make it possible for Target to offer baby clothes to pregnant teenagers, but also can keep track of your reading habits and the questions you pose to Google on just about anything from pornography to terrorism, presumably to sell you Viagra and assault rifles.

Locating You

Edward Snowden has done the world a great service by telling us what the National Security Agency does and how it has sweet-talked, threatened, and bullied the first category of companies into handing over our data. As a result, perhaps you’ve considered switching providers from AT&T to T-Mobile or Dropbox to the more secure SpiderOak. After all, who wants some anonymous government bureaucrat listening in on or monitoring your online and phone life?

Missing from this debate, however, have been the companies that get contracts to break into our homes in broad daylight and steal all our information on the taxpayer's dime. We’re talking about a multi-billion dollar industry whose tools are also available for those companies to sell to others or even use themselves for profit or vicarious pleasure.

So just what do these companies do and who are they?

The simplest form of surveillance technology is an IMSI catcher. (IMSI stands for International Mobile Subscriber Identity, which is unique to every mobile phone.) These highly portable devices pose as mini-mobile phone towers and can capture all the mobile-phone signals in an area. In this way, they can effectively identify and locate all phone users in a particular place. Some are small enough to fit into a briefcase, others are no larger than a mobile phone. Once deployed, the IMSI catcher tricks phones into wirelessly sending it data.

By setting up several IMSI catchers in an area and measuring the speed of the responses or "pings" from a phone, an analyst can follow the movement of anyone with a mobile phone even when they are not in use.

One of the key players in this field is the Melbourne, Florida-based Harris Corporation, which has been awarded almost $7 million in public contracts by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) since 2001, mostly for radio communication equipment. For years, the company has also designed software for the agency's National Crime Information Center to track missing persons, fugitives, criminals, and stolen property.

Harris was recently revealed to have designed an IMSI catcher for the FBI that the company named "Stingray." Court testimony by FBI agents has confirmed the existence of the devices dating back to at least 2002. Other companies like James Bimen Associates of Virginia have allegedly designed custom software to help the FBI hack into people's computers, according to research by Chris Soghoian of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

The FBI has not denied this. The Bureau "hires people who have hacking skill, and they purchase tools that are capable of doing these things," a former official in the FBI's cyber division told the Wall Street Journal recently. "When you do, it's because you don't have any other choice."

The technologies these kinds of companies exploit often rely on software vulnerabilities. Hacking software can be installed from a USB drive, or delivered remotely by disguising it as an email attachment or software update. Once in place, an analyst can rifle through a target's files, log every keystroke, and take pictures of the screen every second. For example, SS8 of Milpitas, California, sells software called Intellego that claims to allow government agencies to "see what [the targets] see, in real time" including "draft-only emails, attached files, pictures, and videos." Such technology can also remotely turn on phone and computer microphones, as well as computer or cellphone cameras to spy on the target in real-time.

Charting You

What the FBI does, however intrusive, is small potatoes compared to what the National Security Agency dreams of doing: getting and storing the data traffic not just of an entire nation, but of an entire planet. This became a tangible reality some two decades ago as the telecommunications industry began mass adoption of fiber-optic technology. This means that data is no longer transmitted as electrical signals along wires that were prone to interference and static, but as light beams.

Enter companies like Glimmerglass, yet another northern California outfit. In September 2002, Glimmerglass started to sell a newly patented product consisting of 210 tiny gold-coated mirrors mounted on microscopic hinges etched on to a single wafer of silicon. It can help transmit data as beams of light across the undersea fiber optic cables that carry an estimated 90% of trans-border telecommunications data. The advantage of this technology is that it is dirt cheap and -- for the purposes of the intelligence agencies -- the light beams can easily be copied with almost no noticeable loss in quality.

"With Glimmerglass Intelligent Optical Systems (IOS), any signal travelling over fiber can be redirected in milliseconds, without adversely affecting customer traffic," says the company on its public website.

Glimmerglass does not deny that its equipment can be used by intelligence agencies to capture global Internet traffic. In fact, it assumes that this is probably happening. "We believe that our 3D MEMS technology -- as used by governments and various agencies -- is involved in the collection of intelligence from sensors, satellites, and undersea fiber systems," Keith May, Glimmerglass's director of business development, told the trade magazine Aviation Week in 2010. "We are deployed in several countries that are using it for lawful interception."

In a confidential brochure, Glimmerglass has a series of graphics that, it claims, show just what its software is capable of. One displays a visual grid of the Facebook messages of a presumably fictional “John Smith.” His profile is linked to a number of other individuals (identified with images, user names, and IDs) via arrows indicating how often he connected to each of them. A second graphic shows a grid of phone calls made by a single individual that allows an operator to select and listen to audio of any of his specific conversations. Yet others display Glimmerglass software being used to monitor webmail and instant message chats.

"The challenge of managing information has become the challenge of managing the light," says an announcer in a company video on their public website. "With Glimmerglass, customers have full control of massive flows of intelligence from the moment they access them." This description mirrors technology described in documents provided by Edward Snowden to the Guardian newspaper.

Predicting You

Listening to phone calls, recording locations, and breaking into computers are just one part of the tool kit that the data-mining companies offer to U.S. (and other) intelligence agencies. Think of them as the data equivalents of oil and natural gas drilling companies that are ready to extract the underground riches that have been stashed over the years in strongboxes in our basements.

What government agencies really want, however, is not just the ability to mine, but to refine those riches into the data equivalent of high-octane fuel for their investigations in very much the way we organize our own data to conduct meaningful relationships, find restaurants, or discover new music on our phones and computers.

These technologies -- variously called social network analysis or semantic analysis tools -- are now being packaged by the surveillance industry as ways to expose potential threats that could come from surging online communities of protesters or anti-government activists. Take Raytheon, a major U.S. military manufacturer, which makes Sidewinder air-to-air missiles, Maverick air-to-ground missiles, Patriot surface-to-air missiles, and Tomahawk submarine-launched cruise missiles. Their latest product is a software package eerily named “Riot” that claims to be able to predict where individuals are likely to go next using technology that mines data from social networks like Facebook, Foursquare, and Twitter.

Raytheon's Rapid Information Overlay Technology software -- yes, that’s how they got the acronym Riot -- extracts location data from photos and comments posted online by individuals and analyzes this information. The result is a variety of spider diagrams that purportedly will show where that individual is most likely to go next, what she likes to do, and whom she communicates with or is most likely to communicate with in the near future.

A 2010 video demonstration of the software was recently published online by the Guardian. In it, Brian Urch of Raytheon shows how Riot can be used to track "Nick" -- a company employee -- in order to predict the best time and place to steal his computer or put spy software on it. "Six a.m. appears to be the most frequently visited time at the gym," says Urch. "So if you ever did want to try to get a hold of Nick -- or maybe get a hold of his laptop -- you might want to visit the gym at 6:00 a.m. on Monday."

"Riot is a big data analytics system design we are working on with industry, national labs, and commercial partners to help turn massive amounts of data into useable information to help meet our nation's rapidly changing security needs," Jared Adams, a spokesman for Raytheon's intelligence and information systems department, told the Guardian. The company denies that anyone has yet bought Riot, but U.S. government agencies certainly appear more than eager to purchase such tools.

For example, in January 2012 the FBI posted a request for an app that would allow it to "provide an automated search and scrape capability of social networks including Facebook and Twitter and [i]mmediately translate foreign language tweets into English." In January 2013, the U.S. Transportation Security Administration asked contractors to propose apps "to generate an assessment of the risk to the aviation transportation system that may be posed by a specific individual" using "specific sources of current, accurate, and complete non-governmental data."

Privacy activists say that the Riot package is troubling indeed. "This sort of software allows the government to surveil everyone," Ginger McCall, the director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center's Open Government program, told NBC News. "It scoops up a bunch of information about totally innocent people. There seems to be no legitimate reason to get this."

Refining fuel from underground deposits has allowed us to travel vast distances by buses, trains, cars, and planes for pleasure and profit but at an unintentional cost: the gradual warming of our planet. Likewise, the refining of our data into social apps for pleasure, profit, and government surveillance is also coming at a cost: the gradual erosion of our privacy and ultimately our freedom of speech.

Ever tried yelling back at a security camera? You know that it is on. You know someone is watching the footage, but it doesn’t respond to complaint, threats, or insults. Instead, it just watches you in a forbidding manner. Today, the surveillance state is so deeply enmeshed in our data devices that we don’t even scream back because technology companies have convinced us that we need to be connected to them to be happy.

With a lot of help from the surveillance industry, Big Bro has already won the fight to watch all of us all the time -- unless we decide to do something about it.

Pratap Chatterjee, a TomDispatch regular, is executive director of CorpWatch and a board member of Amnesty International USA. He is the author of Halliburton's Army (Nation Books) and Iraq, Inc. (Seven Stories Press).

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook or Tumblr. Check out the newest Dispatch book, Nick Turse’s The Changing Face of Empire: Special Ops, Drones, Proxy Fighters, Secret Bases, and Cyberwarfare.

Copyright 2013 Pratap Chatterjee

Fascist Greek Revival, or Monetary Blip?

The Golden Dawn Murder Case: Larry Summers and the New Fascism

by Greg Palast - Truthout

On September 18, hip-hop artist Pavlos Fyssas, a.k.a. Killah P, was stabbed outside a bar in Keratsini, Greece. Larry Summers has an air-tight alibi. But I don't believe it.


Larry didn’t hold the knife: The confessed killer is some twisted member of Golden Dawn, a political party made up of skin-head freaks, anti-immigrant fear-mongers, anti-Muslim/anti-Semitic/anti-Albanian sociopaths and ultra-patriot fruitcakes. Think of it as the Tea Party goes Greek.

Following Fyssas’ killing, other groups of dangerous psychopathic misfits, namely the European Union and Greece’s governing coalition, moved to ban Golden Dawn.

Over the weekend, Greece’s rulers arrested six members of Parliament who belong to Golden Dawn. Apparently, Greece’s political leaders prefer democracy as defined by Egypt’s General Sisi to the precepts of Aristotle and Thomas Jefferson.

To my friends on the Greek Left: It’s sickening to watch you cheer the arrest of Golden Dawn parliamentarians.

Mark my words: You are next.

Listen up:

My investigation reveals that behind the banning of Golden Dawn, besides the usual European distaste for democracy, is something far more sinister: the ruling parties are distracting the public from their own involvement in the crime.

The rise in violence and hate-crimes is no surprise. The official unemployment rate in Greece is 28%, and over 60% among young men. No wonder desperate youths are wrapping batons in Greek flags and beating immigrants: When people are pressed to the wall, they hunt for their tormentors –– and too often find their fellow victims to blame.

Economic devastation breeds fascism. In the 1930s, the hungry and angry sought relief in hyper-patriotism, racism and pogroms. In the 1980s Reagan Recession in the USA, when factories shut down in the Midwest, the hopeless unemployed joined right-wing skinhead cults and went on a killing rampage –– beginning with the murder of Jewish journalist Alan Berg and ending with the bombing of a government building in Oklahoma, killing 168 people.

Vultures Over Athens

Golden Dawn is a symptom of the nation's illness, not its cause. Unfortunately, the Brown-shirts go after easy targets –– Pakistanis, Gypsies, Africans, whoever is different and easy to whack. It's a lot easier to stab a hip-hop rapper than it is to go after a hedge-fund shark.


The real culprits behind the suffering are
well camouflaged. So let me name some:
In Greece, we begin with billionaires
Kenneth Dart and Paul 'The Vulture' Singer.

Dart and Singer bought up Greek government bonds for pennies on the dollar. While the holders of 97% of Greek bonds agreed to accept a loss of 75% of their value, Dart and Singer demanded several hundred percent more than they paid. Then Dart and Singer threatened the dead-broke Greek government. If Greece did not pay this ransom, Dart and Singer would declare Greek bonds in default. Every bank in Europe holding these government debts as reserve funds would face technical bankruptcy; the value of government bonds worldwide would implode in value and the entire hemisphere would face a new financial collapse.

It was financial terrorism, and the Greek government gave in. It paid the full ransom demanded. Dart grabbed over half a billion dollars ($513 million) from the Greek treasury –– and only the gods know how much Singer has pocketed. [Get the full story on Singer the Vulture, read Billionaires & Ballot Bandits and Vultures' Picnic.]

How was this vulture food paid for? With “austerity” — tightening a belt that’s already not much bigger than its buckle. To pay Singer and Dart, the Greek government announced it would fire 15,000 workers.

What’s sick is that the ruling coalition (or misruling coalition) does not say this is to cover the payoffs to the vultures. Rather, the government says it is the just punishment Greeks deserve for their "laziness and greed." The victims’ punishment is called, “austerity.”

The Austerity Fairy Tale

My children often ask me, “Daddy, where does ‘austerity’ come from?” And I tell them:

Once upon a time, there was a good fairy named John Maynard Keynes. He wanted to stop depressions, financial crises and suffering, so he conceived of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. He said, When a nation’s foreign exchange earnings drop (say, if the price of oil rises or Greek tourism falls because its currency is over-valued), the countries taking the poor nations’ money, rich countries like Germany and the USA, would lend it back via the IMF.

By this rule, the rich lending to the poor, the world prospered and lived happily ever after … until the 1980s, when a wicked witch, known as the Iron Lady, and America’s gaga grandpa, Reagan of the Rich, insisted that the IMF and the World Bank beat poor nations with a stick called, “structural adjustment.”

Nations facing destitution because of higher oil costs, currency imbalance or predatory interest rate demands were “structurally adjusted.” Structural adjustment is a cruel and debilitating potion of mass firings of public employees, cheap sell-offs of national assets and deregulation of corporate profiteering. This ripping the wings off the better angels of government is called, “austerity.”

The good fairy Keynes had warned about this evil potion, this snake oil called “austerity.” Cutting government spending during a recession, he said, will only make things worse.

And that’s what happened: In every single case, the “adjusted” nations’ economies were devastated.

Structural adjustment reached its cruel apotheosis in the early 1990s under the guidance of the World Bank’s Chief Economist, one Larry Summers.

But then, in 1997, Summers’ post was taken by Prof. Joseph Stiglitz.

In 2001, I met Stiglitz whom I’d heard was quietly expressing grave doubts about austerity and structural adjustment à la Summers. He agreed to go public. Over several hours of discussion, which I recorded for BBC TV, Stiglitz charged that IMF-imposed austerity was “ a little like the Middle Ages, when the patient died they would say well, we stopped the bloodletting too soon, he still had a little blood in him.”

Stiglitz detailed for me the ill effects of the “structural adjustment” demands, including “free” trade, which he likened to the Opium Wars; bank deregulation, which he found ludicrously dangerous; privatization, which Stiglitz called “briberization”; and budget-cutting austerity.

The budget cuts and free-market nostrums, Stiglitz told me, were as cruel as they were stupid. And he said of those who profited off these IMF diktats, “They don’t care if people live or die.”

Stiglitz went on to win the Nobel Prize in economics for his skepticism of Markets über Alles.

So how, a decade after austerity, briberization and all their cruelties exposed and discredited, did Greece (and Spain and Portugal and too many others) end up under austerity’s bloody grip?

To begin with, in 2000, Larry Summers, as US Treasury Secretary, successfully demanded the World Bank fire Stiglitz and purged the Bank and IMF of austerity apostasy.

Why? Austerity may fail the public, but it’s damn profitable for those on the inside.

All you need is a riot and a few dead bodies.

The IMF Riots

Among Stiglitz’ stunning revelations to me was his description of “the IMF riot.” I showed him confidential World Bank and IMF plans for the nation of Ecuador. These included what seemed to be a warning to that nation’s finance minister that austerity could lead to violence in the streets, “social unrest” — which the World Bank recommended be crushed with “resolve”. In Ecuador, “resolve” meant tanks.

Did the IMF really write the riots into the plans?

Yes, Stiglitz said, matter-of-factly. “We had a name for it ‘The IMF Riot’”.

When a nation is “down and out, [the IMF] takes advantage and squeezes the last pound of blood out of them. They turn up the heat until, finally, the whole caldron blows up”.

And that’s what we’re seeing in Greece. It began in May 2010, when some sick, misguided berserker set fire to a bank in Athens and killed four bank employees. The killings did the trick: the Left’s protests against insane austerity and banker gangsterism came to a halt.

Still, people could see that the austerity medicine was making Greece ill. So, they put their hopes in a new party, Syriza, which, from nowhere, became the second highest vote-getter in Greece by promising to oppose austerity. Once in parliament, the faux-Left Syriza completely sold out its positions.

That leaves Golden Dawn, although diseased by racism and violently bent, it is the only one of Greece’s top four parties to stand firm against rabid austerity and the economy being chained like a beaten dog to Germany’s currency.

In 2010, the bank burning was used to discredit protests by the Left. Today, once again, the Greek government, dancing on its hind legs, begging for a biscuit from German bankers, has used a murder as an excuse to outlaw the only major party dissenting from the austerity suicide pact.

I wish I could say that the reason Golden Dawn is being banned is because of the violent bend of its racist followers. But that’s just not what’s going on here.

Dimitris Kazakis, the leader of Greece’s true progressive party, the United People’s Front (EPAM), has spoken out against Golden Dawn’s racist violence — and the greater danger of the bogus charges created to arrest members of Parliament. He scolds Greeks, reminding them that this is how the military dictatorship seized power in 1967.

So, who are the real Fascists?

Fascism, as defined since the days of Il Duce, is the official combine of government and big business. By that definition, Golden Dawn is the only non-Fascist party among Greece’s top four. And that is why Golden Dawn has been targeted for elimination.

I hope my fellow progressives will excuse me for not applauding.

* * * * * *

Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestsellers, Billionaires & Ballot Bandits, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, Armed Madhouse and the highly acclaimed Vultures' Picnic, named Book of the Year 2012 on BBC Newsnight Review.

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Making Sense of Sausage: Understanding America's Untied State over Health Care

It Just Doesn't Compute. Or Does It?

by Betty Krawczyk - Betty's Early Edition

At the moment The US is being held hostage by the Republican Tea Party, proving that a small committed group of people (20-30-60) can indeed change the world. For the worse. And they don’t even have to be intelligent. From listening to a few of these US Congress people of the Tea Party who have managed to partially shut down the US government, i.e. Ted Cruz, Michelle Bachman and Marco Rubio, I get this eerie feeling that they don’t even live in this world.

For them there has been no such thing as social evolution. The Tea Party lives back in the glorious pre and early post-American Revolutionary times, when there was only a smattering of government, and only wealthy people (landowners, male, white) controlled it. But there was a role for dirt farmers, too, they were part of a militia if needed, and the dirt farmers treasured their guns to fend off freed slaves, Indians, roaming Yankees and all manners of landless riff raff who were out to steal their livestock and women. The Tea Partiers to this day, both the wealthy ones and the not so wealthy ones, all love their guns and carry around the same egocentric fears and demands of an idealized revolutionary historic time in America.

In my opinion, the Tea Partiers are pathetic. And dangerous. They are much like the radical Islamists in their zeal. They would see the whole world go up in flames to try to recreate those times they fancy existed before government grew big with social programs that were created by more humane leaders to keep less well-heeled people from starving to death in the streets. The Tea Party fundamentally opposes the concept of equality. Yet, many of the Tea Party people are very wealthy themselves and well educated. It just doesn’t compute. Or does it?

Enter US Senator Elizabeth Warren. Her take on the seemingly irrational fears and determination of this group of people to prevent American people from having adequate health care (Obamacare) doesn’t make sense because it isn’t sensible. It’s religious. And it’s all about women’s right to reproductive health care; not only to abortion, but to birth control. The Tea Party people intend to do what their god wants them to do. The Bible says so. Or these fundamentalist says it does. So what is Sen. Warren’s take on the matter? Her words on the floor of the US Senate (30/9/2013) :

“With millions of people still out of work…with students and families crushed by student loan debt, with millions of seniors denied one hot meal a day with Meals on Wheels and millions of little children pushed out of Head Start because of a sequester that is dragging down the middle class, with the country hours away from a government shutdown…the Republicans have decided the single most important issue facing our nation is to change the law (Obamacare) so that employers can deny women access to birth control coverage. In fact, letting employers decide whether women can get birth control covered on their insurance plan is SO important that the Republicans are willing to shutter the government and potentially tank the economy…”

Sounds crazy? That’s because it is. This kind of religion, whether Christian or Muslim, impedes the progress of the human race. In my opinion the only hope we have of getting to a better place is to ditch religion altogether and concentrate on the spiritual which is where we are when we meet each other as equals in humanity. And perhaps Sen. Elizabeth Warren will run for president in the next US election. And in Canada? I wish Quebec Premier Pauline Marois could run outside Quebec. I would certainly vote for her.


©2013 Betty K | Blog: http://bettysearlyedition.blogspot.com Books: www.schiverrhodespublishing.com

Highlands Watershed Threatened by Department of Defense Toxic Dump

Action: Protect Highlands Drinking Water

by Victoria Chapter Council, CoC

What’s Happening?
  
PROTECT HIGHLANDS DRINKING WATER!

Contaminated waste from the Esquimalt Graving Dock is being dumped in the Craigflower fractured rock aquifer between Thetis Lake Park and Teanook Creek in the Highlands. This was initiated by the Government of Canada and contracted to Tervita Corp. with little public consultation and no proper accommodation of First Nations and Highlands residents. The waste is being trucked through Esquimalt, View Royal and Victoria at the rate of 60-90 trucks per day from June 30th 2013 until March 2014.

Short and long term threats:

• Safe drinking water for Highland residents
• Safe swimming water at Thetis Lake Park
• Health and well-being of all people, plants and animals who live in the Craigflower Watershed
• Marine ecology – dredging stirs up the contaminants
• Air quality and soil quality with dust generated from transporting the waste

What’s in the waste?

Chromium, arsenic, lead, copper, zinc, tributyl-tin, PCBs and other chemicals that have accumulated over the last 100 years in Esquimalt Harbour. These chemicals and heavy metals have proven to be hazardous to the health of humans and ecosystems.

Why be concerned?

Tervita does not guarantee that the containment cell liners will outlast the hazards of the contaminated sediments – which can persist for centuries. Two spills have been reported in the last two months, one at the Tervita site in the Highlands, and one in Victoria (VIHA, July, 2013). Research on very similar landfill containment in the US has called into question the longevity of the liners and the adequacy of the peripheral well monitoring system (G.Fred Lee, 2013, retrieved from http://www.gfredlee.com/lffail.htm). The waste has been temporarily stockpiled on clay on top of an old cell (Tervita Open House, July 21, 2013).

What do we need?

We need a stop-work order to be issued immediately, until the following are complete:

• Improved First Nations and Community consultation
• A third party, independent environment and health impact study
• A disaster risk assessment
• A hydro-geological assessment

What can we do?

• Download a poster here and share this information
• Ask the Ministers of Environment (Mary Polak: mary.polak.mla@leg.bc.ca) and Health (Terry Lake:
• terry.lake.mla@leg.bc.ca) to stop work on this project until the proper assessments are done
• Advocate and educate to protect all groundwater
• Work with other communities like Shawnigan Lake residents and Cowichan tribes to ensure that that all watersheds are protected

For more information, or to get involved, contact Darlene Sanderson, Ph.D
250-508-7211, darlenesanderson@shaw.ca
Bharat Chandramouli, Ph.D, Council of Canadians
250-508-2163, info@victoriacouncilofcanadians.ca

Supported by The Wilderness Committee and the Council of Canadians Victoria.