The entire concept of a “Terrorism expert” is invalid, as it is an honorific title typically assigned due to ideology and interests served rather than actual expertise.
In U.S. political and media discourse, Terrorism means little more than: that which America’s Enemies du Jour (generally Muslim Enemies) do to it, but not what America and its allies do to anyone.
Terrorism is not a real concept in which one develops “expertise”; it is, and from its introduction into world affairs always has been, a term of propaganda designed to legitimize violence by some actors while de-legitimizing very similar violence by others.
US Military Drones targeting Rescue Workers and Funerals in Pakistan
The CIA’s drone campaign targeting suspected militants in Pakistan has killed dozens of civilians who had gone to rescue victims or were attending funerals. So concludes a new report by the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism. It found that since President Obama took office three years ago, as many as 535 civilians have been killed, including more than 60 children. The investigation also revealed that at least 50 civilians were killed in follow-up strikes when they had gone to help victims. More than 20 civilians have also been attacked in deliberate strikes on funerals and mourners. We speak to Chris Woods, award-winning reporter with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. “We noted that there were repeated reports at the time, contemporaneous reports in publications like New York Times, news agencies like Reuters, by CNN, that there were these strikes on rescuers, that there were reports that there had been an initial strike and then, some minutes later, as people had come forward to help and pull out the dead and injured, that drones had returned to the scene and had attacked rescuers,” Woods says. “We’ve been able to name just over 50 civilians that we understand have been killed in those attacks. In total, we think that more than 75 civilians have been killed, specifically in these attacks on rescuers and on mourners, on funeral-goers.”
Two major investigations have provided fresh evidence that civilians are continuing to be killed in Pakistan’s tribal areas by CIA drones – despite aggressive Agency denials.
In a study of ten major drone strikes in Pakistan since 2010, global news agency Associated Press deployed a field reporter to Waziristan and questioned more than 80 local people about ten CIA attacks. The results generally confirm the accuracy of original credible media reports – and in two cases identify previously unrecorded civilian deaths.
In a further case, in which an anonymous US official had previously attacked the Bureau’s findings of six civilian deaths in a 2011 strike, AP’s report has confirmed the Bureau’s work.
Anglo-American legal charity Reprieve has also filed a case with the United Nations Human Rights Council, based on sworn affidavits by 18 family members of civilians killed in CIA attacks – many of them children. Reprieve is calling on the UNHRC ‘to condemn the attacks as illegal human rights violations.’
Since the drug war has become so unpopular with the electorate, instead of politicians actually changing the drug laws, the Department of Defense seeks to reduce and conceal the real costs by transferring the “dirty work” to private contractors to do what “U.S. military forces are not allowed or not encouraged to do.”
The BBC (in Spanish) is reporting that the U.S. Department of Defense is delegating the war on drugs to private mercenary companies. Of those companies, the increasingly infamous organization previously known as Blackwater is said to have received several multimillion-dollar government contracts for “providing advice, training and conducting operations in drug producing countries and those with links to so-called “narco-terrorism” including Latin America.”
The “no bid”contracts, issued under the Counter-Narcoterrorism Technology Program Office’s $15 billion dollar budget, are described as “non-specific” and are said to be “juicy” for the private contractors. The Pentagon says “the details of each cost in very general contracts do not go through bidding processes.”
An unnamed analyst says “the responsibility of the public and national security changing from a state’s duty to be a private business…has become the trend of the future.”
Although parts of the drug war have been privatized for years, the BBC reports this “transfer” of responsibilities is an attempt to placate those looking for Pentagon budget cuts in an election year.
According to Larry Birns, director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA), “the drug war is unpopular and has no political weight except in an election year like this, so the Department of Defense wants to remove that spending from their accounts.”
“They surreptitiously want to reduce anti-drug budget by transferring it to private agencies,” said Birns.
Bruce Bagley, head of International Studies at the University of Miami, agrees with Birns that the main reason for privatizing the drug war is to sidestep “the high political cost.”
But this move is not without risk, as private mercenaries have known to operate outside of national and international laws. ”Here we go into a vague area where the rules of engagement are not clear and there is almost zero accountability to the public or the electorate,” said Bagley.
The Pentagon maintains that it’s perfectly legal, and mercenaries must follow strict parameters. However, Bagley points out that “few members of the Oversight Committees of the Senate and the House are aware, but they are required to keep secret, so all this flies under the radar.”
There are concerns that contractors acting independently will threaten the sovereignty of the “key countries” in which they will operate. The Pentagon says the largest efforts will occur in Latin America including Mexico, Central America, Caribbean, Columbia and other Andean countries.
Professor Bagley says these private armies could “generate a nationalist backlash if the public came to realize the situation” of operations in their countries.
Once again, the war on drugs creates the opportunity to place troops in countries where having American soldiers would be politically disadvantageous, or simply impossible.
Ultimately, the Pentagon claims they will save money because private contractors don’t have the bureaucracy and hierarchy involved in operations and because “if any of its employees dies, they are responsible.”
Apparently, humanity is the last concern for the Pentagon budget, which always seems to have plenty of money for advanced weapons systems (also privatized), but is consistently lacking in benefits for its veterans. By privatizing the drug war, they no longer have to concern themselves with paying for benefits for warriors who pledge allegiance to the United States and take an oath to defend its Constitution.
As the war on drugs is increasingly viewed as a money-draining failure, it’s unlikely that this move to privatize it will succeed in anything but creating demand for more profit, thus fueling its continuance through corporate lobbying to prevent a political end to such lunacy.
Quotes are translated from Google translator, and Eric Blair speaks adequate Spanish as a second language.
Excerpts from the Arab League observers’ report on Syria make it clear that the establishment media is only telling part of the story and exaggerating violence by the al-Assad government and its police and military.
The report mentions an “armed entity’ that is killing civilians and police and conducting terrorist attacks targeting innocent civilians. Casualties from these attacks are attributed to the al-Assad government and used to build a case against Syria in the United Nations.
Rebels in Idlib, Syria. Evidence reveals they are supported by the CIA, MI6, and Mossad.
According to the Arab League report, the “Free Syria Army” and “armed opposition groups” are responsible for many of the killings.
The report lends credence to reports filed in November of last year by journalist Webster Tarpley, who visited the Middle Eastern nation.
“What average Syrians of all ethnic groups say about this is that they are being shot at by snipers. People complained that there are terrorist snipers who are shooting at civilians, blind terrorism simply for the purpose of destabilizing the country. I would not call this civil war – it is a very misleading term. What you are dealing with here are death squads, you are dealing with terror commandos; this is a typical CIA method. In this case it’s a joint production of CIA, MI6, Mossad, it’s got money coming from Saudi Arabia, The United Arab Emirates and Qatar,” Tarpley told RT.
Tarpley said the United States is pushing a “bankrupt model of the color revolution, backed up by terrorist troops – people from Al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood” and the objective is “to smash the Middle East according to ethnic lines.”
Excerpts from the Arab League observers’ report make it clear “that there is widespread violence on both sides, but that the opposition and the Western media have exaggerated the violence and casualties inflicted by government forces,” writes Nicolas Davies for War Is A Crime blog, formerly After Downing Street.
“The UN has stopped accepting casualty figures claimed by the opposition, and has frozen its “official” estimate of civilian deaths at 5,400, without acknowledging that this may already be highly exaggerated,” Davies explains. “This is not yet a bloodbath on the scale of Libya, where even the new government admits that at least 25,000 people died in the NATO-led war. Syria could follow the Libya model though, if NATO and the GCC keep providing weapons and military training to the Free Syrian Army and are prepared to beef it up with special forces on the ground, and as long as the UN approves a no-fly zone to provide cover for another 9,700 air strikes.”
The establishment media put the number of dead between 1,000 and 5,000. The International Criminal Court, Hisham Abu Hajer (of the Libyan “rebels,” in other words al-Qaeda), Pravda and other sources put the number at between 50,000 and 100,000. Tarpley estimated the number at 150,000, a staggering number for a population of just under six and half million people.
“The Mission determined that there is an armed entity that is not mentioned in the protocol. This development on the ground can undoubtedly be attributed to the excessive use of force by Syrian Government forces in response to protests that occurred before the deployment of the Mission demanding the fall of the regime. In some zones, this armed entity reacted by attacking Syrian security forces and citizens, causing the Government to respond with further violence. In the end, innocent citizens pay the price for those actions with life and limb.
In Homs, Idlib and Hama, the Observer Mission witnessed acts of violence being committed against Government forces and civilians that resulted in several deaths and injuries. Examples of those acts include the bombing of a civilian bus, killing eight persons and injuring others, including women and children, and the bombing of a train carrying diesel oil. In another incident in Homs, a police bus was blown up, killing two police officers. A fuel pipeline and some small bridges were also bombed.
28. The Mission noted that many parties falsely reported that explosions or violence had occurred in several locations. When the observers went to those locations, they found that those reports were unfounded.
29. The Mission also noted that, according to its teams in the field, the media exaggerated the nature of the incidents and the number of persons killed in incidents and protests in certain towns.
According to their latest reports and their briefings to the Head of the Mission on 17 January 2012 in preparation for this report, group team leaders witnessed peaceful demonstrations by both Government supporters and the opposition in several places. None of those demonstrations were disrupted, except for some minor clashes with the Mission and between loyalists and opposition. These have not resulted in fatalities since the last presentation before the Arab Ministerial Committee on the Situation in Syria at its meeting of 8 January 2012.
Some observers reneged on their duties and broke the oath they had taken. They made contact with officials from their countries and gave them exaggerated accounts of events. Those officials consequently developed a bleak and unfounded picture of the situation.
Arab and foreign audiences of certain media organizations have questioned the Mission’s credibility because those organizations use the media to distort the facts. It will be difficult to overcome this problem unless there is political and media support for the Mission and its mandate. It is only natural that some negative incidents should occur as it conducts its activities because such incidents occur as a matter of course in similar missions.
75. Recently, there have been incidents that could widen the gap and increase bitterness between the parties. These incidents can have grave consequences and lead to the loss of life and property. Such incidents include the bombing of buildings, trains carrying fuel, vehicles carrying diesel oil and explosions targeting the police, members of the media and fuel pipelines. Some of those attacks have been carried out by the Free Syrian Army and some by other armed opposition groups.
Since its establishment, attitudes towards the Mission have been characterized by insincerity or, more broadly speaking, a lack of seriousness. Before it began carrying out its mandate and even before its members had arrived, the Mission was the target of a vicious campaign directed against the League of Arab States and the Head of the Mission, a campaign that increased in intensity after the observers’ deployment. The Mission still lack the political and media support it needs in order to fulfill its mandate. Should its mandate be extended, the goals set out in the Protocol will not be achieved unless such support is provided and the Mission receives the backing it needs to ensure the success of the Arab solution.”
Secrets are More Often Conspiracies and Shame and Seldom are National Security
Let’s start this out with an attention grabber. Out there, somewhere is a photograph of Osama bin Laden and George H. W. Bush, shaking hands in the White House. It exists. There is this and more, so much more, that would make America’s heads spin.
The actual trained journalists around me beat this into my head. OK, here it is.
Those who follow rumors, which means every single one of us, know that former President George H. W. Bush worked with the bin Ladens, a wealthy and respected Saudi family that invests in a group of military companies called The Carlyle Group, headed by many former world leaders.
When Osama bin Laden, the short haired young Saudi millionaire CIA agent visited Bush in the White House, he came there, not just as an important part of our intelligence infrastructure at the end of the Cold War, but as a good friend of George H. W. Bush, a man who was practically an uncle to him.
“Hey Osama, I mean Tim”…”Get Over Here and Get in the Picture!”
Wait a minute, wouldn’t that make George “W” Bush Osama bin Laden’s brother? Well, not a real brother, not like Jeb anyway. Bin Laden was taller and better looking and, as the CIA transcript below indicates, certainly better educated and more honest. Be sure to read the only certified statement ever made by Osama bin Laden about 9/11 and compare it to what you are told he had said.
Then rememer the last 10 years how many times you have been told bin Laden claimed credit for 9/11. Each of those video and audio recordings were presented to news agencies by proven agents of the Israeli government and have, after examination, all been shown to be counterfeit.
The news has refused to report either of these facts.
We might also add, Osama bin Laden, were he of “that” Bush generation, was a veteran, having risked his life defending the United States against Russia many times.
The Bush boys shunned wartime service as we well know, perhaps they saw brother “Tim” as doing their part for them. (Tim “bin Laden” Osman)
No wonder Bush thought the 9/11 attacks were “pilot error” and not “Brother Tim” gone bad. The video below actually has President Bush citing 9/11 as “pilot error.”
The president’s immediate responses to the 9/11 attacks are among the most amazing pieces of inappropriate humor since Caligula nominated his horse to the Roman senate: YouTube – Veterans Today –
Does this put the fact that the bin Laden family was evacuated from the United States, the safest place on Earth for them, on 9/12/2001 rather than have any of them interviewed by the FBI in perspective?
A plane load of Israelis left also, had to escape the United States, which had suddenly become terrifyingly dangerous to an entire planeload of trained Mossad agents, supposedly the among the most dangerous people on earth.
Was Bush their uncle too? We wonder.
The cover story is that their son, Osama, went a bit off and began blowing things up. We have secrets that disprove this as a wild conspiracy, or worse, “cover and deception.”
To the CIA and top US officials, Osama bin Laden was Tim Osman, his cover name.
He held an equivalent US military rank, had broad security clearances through the American government and received a salary for decades. Someone has access to his history, to his files. It gets worse, worse than I had known, worse than I had suspected.
Tim Osman in Military Uniform with Brzezinski
I had discussed bin Laden with General Hamid Gul, with Susan Lindauer and with his CIA handlers.
I had been asked, after the announcement of the bin Laden killing to reaffirm what General Gul, the foremost expert told me, what I heard from official sources that also briefed General Petraeus and Secretary Clinton (same briefing) to tell the truth.
Osama bin Laden, known by his friends as Tim Osman, spoke English, was always loyal to the US and was deeply trusted by the CIA despite their “bin Laden unit” and the endless hunts for him and a supposedly connected group, the 9/11 hijackers.
Let’s take a second look at the hijackers. Those who knew that a group of Arabs were being trained in the US, some paid by FBI funds, entertained by GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff and said to be planning a new attack on the World Trade Center have suffered for that knowledge.
Well over a year ago, Fox News “outed” this operation, partially at least, with proof that the US government knew about 9/11 in advance. Here is one of the broadcasts but is only part of the story:
What we have since learned is that the evidence brought forward about the attacks was a deception plan for the real attack, which was staged by the US government along with help from Israel. Passenger lists show no hijackers, phone bills show no calls from planes, no box cutters and many of those said to have died as suicide hijackers have tried to file suit against the US governent for defamation.
They are alive and more than willing to prove it. The “hijackers” were clones. My personal belief is that they were on the plane to Tel Aviv on September 12, 2001. Many FBI agents believed the same. All have been silenced.
If Jews had to be taken out of America, why leave 14 million behind? Who was on the plane, why? There was only one purpose for the flight, to avoid the FBI. There was only one purpose for that. The “hijackers” were on the plane along with demolition teams, this is what FBI officials said they beleive. There are no films, no tickets, there were no passport checks and the flight left on the personal authority of President Bush. Where they not terrorists, there was no other possible reason for the flight.
If you can think of one, any reason, let me know. If you have access to a single airport employee who saw one person board the plane, a video, a passenger list anything, ten years later, please come forward. Secrecy has one purpose, to cover crimes committed by governments. If you wanted a real secret, call Tel Aviv or China, they have had those from day one, as anyone knows.
Here is General Hamid Gul, America’s top intelligence resource in Central Asia at the time, talking about this: YouTube – Veterans Today –
I have met other CIA and FBI employees including one former member of congress who knew also. Two of the CIA employees were locked in psychiatric facilities to keep them from reporting “officially” to the president, both charged with crimes and one jailed.
Sibel Edmonds
The FBI employee I have spoken with is Sibel Edmonds. She was officially silenced by the US government for 6 years, court order under threat of imprisonment.
It goes further. One of the companies paying the hijackers, a company known to be CIA related, part of a major insurance conglomerate on the “bail out” list was run by one of my friends.
If you are thinking AIG/Kroll, you are getting warm.
He had been the head of a famous foreign police intelligence service. Sherlock Holmes fans will get the idea.
His brother was CFO of this company at the center of “black ops,” much more secret and high level than Blackwater ever was. His brother was murdered.
He died on 9/11. He knew, and he was silenced. How many were silenced?
Osama bin Laden reported that 9/11 was an inside job before his death, confirmed through the highest sources, December 13, 2001. This is the official CIA transcript of that report:
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY FOREIGN BROADCASTING INTERNATIONAL SERVICE:
FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY
Website of Doha Al-Jazirah Satellite Channel Television in Arabic [FBIS Report] Website of Doha Al-Jazirah Satellite Channel Television in Arabic,independent television station financed by the Qatari Government, which can be accessedat URL: http://www.aljazeera.net, carries at 2011 GMT on 24 September the text of the following letter by Usama Bin Ladin “to the Pakistani people.”
“We hope that these brothers would be the first martyrs in Islam’s battle in this age against the new Jewish crusade that is being led by the biggest crusader, Bush, under the banner of the cross. This battle is one of Islam’s immortal battles.”
“We beseech God to grant him victory against the forces of infidelity and arrogance, and to crush the new crusader-Jewish campaign on the land of Pakistan and Afghanistan.”
“I have already said that I am not involved in the 11 September attacks in the United States.”
“Neither I had any knowledge of these attacks nor I consider the killing of innocent women, children, and other humans as an appreciable act. . Islam strictly forbids causing harm to innocent women, children, and other people. Such a practice is forbidden ever in the course of a battle.”
“All that is going on in Palestine for the last 11 months is sufficient to call the wrath of God upon the United States and Israel.”
“Whoever committed the act of 11 September are not the friends of the American people. I have already said that we are against the American system, not against its people, whereas in these attacks, the common American people have been killed. According to my information, the death toll is much higher than what the US Government has stated.
“The United States should try to trace the perpetrators of these attacks within itself; the people who are a part of the US system, but are dissenting against it. Or those who are working for some other system; persons who want to make the present century as a century of conflict between Islam and Christianity so that their own civilization, nation, country, or ideology could survive.”
“They can be any one, from Russia to Israel and from India to Serbia.”
“Then you cannot forget the American Jews, who are annoyed with President Bush ever since the elections in Florida and want to avenge him.”
“Then there are intelligence agencies in the US, which require billions of dollars worth of funds from the Congress and the government every year. This [funding issue] was not a big problem till the existence of the former Soviet Union but after that the budget of these (FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY 180) agencies has been in danger. They needed an enemy. So, they first started propaganda against Usama and Taliban and then this incident happened.”
“Drug smugglers from all over the world are in contact with the US secret agencies. These agencies do not want to eradicate narcotics cultivation and trafficking because their importance will be diminished. The people in the US Drug Enforcement Department are encouraging drug trade so that they could show performance and get millions of dollars worth of budget. General Noriega was made a drug baron by the CIA and, in need, he was made a scapegoat.”
“President Bush or any other US President, they cannot bring Israel to justice for its human rights abuses or to hold it accountable for such crimes. What is this? Is it not that there exists a government within the government in the United Sates? That secret government must be asked as to who made the attacks.”
“Supporting the US act is the need of some Muslim countries and the compulsion of others. However, they should think as to what will remain of their religious and moral position if they support the attack of the Christians and the Jews on a Muslim country like Afghanistan.”
“I have already said that we are not hostile to the United States. We are against the system, which makes other nations slaves of the United States, or forces them to mortgage their political and economic freedom.”
“This system is totally in control of the American Jews, whose first priority is Israel, not the United States. It is simply that the American people are themselves the slaves of the Jews and are forced to live according to the principles and laws laid by them. So, the punishment should reach Israel.”
”The Western media is unleashing such a baseless propaganda, which make us surprise but it reflects on what is in their hearts and gradually they themselves become captive of this propaganda. They become afraid of it and begin to cause harm to themselves.”
“Terror is the most dreaded weapon in modern age and the Western media is mercilessly using it against its own people. It can add fear and helplessness in the psyche of the people of Europe and the United States. It means that what the enemies of the United States cannot do, its media is doing that. You can understand as to what will be the performance of the nation in a war, which suffers from fear and helplessness.”
FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY END OF OFFICIAL TRANSCRIPT
This transcript makes every word said about bin Laden a lie, every news report, every statement by our presidents and congress, if they lie about this, what else do they lie about? It gets worse, much worse.
BIN LADEN USA
CIA files that dozens of members of congress have access to and dozens of journalists have seen introduce these facts:
Osama bin Laden had a cover name, Tim Osmon
Osama bin Laden was brought to the US through the airport in Ontario, California and settled in the San Diego area for a number of years.
He was paid by FBI funds and maintained contact with a number of high ranking individuals that I can name, but the last person doing something similar, is in jail. The names include CIA, US Army, FBI and Department of the Treasury.
Tim Osmon, AKA Osama bin Laden visited the White House on at least one occasion. Staffers there report the visit and witnessed Tim Osmon, yes, we are talking about Osama bin Laden meeting with George Herbert Walker Bush in the White House.
This is a fully confirmed report.
While bin Laden is accused of 9/11, others working in the White House tell us that Richard Clarke, managed secret projects for the Bush administration and Pentagon prior to 9/11 that puts his picture on the “wanted list” where bin Laden never belonged.
OTHER THINGS
The president mentioned during his State of the Union address that congress should pass laws outlawing “insider trading.” If any other American were to do it, they would go to jail. Hundreds having committed crimes that members of congress commit every day are in federal prison.
On national television, the President of the United States announced that many members of congress are criminals and asked that they rescind the laws they passed that allow them to commit criminal acts and avoid prosecution.
Insider trading would cause members of congress to act against the interests of the American people and for corporations. It would also turn members of congress into, not just millionaires, but full-fledged members of criminal organizations. YouTube – Veterans Today –
If you just watched the video, you saw the president tell congress to stop being criminals. They applauded as though they wanted to stop stealing. I nearly fell off my chair.
First of all, I thank any person in Washington who tells the truth, which Obama did. But at the end of the broadcast, using laws on the books, 80% of the people sitting behind the desks, in the good seats, including members of the US Supreme Court, should have been arrested and jailed.
Congress does not have the right to pass laws that legalize criminal acts on their own part.
They did it !!
You heard about it. This isn’t even close to the beginning and there are still people who believe that airplanes knocked down the World Trade Center or who don’t know the movie, “Flight 93″ was, every single word of it, a total fiction.
Top US officials have actually come to me asking where I think the plane went and what happened to the passengers. I told them. It was a guess. They wanted my guess. You don’t get that guess today.
Here is another way of looking at it. Only the President of the United States has authority to pardon or commute sentences for those convicted of or seeking immunity from federal prosecution.
In passing legislation that abrogates that right, legalizing violations of federal law by members of the legislative branch, the number of unconstitutional acts involved is almost countless.
Not only does this overrule separation of powers as outlined in the constitution, it is, in itself, a usurpation, it essentially turns any authority empowered with the protection of the constitution, with or without writ of mandamus, that fails to act, into a party to criminal activity.
Congress has, in protecting itself from both civil and criminal remedies other than its of “witch hunts” against carefully chosen scapegoats, put itself above the law. There is one purpose for that. Members of congress continually commit serious felonies. This means we are voting for criminals.
Does this make sense now?
DRUGS, A CONGRESSIONAL FRANCHISE
Actually, it goes further than congress. One presidential candidate, a very wealthy one, uses his “offshore accounts” to launder drug money. The only reason for the offshore accounts is to take drug profits, by truck, into Mexico, paying off
customs officials on both sides of the border and moving the money into secret corporate accounts in the Cayman Islands.
“Ah…I think we need a faster process.”
Not one scrap of information has been submitted on these accounts, where the money came from or how much is there. It could be $75 billion or more.
There isn’t one scrap of evidence it was “earned,” in fact, were it earned, it couldn’t be in Cayman accounts. There would be a trail of taxes and clear evidence of investments or business enterprises which simply don’t exist.
Several years ago, Colonel Eugene Khrushchev, former First Secretary representing both the Soviet Union and Russian Republic in Kabul came to me with a story.
He said that Richard Hollbrooke, the top US official in Afghanistan was, in fact, managing the world’s largest drug empire. Hollbrooke is dead now but the drugs continue to flow, $80 billion per year.
Others worked to find how Afghanistan went from a few hundred pounds of opium paste per year to tons of heroin flown around the world by private airlines contracted to the CIA.
Then we found irrigation projects, paid for at Hollbrooke’s request, costing millions, that watered opium poppies.
Then we found agricultural programs under USAID that moved opium production to areas more suited for that plant, upping production. We even found the US aiding Afghanistan in buying shiploads of fertilizer to increase opium production.
Afghan Drugs Has Been a Huge Source of Corruption – A Rare Seizure Here Because it was Taliban Dope
Then, an investigative reporter came to me with evidence that current and former members of congress, some involved in organizations supposedly supporting a peaceful settlement in Afghanistan were, in actuality, importing chemicals used to convert opium to much more valuable heroin.
These efforts received full US government subsidies and protection and, in addition, paid taxes to the Taliban.
This is going on today and you are paying for it. The heroin, part of it, is being sold to your children.
It is being sold to everyone’s children as America now supplies 97% of the world’s heroin and smaller percentages, in some cases not much smaller of other drugs, cocaine, ecstasy, “meth” and is involved now in cultivating new strains of marijuana.
That, in itself makes me suspicious as it may actually be useful.
The US isn’t allowed to torture. The CIA isn’t allowed to invent lies to push the US government into wars because members of that organization are spies for a foreign government or are receiving financial gain.
Many members of the CIA and other intelligence agencies are actually foreign nationals and active member of foreign intelligence agencies whose goals are inconsistent with the welfare of the United States. Reporting this can and will get an honest CIA agent imprisoned. Yes, dozens of CIA agents are also agents of foreign intelligence agencies, some of whom are known to have been directly involved in terrorists acts including but not limited to planting car bombs, killing American soldiers with IEDs and helping orchestrate financial crimes inside the US.
Many more foreign nationals inside the US carry falsified identification and pretend to be FBI or CIA or TSA or Homeland Security or even your local police. They harass journalists or operate as assassination teams. John Wheeler III was killed by one such team. The American governent knows who they are but refuses to arrest them. YouTube – Veterans Today –
When people talk about disbanding the CIA and starting all over again, they aren’t talking through their hats. We wish the current director, former General Petraeus, an oddly able person, luck with dealing with this problem.
He will do nothing. He can’t afford being accused of anti-Semitism, which is the direct threat he is currently under. He is very aware of this.
Congress demands that he never “clean house,” no matter how many in the CIA are disloyal to the United States.
What am I saying? Simply put, there are serious inconsistencies between many Israeli policies and the broader welfare of the United States, yet Israeli citizens are, to a large extent, in official policy making positions as paid employees of US intelligence and security organizations.
These are the individuals responsible for much of what you read above, very real proof of foreknowledge of 9/11 and to many, a trail of suspicion, backed by increasing hard evidence, now a deluge, that “foreknowledge” was actually “full complicity.”
How can Kiriakou be arrested for reporting criminal acts, unless you consider the withdrawal from the ICC (International Criminal Court) by the US as protection from crimes committed by Americans on the sovereign territory of signatory nations.
From a legal standpoint, the arrest of Kiriakou is complicity after the fact in war crimes and warrants can be issued by any signatory nation against any authority involved, which, in this case, is the Central Intelligence Agency and the United States Department of Justice, their directors, legal staff and participating enforcement officers. This includes judges. They will be unable to travel outside the US.
THE UNFOLLOWED TRAIL
Yesterday, Dr. Jim Fetzer and I talked for hours. We talked much about the Kennedy killings and how TV shows try to depict the impossible act of shooting President Kennedy with a broken rifle through the middle of a tree in full bloom was beyond any imagination.
Real life demonstrations all failed, the last by Jesse Ventura.
TV stars do it all the time, on NCIS, on Bones, shots those of us who could shoot skeet with a pistol could never make.
What does this prove? It tells me that the hopeless coverup of the murder of John and Robert Kennedy, tied to Vietnam, tied to Israeli nuclear weapons and tied to the infamous Federal Reserve System, is still an industry with backers who some would believe were “Hollywood liberals.”
We know them as traitors who still need to cover up a 50 year old crime, media powers that fictionalize history as they fictionalize our news.
LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL
Many of the things covered by President Obama, not enough things I admit, but many, would restore confidence and some legality to federal authority that is, in all probability, totally absent now.
Current monies held by the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, ordered released recently, are sufficient to impact the US economy, cut unemployment by 40% and reduce our national debt.
These monies, according to documents filed in federal court this week, have, with the tacit approval of the Chairman of the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department, been illegally used as collateral by major banks.
In 2007, a federal suit was filed to recover $4.3 trillion USD stolen by Goldmann Sachs, Morgan Stanley and others.. A settlement was reached and the monies are to be returned, we are told, but no agency is enforcing the orders of the court or even the orders signed by the president of the United States.
Billions of this money now officially belongs to non-profit corporations earmarked for aid to homeless veterans and other projects.
Some of the language of that lawsuit will be included in the exhibits below.
Please note: Goldman Sachs went to the Bush administration, straight to Paulson who had secretly lent them, tax free and interest free, $4.5 trillion dollars, and asked for a federal “bail out.”
He authorized it, just as he had authorized the illegal loan of money that was never his to lend in the first place.
Goldman Sachs never carried this on their books nor any of the profits, estimated at over $15 trillion dollars. It was all laundered overseas while American taxpayers covered imaginary losses engineered by our own Secretary of Treasury.
You have heard stories that the Federal Reserve has lend out, illegally, trillions to their friends. What they don’t say is that this money wasn’t theirs but stolen from accounts under their trust. They is why they could do it, depending on court and enforcement agencies to look the other way under Ashcroft, Gonzoles and now even the Obama administration though our curren president has personally intervened.
His signed orders are now being ignored as though he were some bum off the streets. What does this tell you?
Here is another even more interesting part:
So, we have, nearly 6 years ago, proof that China transferred $4.5 trillion dollars to the US, part of a fund to be used to finance public projects and reduce national debt and build a nationwide high speed rail system which would employ 400,000 Americans.
In the interim, who has been using this money?
Current court estimates indicate the value with interest at $7.2 trillion dollars, half the entire national debt.
The real question, of course, is how many trillions of dollars of profit was made by the banks who were allowed to borrow this money at no interest, enough to finance hundreds, perhaps thousands of trillions of dollars in transactions and untold profit.
These same banks claimed they were broke and had to be bailed out by the US government, begging trillions while hiding the fact they had been given the free use of trillions in illegal wealth from China, funding now proven to belong to Ameritrust and designated for rebuilding America.
THE STORY
As President Obama mentioned in the video above, the American people are increasingly separating themselves from their government. Washington is looked on as a den of inequity, the center of all that is wrong in the world, a heart even darker than Wall Street.
” What Do You Mean How Much is Enough!!! ”
As for “insider trading,” few know what it means. Members of congress, not only profit from the companies they award government contracts to but are regularly awarded “stock options” which profit them billions, by authorizing the traditional “$600 toilet seat” times a million.
They wasted the future of America for their own enrichment, sucking the lifeblood of America and hiding behind illegal laws, crooked judges and a Justice Department that is required, we are told, to look the other way because congress is above any law.
As for Ameritrust and China, we find that members of the Bush regime personally authorized the lending an no interest of trillions of dollars of money that wasn’t theirs.
How were they repaid? What we find, of course, is that the famous names of that period are investors and board members everywhere we look.
It has been a decade of thievery hidden behind the War on Terror, all done while American soldiers not only died, but were sent on missions to kidnap, torture and murder.
When those same soldiers returned, unprepared for anything but suicide, homelessness or murdering their own families, something that has happened more times than anyone could imagine, the trillions in profits made off their destruction are too busy filling foreign bank accounts, those “Mitt Romney” accounts, to do any good.
When $2 billion is given to American veterans, they find it illegally lent to Goldman Sachs by former Treasury Secretary Paulson. How do we get it back? I have some ideas.
Editing: Jim W. Dean…Dear Readers, A personal note.
If you have not caught on yet, a war is about to start. This huge grand larceny is just a beginning string to pull. In countries all over the world similar financial scams have been going on that have stolen more money and caused more suffering than a huge war.
Those that did this gave some of it away to charity and are feted as great citizens. And buying protection from prosecution, so far, has been pocket change for them.
To carry this through we are going to be calling on you to help. The bad guys know that if this gets started it could be all down hill for them. Ditto for many in Congress who have earned themselves life sentences.
These funds could have had a tremendous impact on blunting the worst part of the recession, but some very well known American figures and families put their own greed before the unneeded suffering of the American people. They have had little to no fear and they have bet that money rules. So we are going to find out if they are right, and so will you.
It’s time to choose sides folks. American has been betrayed by supposedly her best and her finest. It’s time for us to show them what we think of their efforts, and set an example. Let us know if you would like to help, because it is fix bayonets time.
If they get away with this, there is nothing that they will not do to us.
The Central Intelligence Agency was intimately involved with the federal government’s infamous “Operation Fast and Furious” scheme to send American weapons to Mexican drug cartels while simultaneously working with other agencies allowing narcotics to be shipped over the border, according to a series of explosive reports.
Citing an unnamed CIA source, a Washington Times article theorizes that U.S. officials were actively aiding organizations such as the Sinaloa cartel with guns and immunity in an effort to stymie Los Zetas. That’s because, according to the piece, the powerful and brutal criminal Zetas syndicate has the potential to overthrow the government of Mexico — and might be planning to do so.
Apparently the secretive U.S. intelligence agency also played a key role in creating and using the American government’s gun-running program to arm certain criminal organizations. The scheme, which has already been implicated in countless deaths including the murders of several U.S. and Mexican law enforcement officers, saw thousands of high-powered American guns delivered to multiple cartels.
“The CIA’s motive is clear enough: The U.S. government is afraid the Los Zetas drug cartel will mount a successful coup d’etat against the government of [Mexican President] Felipe Calderón,” wrote Robert Farago and Ralph Dixon in the Times’ report, entitled “Was CIA behind Operation Fast and Furious?”
According to the article, which also cites former CIA officials and even ex-Drug Enforcement Administration boss Phil Jordan, Los Zetas has already prepared to disrupt and possibly even subvert Mexico’s 2012 national election. Ironically, many leaders of the criminal empire supposedly threatening the existence of the Mexican government were actually trained in the U.S. at the infamous military training center known as School of the Americas.
“Founded by ex-Mexican special forces, the Zetas already control huge swaths of Mexican territory,” Farago and Dixon noted. “They have the organization, arms and money needed to take over the entire country … There’s a very real chance the Zetas cartel could subvert the political process completely, as it has throughout the regions it controls.”
As The New Americanreported last week, federal court filings by a top Sinaloa Cartel operative shed even more insight on what may have been going on. And the documents would appear to lend some credence to the Times’ article.
The accused “logistical coordinator” for the Sinaloa organization, Jesus Vicente “El Vicentillo” Zambada-Niebla, claimed that he had an agreement with top American officials. In exchange for information on rival cartels, the deal supposedly gave him and his associates immunity to import multi-ton quantities of drugs across the border.
“Indeed, United States government agents aided the leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel,” the court filing states. Countless guns — via Operation Fast and Furious — also flowed to the cartel under the arrangement, according to Zambada-Niebla and U.S. officials.
But there might be even more to the story than this. Other former U.S. agents have claimed that Los Zetas is controlled and abetted by the American government, too. “There’s warehouses down here [in Texas] where they’re training more Zetas individuals that work for the cartels,” former DEA operative and whistleblower Celerino Castillo said during a radio interview with Alex Jones.
And a separate report late last month based on allegations by CIA and DEA insider Phil Jordan is even more explosive. He is claiming that the Obama administration was selling Los Zetas military-grade weaponry through a front company set up in Mexico.
“They’ve found anti-aircraft weapons and hand grenades from the Vietnam War era,” former CIA pilot Robert “Tosh” Plumlee, who supported Jordan’s claims, told the El Paso Times.
Even members of the Zetas have confirmed the allegations, as The New Americanreported last month. One of the cartel’s founders, Jesús “El Mamito” Aguilar, told Mexican police in a taped interrogation released to the public that his organization was getting weapons directly from the U.S. government.
New revelations also indicate that American taxpayers were even financing the cartels’ arms acquisitions through multiple federal agencies. And available evidence shows that approval for the programs reached into the highest levels of the Justice Department and other parts of the Obama administration.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (still known as ATF) officially claimed that “Fast and Furious” was an effort to track guns and arrest higher-ups involved in Mexico’s criminal underworld. But after the scheme was publicly exposed, countless analysts and whistleblowers questioned that excuse.
Many speculated that it may have been a plot to demonize the Second Amendment and impose further restrictions on the rights of law-abiding Americans. Indeed, the process is already well underway — and gun violence in Mexico has been used for years as a primary justification.
But this new twist in the story adds another, even more troubling dimension to the whole plot. The Washington Times claimed that, in an effort to stop a Zetas takeover of Mexico, “Uncle Sam has gotten into bed with the rival Sinaloa cartel, which has close ties to the Mexican military.” According to the article, the Obama administration was essentially taking sides to help keep the Calderón regime in power at any cost.
But if the U.S. government is also coddling and helping the Zetas, that theory cannot be entirely accurate. As more information continues to surface, the questions are growing in number and importance.
In the past, the CIA has been implicated in numerous scandals involving drug and weapons trafficking. From Vietnam and Iran to Latin America, the agency has repeatedly been caught importing narcotics and exporting arms for shadowy and subversive purposes.
Whether segments of the CIA were definitively involved in Mexico’s mayhem remains to be seen. A former DEA agent cited by Narco Newsraised that possibility last month, but said if the agency was indeed behind the plot, evidence would almost certainly be sealed under the guise of “national security.”
For now, the New York Timesreported on August 6 that the Obama administration was sending more CIA operatives to the troubled nation of Mexico. Congress is also currently investigating some elements of the administration’s ever-expanding gun-running scandal.
But as the Washington Times’ piece and various analysts have suggested, it might be time to appoint a special prosecutor and hold officials linked to the chaos and criminality responsible in a court of law. Otherwise, the whole truth may never be known.
The FBI has received substantial criticism over the past decade — much of it valid — but nobody can deny its record of excellence in thwarting its own Terrorist plots. Time and again, the FBI concocts a Terrorist attack, infiltrates Muslim communities in order to find recruits, persuades them to perpetrate the attack, supplies them with the money, weapons and know-how they need to carry it out — only to heroically jump in at the last moment, arrest the would-be perpetrators whom the FBI converted, and save a grateful nation from the plot manufactured by the FBI.
Last year, the FBI subjected 19-year-old Somali-American Mohamed Osman Mohamud to months of encouragement, support and money and convinced him to detonate a bomb at a crowded Christmas event in Portland, Oregon, only to arrest him at the last moment and then issue a Press Release boasting of its success. In late 2009, the FBI persuaded and enabled Hosam Maher Husein Smadi, a 19-year old Jordanian citizen, to place a fake bomb at a Dallas skyscraper and separately convinced Farooque Ahmed, a 34-year-old naturalized American citizen born in Pakistan, to bomb the Washington Metro. And now, the FBI has yet again saved us all from its own Terrorist plot by arresting 26-year-old American citizen Rezwan Ferdaus after having spent months providing him with the plans and materials to attack the Pentagon, American troops in Iraq, and possibly the Capitol Building using “remote-controlled” model airplanes carrying explosives.
None of these cases entail the FBI’s learning of an actual plot and then infiltrating it to stop it. They all involve the FBI’s purposely seeking out Muslims (typically young and impressionable ones) whom they think harbor animosity toward the U.S. and who therefore can be induced to launch an attack despite having never taken even a single step toward doing so before the FBI targeted them. Each time the FBI announces it has disrupted its own plot, press coverage is predictably hysterical (new Homegrown Terrorist caught!), fear levels predictably rise, and new security measures are often implemented in response (the FBI’s Terror plot aimed at the D.C. Metro, for instance, led to the Metro Police announcing a new policy of random searches of passengers’ bags). I have several observations and questions about these matters:
(1) The bulk of this latest FBI plot entailed attacks on military targets: the Pentagon, U.S. troops in Iraq, and possibly military bases. The U.S. is — as it has continuously announced to the world — a Nation at War. The Pentagon is the military headquarters for this war, and its troops abroad are the soldiers fighting it. In what conceivable sense can attacks on those purely military and war targets be labeled “Terrorism” or even illegitimate? The U.S. has continuously attacked exactly those kinds of targets in multiple nations around the world; it expressly tried to kill Saddam and Gadaffi in the wars against their countries (it even knowingly blew up an entire suburban apartment building to get Saddam, who wasn’t actually there). What possible definition of “Terrorism” excludes those attacks by the U.S. while including this proposed one on the Pentagon and other military targets (or, for that matter, Nidal Hasan’s attack on Fort Hood where soldiers deploy to war zones)?
(2) With regard to the targeted building that is not purely a military target — the Capitol Building — is that a legitimate war target under the radically broad standards the U.S. and its allies have promulgated for itself? The American “shock and awe” assault on Baghdad destroyed “several government buildings and palaces built by Saddam Hussein”; on just the third day of that war, “U.S. bombs turn[ed] key government buildings in Baghdad into rubble.” In Libya, NATO repeatedly bombed non-military government buildings. In Gaza, Israeli war planes targeted a police station filled with police recruits on the stated theory that a valid target “ranges from the strictly military institutions and includes the political institutions that provide the logistical funding and human resources” to Hamas.
Obviously, there is a wide range of views regarding the justifiability of each war, but isn’t the U.S. Congress — which funds, oversees, and regulates America’s wars — a legitimate war target under the (inadvisedly) broad definitions the U.S. and its allies have imposed when attacking others? If the political leaders and even functionaries of other countries with which the U.S. is at war are legitimate targets, then doesn’t that necessarily mean that Pentagon officials and, arguably, those in the Congress are as well?
(3) The irony that this plot featured “remote-controlled aircraft filled with plastic explosives” is too glaring to merit comment; the only question worth asking is whether the U.S. Government can sue Ferdaus for infringing its drone patents. Glaring though that irony is, there is no shortage of expressions of disgust today, pondering what kind of Terrorist monster does it take to want to attack buildings with remote-controlled mini-aircraft.
(4) Wouldn’t the FBI’s resources be better spent on detecting and breaking up actual Terrorist plots — if there are any — rather than manufacturing ones so that they can stop those? Harboring hatred for the U.S. and wanting to harm it (or any country) is not actually a crime; at most, it’s a Thought Crime. It doesn’t become a crime until steps are taken to attempt to transform that desire into reality. There are millions and millions of people who at some point harbor a desire to impose violent harm on others who never do so: perhaps that’s true of a majority of human beings. Many of them will never act in the absence of the type of highly sophisticated, expert push of which the FBI is uniquely capable. Is manufacturing criminals — as opposed to finding and stopping actual criminals — really a prudent law enforcement activity?
(5) Does the FBI devote any comparable resources to infiltrating non-Muslim communities in order to persuade and induce those extremists to become Terrorists so that they can arrest them? Are they out in the anti-abortion world, or the world of radical Christianity, or right-wing anti-government radicals, trying to recruit them into manufactured Terrorist plots?
(6) As usual, most media coverage of the FBI’s plots is as uncritical as it is sensationalistic. The first paragraph of The New York Times article on this story described the plot as one “to blow up the Pentagon and the United States Capitol.” But the FBI’s charging Affidavit (reproduced below) makes clear that Ferdaus’ plan was to send a single model airplane (at most 1/10 the size of an actual U.S. jet) to the Capitol and two of them to the Pentagon, each packed with “5 pounds” of explosives (para. 70); the Capitol was to be attacked at its dome for “psychological effect” (para 34). The U.S. routinely drops 500-pound or 1,000-pound bombs from actual fighter jets; this plot — even if it were carried out by someone other than a hapless loner with no experience and it worked perfectly — could not remotely “blow up” the Pentagon or the Capitol.
(7) As is now found in almost every case of would-be Terrorist plots against the U.S. — especially “homegrown Terrorists” — the motive is unbridled fury over (and a desire to avenge) contintuous U.S violence against Muslim civilians. Infused throughout the charging Affidavit here are such references to Ferdaus’ motives, including his happiness over the prospect of killing U.S. troops in Iraq; his proclamation that he’s “interested in traveling to Afghanistan” to aid insurgents; his statement that “he wanted to ‘decapitate’ the U.S. government’s ‘military center’ and to severely disrupt . . . the head and heart of the snake” (para 12) and to “essentially decapitate the entire empire” (para 34) (compare that language to how the U.S. described what it tried to do in Baghdad). At least according to the FBI, this is how Feradus replied when expressly asked why he wanted to attack the U.S.:
Cause that would be a huge scare . . . the point is you want to scare them so they know not to mess with you . . . They have . . . . have killed from us, our innocents, our men, women and children, they are all enemies (para 19).
If the FBI’s allegations are accurate, then it’s clear Ferdaus has become hardened in his hatred; he talks about a willingness to kill American civilians because they have become part of the enemy, and claims that he fantasized about such attacks before the FBI informant spoke to him.
But whatever else is true, it’s simply unrealistic in the extreme to expect to run around for a full decade screaming WE ARE AT WAR!! — and dropping bombs and attacking with drones and shooting up families in multiple Muslim countries (and occupying, interfering in and killing large numbers before that) – and not produce many Rezwan Ferdauses. In fact, the only surprising thing is that these seem to be so few of them actually willing and able to attack back that — in order to justify this Endless War on civil liberties (and Terror) — the FBI has to search for ones they can recruit, convince, and direct to carry out plots.
The CIA’s drone campaign targeting suspected militants in Pakistan has killed dozens of civilians who had gone to rescue victims or were attending funerals. So concludes a new report by the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism. It found that since President Obama took office three years ago, as many as 535 civilians have been killed, including more than 60 children. The investigation also revealed that at least 50 civilians were killed in follow-up strikes when they had gone to help victims. More than 20 civilians have also been attacked in deliberate strikes on funerals and mourners. We speak to Chris Woods, award-winning reporter with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. “We noted that there were repeated reports at the time, contemporaneous reports in publications like New York Times, news agencies like Reuters, by CNN, that there were these strikes on rescuers, that there were reports that there had been an initial strike and then, some minutes later, as people had come forward to help and pull out the dead and injured, that drones had returned to the scene and had attacked rescuers,” Woods says. “We’ve been able to name just over 50 civilians that we understand have been killed in those attacks. In total, we think that more than 75 civilians have been killed, specifically in these attacks on rescuers and on mourners, on funeral-goers.” [includes rush transcript]
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Publication Date: April 20, 2008
Published to extraordinary praise, this provocative international bestseller details the story of IBM’s strategic alliance with Nazi Germany. IBM and the Holocaust provides a chilling investigation into corporate complicity, and the atrocities witnessed raise startling questions that throw IBM’s wartime ethics into serious doubt. Edwin Black’s monumental research exposes how IBM and its subsidiaries helped create enablling technologies for the Nazis, step-by-step, from the identification and cataloging programs of the 1930s to the selections of the 1940s.
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Was IBM, “The Solutions Company,” partly responsible for the Final Solution? That’s the question raised by Edwin Black’s IBM and the Holocaust, the most controversial book on the subject since Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners. Black, a son of Holocaust survivors, is less tendentiously simplistic than Goldhagen, but his thesis is no less provocative: he argues that IBM founder Thomas Watson deserved the Merit Cross (Germany’s second-highest honor) awarded him by Hitler, his second-biggest customer on earth. “IBM, primarily through its German subsidiary, made Hitler’s program of Jewish destruction a technologic mission the company pursued with chilling success,” writes Black. “IBM had almost single-handedly brought modern warfare into the information age [and] virtually put the ‘blitz’ in the krieg.”
The crucial technology was a precursor to the computer, the IBM Hollerith punch card machine, which Black glimpsed on exhibit at the U.S. Holocaust Museum, inspiring his five-year, top-secret book project. The Hollerith was used to tabulate and alphabetize census data. Black says the Hollerith and its punch card data (“hole 3 signified homosexual … hole 8 designated a Jew”) was indispensable in rounding up prisoners, keeping the trains fully packed and on time, tallying the deaths, and organizing the entire war effort. Hitler’s regime was fantastically, suicidally chaotic; could IBM have been the cause of its sole competence: mass-murdering civilians? Better scholars than I must sift through and appraise Black’s mountainous evidence, but clearly the assessment is overdue.
The moral argument turns on one question: How much did IBM New York know about IBM Germany’s work, and when? Black documents a scary game of brinksmanship orchestrated by IBM chief Watson, who walked a fine line between enraging U.S. officials and infuriating Hitler. He shamefully delayed returning the Nazi medal until forced to–and when he did return it, the Nazis almost kicked IBM and its crucial machines out of Germany. (Hitler was prone to self-defeating decisions, as demonstrated in How Hitler Could Have Won World War II.)
* Paperback: 560 pages
* Publisher: Dialog Press; 1 edition (April 20, 2008)
* Language: English
* ISBN-10: 0914153102
* ISBN-13: 978-0914153108
* Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6 x 1.6 inches
* Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
* Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (80 customer reviews)
* Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #129,380 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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143 of 157 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Important Questions Unraised Before Now, March 16, 2001
By
Donald Mitchell “Jesus Loves You!” (Thanks for Providing My Reviews over 109,000 Helpful Votes Globally) – See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE) (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER) (TOP 100 REVIEWER)
This review is from: IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America’s Most Powerful Corporation (Hardcover)
This book is the most important new work on the Nazi era in the last two decades. The book is even more significant for the questions it raises about what the purpose of a corporation is and should be, what role companies and governments should play in directing cutting edge technology, and the danger that misuses of advanced information technology bring to individuals.
The core of the story is how a key IBM technology, the Hollerith-based card tabulating machines, became available for the Nazi war and Holocaust efforts. Although the details are murky (and may remain so), it is fairly clear that the use of this technology was sustained during the war years in part by shipments of customized (for each end user) tabulating cards from IBM in neutral countries for everything from blitzkriegs to slave camp scheduling to transportation to the death camps. There was not enough paper capacity to make the cards in Europe (that the Nazi and IBM records show were used), and there is no evidence that Nazis created substitutes for these essential supplies.
As Mr. Black warns, “This book will be profoundly uncomfortable to read.” I agree. My sleep will not be the same for some time after experiencing this powerful story.
Mr. Black makes an even stronger statement. “So if you intend to skim, or rely on selected sections, do not read the book at all.” I took him at his word, and did not even read the book quickly. I also arranged to read it in several sittings, so I could think about what I had read in between. I recommend that you do the same.
The reason for my recommendation is that your thinking will change very fundamentally through reading the book. Having read dozens of books by fine historians about the Nazi period, and knowing a great deal about the history of data processing, I assumed that there would be little new to the story here. But the title intrigued me. By the fourth time I saw the book, I could no longer resist it.
What I found inside the book surprised, shocked, and amazed me.
First, many authors claim that it was not clear in the United States that Jews were losing their lives in Europe during the Nazi years until just before the end of the war. This book documents many articles that appeared in the New York Times that certainly seemed to be saying that this systematic killing was going on from very near the time when it began. Anyone who ignored these reports just didn’t want to know.
Second, the book makes many connections between Thomas Watson, Sr. and Nazi Germany. Many things surprised me about this. One, he was there once or twice a year until just before World War II began. The horrible human abuses were probably observed first hand by him then. Two, he had friends who were victimized by the Nazis. Three, he accepted a very prestigious medal from Hitler in 1937 (which he returned in June 1940). Four, he spoke in favor of making U.S. policy pro-German until just before the United States entered World War II. Five, it appeared that he had a lot more concern about IBM’s profits and machines in Europe than about any people there.
Third, although I was very familiar with the improvements in industrial and transportation effectiveness in Germany during the Nazi years, I did not realize that IBM’s design of Hollerith machines for card tabulation was a breakthrough technology that enabled this progress.
Fourth, I had always been amazed that the Nazis had such detailed records of the geneologies of European Jews. What I did not realize was that much of this information was provided by Jewish citizens in government censuses, and was quickly processed into records used by oppressors on Hollerith machines leased from IBM or its subsidiaries.
In France, where the use of these machines was subverted by the Resistance, the percentage rate of Jewish deaths was one-third of what occurred in Holland where this technology was well applied. It is hard to avoid the feeling that millions of people died because these machines were available and kept supplied with parts and punch cards for the Nazis.
One cannot help but draw the comparison between this historical example and the companies and countries (including, apparently, the United States) that have more recently allowed critical nuclear, rocket, and satellite technology to become available to repressive regimes. It seems that by not asking questions about IBM and the Holocaust, we may be continuing to make many of the same mistakes today.
I salute the incredible imagination and back-breaking effort that went into assembling this astonishing set of documents and perspectives. I hope that many people will read the book, that scholars will look for more information to expand our understanding, and that the fundamental questions raised by this book will be debated wherever free people live.
Remember: Your freedom is only as good as that of the least free person, who is most vulnerable.
“Ask not for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee.”
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38 of 42 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars IBM and the Holocaust, December 7, 2006
By
Nancyrae Kjelgaard (Tallahassee, FL) – See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)
This review is from: IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance Between Nazi Germany and America’s Most Powerful Corporation (Paperback)
I did not want to read this book.
My grandfather worked for International Time Recording (ITR) in Endicott, NY before IBM was formed and Mr. Watson came on board. My father’s first job, at the age of seventeen, was caretaker of the Watson Homestead. My family has had a hand in virtually every product that issued from the IBM manufacturing effort since its inception in 1924. I have deep affection for the company my family labored to build.
I approached “IBM and the Holocaust” with a high degree of skepticism. The book sat on my nightstand for two months before I opened it. Finally picked it up for the sake of completing my 14-book IBM historical reading cycle.
This book is astounding. It is impeccably researched, artfully written, highly detailed, painstakingly documented, remarkably objective and thoroughly engaging.
“IBM and the Holocaust” has finally exposed the undeniable truth: IBM became the world’s most powerful corporation largely because it assisted in identifying, cataloging and exterminating millions of innocent people for Hitler. The evil that lurks in IBM history was not exposed previously only because IBM management was smart enough and powerful enough to “hide its tracks” in Nuremburg. No investigator has ever dug deeper into IBM history than Edwin Black.
A close reading of the book makes it absolutely clear that Mr. Watson (IBM CEO) knew the exact purpose, goal and expected outcome of the IBM solution in Europe. The book details the fact that unlike previous IBM engagements for the Third Reich that were completed by Dehomag (IBM’s German subsidiary), the engagement in Romania (1941) was conducted directly under the management of IBM New York. That engagement resulted in the swift identification, transportation and extermination of hundreds of thousands of innocent Jews. All in the name of “IBM.”
As a result of reading “IBM and the Holocaust”, I no longer view Mr. Watson as the glamorous benevolent industrial icon depicted in hollywoood newsreels. Though the affectionate “shop talk” tossed through the air when I was young still captures my imagination, Mr. Watson is no longer the focus of my unqualified admiration.
Watson, for me, now stands beside Carnegie, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Mellon, Jeffrey Skilling, Kenneth Lay and all the other American Industrialists throughout history who had many fine qualities yet are outrageously flawed–so good yet so very, very bad.
This book is remarkable. Have since read “Internal Combustion”, Banking on Baghdad” and “War Against the Weak.”
Edwin Black is “the bomb.”
If you have an interest in history, corporations, corruption, good, bad, evil or fine nonfiction; you will appreciate the works of Edwin Black.
NancyRae Kjelgaard
Tallahassee, FL
December 7, 2006
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5.0 out of 5 stars Story from the Past and a Tech Warning for the Future, September 4, 2001
By
Linda Marinus (Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH) – See all my reviews
This review is from: IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America’s Most Powerful Corporation (Hardcover)
I just came upon this book this past week, but I have read research on the Holocaust for over 30 years and always wondered how the Nazis could be so efficient in rounding up people, how they could exactly know so much as they took over Poland and France, etc., etc., Now I think I know and the knowledge is most disturbing.
Reading this book made me stop and think about where technology is going today in our world where all the bits of information about everybody are carefully stored, collated, and applied to “appropriate” use. I think there is a warning from the book about having too much data about individuals. I for one will never answer census questions completely again, certainly not the petty questions that inquire into the specifics of my personal life.
A few months ago, I watched the HBO Movie Conspiracy which was an exact dramatization of the Wannesee Conference in 1942 in Berlin. The script was based on the sole transcript of that meeting found after the war and belonging to one of the attendees. As I was watching the movie and later when I poured over the actual transcript which I found on the net, I wondered, “How did they have such exact figures for each country and group? So exact that the numbers were down to the single digits. How did they find these people?” It puzzled me. In reading IBM and the Holocaust, I found my answer.
History has an ostentatous way of rationalizing what actually happened to fit current viewpoints that are acceptable to people and institutions. We don’t want to think that a company like IBM could be so dreadful for profit or that our Government refused to bomb camps or take in refugees when they knew horror was happening. There was a rationalization that there ” must have been other circumstances”, mitigating circumstances, and today simply bad historical recollection. It is much easier to go forward and forget and rationalize and look for “reasonable” solutions, that is, until it all happens again and we have to say once more, “but that simply couldn’t be possible.”
A n important and courageous book that every young person especially should read as the years pass and the witnesses of that time leave us. http://www.amazon.com/IBM-Holocaust-Strategic-Alliance-Corporation/dp/0914153102/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1290211067&sr=8-1
So yet again the people of the virtual-concentration camp, known officially as ‘Gaza’, are being bombarded from the sky and from the ground by the bully-boys of Tel Aviv.
State-of-the art Israeli jets and tanks, paid for by the United States, strike civilian targets in this tragic, poverty-stricken wasteland which acts as a holding camp for the human beings the Israeli government would rather be dead.
The world watches as a nation of people, the Palestinians, is systematically crushed and destroyed by the tyrants who call the shots in Israel on behalf of that country’s real power structure – the House of Rothschild.
And, taxpayers of America (and elsewhere), you are paying for this calculated slaughter.
The Palestinian ‘territories’ of Gaza and the West Bank
American aid to Israel accounts for something like a third of all US overseas aid when Israel is home to just .001 per cent of the global population and has one of the highest incomes per head in the world. This is without all the ‘private’ donations from US corporations and individuals which are tax-deductible even when given to the Israeli military, unlike any other foreign power.
According to 2007 figures, the United States government gave more than $6.8 million to wealthy Israel every day while to the desperate and devastated Palestinians of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank they gave just $300,000.
US military ‘aid’ to Israel increased by more than a quarter to an average $3 billion a year in 2007 – a figure guaranteed for ten years. This and other support makes Israel the biggest recipient of United States foreign military funding since the Second World War.
The United States is also Israel’s biggest supplier of fighter planes, weapons and other military technology. As a result, Israel has the world’s largest F-16 fleet outside the US Air Force. In their book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt write:
‘Since the October War in 1973, Washington has provided Israel with a level of support dwarfing the amounts provided to any other state. It has been the largest annual recipient of direct U.S. economic and military assistance since 1976 and the largest total recipient since World War ll. Total direct U.S. aid to Israel amounts to well over $140 billion in 2003 dollars.
Israel receives about $3 billion in direct foreign assistance each year, which is roughly one-fifth of America’s entire foreign aid budget. In per capita terms, the United States gives each Israeli a direct subsidy worth about $500 per year. This largesse is especially striking when one realizes that Israel is now a wealthy industrial state with a per capita income roughly equal to South Korea or Spain.’
Why do they do this? Because the House of Rothschild controls Israel and the House of Rothschild controls the political system of the United States. The network that links the two is called ‘Zionism’, a Rothschild creation – just like Israel itself.
The might of this Zionist cabal spanning Israel, the United States, Europe and beyond is yet again, like the playground bully that it is, attacking the little kid in the callipers – the people of Gaza.
At the time of writing the death toll is more than 800 Palestinian men, women and children with thousands injured, many disabled for life. They are bombing the unarmed innocent knowing there will be no credible response – the way all bullies operate. Oh, brave men of Israel; oh how Yahweh would be so proud:
‘When the LORD your God hands these nations over to you and you conquer them, you must completely destroy them. Make no treaties with them and show them no mercy.’
Deuteronomy 7:1-4
What we are seeing in Gaza, and have seen so many times, both there and in the Lebanon, is merciless Old Testament slaughter: cold, calculated, heartless slaughter.
‘So they sent twelve thousand warriors to Jabesh-gilead with orders to kill everyone there, including women and children. “This is what you are to do,” they said. “Completely destroy all the males and every woman who is not a virgin”.’
Judges 21:10-24
‘Then I heard the LORD say to the other men, “Follow him through the city and kill everyone whose forehead is not marked. Show no mercy; have no pity! Kill them all – old and young, girls and women and little children. But do not touch anyone with the mark. Begin your task right here at the Temple”.’
Ezekiel 9:5-7
‘So they began by killing the seventy leaders. “Defile the Temple!” the LORD commanded. “Fill its courtyards with the bodies of those you kill! Go!” So they went throughout the city and did as they were told.‘
Ezekiel 9:5-7
The parallels are endless between the bloodthirsty ‘God’ of the Old Testament and the actions of the heartless, soulless, Artificial Intelligence that controls Israel, most notably the biological robots of the House of Rothschild who thus have no soul, no empathy, no more mercy for the consequences of their actions than a desktop computer.
Imagine if Iran or anyone else outside Israel and the United States (both Rothschild assets) was doing what the Israeli military is doing in Gaza. There would be global condemnation, not least from Israel and the United States, resolutions passed in the UN Security Council fiercely attacking the country involved and talk of the need for sanctions or military intervention to ‘save the innocent’.
But when Israel does it we have vacuous calls for a truce, an end to the violence while ‘understanding Israel’s position’, and, in terms of soon-to-be President ‘Change’ Obama, silence. It’s all a fraction of what others would face because Israel is a wholly-owned asset of the Rothschilds and so is not subject to the same rules as anyone else. As former Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, said:
‘Israel may have the right to put others on trial, but certainly no one has the right to put the Jewish people and the State of Israel on trial.’
And Prime Minister Golda Meir betrayed the same Zionist arrogance:
‘This country exists as the fulfilment of a promise made by God Himself. It would be ridiculous to ask it to account for its legitimacy.’
Ah, it’s all in the Old Testament? Gotcha, right, well do as you like then.
The ‘Jewish homeland’ was from the start a Rothschild fiefdom orchestrated through the global secret society network of interbreeding families known as the Illuminati.
During the Israeli military attacks on the Lebanon in 2006, the Israeli writer, Barry Chamish, told of a meeting with Evelyn Rothschild’s grandson, who abandoned the family to be a Mormon (so actually he didn’t, even if he thought he did).
Chamish said he learned that just seven families were enjoying the ‘fruits of the war’ with the Lebanon. The grandson had said of the Rothschilds: ‘They created Israel as their personal toy. It makes them richer and gives them more control. It’s not going to be destroyed.’
The Rothschilds funded the early European settlers in Israel, manipulated events in Germany that led to the horrific treatment of Jewish people and others, and then used that as the excuse to reach their long-term goal – a Rothschild-Illuminati stronghold in Palestine using the Jewish population as fodder to be used and abused as necessary.
They called their plan ‘Zionism’. This term is often used as a synonym for Jewish people when it is actually a political movement devised and promoted through the House of Rothschild and opposed by many Jews.
Poster for the Irgun terrorist group
The Israeli bully-boys spend most of their time condemning the terrorism of others and yet their very State was created through terrorism of the most grotesque kind via groups like Irgun, Haganah and the Stern Gang, which bombed and terrorised Israel into being and from which came the Israel Defence Forces, the IDF, which is bombing Gaza today.
Among the leading lights in these and other terrorist groups were Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir and Ariel Sharon, butchers who became Israeli Prime Ministers and had the nerve to condemn Arab terrorism. And to this day the butchery goes on with the goal of destroying the Palestinian people.
After the Rothschild-controlled Zionist terrorists had bombed the State of Israel into existence in 1948, an estimated 800,000 Palestinians were made refugees and fled what had been their own country. Their descendents are said to number some four million.
And the world simply looked on – just as it does to this day – because Israel is a law unto itself and so terms like justice, fairness, decency and mercy do not apply.
Palestinian families fleeing the newly-imposed Israel after their country was occupied by Zionist terrorism in 1948.
The idea was always to destroy the Palestinian people step-by-step long before Israel was even created. The Balfour Declaration of 1917, in which the Rothschild-controlled British government supported the establishment of a ‘Jewish’ homeland in Palestine, said that ‘nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine’.
But the Rothschild sidekick Chaim Weizmann would later say: ‘With regard to the Arab question – the British told us that there are several hundred thousand Negroes there but this is a matter of no consequence’. Nor have they been ever since and the goal of destroying them is closer today than ever before.
The first Prime Minister of Israel, yet another terrorist called David Ben-Gurion, made no secret of this fact within his inner circle. Former Israel Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, said in an uncensored version of his memoirs, published in the New York Times on 23 October 23rd, 1979:
‘We walked outside, Ben-Gurion accompanying us. Allon repeated his question – What is to be done with the Palestinian population?’ Ben-Gurion waved his hand in a gesture which said “Drive them out!”‘
The current bombing campaign against the Gaza Palestinians is just the latest step to that end. They have forced Palestinians into a Gaza Strip that is little more than a massive concentration camp in which they control all that goes in and out, people or supplies of food, medicines and other essentials.
When the Israelis close the border posts, that’s it, the Palestinians are trapped and at the mercy of the soulless and heartless that control the Tel Aviv government and military under Rothschild direction.
One writer recently described conditions in Gaza:
‘ … Israel nails shut the coffin that is Gaza under a siege that has lasted nearly three years, steadily intensifying so that malnutrition rates rival those of sub-Saharan Africa, sewage runs raw in the streets and pollutes the ocean, homes are still being bulldozed to super-add collective punishment upon collective punishment; men, women and children are still being sniped at and killed; children are deafened by continuing sonic booms, the vast majority of them suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome, and many of that majority have no ambition other than becoming “martyrs” …’
And it’s a whole lot worse now.
How can anyone inflict such a lack of mercy on an entire people? The question can only be answered when we understand that Zionist extremists really do believe they are God’s Chosen People and that therefore the Palestinians are little more than cattle.
The Israel Prime Minister and terrorist, Menachem Begin, described the Palestinians in a speech to the Israeli parliament as ‘beasts walking on two legs’. Another Prime Minister and terrorist, Yitzhak Shamir, told Jewish settlers in 1988 that the Palestinians ‘would be crushed like grasshoppers … heads smashed against the boulders and walls.’
Prime Minister and terrorist, Ariel Sharon, then Israeli Foreign Minister, confirmed in 1998 what the plan really was for the Palestinians:
‘It is the duty of Israeli leaders to explain to public opinion, clearly and courageously, a certain number of facts that are forgotten with time. The first of these is that there is no Zionism, colonialisation, or Jewish State without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands.’
The plan is to kill or drive out the Palestinian people using poverty, hunger and war and so allow the Zionists to expand into ‘Greater Israel’. That plan is now well advanced.
In early 2008, the United Nations’ leading humanitarian affairs official said he was ‘shocked’ by the ‘grim and miserable’ conditions in Gaza. Undersecretary General John Holmes blamed this on Israel closing the border crossings and so limiting the supply of food and other materials – just as they are doing today.
He said: ‘All this makes for a grim human and humanitarian situation here in Gaza, which means that people are not able to live with the basic dignity to which they are entitled’.
But they are just ‘beasts walking on two legs’, right?
Richard Falk, the UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur on the occupied territories, has also condemned Israel for its actions in Gaza. He is Jewish and therefore much more dangerous to the Israel government because he can’t be dismissed as the old favourite ‘anti-Semitic’. Or maybe he is a ‘self-hater’, the tag given by these sick people to those Jews who speak out against Israel.
Falk’s punishment for daring to criticise the Promised Land as a UN official was to be held for 20 hours and then denied entry to the country and so he is prevented from doing his job of reporting on conditions for the Palestinian people during the current air and ground attacks.
The Bush administration for the last eight years has been dominated by the Neo-conservative, or ‘Neocon’, network which is, itself, dominated by US/Israeli duel citizens and/or Zionists like Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Pearle, Dov Zackheim, William Kristol, Robert Kagan, Elliot Abrams, Douglas Feith, John Bolton, Robert B Zoellick, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and others. The neo-con godfather is the late Leo Strauss, a German-born Jewish ‘philosopher’, who believed that people must be governed by a ‘pious elite’.
But surely those days of Zionist dominance are over because ‘Mr. Change’ is coming to ‘power’ now. Er, if only. Barack Obama has packed his ‘new’ administration with Zionists like Rahm Emanuel, his White House Chief of Staff.
Emanuel’s father, Benjamin, is a Zionist extremist who was a member of the Irgun terrorist group in Palestine that I mentioned earlier and we can clearly expect the Obama administration to be balanced and fair on its Israel/Palestinian policy. No wonder Obama has kept quiet on the Israeli bombing of Gaza.
Obama speaks out on Gaza crisis: ‘Hey, I got nothin’ to say, I got the chance of a par here … ask my Chief of Staff, he’s a rabid Zionist and his dad helped bomb Israel into existence. He’ll know what’s goin’ on.’
The Obama government is going to be slavishly pro-Israel because he needed the sanction of the truly massive Zionist lobby in the United States to secure the presidency. His vice-president, Joe Biden, is a long-time bag-carrier for Israel. He said on Israeli television: ‘I am a Zionist – you don’t have to be a Jew to be a Zionist’. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is another Israel puppetess who pledged to ‘obliterate’ Iran if it launched a nuclear attack on God’s chosen country.
Would she say she would obliterate Israel if it launched a nuclear attack on Iran? No way.
The Palestinians have never had a chance because the table is weighted, the game is rigged and it always has been. At the time of the First World War, the Rothschild-controlled British government told the Palestine Arabs that if they fought the Ottoman Turks and forced them to leave Palestine and other lands they would be rewarded with an independent Palestine.
The Palestinian Arabs agreed and with support from the British through Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Edward Lawrence – ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ – the Ottoman Empire was defeated. But their reward was not independence. It was first rule by a British ‘Mandate’ and then occupation by Zionist Israel.
The Arabs were lied to, as Lawrence later admitted, and they have been lied to ever since. All these ‘road maps’ and ‘peace processes’ are always designed to lead nowhere. They are just holding positions to maintain the status quo until the Palestinians are basically no more.
The Israelis always say they are killing people in ‘retaliation’ for attacks by the Palestinian group, Hamas, which officially controls the Gaza ‘authority’, although control is hardly the word with Israel deciding what and who goes in and out.
Hamas operatives are firing seriously low-tech rockets that have so far killed four people. Terrible, yes, and it should not be happening. I have no brief for Hamas, which is another tyranny in its own way, but ask yourself this: What would you do if you were faced with the situation the Palestinians are in after sixty years of oppression and persecution while the world does nothing?
If you remove the injustice, you remove the motivation for a violent response to that injustice. Put people in a position where they either accept their pathetic plight or open fire and some are bound to choose the latter.
But instead of tackling the root cause, injustice, Israel responds with a state-of-the-art bombardment that kills more than 800 and injures thousands in a few days, at least 90% of which are men, women and children who have nothing whatsoever to do with the rocket attacks. In 2007, 25 Palestinians were killed for every Israeli. That’s more than just ‘protecting yourself’.
As Jewish UN representative, Richard Falk, said in the last two weeks even before the ground offensive:
‘The Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip represent severe and massive violations of international humanitarian law as defined in the Geneva Conventions, both in regard to the obligations of an Occupying Power and in the requirements of the laws of war …
Those violations include:
Collective punishment: The entire 1.5 million people who live in the crowded Gaza Strip are being punished for the actions of a few militants.
Targeting civilians: The airstrikes were aimed at civilian areas in one of the most crowded stretches of land in the world, certainly the most densely populated area of the Middle East.
Disproportionate military response: The airstrikes have not only destroyed every police and security office of Gaza’s elected government, but have killed and injured hundreds of civilians; at least one strike reportedly hit groups of students attempting to find transportation home from the university.’
This savagery towards Palestinians has been going on since the Zionist terror groups began their campaign of violence to secure the State of Israel and the scale of this ongoing evil has often been suppressed by the fear of being called ‘anti-Semitic’.
The Rothschild dynasty has created a highly-funded network of ‘anti-hate’ groups, like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and so many others, to label as ‘anti-Semitic’ or ‘racist’ anyone who dares to expose or condemn Israel or its networks of manipulation within the United States and elsewhere.
Politicians (though all but are a few are terrified or rewarded into silence), university professors, people like me, and anyone with any kind of public stage, are immediately condemned by the ADL and smeared as ‘racist’ with support from the Robot Radicals of the Robot ‘Left’ if they expose Israel or anyone who happens to be Jewish.
The irony of those claiming to be the chosen people and above all others accusing anyone else of racism boggles the bloody mind.
Jewish people who challenge the tyranny, like the superb NormanFinkelstein, are dubbed ‘self-haters’ and often lose their jobs and livelihoods as a result. The Rothschild ‘anti-hate’ groups put any Big Brother to shame.
But we can’t – and MUST NOT – stay silent on the plight of the Palestinians because we fear the consequences for ourselves. What are we, mice??
This is not about racism; it is about fascism and the daily onslaught against a helpless and tragic people. I don’t give a shit what the ADL thinks about what I say, nor those on the ‘Left’ who parrot its propaganda like the juveniles that they are.
It needs saying and therefore someone needs to say it.
And, by the way, those that are running the Zionist agenda, which is part of much bigger global agenda in league with the Illuminati families, don’t give a damn for Jewish people in general. They, too, are just an expendable irrelevance to the greater goal.
As the first Israeli Prime Minister, the terrorist, David Ben-Gurion, said:
‘If I knew that it was possible to save all the children of Germany by transporting them to England, and only half by transferring them to the Land of Israel, I would choose the latter, for before us lies not only the numbers of these children but the historical reckoning of the people of Israel.’
What kind of sick mind does it take to say that? The kind that has run Israel since 1948 would appear to be the answer.
We need to drop the ludicrous, childish, labels of Jew and Gentile and Muslim and all this illusory crap and come together in the name of peace and justice for all. There is not a Jewish injustice or a Palestinian injustice, there is simply injustice.
Justice for one and no justice for another is ‘justice’ for no-one. For justice has no meaning unless it applies to all, and it will never apply to the Palestinians while the world stays silent and looks the other way.
The White House is signing off on a controversial new law that would authorize the U.S. military to arrest and indefinitely detain alleged al Qaeda members or other terrorist operatives captured on American soil.
As the bill neared final passage in the House of Representatives and the Senate on Wednesday, the Obama administration announced it would support passage of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which contains slightly watered-down provisions giving the military a front line role in domestic terrorism cases.
The administration abandoned its long-held veto threat due to changes in the final version of the bill, namely that in its view, the military custody mandate has been “softened.” The bill now gives the President the immediate power to issue a waiver of the military custody requirement, instead of the Defense Secretary, and gives the President discretion in implementing these new provisions.
“We have concluded that the language does not challenge or constrain the President’s ability to collect intelligence, incapacitate dangerous terrorists, and protect the American people, and the President’s senior advisors will not recommend a veto,” the White House statement said.
The detainee provisions are just one part of the annual NDAA authorizing $662 billion in federal defense spending next year.
While the bill never expanded the authority to detain American citizens indefinitely without charges, proponents said the legislation would codify court decisions finding the President does have the authority to declare “enemy combatants,” as commander-in-chief and under the post-9/11 Authorization for Use of Military Force against al Qaeda and its allies. The administration, which has pledged not to use this power, believes the bill leaves this legal issue unresolved.
“By signing this defense spending bill, President Obama will go down in history as the president who enshrined indefinite detention without trial in U.S. law,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. “In the past, Obama has lauded the importance of being on the right side of history, but today he is definitely on the wrong side.”
FBI Director Robert Mueller, testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, said the provisions still could create confusion among counter-terrorism professionals.
“My concern is that you don’t want FBI agents and the military showing up at the same time, with some uncertainty” as to who has control, Mueller said, and raised this hypothetical example: “A case that we’re investigating on three individuals, two of whom are American citizens and would not go to military custody and the third is not an American citizen and could go to military custody?”
Mueller was joined earlier in the detainee debate by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper in opposing the military custody provision, because they said it might inhibit flexibility by counter-terrorism professionals, restrain federal, state, and local law enforcement authorities, and risk losing the cooperation of terror arrestees.
“If President Obama signs this bill, it will damage both his legacy and American’s reputation for upholding the rule of law,” said Laura Murphy, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. “The last time Congress passed indefinite detention legislation was during the McCarthy era, and President Truman had the courage to veto that bill.”
Bill opponents have noted that in the decade since the 9/11, the government has successfully convicted over 300 people for terrorism-related crimes, including thwarted plots to bomb passenger jets, subway lines, and landmarks such as Times Square and the Sears Tower.
By comparison, the military justice system, although stymied by constitutional challenges, has completed only six cases in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where 170 detainees remain.
Pakistani radical Mulsims burn the American flag during a demonstration near a local mosque in down town Peshawar after performing Friday noon prayers protesting against the US-led air strikes on Afghanistan 12 October 2001 (AFP Photo / Tariq Mahmood)
Americans are in the crosshairs of terrorists worldwide purely due to Washington’s policy in the Muslim world, not because there is an Islamic enemy whose only aim is to kill Americans for their freedoms and lifestyle, insists a former CIA officer.
Historian Michael Scheuer, an author of “Through our enemies’ eyes”, who worked for the agency for over 20 years till 2004 and at one time was the chief of the CIA’s ‘Bin Laden unit’, says America’s greatest enemy – radical Islam – never existed: neither when Bin Laden was alive, nor now.
Israeli lobby drag America into wars
Actually, “it is America’s relationship with Israel that is causing this war [on Islam]”, and until Americans accept this, “we are not going to defeat this enemy,” the author says.
Michael Scheuer believes it is the Israeli lobby in America that is dragging the US into wars.
“In Israel itself as a country, it is not a problem. The real problem is the leaders of the Jewish American community in the US, who influence and corrupt our Congress to support Israel when we have no interest there,” he states.
“The American political establishment is caught between two things. They are extremely pro-Israel and they are almost Marxist in their belief that the spread of democracy is inevitable in all places, in all peoples, in all time,” evaluates the former CIA officer, adding that in their desire to protect Israel, the US establishment cannot tell what’s real.
Radical islamists will benefit
Michael Scheuer predicts that in countries caught up in the Arab Spring like Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, “there is not going to be a democracy that in any way resembles democracy in the west.”
At the same time, the anarchy being created in the Muslim world will make radical Islamists the only beneficiaries of the chaos engulfing the Arab countries.
According to Michael Scheuer, further radicalization of Islamist groups, particularly in Africa, is inevitable – thanks to guns becoming more affordable.
The endless flow of uncounted weapons and the opened prisons in the above countries have reinforced Islamist groups around the world, believes Scheuer.
“Their [American political establishment’s] mindless pursuit of secular democracy at the end of the day endangers the stability of the region and probably the whole world,” he says.
If Syria falls to Islamists – Israel will go down
As for the situation in Syria – it has been interfered in by the US unconscionably.
“Until they [the Syrians] removed the US ambassador, he was running around their country trying to encourage groups to overthrow the Syrian government. That is not the role of any diplomat, US, Russian, Chinese or British,” the author points out, saying that “Syrians were urged onto the streets cold-bloodedly,” without mention of the possibility of being shot dead by the government.
The author recalls that Syria, with its traditional support of Hezbollah, is naturally an Israeli zone of interest, not an American one.
“Syria is a country with no US interest. Since I was a little boy, we’ve been afraid of the Syrians,” the author says, laughing at the fact that “if you look at the map – it’s hard to imagine that this little blat of country called Syria could be a threat to the US.”
Clarifying a possible result of any American success in Syria, Scheuer says that “this is another good example of dichotomy in the thinking of the American leaders. Because as we call for democracy in Syria, if Assad goes – Israel’s security goes straight down.”
Israel sets US plans on Iran
Michael Scheuer reveals that America’s ‘plan on Iran’ depends on that of Israel.
“Both Republicans and Democrats are deathly afraid that Israelis will attack Iran off their own work. If Israel attacks Iran, the Americans will get blamed for condoning it, whether we did or not,” he explains.
“What we are seeing is a slow, almost non-accelerable advance toward some kind of a conflict with Tehran.”
He labels the alleged plot of eliminating a Saudi Arabian ambassador in the US with the help of a Mexican drug cartel “a comic uproar”, saying he can hardly believe Iran would risk a war with the US, Israel and much of NATO, just to kill somebody who is not even a member of the ruling family of Saudi Arabia.
“They’ve come down under belief that democracy is better for everybody. The truth is, American and western foreign policy interests in the Middle East have depended for 50 years on the maintenance of tyranny that gave us access to oil, that protected Israel and persecuted Islamists to protect us. All of that going by the wayside,” acknowledges the author, recalling the Israelis, who were first to realize that democracy might not be good for their security.
‘Libya will be anti-American’
Answering a question about war-torn Libya, the author pointed out that this country is notorious for having its Islamists fighting against the Soviets in Afghanistan, and then the same men encountering the Americans in Iraq and also in Afghanistan. Michael Scheuer is uncertain whether Libya will become a hotbed for terrorists, but “it will decidedly be anti-American and anti-NATO”.
‘We are fighting a religious war’
Despite being largely well-educated and technologically advanced,
“America lacks common sense”
, claims the former CIA officer, maintaining that for the last 20 years, the US has been very efficient in creating enemies and endangering security. The last four American presidents have been telling the population that the wars the US wages abroad are against a bunch of madmen, and in no way religious wars.
“We are definitely fighting a religious war. And until we come to realize that – we are never going to be able to defeat it,” Scheuer concludes.
“Let the Chinese deal with these [Islamist] people for the next 50 years, we’ve had enough of it, but the point is – the Americans cannot get out.”
(NaturalNews) Afghanistan is, by far, the largest grower and exporter of opium in the world today, cultivating a 92 percent market share of the global opium trade. But what may shock many is the fact that the US military has been specifically tasked with guarding Afghan poppy fields, from which opium is derived, in order to protect this multibillion dollar industry that enriches Wall Street, the CIA, MI6, and various other groups that profit big time from this illicit drug trade scheme.
Prior to the tragic events of September 11, 2001, Afghanistan was hardly even a world player in growing poppy, which is used to produce both illegal heroin and pharmaceutical-grade morphine. In fact, the Taliban had been actively destroying poppy fields as part of an effort to rid the country of this harmful plant, as was reported by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on February 16, 2001, in a piece entitled Nation’s opium production virtually wiped out (http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=gL9scSG3K_gC&dat=20010216&printsec=…).
But after 9/11, the US military-industrial complex quickly invaded Afghanistan and began facilitating the reinstatement of the country’s poppy industry. According to the United Nations Drug Control Program (UNDCP), opium cultivation increased by 657 percent in 2002 after the US military invaded the country under the direction of then-President George W. Bush (http://www.infowars.com/fox-news-makes-excuse-for-cias-afghan-opium-culti…).
CIA responsible for reinstating opium industry in Afghanistan after 9/11
More recently, The New York Times (NYT) reported that the brother of current Afghan President Hamid Karzai had actually been on the payroll of the CIA for at least eight years prior to this information going public in 2009. Ahmed Wali Karzai was a crucial player in reinstating the country’s opium drug trade, known as Golden Crescent, and the CIA had been financing the endeavor behind the scenes (http://www.infowars.com/ny-times-afghan-opium-kingpin-on-cia-payroll/).
“The Golden Crescent drug trade, launched by the CIA in the early 1980s, continues to be protected by US intelligence, in liaison with NATO occupation forces and the British military,” wrote Prof. Michel Chossudovsky in a 2007 report, before it was revealed that Ahmed Wali Karzai was on the CIA payroll. “The proceeds of this lucrative multibillion dollar contraband are deposited in Western banks. Almost the totality of revenues accrue to corporate interests and criminal syndicates outside Afghanistan” (http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Afghanistan/US_Forces_Narcotics_Trade.html).
But the mainstream media has been peddling a different story to the American public. FOX News, for instance, aired a propaganda piece back in 2010 claiming that military personnel are having to protect the Afghan poppy fields, rather than destroy them, in order to keep the locals happy and to avoid a potential “security risk” — and FOX News reporter Geraldo Rivera can be heard blatantly lying about poppy farmers being financially supported by the Taliban, rather than the CIA and other foreign interests.
So while tens of thousands of Americans continue to be harmed or killed every year by overdoses from drugs originating from this illicit opium trade, and while cultivation of innocuous crops like marijuana and hemp remains illegal in the US, the American military is actively guarding the very poppy fields in Afghanistan that fuel the global drug trade. Something is terribly wrong with this picture.
The “Bin Laden” hoax is consuming our time and energy even as the global corporate-financier oligarchs flee forward cashing in on the political capital they presume they have gained by making this announcement. Even a superficial examination of mainstream media’s headlines and interviews with the CIA director himself calls into question the official narrative with mind numbing contradictions and faulty logic even a child could spot.
The CIA itself is only 95% sure, based on facial recognition, that they bagged their rogue agent. A London Guardian report compounds this uncertainty stating that the CIA compared the alleged DNA of this man they claim to have shot dead in Pakistan, not with a previous sample from Osama Bin Laden, but against a Bin Laden family member. If we are to believe any of this at all, the CIA is not even saying they are 100% sure, so why should we be?
“We were never really certain about whether or not Bin Laden was there.”
Stripping further credibility away, was CIA Director Leon Panetta’s interview on PBS where he begins by saying the CIA had no evidence and were entirely uncertain Osama Bin Laden was even in the compound to begin with. According to a Washington Post article, the CIA claims to have had a nearby safe house from which they observed the alleged compound for months. They also confirm that not a single photo or shred of evidence was revealed throughout the course of this lengthy surveillance mission that the elusive, bearded mastermind was present.
But debating the minutiae is self-defeating. Bin Laden has been long dead, according to a myriad of government officials both in America and abroad. We must look at how this stunt is being exploited at home and abroad, rhetorically and geopolitically.
Domestically
It has become an opportunity at home to criticize all who question government statements and further punish those in Western society who still take their responsibility of holding their government accountable seriously. Perhaps the most ridiculous examples can be gleaned from the Pittsburgh Post Gazette article penned by Reg Henry titled, “It’s time for conspiracy theorists to shut up,” where he postulates anyone questioning the “95%” certainty of the CIA is a “lunatic.”
Despite the Jessica Lynch story being completely fabricated, Henry believes her injury and her signing up for service still makes her a hero. He also believes that Pat Tillman is likewise a hero simply for serving, despite being murdered by his own government who then treacherously covered it up. He omits the fact that Tillman had become critical of the war and his true heroism was for standing up against a system willing to murder its own to perpetuate its malicious agenda. Henry might want to read Pat Tillman’s brother’s rebuttal.
How a real American responds to official government statements: Cindy
Sheehan nails government lies and the propagandists who peddle them to
the wall with healthy skepticism and independent, critical thinking.
This attack on those who question the official narrative coming from a known lying, murderous government is not confined to America’s shores. Jim Corr of “The Corrs” fame has been a long-time outspoken critic of the emerging global government and in particular the glaring inconsistencies behind the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center. This vigilance and skepticism has cost him a heavy price, as he faces a constant, unending barrage by pundits like Reg Henry and his counterparts overseas.
Just one of many media barrages unleashed on Jim Corr of Ireland to undermine him personally, and the message of truth he carries.
Most recently he was attacked by the Irish Daily Mirror which stated, “I call it Jim Corr Syndrome and it seems to be contaminating more and more people. It occurs when something big happens and ordinary folk believe the craziest conspiracy story rather than accept the plain truth. Bin Laden is dead. He was shot during a raid by US special forces. End of story. I’m inclined to believe President Obama on this one but Jim doesn’t and he’s not alone out there. Ironically it’s right-wing Christians who are clambering for evidence of bin Laden’s death. So much for faith.” www.youtube.com/watch?v=seU4xsz9vsY&feature=player_embedded
Declan O’Shea of Infowars Ireland breaks down the latest attack on Jim Corr and the absolute absurdity surrounding the recent “Bin Laden” hoax.
Apparently the author, Mr. Pat Flanagan, is also unaware of even the official narrative and how tenuously it stands. He also seems to insist that we should simply have “faith” in our government, a statement that surely sent many brave Irish men who fought for Ireland’s freedom over the centuries, spinning in their graves. Such an attitude has invited some of the darkest chapters in human history. Telling people to “shut up” and have “faith,” are the very hallmarks of a fascist society, and we already see amidst this atmosphere of “shut up” the concurrent expansion of an ever increasing, omnipresent police-state. Will we be told next by Henry and Flanagan that having armed paramilitary guards standing on every street corner like Castro’s Cuba is indicative of freedom?
Geopolitically
The most alarming aspect of this entire “Bin Laden” hoax is its geopolitical implications. While people argue over the minutia of the shoddy government narrative and question the patriotism of skeptics, the alleged killing of Bin Laden in the middle of Pakistan’s intelligence and military community has increased tensions between Washington, Islamabad, and perhaps unnoticed by the likes of Reg Henry and Pat Flanagan, Beijing as well. In fact, a flurry of mainstream media stories covered China’s awareness that this stunt is designed to give America an excuse to enter into Pakistan and thus directly confront China who has an established and growing presence in the region.
AlJazeera’s article, “After Osama, China fears the next target,” indicates that the Chinese are well aware America’s foreign policy to “spread democracy” is in actuality an attempt to contain the rise of China and other emerging economies. While pundits in the West maintain such claims are the makings of “tinfoil hat” conspiracies, a nation of 1.3 billion is mobilizing to confront this very real threat.
The skeptical who might be tempted to accuse China’s leadership of unwarranted “tinfoil hat” paranoia might want to consult the the 2006 Strategic Studies Institute’s report “String of Pearls: Meeting the Challenge of China’s Rising Power across the Asian Littoral.” Throughout the report, China’s efforts to secure its oil lifeline from the Middle East to its shores in the South China Sea are examined as are means to maintain American hegemony throughout the Indian and Pacific Ocean. The premise is that, should Western policy wonks and paper-pushers fail to entice China into participating in the “international system” as “responsible stakeholders,” an increasingly confrontational posture must be taken to contain the rising nation.
Dr. Webster Tarpley breaks down on Press TV the greater implications
of the “Bin Laden” hoax, including the threat of general world war. Part II
can be found here. All three interviewees make valid, cogent points.
Considering the current standoff brewing in Pakistan, where we see a convergence of Iranian, Indian, American, Chinese, and Pakistani interests, punctuated by provocative drone attacks just hours after Pakistan warned America over violating its airspace, it is quite clear “confrontation” has become the order of the day. The disposal of “Bin Laden” or at least his politically convenient ghost, signals not a drawing down of America’s global war, but a deep breath being taken before the final plunge into confrontation with Pakistan, China, and Russia.
The dangers are very real. We must not back down from our innate rights to hold our government accountable for the statements it makes regarding the actions it is increasingly unilaterally taking. We must call out those who tell us to “shut up” and “have faith” and remind them that it is not only our right, but our duty to “speak up” and scrutinize everything our government says and does. We must reach out and remind them of the danger servile obedience invites, and the horrifying historical examples that exhibit the results from such a cowardly stance. We are literally being penned in, rallied around the flag, and mobilized for a greater, impending confrontation, of that there is no doubt.
To contact Mr. Reg Henry of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette and INTELLIGENTLY remind him of his duty as an American, he can be reached at, [email protected] .
Mr. Pat Flanagan can also be INTELLIGENTLY reminded of his duty as a journalist to objectively examine the evidence before conducting a campaign of degradation against those exercising their rights and duty to call into question their government at, [email protected] .
Tony Cartalucci’s articles have appeared on many alternative media websites, including his own at
A sword, a lightning bolt, a key, a globe, and a bird. These are the symbols of your United States Cyber Command, which you’ll be proud to know has “achieved full operational capability.” FOC is when a military organization basically has what it needs and knows how to use it, but we’re guessing our new cyber-commandos will be a little nervous at first, like a prom date just presented with a room key, or a Modern Warfare player with a new weapon attachment. Surely the USCC will get into its stride real soon, enabling it to “operate and defend our networks effectively.” You know what that means: feel free to be a little extra offensive when trolling on foreign soil today. Uncle Sam has your back.
‘The information linking 9/11 hijackers to several Central Oklahoma locales in the days prior to 9/11/01 was “almost accidentally” uncovered by Oklahoma City-based researchers Chris Emery and Holland Van den Nieuwenhof while working on their research into the 1995 Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building bombing here in Oklahoma City.
As Jack Blood announced on his Deadline Live radio program, based in Austin, Texas, Mohamed Atta and up to five of the 19 9/11 hijackers were seen in Oklahoma City between September 6, 2001 and September 8, 2001 by multiple witnesses who have provided signed affidavits confirming these encounters.
The 911 hijackers seen by witnesses with Atta in Oklahoma have been revealed as: Abdulaziz Alomari, Saeed Al-gamdi, Ahmed Alnami, and Hamza Algamdi.’
As Syria’s crackdown on protests has claimed more than 3,000 lives since March, Italian technicians in telecom offices from Damascus to Aleppo have been busy equipping President Bashar al-Assad’s regime with the power to intercept, scan and catalog virtually every e-mail that flows through the country.
Employees of Area SpA, a surveillance company based outside Milan, are installing the system under the direction of Syrian intelligence agents, who’ve pushed the Italians to finish, saying they urgently need to track people, a person familiar with the project says. The Area employees have flown into Damascus in shifts this year as the violence has escalated, says the person, who has worked on the system for Area.
Area is using equipment from American and European companies, according to blueprints and other documents obtained by Bloomberg News and the person familiar with the job. The project includes Sunnyvale, California-based NetApp Inc. (NTAP) storage hardware and software for archiving e-mails; probes to scan Syria’s communications network from Paris-based Qosmos SA; and gear from Germany’s Utimaco Safeware AG (USA) that connects tapped telecom lines to Area’s monitoring-center computers.
The suppliers didn’t directly furnish Syria with the gear, which Area exported from Italy, the person says.
The Italians bunk in a three-bedroom rental apartment in a residential Damascus neighborhood near a sports stadium when they work on the system, which is in a test phase, according to the person, who requested anonymity because Area employees sign non-disclosure agreements with the company.
Mapping Connections
When the system is complete, Syrian security agents will be able to follow targets on flat-screen workstations that display communications and Web use in near-real time alongside graphics that map citizens’ networks of electronic contacts, according to the documents and two people familiar with the plans.
Such a system is custom-made for repression, says Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which promotes tighter sanctions against Syria.
“Any company selling monitoring surveillance technology to the Assad regime is complicit in human rights crimes,” he says.
Privately held Area, which got its start in 1996 furnishing phone taps to Italian law enforcement, has code-named the system “Asfador.” The title is a nod to a Mr. Asfador who cold-called the company in 2008 asking it to bid on the deal, according to one person knowledgeable about the project. The person didn’t know Mr. Asfador’s full name, and efforts to identify him were unsuccessful. The price tag is more than 13 million euros ($17.9 million), two people familiar with the deal say.
Change Outpaces Deals
Area Chief Executive Officer Andrea Formenti says he can’t discuss specific clients or contracts, and that the company follows all laws and export regulations.
He says governments often use what is known as “lawful interception” gear to catch criminals. Without referring specifically to Syria, Formenti says political change can outpace business deals.
“You may consider that any lawful interception system has a very long sales process, and things happen very quickly,” he says, citing the velocity of Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi’s fall, only a year after pitching his Bedouin tent in a Rome park on a visit to Italy. “Qaddafi was a big friend of our prime minister until not long ago.”
When Bloomberg News contacted Qosmos, CEO Thibaut Bechetoille said he would pull out of the project. “It was not right to keep supporting this regime,” he says. The company’s board decided about four weeks ago to exit and is still figuring out how to unwind its involvement, he says. The company’s deep- packet inspection probes can peer into e-mail and reconstruct everything that happens on an Internet user’s screen, says Qosmos’s head of marketing, Erik Larsson.
Monitoring Centers
“The mechanics of pulling out of this, technically and contractually, are complicated,” Larsson says.
The daisy chain of Western companies from the U.S. to Europe shows the route high-tech surveillance equipment takes on its way to repressive regimes that can use it against their own political enemies.
As uprisings in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia toppled Arab leaders this year, Assad, 46, has held on, deploying security forces against demonstrators protesting his rule, and defying a call by U.S. President Barack Obama to step down. Bordering Israel, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, Syria has been run by Assad and his late father, Hafez, for a combined 41 years.
Captor Computers
Area is installing the system, which includes the company’s “Captor” monitoring-center computers, through a contract with state-owned Syrian Telecommunication Establishment, or STE, the two people familiar with the project say. Also known as Syrian Telecom, the company is the nation’s main fixed-line operator.
Without the Area gear, Syria’s current electronic surveillance captures only a portion of the nation’s communications, and lacks the new system’s ability to monitor all Internet traffic, say the two people who know of Syria’s capabilities through their work for Area.
Businesses that sell surveillance equipment to Syria should be held accountable for aiding repression, says Osama Edward Mousa, a Syrian blogger who was arrested in 2008 for criticizing the regime and fled to Sweden in 2010.
“Every single company who is selling monitoring technology to the Syrian government is a partner to stopping democracy in Syria,” he says. “They are a partner to the killing of people in Syria. They are helping the Syrian government stay in control.”
Syria Sanctions
The European Union has imposed a series of sanctions against Syria since May, including a ban on arms sales and a freeze on assets of people in the regime. The measures don’t prohibit European companies from selling Syria the sort of equipment in Area’s project.
The U.S. has banned most American exports to Syria other than food or medicine since 2004.
That means the U.S. government may need to determine if the shipment of NetApp’s hardware to Syria violated sanctions, says Hal Eren, a former lawyer for the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control who is in private practice in Washington.
“Products of U.S. origin, whether they’re exported or re- exported, are generally prohibited to Syria,” Eren says.
NetApp, which has a market value of about $15 billion and more than 10,000 employees, makes its products in countries around the globe, according to its most recent annual report.
NetApp ‘Not Aware’
“NetApp takes these matters very seriously and is committed to global trade compliance,” Jodi Baumann, NetApp’s Sunnyvale-based senior director for corporate communications, said in a statement. “We are not aware of any NetApp products being sold or having been sold into Syria.”
The NetApp deal was structured in a way that avoided dealing directly with Area, one of the people familiar with the project says. NetApp’s Italian subsidiary sold the equipment through an authorized vendor in Italy which then re-sold it to Area, the person says.
Utimaco General Manager Malte Pollmann says his company relies on Area to ensure its equipment is used and exported legally. “Area is a trusted long-term partner,” he says.
Utimaco, based in Oberursel near Frankfurt, wasn’t aware of any Syria project involving its gear and rarely knows where partners install its equipment, Pollmann says. “I wouldn’t need to know, because it’s not the duty of any of our end partners to tell us,” Pollmann says. “We don’t sell direct.”
No Information
Sophos Ltd., the Abingdon, England-based provider of security and data-protection software that controls Utimaco, referred questions to Utimaco, said Fiona Halkerston, who handles Sophos media relations at London agency Johnson King Ltd.
STE General Director Baker Baker didn’t respond to a request for comment faxed to his office.
At Syria’s embassy in Rome, a press officer said she had no information about the system and declined to comment on human rights implications of such monitoring.
Syria’s purchase of the system illustrates how authoritarian governments are using Western-produced surveillance technology to track dissidents. In Iran, a Bloomberg News investigation showed, European companies provided or marketed gear to track citizens’ locations and communications that law enforcement or state security agencies would have access to.
Tools for Interrogators
In Bahrain, interrogators of human rights activists used text-message transcripts generated by European surveillance equipment, the investigation found. Other Middle Eastern nations that cracked down on uprisings this year purchased the same gear, including Egypt, Yemen and Syria, according to the report.
In Syria, Area’s system for intercepting e-mail and Web sessions will be more intrusive than simpler equipment for blocking websites.
The U.S. is looking into reports that Syria is using technology made by Blue Coat Systems Inc. (BCSI), another company based in Sunnyvale, to censor the Internet and record browsing histories, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said at an Oct. 24 news briefing.
Blue Coat is investigating allegations its filtering gear was sold or transferred to Syria, spokesman Steve Schick says. The company doesn’t sell to Syria and prohibits its partners from selling to Syria or other embargoed countries, he says.
The State Department’s Nuland underscored the ban on virtually all U.S. exports to Syria, responding to a question about Blue Coat during the news conference.
State Department Concerned
“We are concerned about reports of the use of technology by repressive regimes in general, but Syria in particular, to target activists and dissidents,” she said.
Over the past three years, Area has been working to furnish Syria with precisely those tools.
Area, which is based in a modern office building next to Milan’s Malpensa Airport, got the 2008 phone call asking it to compete for the project as it was struggling to collect debts at home, the person familiar with the call says. Along with two Italian competitors, the company had been pressing the Italian government that year to pay overdue bills for interception work, Area CEO Formenti says.
Area won the Syria deal in 2009, two people familiar with the project say. This February, a ship carrying the computers and other equipment arrived in the Syrian port of Latakia, one of the people says.
Death Toll
With the gear in Syria, deployment of Asfador unfolded in parallel with Assad’s escalating crackdown.
The turmoil began in mid-March. Two weeks into the violence, on March 30, Italian employees of NetApp and Area exchanged e-mails in which the computer supplier gave advice to the surveillance company on how to configure equipment that had just been delivered, copies of the correspondence show.
That same day, Assad addressed Syria’s parliament, blaming the protests on a “conspiracy.” “If the battle was imposed on us today, we welcome it,” he said.
By then, more than 90 people had been killed in clashes, according to Amnesty International.
An Area schematic for “NetApp Storage Cluster B,” dated May 26, shows how the U.S. company’s stacks of disks were being wired in computer cabinets. The schematic bears the Asfador code name as well as a cover sheet titled “STE PDN Monitoring Center Project.”
Also on May 26, Syrian security forces killed at least three protesters in the Daraa governorate, bringing the death toll to more than 1,100 people.
Surveillance Room
If Area’s installation is completed as planned, Assad’s government will gain the power to dip into virtually any corner of the Internet in Syria.
Schematics for the system show it includes probes in the traffic of mobile phone companies and Internet service providers, capturing both domestic and international traffic. NetApp storage will allow agents to archive communications for future searches or mapping of peoples’ contacts, according to the documents and the person familiar with the system.
The equipment has already been set up in an air-conditioned room at a telecom exchange building in the Mouhajireen neighborhood of Damascus, where about 30 metal racks hold the computers that handle the surveillance and storage, the person familiar with the installation says. The data center has a linkup to a surveillance room one floor above, where the intercepted communications will stream to some 40 terminals, the person says.
Two people familiar with terms of the deal say that as a final stage of the installation, the contract stipulates Area employees will train the Syrian security agents who will man those workstations — teaching them how to track citizens.
ISLAMABAD – Globally recognised intelligence and forecast STRATFOR has rejected the US Central Intelligence Agency claim that the man killed in Abbottabads compound by US Naval SEALs was al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden. This was one of the reasons the CIA kept Pakistans premier intelligence agency Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in dark.
The STRATFOR says: The possibility that bin Laden was already dead and in terms of his impact on terrorist operations, he effectively was. That does not mean, however, that he was not an important ideological leader or that he was not someone the United States sought to capture or kill for his role in carrying out the most devastating terrorist attack in the US history. In its latest intelligence gathering, the STRATFOR claims that aggressive US intelligence collection efforts have come to fruition, as killing of Osama bin Laden was perhaps the top symbolic goal for the CIA and all those involved in the US covert operations. Indeed, President Obama said during his speech on May 1 that upon entering the office, he had personally instructed CIA Director Leon Panetta that killing the al-Qaeda leader was his top priority. The logistical challenges of catching a single wanted individual with Bin Laden level of resources were substantial and while 10 years, the United States was able to accomplish the objective it set out to do in October 2001.
Because of bin Ladens communications limitations, since October 2001 when he fled Tora Bora after the US invasion of Afghanistan, he has been relegated to a largely symbolic and ideological role in al-Qaeda. Accordingly, he issued audiotapes on a little more than a yearly basis, whereas before 2007 he was able to issue videotapes.
The growing infrequency and decreasing quality of his recorded messages was the most notable when al-Qaeda did not release a message marking the anniversary of 9/11 in September 2010 but later followed up with a tape on January 21, 2011.
The bottom line is that from an operational point of view, the threat posed by al-Qaeda – and the wider jihadist movement – is no different operationally after his death.
The killing of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden represents possibly the biggest clandestine operations success for the United States since the capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in 2003, it claimed.
The confirmation of his death is an emotional victory for the United States and could have wider effects on the geopolitics of the region, but bin Ladens death is irrelevant for al-Qaeda and the wider jihadist movement from an operational perspective.
The operation that led to bin Ladens death at a compound deep in Pakistan is among the most significant operational successes for the US intelligence in the past decade.
An important local source told this scribe: If it was not the case why all the evidences leading to the confirmation of Ladens death were eliminated. His was never subjected to postmortem. Neither the DNA was collected nor it was matched.
Another important source conceded: How come one of the wives of bin Laden, Hamal, who remained in the custody of Iranian Intelligence and hidden mole of US intelligence community made her way to Abbottabad. Hamal never appeared in public.
Hamal has deep US connections. When she traveled from Iran to Pakistan her movements were under watch and the watchers had decided Hamal to end her journey in Abbottabad, the sources added.
Senior intelligence analysts in Islamabad argue: A three trillion worth manhunt concluded very discreetly. Dead body of the ‘man killed by SEALs had no media mention as was done by the US authorities in case of Iraqs President Saddam.
After receiving this vital information, this scribe phoned a senior Pakistani journalist in Washington DC early Thursday. He did not rule out latest findings on this subject saying: Why the CIA was in hurry to remove all possible evidences of the bin Ladens killing who dominated world politics for over a decade?
The Washinton-based journalist termed the crash of US Armys Chinook helicopter and killings of over 36 US Naval SEALs as a part of the effort to finish left over evidence which could lead to facts of May 2 US action in Abbottabad.
The STRATFOR further states the primary threat is now posed by al-Qaeda franchise which can attempt to stage an attack in the United States or elsewhere in retribution for bin Ladens death, but they do not have training or capabilities for high-casualty transnational attacks.
Pakistans former spymaster Lt Gen (r) Hamid Gul told TheNation they never challenged credence of the STRATFOR. I agree with the latest intelligence gathering about May 2 operations follow up. This remains one of the reasons the CIA never informed its Pakistan counterpart ISI when it decided to kill a fake bin Laden, he said.
A frightening foreign military intelligence directorate (GRU) report circulating in the Kremlin today states that over the past nearly 36 hours the vast intercontinental military tunnel complex constructed by the United States Air force over the past nearly 45 years was hit with two powerful nuclear explosions at its main terminuses in Colorado and Virginia used nearly exclusively by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
According to this report, this unprecedented nuclear attack began on the evening of 22 August when one of the main air pressure relief tunnels for this CIA tunnel, located at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa Florida, was forced open allowing millions of cubic feet of air to rush suddenly into the atmosphere. The unique sound of this event was captured by video [3rd video] during a baseball game being played at Tropicana Field near MacDill, though US officials blamed the “mystery noise” on a faulty sound system.
This GRU report, however, points out that Russian engineers are well acquainted with this unique sound as they work feverishly to prepare an additional 5,000 bomb shelters ordered by Prime Minister Putin this past spring to be completed by the end of 2012.
Russian engineers were, also, able to duplicate this unique sound this past March when they were called into the Ukraine to vent a number of deep underground tunnels from poison gas that had killed three people near Kiev and which was, likewise, captured by video.
These bizzare sounds were also heard in Belarus
The sounds were also heard in America
People from Canada, United Kingdom and Lithuania have also reported these strange sounds!
Within a few hours of the venting of this vast tunnel complex, this report continues, a nuclear device was detonated at its western terminus located near Trinidad Colorado with the second blast occurring nearly 12 hours later at the eastern terminus near Culpeper Virginia, and both causing powerful earthquakes felt by tens of millions of Americans.
Unbeknownst to the vast majority of the American people is that the vast military tunnel network constructed since the early 1960’s under their country has cost an estimated $40 trillion and with the exception of this attack shows no sign of abating.
The only known photo of one of the massive US Air Force boring machines used to construct this vast tunnel complex was taken by Little Skull Mountain in Nevada in December 1982 [top right photo] and is similar in design to those used to construct the Chunnel between England and France.
Maps of these tunnels, and the underground bases associated with them, have been compiled over the years by many independent researchers along with lists of their probable locations.
The specific tunnel attacked by these nuclear devices, this GRU report says, was being used by the CIA during their moving of their headquarters and all of their assets out of their Langley Virginia location to their new base located in Denver Colorado that was begun in 2005 for reasons still not fully explained.
The GRU speculates that the timing of this attack in hitting the western terminus first, then the eastern one, was more than likely meant to “trap and destroy” whatever the CIA was currently moving through this tunnel from Langley to Denver.
Most interesting to note is that this attack comes nearly a decade to the day after the 11 September 2011 internal war between the CIA and the US military establishment that rained destruction upon America, and then the world, but whose final battle has yet to be fought, or won, by either side.
To what the final outcome of this titanic struggle will be it is not in our knowing, other than to note that when two powerful forces like these collide, and as they have done so many times in the past, the ultimate losers end up being the American people whose delight in total ignorance as to what is happening around them continues to astound the whole world.
One type of “defensive” war is one that follows a successful provocation of aggression from the desired enemy. This method was used to begin, and repeatedly to escalate, the Vietnam War, as recorded in the Pentagon Papers. Setting aside the question of whether the United States should have entered World War II, in either Europe or the Pacific or both, the fact is that our country was unlikely to enter unless attacked. In 1928 the U.S. Senate had voted 85 to 1 to ratify the Kellogg-Briand Pact, a treaty that bound — and still binds — our nation and many others never again to engage in war.
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s fervent hope for years was that Japan would attack the United States. This would permit the United States (not legally, but politically) to fully enter the war in Europe, as its president wanted to do, as opposed to merely providing weaponry, as it had been doing. On April 28, 1941, Churchill wrote a secret directive to his war cabinet:
“It may be taken as almost certain that the entry of Japan into the war would be followed by the immediate entry of the United States on our side.”
On May 11, 1941, Robert Menzies, the prime minister of Australia, met with Roosevelt and found him ” a little jealous” of Churchill’s place in the center of the war. While Roosevelt’s cabinet all wanted the United States to enter the war, Menzies found that Roosevelt,
” . . . trained under Woodrow Wilson in the last war, waits for an incident, which would in one blow get the USA into war and get R. out of his foolish election pledges that ‘I will keep you out of war.'”
On August 18, 1941, Churchill met with his cabinet at 10 Downing Street. The meeting had some similarity to the July 23, 2002, meeting at the same address, the minutes of which became known as the Downing Street Minutes. Both meetings revealed secret U.S. intentions to go to war. In the 1941 meeting, Churchill told his cabinet, according to the minutes: ” The President had said he would wage war but not declare it.” In addition, “Everything was to be done to force an incident.”
Japan was certainly not averse to attacking others and had been busy creating an Asian empire. And the United States and Japan were certainly not living in harmonious friendship. But what could bring the Japanese to attack?
When President Franklin Roosevelt visited Pearl Harbor on July 28, 1934, seven years before the Japanese attack, the Japanese military expressed apprehension. General Kunishiga Tanaka wrote in the Japan Advertiser, objecting to the build-up of the American fleet and the creation of additional bases in Alaska and the Aleutian Islands:
“Such insolent behavior makes us most suspicious. It makes us think a major disturbance is purposely being encouraged in the Pacific. This is greatly regretted.”
Whether it was actually regretted or not is a separate question from whether this was a typical and predictable response to military expansionism, even when done in the name of “defense.” The great unembedded (as we would today call him) journalist George Seldes was suspicious as well. In October 1934 he wrote in Harper’s Magazine: ” It is an axiom that nations do not arm for war but for a war.” Seldes asked an official at the Navy League:
“Do you accept the naval axiom that you prepare to fight a specific navy?”
The man replied “Yes.”
“Do you contemplate a fight with the British navy?”
“Absolutely, no.”
“Do you contemplate war with Japan?”
“Yes.”
In 1935 the most decorated U.S. Marine in history at the time, Brigadier General Smedley D. Butler, published to enormous success a short book called “War Is a Racket.” He saw perfectly well what was coming and warned the nation:
“At each session of Congress the question of further naval appropriations comes up. The swivel-chair admirals…don’t shout that ‘We need lots of battleships to war on this nation or that nation.’ Oh, no. First of all, they let it be known that America is menaced by a great naval power. Almost any day, these admirals will tell you, the great fleet of this supposed enemy will strike suddenly and annihilate our 125,000,000 people. Just like that. Then they begin to cry for a larger navy. For what? To fight the enemy? Oh my, no. Oh, no. For defense purposes only. Then, incidentally, they announce maneuvers in the Pacific. For defense. Uh, huh.
“The Pacific is a great big ocean. We have a tremendous coastline in the Pacific. Will the maneuvers be off the coast, two or three hundred miles? Oh, no. The maneuvers will be two thousand, yes, perhaps even thirty-five hundred miles, off the coast.
“The Japanese, a proud people, of course will be pleased beyond expression to see the United States fleet so close to Nippon’s shores. Even as pleased as would be the residents of California were they to dimly discern, through the morning mist, the Japanese fleet playing at war games off Los Angeles.”
In March 1935, Roosevelt bestowed Wake Island on the U.S. Navy and gave Pan Am Airways a permit to build runways on Wake Island, Midway Island, and Guam. Japanese military commanders announced that they were disturbed and viewed these runways as a threat. So did peace activists in the United States. By the next month, Roosevelt had planned war games and maneuvers near the Aleutian Islands and Midway Island. By the following month, peace activists were marching in New York advocating friendship with Japan. Norman Thomas wrote in 1935:
“The Man from Mars who saw how men suffered in the last war and how frantically they are preparing for the next war, which they know will be worse, would come to the conclusion that he was looking at the denizens of a lunatic asylum.”
The U.S. Navy spent the next few years working up plans for war with Japan, the March 8, 1939, version of which described “an offensive war of long duration” that would destroy the military and disrupt the economic life of Japan. In January 1941, eleven months before the attack, the Japan Advertiser expressed its outrage over Pearl Harbor in an editorial, and the U.S. ambassador to Japan wrote in his diary:
“There is a lot of talk around town to the effect that the Japanese, in case of a break with the United States, are planning to go all out in a surprise mass attack on Pearl Harbor. Of course I informed my government.”
On February 5, 1941, Rear Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner wrote to Secretary of War Henry Stimson to warn of the possibility of a surprise attack at Pearl Harbor.
As early as 1932 the United States had been talking with China about providing airplanes, pilots, and training for its war with Japan. In November 1940, Roosevelt loaned China one hundred million dollars for war with Japan, and after consulting with the British, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau made plans to send the Chinese bombers with U.S. crews to use in bombing Tokyo and other Japanese cities. On December 21, 1940, two weeks shy of a year before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, China’s Minister of Finance T.V. Soong and Colonel Claire Chennault, a retired U.S. Army flier who was working for the Chinese and had been urging them to use American pilots to bomb Tokyo since at least 1937, met in Henry Morgenthau’s dining room to plan the firebombing of Japan. Morgenthau said he could get men released from duty in the U.S. Army Air Corps if the Chinese could pay them $1,000 per month. Soong agreed.
On May 24, 1941, the New York Times reported on U.S. training of the Chinese air force, and the provision of “numerous fighting and bombing planes” to China by the United States. “Bombing of Japanese Cities is Expected” read the subheadline. By July, the Joint Army-Navy Board had approved a plan called JB 355 to firebomb Japan. A front corporation would buy American planes to be flown by American volunteers trained by Chennault and paid by another front group. Roosevelt approved, and his China expert Lauchlin Currie, in the words of Nicholson Baker, “wired Madame Chaing Kai-Shek and Claire Chennault a letter that fairly begged for interception by Japanese spies.” Whether or not that was the entire point, this was the letter:
“I am very happy to be able to report today the President directed that sixty-six bombers be made available to China this year with twenty-four to be delivered immediately. He also approved a Chinese pilot training program here. Details through normal channels. Warm regards.”
Our ambassador had said “in case of a break with the United States” the Japanese would bomb Pearl Harbor. I wonder if this qualified!
The 1st American Volunteer Group (AVG) of the Chinese Air Force, also known as the Flying Tigers, moved ahead with recruitment and training immediately and first saw combat on December 20, 1941, twelve days (local time) after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.
On May 31, 1941, at the Keep America Out of War Congress, William Henry Chamberlin gave a dire warning: “A total economic boycott of Japan, the stoppage of oil shipments for instance, would push Japan into the arms of the Axis. Economic war would be a prelude to naval and military war.” The worst thing about peace advocates is how many times they turn out to be right.
On July 24, 1941, President Roosevelt remarked, “If we cut the oil off , [the Japanese] probably would have gone down to the Dutch East Indies a year ago, and you would have had a war. It was very essential from our own selfish point of view of defense to prevent a war from starting in the South Pacific. So our foreign policy was trying to stop a war from breaking out there.”
Reporters noticed that Roosevelt said “was” rather than “is.” The next day, Roosevelt issued an executive order freezing Japanese assets. The United States and Britain cut off oil and scrap metal to Japan. Radhabinod Pal, an Indian jurist who served on the war crimes tribunal after the war, called the embargoes a “clear and potent threat to Japan’s very existence,” and concluded the United States had provoked Japan.
On August 7th four months before the attack the Japan Times Advertiser wrote: “First there was the creation of a superbase at Singapore, heavily reinforced by British and Empire troops. From this hub a great wheel was built up and linked with American bases to form a great ring sweeping in a great area southwards and westwards from the Philippines through Malaya and Burma, with the link broken only in the Thailand peninsula. Now it is proposed to include the narrows in the encirclement, which proceeds to Rangoon.”
By September the Japanese press was outraged that the United States had begun shipping oil right past Japan to reach Russia. Japan, its newspapers said, was dying a slow death from “economic war.”
What might the United States have been hoping to gain by shipping oil past a nation in desperate need of it?
In late October, U.S. spy Edgar Mower was doing work for Colonel William Donovan who spied for Roosevelt. Mower spoke with a man in Manila named Ernest Johnson, a member of the Maritime Commission, who said he expected “The Japs will take Manila before I can get out.” When Mower expressed surprise, Johnson replied “Didn’t you know the Jap fleet has moved eastward, presumably to attack our fleet at Pearl Harbor?”
On November 3, 1941, our ambassador tried again to get something through his government’s thick skull, sending a lengthy telegram to the State Department warning that the economic sanctions might force Japan to commit ” national hara-kiri.” He wrote: ” An armed conflict with the United States may come with dangerous and dramatic suddenness.”
Why do I keep recalling the headline of the memo given to President George W. Bush prior to the September 11, 2001, attacks? “Bin Laden Determined To Strike in U.S.”
Apparently nobody in Washington wanted to hear it in 1941 either. On November 15th, Army Chief of Staff George Marshall briefed the media on something we do not remember as “the Marshall Plan.” In fact we don’t remember it at all.” We are preparing an offensive war against Japan,” Marshall said, asking the journalists to keep it a secret, which as far as I know they dutifully did.
Ten days later Secretary of War Henry Stimson wrote in his diary that he’d met in the Oval Office with Marshall, President Roosevelt, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, Admiral Harold Stark, and Secretary of State Cordell Hull. Roosevelt had told them the Japanese were likely to attack soon, possibly next Monday. That would have been December 1st, six days before the attack actually came. “The question,” Stimson wrote, ” was how we should maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves. It was a difficult proposition.” Was it? One obvious answer was to keep the fleet in Pearl Harbor and keep the sailors stationed there in the dark while fretting about them from comfortable offices in Washington, D.C. In fact, that was the solution our suit-and-tied heroes went with.
The day after the attack, Congress voted for war. Congresswoman Jeannette Rankin (R., Mont.), the first woman ever elected to Congress, and who had voted against World War I, stood alone in opposing World War II (just as Congresswoman Barbara Lee [D., Calif.] would stand alone against attacking Afghanistan 60 years later). One year after the vote, on December 8, 1942, Rankin put extended remarks into the Congressional Record explaining her opposition. She cited the work of a British propagandist who had argued in 1938 for using Japan to bring the United States into the war. She cited Henry Luce’s reference in Life magazine on July 20, 1942, to “the Chinese for whom the U.S. had delivered the ultimatum that brought on Pearl Harbor.” She introduced evidence that at the Atlantic Conference on August 12, 1941, Roosevelt had assured Churchill that the United States would bring economic pressure to bear on Japan. “I cited,” Rankin later wrote, ” the State Department Bulletin of December 20, 1941, which revealed that on September 3 a communication had been sent to Japan demanding that it accept the principle of ‘nondisturbance of the status quo in the Pacific,’ which amounted to demanding guarantees of the inviolateness of the white empires in the Orient.”
Rankin found that the Economic Defense Board had gotten economic sanctions under way less than a week after the Atlantic Conference. On December 2, 1941, the New York Times had reported, in fact, that Japan had been “cut off from about 75 percent of her normal trade by the Allied blockade.” Rankin also cited the statement of Lieutenant Clarence E. Dickinson, U.S.N., in the Saturday Evening Post of October 10, 1942, that on November 28, 1941, nine days before the attack, Vice Admiral William F. Halsey, Jr., (he of the slogan “kill Japs, kill Japs!” ) had given instructions to him and others to “shoot down anything we saw in the sky and to bomb anything we saw on the sea.”
Whether or not World War II was the “good war” we are so often told it was, the idea that it was a defensive war because our innocent imperial outpost in the middle of the Pacific was attacked out of the clear blue sky is a myth that deserves to be buried.
David Swanson is the author of “War Is A Lie” http://warisalie.org from which this is excerpted.
Weeks after the raid that killed Osama bin Laden at this compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan arrested C.I.A. informants who had assisted in the operation.
WASHINGTON — Pakistan’s top military spy agency has arrested some of the Pakistani informants who fed information to the Central Intelligence Agency in the months leading up to the raid that led to the death of Osama bin Laden, according to American officials.
Kuni Takahashi for The New York Times
A casualty of the recent tension between the countries is an ambitious Pentagon program to train Pakistani paramilitary troops to fight Al Qaeda and the Taliban in the northwestern tribal areas.
Pakistan’s detention of five C.I.A. informants, including a Pakistani Army major who officials said copied the license plates of cars visiting Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in the weeks before the raid, is the latest evidence of the fractured relationship between the United States and Pakistan. It comes at a time when the Obama administration is seeking Pakistan’s support in brokering an endgame in the war in neighboring Afghanistan.
At a closed briefing last week, members of the Senate Intelligence Committee asked Michael J. Morell, the deputy C.I.A. director, to rate Pakistan’s cooperation with the United States on counterterrorism operations, on a scale of 1 to 10.
“Three,” Mr. Morell replied, according to officials familiar with the exchange.
The fate of the C.I.A. informants arrested in Pakistan is unclear, but American officials said that the C.I.A. director, Leon E. Panetta, raised the issue when he travelled to Islamabad last week to meet with Pakistani military and intelligence officers.
Some in Washington see the arrests as illustrative of the disconnect between Pakistani and American priorities at a time when they are supposed to be allies in the fight against Al Qaeda — instead of hunting down the support network that allowed Bin Laden to live comfortably for years, the Pakistani authorities are arresting those who assisted in the raid that killed the world’s most wanted man.
The Bin Laden raid and more recent attacks by militants in Pakistan have been blows to the country’s military, a revered institution in the country. Some officials and outside experts said the military is mired in its worst crisis of confidence in decades.
American officials cautioned that Mr. Morell’s comments about Pakistani support was a snapshot of the current relationship, and did not represent the administration’s overall assessment.
“We have a strong relationship with our Pakistani counterparts and work through issues when they arise,” said Marie E. Harf, a C.I.A. spokeswoman. “Director Panetta had productive meetings last week in Islamabad. It’s a crucial partnership, and we will continue to work together in the fight against Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups who threaten our country and theirs.”
Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, said in a brief telephone interview that the C.I.A. and the Pakistani spy agency “are working out mutually agreeable terms for their cooperation in fighting the menace of terrorism. It is not appropriate for us to get into the details at this stage.”
Over the past several weeks the Pakistani military has been distancing itself from American intelligence and counterterrorism operations against militant groups in Pakistan. This has angered many in Washington who believe that Bin Laden’s death has shaken Al Qaeda and that there is now an opportunity to further weaken the terrorist organization with more raids and armed drone strikes.
But in recent months, dating approximately to when a C.I.A. contractor killed two Pakistanis on a street in the eastern city of Lahore in January, American officials said that Pakistani spies from the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, known as the ISI, have been generally unwilling to carry out surveillance operations for the C.I.A. The Pakistanis have also resisted granting visas allowing American intelligence officers to operate in Pakistan, and have threatened to put greater restrictions on the drone flights.
It is the future of the drone program that is a particular worry for the C.I.A. American officials said that during his meetings in Pakistan last week, Mr. Panetta was particularly forceful about trying to get Pakistani officials to allow armed drones to fly over even wider areas in the northwest tribal regions. But the C.I.A. is already preparing for the worst: relocating some of the drones from Pakistan to a base in Afghanistan, where they can take off and fly east across the mountains and into the tribal areas, where terrorist groups find safe haven.
Another casualty of the recent tension is an ambitious Pentagon program to train Pakistani paramilitary troops to fight Al Qaeda and the Taliban in those same tribal areas. That program has ended, both American and Pakistani officials acknowledge, and the last of about 120 American military advisers have left the country.
American officials are now scrambling to find temporary jobs for about 50 Special Forces support personnel who had been helping the trainers with logistics and communications. Their visas were difficult to obtain and officials fear if these troops are sent home, Pakistan will not allow them to return.
In a sign of the growing anger on Capitol Hill, Representative Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican who leads the House Intelligence Committee, said Tuesday that he believed elements of the ISI and the military had helped protect Bin Laden.
The BBC (in Spanish)
